Trying Not To Fall Down The Rabbit Hole

When I was a little girl, kids enjoyed simpler things. I loved fairy tales. I still love them. I have a lovely, very, very old edition of Grimms.

I think the two fairy tales I liked the most were Cinderella and Alice In Wonderland. I liked and identified with Cinderella because she was very poor and lived in rather harsh circumstances. But she managed to overcome that.

I liked Alice best though. She wasn't a princess, she was an ordinary girl who just sort of went along falling into things topsy turvy, doing things sometimes against her better judgement (or lack of it) and made the most of her unusual circumstances. I still identify with that!

When it was announced that the new Alice movie was coming out, I was terribly excited. I just can't wait to go see it this week. Some of the critics have been rather hard on the movie, but I don't care. I want to go, I would go now, right this minute if I could. But I want to wait and see it in 3-D at the IMAX.

Last month I made a post telling you that I decided it was time for me to set the proverbial stage for where my bears would live in order to better define what I want them to be. So keeping in mind what I had decided on as an influence, I set out to make a new layout for my website. (You can see a sneak peek in the new blog header.) It was all going along fairly well, then I got stuck. I have been stuck for a week now.

While I want a bit of a fairy tale feel to it, I don't want it to be inspired by Wonderland. It's proving much harder to stay out of the rabbit hole than you might think. Wonderland has all those elements that I love. There is the life size chessboard, giant mushrooms, tea parties and characters living in fantastical places.

I just don't want anyone drawing the conclusion that I made the change to coincide with the movie coming out. Maybe if the movie wasn't coming out at the same time I wouldn't focus on it so much. I know I want the bears to live in a forest that has a perfectly integrated steampunk-esque town. While in my head it doesn't resemble Wonderland that much, it keeps translating to that on the screen.

Until I dig myself out of the rabbit hole, I guess the new layout won't be put in place. I just hope when I do see the movie, it doesn't influence me even more.

A Chocolate Bunny's Tale

Back when I first started making bears and animals I had a little bit of a hard time letting them go. I think that's normal with all bear artists. But as I saw that people loved them, it became easier because I knew they were going to homes where they would be appreciated.

I have never sat down with the intention of making something just for myself since that very first bear. As a result I don't have a whole lot of my own work. Once in a blue moon one will decide to stay here. But for some reason I always have a little bit of guilt about wanting to keep one.

For several years I have wanted to make a simple little rabbit. I have made quite a few jointed rabbits over the years and I have never kept one. There is one that I have always kind of regretted sending out to a new home, but I am sure he is quite happy and where he is meant to be.

A few days ago I sat down to finally create my simple little rabbit. I figured with Easter coming it was a good choice to finally do it. I have amassed a few lovely little baskets and eggs along the way so I wanted to make "chocolate" bunnies for baskets reminiscent of childhood. I think we all loved getting those fancy little baskets.

After he had half his face finished yesterday I wasn't so sure he was going to turn out the way I wanted. But I forged ahead.

When he was completed, I was pleasantly surprised. You never really know for sure what they are going to look like until they are done. I think they just turn out how they choose and I have very little to do with it.

As I was finishing him up, Bunny and I formed a bond. For some reason I can't bear the thought of letting him go. Maybe it's because I have wanted to make one for so long, or maybe it's because I am allergic to chocolate and he is the only type of chocolate bunny I can have...or maybe he has his own reasons for wanting to stay here.

At any rate, I am going to give you a peek at the very first Chocolate Bunny. While he has chosen to stay here, never fear bunnies multiply and there will be more adventurous bunnies who want to go out into the world available for adoption soon!

Spinning Off Our Axis

Last weekend Chile was hit with an 8.8 earthquake. It had a devastating effect on the region and the people who live there. Their lives are forever irrevocably changed. My heart goes out to them.

But what you may not know is that it had an effect on our entire planet. The Earth's axis moved roughly 3 inches due to the plate tectonic movement, causing a mass shift in our planet. It sped up the rotation of our planet a tiny bit, and thus shortened our day by 1.26 millionths of a second.

Now I know what you might be thinking...that's an imperceptible amount to us. The human brain wouldn't even notice that right? So what's the difference? Six years ago we had another imperceptible shortening of our day by 6.8 millionths of a second, due to another earthquake mass shift changing our axis. These changes aren't anything we notice. But we have only been monitoring things of this type for a very brief period compared to the entire history of the planet. If we added up the total amount of every time the day got a bit shorter the change would be quite noticeable and a little bit shocking.

Scientists say the moon was 15 times bigger in our sky several billion years ago. It's moving away from us gradually, but the changes are so slow we don't notice.

Now if you've been reading my blog recently then you have read that I have been struggling to figure out my life lately. Something seemed different. As if something had changed in what I was doing or maybe not doing. I have been struggling to figure it out and fix it.

