Button Art is cooler than you

Long story short, I’m obsessive compulsive. When I’m bored I like to keep my hands busy by normally organizing, or when I was a kid I made those ‘rad’ fabric bracelets and wore ten of them at one time on my arm even when I was in the shower… ahem. Yes.

So needless to say after a month of living in the new apartment I started to get a little squirrely on the weekends when video games no longer sated the need to ‘do something’. The boyfriend will contest that it is a state most dire, when I flop of the couch, sigh repeatedly and say ‘I’m borrredd’.

He hates and loves that shit.

Well, I found myself bored with a lot of buttons.

‘Why do I have a shit-ton of buttons?’ you may ask?

None of your goddamn beeswax good sir. I had them for a very long time as I don’t throw out anything that could be useful. How I’m not a recurring star on hoarders still baffles me.

But I had all these buttons.

And a paint gun, some beat up cardboard and crap loads of time.

Button Art was born.

This is the final creation after one of the most frustrating outings to Walmart I’ve ever had. That is a whole other story about how no one in this world has buttons and apparently asking for them at the dollar store, Walmart, crafts stores and home hardware deserves ridiculous glares and confused looks like I've asked for Soylent green 

It took some time, but the design was simple. Curvy stuff plus cute bursts of colour surrounded by black (because my walls are all white) equals ‘art’.

How-To (thank me later)

1. Design: This is where you decide what you want to do with what you have. I did white swirls with small colour burst. You might be feeling a glob of rounded poop on a silver platter. Whatever floats your boat. 

2. Paint that on your cardboard: I didn't do this and now regret it. So make sure you paint your cardboard first. It also gives you a blue print to follow when putting back your buttons. I would have appreciated this earlier in the design. 

3. Heat up your glue gun: Pretty obvious what to do here and why. Cold glue is solid people. 

4. Begin with your least moveable object: Glue the back of your buttons with a small amount of glue and put them on your design. Make sure you start with your main focus or fixed center. It's better to start in the middle and build out. 

5. Continuing buttoning until your fingers hurt: That's just the hot glue, don't worry so much. Just remember to be safe and not to put the glue gun on anything important, like a cat. 

6. Dry

7.(actually#2) Hang: if you were smart enough you'll go back to number one and before you start gluing you'll add your hanging hardware after you design. I didn't so a hole was poked and it's sitting on a nail. Button's aren't heavy so it didn't need much to keep it on the wall. 

8. Take a picture and send it to me. This is the most important step!!! I must compare your button Art to mine and determine who's is cooler than yours. Which would be mine. (just kidding, I mostly want to see who else is compulsive enough to do the same damn thing) 

9. Enjoy!

10. 9 steps isn't enough. It took way too long. Or you could use this time to bandaid the blisters you most likely received gluing the tiniest buttons you've ever seen. 

Would I do it again?

I plan to but finding the buttons for my next ambitious project has been pretty trying on my tiny amount of patience. And I’m suffering from acute and super lame insomnia this week – so another time!!!

Do you like? Maybe not the blisters soo much but the art is lovely.

But remember folks, I feel no pain when ‘arting’. Nor should you. 

Friday Update of Epic Proportion

I may have lied on the epic-ness but I think you'll live.

Another week done and I feel like I haven't done all that much. Oh well, I guess it's time to start that thing professional or 'well visited' blogs do and recap.

My bigass online footprint

On that place called Wattpad - Something Blue (cont'd). Checkout Vanair for all story posts.

UpsetAppleCart Publicity and Promotions - Crawling Back to the Blogverse : you didn't think I'd hide my professionalism here now did you? This talks a bit on scheduling and the importance of it to publicity (though it really could work with just about any damn profession).

DeviantArt Pictures - Why? Because there are kittens and you know you want the goddamn kittens. Of course you could just stalk my Facebook photo's and see them there too.

Do you like the card game Bridge? I DIDN'T THINK SO! But it case you are one of the 1% of people I know that do we've announced (at my day job) the 2012 ABTA/Master Point Press Bridge Teacher of the Year Award winner: Mary Jane Orock of Texas!! Hurray!!
If you don't know what it is I'm not telling you...

