Fake CD covers

I was bored last night and looking to kill some time and ran across this little bit of photochop fun.

You go to wikipedia and hit random search - the subject that appears is your fictional band's name.
You then run a random quotations search and the last three to five words make up your album title.
Finally, you then go to flickr and hit explore: the third image is the one you have to use in your work. Put it together however you like and voila, you've just effectively procrastinated.

Here are more of mine (the one at the top of the blog was my first attempt):

February

Holy moly! It's mid-february already!

I thought I better give a wee bit of an update as to how I've spent the past three weeks.

There were several largeish things that have happened this month, the first being Camp A Low Hum 2009, in Wainuiomata.

It was three days of hedonistic drinking times, dancing to radtastic bands, falling over laughing, and catching up with the wonderful wellingtonians that I so rarely get the chance to see (seriously, Bronwyn, Chloe, Liz, Gianna, Alex, Phil and Amanda are the bees knees and it always makes me SO happy to get to spend time with them! Albeit rarely! Also, was fabulous to get to know Lily too... my wee asian bebe!)

I mean, holy shitballs. It was grand, but over so quickly, and on such a down note too. You see, my liver no longer has to process large amounts of alcohol on a weekly basis since I dropped the scarfies-on-the-piss routine and adopted a "higher" way of living.

Over the course of Camp, I consumed a couple of boxes of Double Brown, Scrumpies, Red Wine, Gin and Tonsies, and miscellaneous beer. I also smoked like a train. By Sunday, my liver was ready for a revolt so I decided to stop drinking... until the afternoon. So my liver declared war and I spent the wee small hours of Monday morning creeping back and forth between our tent and the toilet block where I spewed from both ends until my stomach was cramping and bile was the only flavour I could remember ever occupying my mouth.

THANK GOD FOR DJ AND FRIENDS. They sorted me out in the morning and let me lie outside on the ground while they packed up all the camping crap.

SECOND amazing thing about this month was that Anni, my Finnish exchange student friend, arrived in New Zealand... and came to camp! Haha! Having never been to a music festival before and only knowing me! What a champ! She made friends pretty quickly though, and we had a stonking good time.


Third big thing this month was that I decided to go to art school. Signed myself up for a three year degree I did. Necessary? Perhaps not. Fun? Heck yeah.

The biggest shit thing about art school so far is the new degree structure meaning that instead of getting four weeks on each module in the first year, we only get THREE weeks per subject, which equates to SIX DAYS, or 39 HOURS PER SUBJECT TOTAL. From only 39 HOURS in each of the five subjects we choose, we have to decide on two to pursue for a semester, and after that BAM, you've got a major and you're off.

I WANT MORE TIME!

Ceramics is the BIZ NIZ. I didn't really like our first day because we were working using coiling and slab techniques and all my work looked SUPER clumsy and like something you'd find on an old lady stand at the local school fair. Not the sort of stuff I'm looking to make. Today we hit the potters wheel and I had a fucking blast. I managed to make two bowl type things and two mug type things in the six hours we had.

I can't wait to get onto glazing them and then making some more. ONLY TWO WEEKS LEFT :(

Poos.

Happy Birthday Mumsy!

It was my Mum's birthday on the 30th, and she spent the day in Central Otago buying kilos and kilos of fruit to preserve and make into jam with her partner, Paul. They had a number of adventures, and when they returned to Dunedin, they had this waiting for them:

Mmm! Delicious dark chocolate torte with gingernut base! Super easy to make, super easy to eat! Rich and satisfying! Goes straight to your thighs! Get the recipe here! Oh how I love you Deb, you and your tasty recipes of goodness...

I also made Mum a wee friend. She seemed to like her new chum. Yay for Mum! Yay for new chum! And birthday fun!

Block Party Breaks

Poster for an upcoming party at Di Lusso and Barakah. Boogie on down, down, boogie on down.

I like to draw people

Here are two people I drew the other day. I was having fun with coloured pencil (which is something I have now vowed to do more of, because it was fun.)

New Fangled

This is a poster that I made for Radio One. It is also an ad that went into Vice Magazine. Hope and I had a lot of fun lighting sparklers inside while she struck viking-esque rock poses, and I tried to get my damn camera to do what I wanted it to.

Friendly Fires

Friendly Fires 'Skeleton Boy' by Clemens Habicht from Nexus Productions on Vimeo.

This video is truly fucking sweet. It's the kind of thing that makes my guts writhe in jealousy because it's a really simple concept which is well married to the song content, and executed brilliantly.

CUPCAKEAGE

So I made these cupcakes from a recipe at Smitten Kitchen and let me tell you, they were awesome. Super moist and really tasty. I doubled the amount of spices she used the second batch I made, and added some mixed spice for good measure and my tastebuds were very appreciative.

The icing still needs work.

I'm not sure I like the frosting that came with the recipe, it totally needs lemon juice in it, and possibly more icing sugar because when it sets it basically IS cream cheese, and I struggle with that. The texture is so... rubbery... will experiment more sometime in the future...

Internetz Lovage

Veer.com chose to feature my batch of critic covers on their portfolio homepage! Squee!

Deck the Halls...

...and dress the tree!

I went around to Mum's house the other day and helped decorate the Christmas tree. So many decorations too - Mum has a couple of bags full of them, from ones we made when my sister and I were kids, to ones Mum has slyly bought every year.

When we were younger, I used to sit down before we hung everything on the tree, and split all the decorations into equal piles so that none of us felt slighted. Often we'd have three fairly similar ornaments (like a set of angels or cherubs) but there were also special awesome ones that had to be carefully measured against one another so as not to offend anyone who felt that their pile was not as special and awesome as the other two.

In which case we'd renegotiate.

A delicate balance really.

Here's a photo of one of our cats Lemme (as in "lemme up! lemme on you! lemme have that") hanging out on top of the computer looking bemused at all the tree activity.


Lemme's son, Max, loves the Christmas tree. He has a perennial love affair with a wee felt Santa that we've had for years. Every year he pulls it out of the tree and lavishes licks all over it, so as a result, it's quite fluffy and gross looking. Mum still hangs it on the tree, but at the bottom, for easy access for Mr Max.