Merry March

- Acapulco Gold -

Greetings, blog readers! If there is actually anyone left out there, that is.

As ever it's been a while since I updated my blog here, I'm sorry ~ I spend much of my spare time these days playing around with my fractal art activities. The picture above is one that I did a few weeks ago, I hope you enjoy it!

Around Christmas time I actually sold some prints of my work ~ I was gobsmacked that anyone would pay good money for my stuff but thrilled to bits, of course! It's all done through the Deviant Art site with just a small percentage of the sale price going to the artist concerned... I'm definitely on my way to fame and fortune now... having earned a massive $5.78 from my artwork so far, LOL!

The downside to putting your work online, as always, is people ripping your stuff. A few weeks ago I discovered one of my art pieces on a mobile phone wallpaper site ~ OK, the size was small and the image quality rather poor but nevertheless the ripper had no right to just help themselves to my work, upload it somewhere and offer it for people to download free of charge! It's damned annoying and hurtful when people have so little regard for the hours you put into something and behave like this. Grrr! The talentless little sh*ts!

The site concerned were very good about it, though - I filed a simple report and the picture was gone within 12 hours. But nevertheless, close to 64,000 people (!!) had apparently downloaded it before I got wind of this (if you can believe the download stats given on the site).

Brilliant gallery viewing browser plugin
I recently discovered PicLens, a plugin for Firefox that enables you to view online photo galleries in an exciting new way. If you use Firefox then I recommend you try it! I've been around the Net a long time now and have seen all sorts of things but this plugin truly has that "Wow!" factor ~ it basically allows you to view photo and art gallery material as a virtual art gallery, with the images displayed on a virtual wall that you can scroll and zoom into. Very slick indeed!

PicLens appears to work with Photobucket, Google images, Picasa and Deviant Art, to name but a few. Some sites like Webshots and Renderosity do not seem to be compatible, however.

"PicLens instantly transforms your browser into a full-screen, 3D experience for viewing images on the web. Photos will come to life via a cinematic presentation that goes well beyond the confines of the traditional browser window. With PicLens, browsing and viewing images on the web will never be the same again." (From the PicLens website.)

Dieting news

I'm still on my diet ~ it's been four months now but I've been seeing a steady loss of about 1 lb a week. I had a slight blip at Christmas but soon got back on track again. I've now lost 17 lbs and am feeling, and looking much better for it and rather pleased with myself. I still want to lose about 7-10 lbs so I have another couple of months to go yet. This is really a case of Aion Lady exercising her iron will... it's tough going but I'm not going to give up until I reach my target. This is my health, well-being and self-esteem at stake here.

Needlework news

I'm not stitching any more these days, I'm too engrossed in fractals, but am still keeping my designs up for sale on my website for the time being. The income is small but steady and not too much work is involved in keeping it all ticking over. I had a nice flurry of activity over Christmas as some free magazine publicity kicked in, so that was cool.

I have a number of designs on Origin Publishing's website, Cross-stitching.com ~ they offer designs for download as .pdf files in exchange for a few £s. Almost every time I visit that site I see one or other of my designs in the list of what people are buying so I know they are still selling. A few years ago Origin sent me some royalties for these online sales but I hadn't heard from them for three and a half years so I thought I would get in touch and see what was happening. After a few email exchanges (with a refreshingly responsive and efficient lady at the other end) I finally got a list of what had been sold in the intervening years, a breakdown of how the royalties are calculated and a final figure owing. I had a rough amount in mind but as their terms are better than I thought they were (25% of sales profit to the designer) the actual sum turned out to be three times what I was expecting and a very nice windfall indeed! So I'm rather happy and pleased about that ~ receiving money for not lifting a finger is a wonderful thing indeed!

Mother's Day
It was Mother's Day last weekend so I made this fractal picture for my mum:

- Mamma Mia -

I don't normally print my pictures because the colours don't come out too well on my (now quite old) Epson inkjet, but I made a bit of an effort with this one and managed to turn out a lovely, detailed photo print which I mounted in a nice frame as a gift for her. She's always on at me to give her more samples of my artwork and was pretty chuffed with this one.

Being on this diet, I gave my son strict instructions not to buy me any chocolates this year. His solution? He bought me a fat free yogurt as his Mother's Day gift to me! Boy, I feel so special after that, as I'm sure you can imagine.

Well, that's all my news for now. Happy Easter to you and maybe I'll be back with another update in a couple of months.

Take care, everyone!

Chris x x

Merry Christmas

This is just to wish everyone a very Happy Christmas!

This is one of my festive fractals this year, I hope you like it.