But I had a moment of clarity thanks to a comment my friend made and a trip to Best Buy. She wisely observed that we have so much technology bombardment that people are starting to get sick of it and won't want it. A week or so later I went to Best Buy and saw all these endless things that we don't need, some of which I couldn't even identify. I am sick of it. I realized I was sick of it when she pointed it out, and I agreed with her.

I also realized it's not just my life that has changed so much. It's our lives in general. Maybe the fall out of simple longevity makes you notice these things more accutely. But I do believe that we have changed our lives radically in the last decade or so thanks to technology. It's like that change in mass that is spinning us off our axis. It's imperceptible on a day to day basis, but when you look at the big picture it's shocking. I feel like I can't keep up lately. I don't want to.

That's the thing that is causing me discomfort. When the world and the way human beings as a whole live our lives change we don't have a choice. We either keep up the best we can or we move to a cave somewhere.

Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, from my perspective it did for a while, and now it isn't. It's complicating it in ways we could have never imagined. But the machine will crank on and spit out new things we don't need. The earth will spin off it's axis again whether we approve or not.

All I can do is choose how to adapt so I don't feel lost and unbalanced by it. But I find myself wondering just for a moment...how much do you think it would cost to heat a cave?

~*~ Mariposa Mouse ~*~

I finally got her finished! My fancy little mouse is available on my website on the animals page if you would like to visit her!

Drug Out

I have to level with you, I don't know how people can become drug addicts. I don't even like to take prescription medications. Unfortunately I have to take some. None of them are that serious, but they are necessary. The ones I have been taking for years have no side effects luckily. But this last one that they gave me had nothing but side effects.

Among other things, I had headaches, nausea, lethargy, apathy, memory loss and worst of all...I did nothing but scratch for the entire time because my skin was so irritated. R and my Mom both insisted I stop taking it. Fortunately it was something the doctor was just trying and it's not critical that I take it.

I have stopped taking it two days ago and while my skin irritation has calmed down considerably it hasn't left my system completely yet so I haven't been posting.

I just thought I would give you a little update so that you knew why there had been no posts. With some luck I should be back to normal in a day or two. Until then, I won't be indulging in anything other than my recreational drug of choice...which comes in a white cup bearing the name Starbucks!

Happy Valentines Day!

Setting The Stage

Picking up from where I left off yesterday...when I tell people how to figure out what they want to do, I tell them to set the stage so to speak. I suggest they make a simple list of everything they like even if it doesn't immediately seem to pertain to a possible career in the art world. Or any world for that matter. Sometimes we see patterns emerging when we do that.

I also tell them to imagine themselves already immersed in the world they want to be in. What kind of life would they live if they could live their dream life? Visualization is a very important thing in realizing what your dream is. Over the years I have visualized myself doing many things, and some of them have turned into realities.

But I have never really visualized the bears themselves living a life beyond the little legends I give them to define their personalities on my site. I have always had a vague notion that they were old toys that someone loved to a worn state, but that's about it.

Now I need to interject a little something before I continue. A few years back I had made some bears that were exactly what I had been striving for. It took me a long time to truly get where I wanted to be with their look and shape. After making several hundred of these bears, I had done it. I had accomplished this goal. So I decided it was time for a new idea and a new goal as to how they should look. The problem is I never really got a new idea. I have just been going along trying this or changing that a little without a real specific design in mind. It's very hard for me to work like that and be satisfied. I love the bears I have created since then, but I still need something specific to strive for which is why all of this is coming about.

I figure after nearly 30 years they deserve a life and world of their own. They have earned it. Besides if you want to get to know someone, knowing their history is a large part of who they are. I thought all day about where the bears and their animal friends would come from. It just seemed terribly important to think about this, I wasn't completely sure why. As I went around doing my household chores I thought about what would their world look like if it didn't have any people in it? I didn't worry about what the inhabitants would look like yet though.

The logical part of my brain said well bears live in the woods. But these are teddy bears so we don't have to be logical. They could live in a city, but what would that city be like? It didn't seem quite right.

I thought it would be best to start setting a mental stage. I kept picturing a sunny meadow in the middle of a lush forest. Even with the addition of butterflies, it was pretty but it still didn't seem quite interesting enough.

But then I realized this is my world I am creating, so I can make it anything I want. I didn't have to choose between city bears or country bears. I could have the best of all worlds.

Suddenly their were dwellings in the forest...all the fanciful places I would like...a striped silk tent, a tree house that is a cuckoo clock on top, a large acorn house with shutters where one of the smaller animals would surely live. I would swear I even saw a dirigible flying in the background. My forest suddenly had a community with a slightly steampunk feel to it.

Suddenly it came alive. And the biggest surprise that came out of all this daydreaming was that I had an idea for what my website should look like, despite picturing the bears yet.

Maybe it seems as if I am doing things backwards, and maybe this seems like a waste of time to the more pragmatic bear artists out there...but I have a feeling this will bring me to the place I need to be. If I take time to set the stage, I will know who to cast in the roles. I probably should have done this years ago.