ComixTribe The Red Ten #2 Reviews: Sure it's technically last week but I'm still proud of how well it's doing! (and I love all the clickables in the post!!)

Shit you should click because I said so

Check out Waffling's post The Challenges of a Small Space.  I may have just whored her out earlier this week by doing a 'blog inspiring me to blog again' post, but she made some interesting points about living in small spaces. Which I do appreciate.

Story by Trish (aka Trewest on Wattpad) Carnal Ferocity, a beauty and the beast retelling where I am a muse. Beauty or beast? Be careful how you answer... She needs to update more than she does for this story but I'll cut her slack because she knows where I live and some of my secrets. Sigh, the things we do for privacy.

The conclusion of Face Off was this week and I nearly shat my pants with anticipation. Needless to say I was pleased that Royce won. Hurray for the only reality Television show I enjoy!! (Watch streaming online at TV Links or don't. Your choice to click. )

ComixTribe A Million Dollar Title. Has some great points about what titles work within the industry and why. Plus the comments are where the magic is: tons of great and terrible title ideas.

Until next time. .

Is there room for a comeback?

It’s been far too long since I’ve blathered and flamed. A lot has happened and I’m not terribly sure where to start so today I think I’ll begin with something SUPER NEW!!!

My friend Casey, awesome gal I’ve known since I was a wee-little third grader, has started a blog called Waffling. Huzzah!!! She’s going to be talking about her apartment and how she’s been, and will continue to do make it her own.

It’s one of those tiny-ass apartments you can just barely fit everything into, but it has a great location downtown Toronto and so far it’s freaking awesome. I’m excited to see what she writes, you should be too.

In other news: I’ve moved to the same damn city!! Maybe I’ll throw some of my own apartment inspirations up while trying to make it more of a home.

Until then, 

Junk Mail

I feel the need to break my lengthily silence by bring you an important announcement.

SPAM IS RIDICULOUS.

In some cases, such as a Lovely Monty Python sketch about the canned version of this word, are a wonderful kind of ridiculous that makes me happy.

Junk Email version is not that kind of ridiculous, but a worse more aggravating and time consuming mash of crap.

Now you might already know this, consider yourself lucky, but there are a large, massive group of people who do not know. How do I know they don’t know? SPAM STILL EXISTS! If people knew about SPAM, SPAM would be inefficient and a waste of time and money.

So. I’ll give you a snippet from my email to let you see the kind of SPAM I have and how to tell from the title. Besides, you know the obvious that it’s in my JUNK folder.

1.

Okay, this is pretty easy to spot. One: Are you female? Then you probably don’t give a shit and didn’t sign up for enlargements to your nonexistent cock. Two: If you are male did you sign up for this? If so it wouldn’t go to junk. This rule can be applied to just about every email you’ll see, however in this case you should NEVER BUY YOUR DRUGS ONLINE. For real. That’s just creepy shit.

2.

BREAKING NEWS: I ALREADY DO WORK ON THE INTERWEBS!! Job offers to not come to you titled as such, only scams do. They’ll probably then ask for your credit card. Maybe a mailing address or another professional email to send you updates and information on how you can start your own interweb business! It’s Magic! All you do is point and click!

If you think it’s as easy as opening an email wake up. It’s not. Besides, ask yourself, why are they contacting you? Who are you? Why should/would they care to get you working online? Have you ever considered they’re trying to fuck with your shit!?

3.

Paid surveys might have been a good idea once. You see the ads ‘Stay at Home Mom makes 2000/week by doing surveys!!’ Even if it was true (which it isn’t) they’re not telling you about the 98% of other people who sign up for ‘paid surveys’ and get attacked by other offers until their inbox crashes.  Stop. Think. Review. Who the fuck will pay you for your opinion when you can get a million people’s online FOR FREAKING FREE! It’s a marketing scam. An evil one. DO NOT OPEN.

4.

Flags should start going off by the words ‘Social Alert’. What social media platform of ANY kind refers to their alerts as ‘SOCIAL ALERTS’? None! They’ll say ‘Facebook Message’ or ‘Twitter.com’ in the sender’s box. Which could still be SPAM but much more stealthily hidden SPAM. This is just... don’t open it. I really wish when you did the private message read ‘You’re a Tool!” because you are if you do. These are meant to trap you into going to a similar looking website, put in personal information and then lose all privacy you once thought you could never lose. Don’t click anything justDELETE.