I expect we will be having our usual quiet and restrained Christmas this year - I certainly won't be doing much indulging as I have started a diet and don't want to undo the good work so far as it has been very slow going (7lbs lost in six weeks - would like to lose another 14lbs if poss.). I may stretch to having a mince pie on Christmas Day but that will probably be the extent of my indulgences for the season, hehe! I say "diet" but really it's a case of exercising some self restraint, eating a bit less and cutting out the little extras - as I don't eat a lot anyway and do "do" exercise in any way, shape or form, this means it takes a long time for any weight to come off. Nevertheless I am reasonably pleased with progress so far. I just want to shift some of that excess middle-age spread that has been creeping up on me before it gets out of hand.

We're fetching our daughter from uni on Sunday - she's late coming back for the holidays because of work commitments. Yes, dear reader, my daughter has actually found herself a real live job to help finance her student life! *swoons in shock* She's working part-time as a barmaid in a pub and is absolutely loving it!

Not much else to report, I'm afraid, life goes on pretty much the same as always. I hope everyone is keeping well and that the New Year will bring good health and happiness to each and every one of you.

Cheers!

Chris x x

I'm still here

I haven't felt like updating my blog for quite some time, I'm afraid... to the dozen or so people who may read this from time to time, I'm sorry. I am still alive and kicking, just too busy to do everything I need to or want to I suppose! Nothing new there, then.

Stitching news

Not much to report on this as I'm not doing much stitching right now. I have more or less finished the Judy Dixon piece I was working on - all the stitching is done but there are still all the beads to attach. I'm afraid I've lost interest in it a bit but I will finish it one day soon and will post a picture of it when that's done.

I had intended to work some fancier stitches in the Hardanger areas than suggested in the original pattern but this didn't work out very well, required far too much concentration and was just not very enjoyable. In the end I gave up that idea before I had got too far into into and went back to the original pattern design - woven bars throughout. Boring but not requiring too much brain strain and the end result is pretty enough.

Aion Designs

I've been working quite hard these last few days, building up some stock for a potential flurry of activity in December. A couple of the stitching magazines will be featuring some of my beaded pins, a Blackwork chart and a teaching book design so I expect there will be some extra orders to fulfill when those New Year issues come out in mid-December.

I made up some more beaded pins a few days ago and got positively dizzy with the glue that I was using, even though I had plenty of ventilation and so on... most unpleasant! For the next batch I will have to take a few more breathers I think. Why anybody would enjoy glue-sniffing is beyond me, lol!

Another job I did today was to update some of the charts with next year's date, something that I do each year. One of the most popular charts that I sell is the Elizabethan Blackwork Sampler - I've been selling this chart steadily online for at least ten years now, I guess because it's a style that doesn't really go out of fashion.

Anyway... because this updating of my master printing files is a bit fiddly and time consuming, and I tend to forget the myriad of fine details from year to year and have to work it out all over again each time, this time I decided to not only do a 2008 chart but a 2009 and 2010 chart as well. Each chart pack includes a page for the stitcher to chart her own name and date - I also include two further year dates on this sheet, charted for the convenience of customers who may not get round to stitching the chart for a while. It just struck me as a little weird to be charting the details of dates going up to 2012 when we haven't even finished with 2007 yet! Oh well, at least I'm prepared for the next three years and won't have to think about doing this updating work again until Nov 2010.

So, watch out for those magazine issues (Cross Stitcher and WoCS) and see if you can spot any mentions of Aion Designs! There's nothing I like better than a bit of free publicity.

Fractal news

I'm currently doing the third and final online course on fractal artistry. It's quite a challenge and enjoyable but the pace is rather too slow for my liking. We're normally given about two weeks between each lesson but the current lesson has been allocated the whole of October and it's just a bit too long for me. In a way it's nice to have plenty of time to do the assignments but once they're done it's all too easy to lose momentum and enthusiasm, which is how I'm feeling now.

During the loooooong lull this month I've written a lengthy tutorial for fellow fractal artists, particularly newbies, on how to make fractals mapped onto 3D-style spheres and marbles. It's a great tutorial but even this project is moving slowly - I have had a few people test it for me before I release it to a wider audience and they have been taking so long to report back to me that, again, I feel I am losing enthusiasm and momentum. If I start something I like to just get on with it and finish the job so having to rely on the input of others before I can proceed is a little frustrating if they drag their heels a little.

Well, enough grumbling! I'm actually still enjoying my fractalling enormously and have come up with some terrific pictures in recent months. One actually won a small online competition and the further prize of a 3-month subscription to the website. That's the second time that's happened now!

As part of an online challenge to do a fractal image that involves some pumpkin carving I came up with this, my latest image, a few days ago:

I'm not a great fan of Halloween, in fact I detest the whole idea normally, but this was actually a really fun piece to do and has been reasonably well received in the fractal community that I tend to hang out in these days. I wouldn't say it was exactly a work of art but it does have that "Wow!" factor that seems to attract a certain amount of attention. Being just a really fun piece of nonsense makes a refreshing change - people seem to take themselves and their "art" so seriously that I quite enjoy throwing the odd unusual picture like this into the mix. I think the bats are a pretty cool touch, don't you?

Well, I hope you enjoy it, anyway!

Bye for now.......