Seen The New Tattoo?

First off today, I thought I'd share a wee bit of the nonsense. During the holiday break, my family ventured to Monterey and for Christmas I got myself a new tattoo. While it's still far from completely healed as that takes a couple of months really, it looks pretty good, so I thought I'd share it with you. This also illustrates at least for me, the importance of a good tattoo artist as opposed to a tattooist. The artist I saw took my drawing and asked if he could work with me on the design. Thank the gods he did. He took what I had created using clip art and a pen trying to create the feeling that I had in my head and made it into this...actual art. I think it's perfect...the picture is not.

I received word back on a few different irons I posted about yesterday, so it's full speed ahead on that fence. Yeah, this is not going to make a lick of sense if you didn't read yesterday, sorry. One of those irons was a commission to make a pearl necklace 'wearable'. I was sent a sketch of what they were thinking of and I made up a little sample piece with the options and I will await the pearls to create the final piece, likely next week. This one should work up rather quickly, but at a very long length for doubling, it should also be quite a striking look and you might see a similar version without real pearls pop up in the store some time.

I know I never showed you what the last pile of ace was becoming. I wanted to wait and see whether the commissioner of that project liked it yet before I did. Well the design has been approved after some slight tweaking, that frankly I should have done in the first place. The final piece may see some crystal embellishment, but we're still on the fence with that decision. It s, my friends a face mask, designed for those who want a tatted mask but wear glasses and I still have not gotten over that design hurdle. I shaped it a bit like gas mask or a motocross mask. Sure, it has little masking powers but hey, it's lace.

Yesterday headband sample was also approved with a slight design adjustment. The entire piece will be created to widen at the center. This should be a fairly simple case of strategic stitch increases. I want the widening to be a nice, gradual increase. Does this mean that I will make a prototype and write it all down? No...that's silly, wise, but silly. I will of course just make it up as I go along. See, this is why I'm not sure I belong in any designers club. I'm like a hack who sometimes gets lucky. I don't follow any rules, hell, I don't even know what rules might actually exist. Don't worry though, I don't think I'm too good for them...I'm just too lazy to figure that all out.

Anyway, I should be busy working on all of this for a while and after I clear my plate, I've been thinking more about doing couture type pieces. After the mask, I felt such accomplishment, so I was thinking of doing a small line of similarly embellished pieces. Price them accordingly, accept that they may never sell, but may in fact inspire others and you know, get eyes into the store who might then purchase the reasonably priced items. Of course they will take much more time to create, but I suppose that's the point. I'll let you know if they ever do start to be created...one day.