5.

Okay this isn’t SPAM, but ended up in Junk because sometimes you need to check and it happens. I am registered with Google Earth (from high school mind you so it’s staying in junk). Think before clicking, Did I ever sign up for this? If you can’t remember it wasn’t important and you don’t need to open the damn mail. This goes the same for:

Maybe I should open that NVIDIA one... but eh. My drivers work, and I do not care about 3D glasses.

6.

OMG this was why I’m writing this. First, it’s brilliant because everyone quoting the insane Charlie Sheen. He’s made of Tiger Blood – did you know? #Winning! But it’s a scam. No one on Sheen’s PR team gives a shit about you or me for that matter. They don’t want you to find ways to stop wasting your time and earn more money. They want you to open your wallet for some tutorial on how to have Tiger Blood and be like a fucking fighter jet while you pay 12.99/minute for advice you can get on Drunk Hulk’s Twitter feed. (Note: It’s awesome, with linky goodness. @DRUNKHULK )

7.

Anyone offering you gold online either wants you to suck their elven WOW cock or they’re trying to steal real money. Cash4Gold my ass.

8.

This is my favourite though. First, note the attachment and run away. It’s bad news bears my friends and you do NOT want to get hacked. Also, you will not have won a random string of numbers! Sometimes you will win actual thing but if they’re contacting you with the name ‘=Ms. E.Mail Lottery’ they’re probably planning to sell your credit card number and financial information. This would be a wise moment to back the fuck away from the computer, have a good laugh and promptly give your screen the finger. Yes. Do it. It’ll make you feel better. Annnnnd delete!

The rest is the same old bullshit as seen above. You might also get some email from Peter something or other who really needs your help! He’s in a terrible situation, he has no bank account to put his 12 million dollars and needs you to just give him your account numbers, he’ll put his money there and then withdraw only 10 million on the ‘morrow. You can have the rest for doing him such an honour.

Please note this is when he takes all your money, credit cards and anything else attached to the accounts you’ve sent him. Peter then never responds to your emails and he and his 12 million disappear from your life as your debt racks up halfway across the world.

It sucks, but these people do exist and you need to stop feeding them reasons to annoy me an my Junk Mailbox. If no one fell for this bullshit my junk folder would only be filled with updates I don’t care about instead of penis enlargements and GOOLLLLDD!!

Be kind. Please delete.

Do not perpetuate the SPAM.

The Sad Soul on the PA

There’s always that one person in your office that’s on the PA way too much. Announcing phone calls, forgets to hang up the line, the one who laughs really hard or talks RIGHT against the phone so you can hear their haggard breathing from having walked up the stairs.

There’s also the sad soul.

The voice of a man or woman that comes on and behind it hides all the tones of sadness. Not happy with their job, or marriage or just disappointed with their life. There’s always one at the office.

Luckily here it’s all rolled into one; the lifer in customer service. Or well, one of the lifers.

 She’s a ‘round’ woman, so says the girl who’s a little ‘round’ herself. But like, really round and sounds round. She breaths so hard into the phone and when she goes on that some of our phone receivers crack out. Then there’s the tension, anger and underlying sadness mingled together in a sloppy insipid soup. You don’t even get this sort of strained attempt of emotion when listening to that stupid sad CSI music; you know the one where they uncover the dead body of a young woman that died for all the wrong reasons and one of the cast is all sad-face because THIS ONE really grinds their gears.

Like really depressing tones you just can’t miss and sometimes I think all of us in the office take a moment to mourn her, until we all remember the way she blares over the PA in the morning stifling sympathy as we all wince with minor headaches.

Then there’s radio voice guy. No explanation required. Countered with angry middle-eastern VP, impossible to understand Mediterranean Zibby (real name, super nice sweet man), younger female co-worker who is afraid to use it and older male co-worker who doesn’t know how and gets cute younger one to do it for him.

Oh how we have our PA atrocity diversity nailed.

I’m the girl with the slight lisp. I pronounce my s’s a little strong. I’m sure it drives everyone mad! But that’s for another day I think.