Blood will Flow

Snaffled from bratfarrar
When you see this, post five things that make you happy.

I've just done this quickly, based on what I'm into right now.

In no particular order:

1. Sunny days, especially in winter. There's something about the quality of the light in the winter months that makes the sun seem extra-special. It's great for photos too.


2. Snuggling up in my blanket to read a good fanfic. It might be one I've read before or a new one from a favourite author, or a new author altogether. The adventure is never-ending.


3. Getting nice comments on something I've created - that's such a lovely feeling, to find someone likes something that I've made. I don't care if it's art or fic, feebdack always makes me smile.


4. Buying art supplies. I think I might be addicted, but I love ordering new watercolours, or paint brushes, or sketchpads. Even though I have enough to set up my own shop, and 90% of my stocks won't get used because I'm scared of messing it up.


5. Finding a new artist to admire and be inspired by. Actually, this one is a bit of a two edged sword, because there is always that moment where you look at someone's amazing art and are filled with the urge to go and try to recreate it, while knowing whatever you do won't be anywhere near as good. But to hell with feelings of inadequacy! Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and it's been pretty interesting seeing that a lot of these artists I admire have the exact same feelings when looking at another artist's work.

So, what makes you happy right now?

I wasn't sure what to do for Holiday Mixtape, then I saw a photo of happy Jensen sitting astride a beer barrel and...this happened.

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I haven't done a meme for ages, so why not. And this was hard! Only 5 of each thing? So tough!

Snaffled from julchen11

These are all in no particular order, and if I filled it in tomorrow I might chose a different 5...

Top 5 Authors

J.R.R.Tolkien
T H White
Maria Doria Russell
Patricia Keneally
Sharon Shinn


Top 5 TV Shows

Supernatural
Alias Smith and Jones
Firefly
Babylon 5
Star Trek (up to and including DS9)


Top 5 Movies (no order)

Princess Bride
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Don't make me choose between Avengers/Iron Man/Captain America coz I can't.
The Mask of Zorro
Withnail and I


Top 5 Bands (no order)

The Beatles
Runrig (When Donnie Munro was still with them)
Oysterband
Muse
Keane

Top 5 Solo Artists (no order)

Pink
David Cook
Adele
Brad Caleb Kane
Michael Kiwanuka

Top 5 Songs (no order)

I took this from my iTunes playlist so these are my most played

Tonight I wanna Cry - Keith Urban
Undivided - Thirteen Senses
All Fall Down - One Republic
Love Should - Moby
Lost+ - Coldplay (with Jay-Z)

Drive by post to cheer about my Bee-sy Rider bee raising a massive £12,200 in the Manchester charity auction, and be all excited that Stan Prokopenko showed one of my silly drawings in one of his round up videos! I'm easily pleased.

Mine's at c7.50

I have my old laptop back with it's new fancy-dancy SSD which so far just means I have to keep logging into everything again, and have lost access to MS Office because Microsoft don't recognise the new drive. Of course I've lost the thingy codes from my original purchase so am now considering my options.

I do have some thinky thoughts about SPN Episode 2 but it's too late in the day to try and formulate them now so I'll see if I can get my head together tomorrow. For now I'll just say that I'm kind of liking how open things are this season. There's potential here, my darlings, definite potential.

I have some backup access, though sadly my external drives haven't been updated very recently... dammit. My online auto-backups show 1 million files backed up but I can only access ones in folders from 2015 - not very useful. I'm waiting for the company to come back to me on this issue - I'm assured it can be fixed. We'll see! In the meantime, the Apple retailer have pronounced a time of death for my hard drive and said if I get an Apple replacement then I don't get my old hard drive back to take to a data recovery specialist. However, if I can get my backups online, then I probably don't need to try and salvage anything anyway. Argh.

My ex work colleague is a Mac expert, and tells me I should replace the drive with a solid state one, and he could do that for me. Since the machine is out of warranty, I'd have nothing to lose. So tomorrow afternoon I'm going to pop into the local shop and see if they can put in a SSD instead and how much they'd charge me. If it's too much dosh, I'm going to get Jim to do it for me and buy the drive on Amazon.

In the meantime, I've installed a trial version of Photoshop CC to tide me over while I'm using my Mum's laptop she kindly lent me. I have no idea how people manage to work on iPads - I NEED laptop functionality! Even though these new Macbooks are a pain in the arse not having old style USB ports or any other interfaces apart from the stupid thunderthingy. So I've had to buy an add on with two USB ports so I can use my Wacom tablet, charge my phone etc.

Oops that went on longer than I intended. I really came on to post a few old photos I found and to give y'all a good laugh.
My wedding day, way way back in the mists of time, when I was half the woman I am now.( Read more... )

I'm in Berlin! It was very, very hot, but now it's rained and it's only normally hot. Well, you have to understand that I'm talking as a Brit who's used to summers where 25ºC was always considered a heatwave (before the global warming that doesn't exist), so you have to understand that recent temperatures home and abroad have been quite traumatic.

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Hi darlings, I'm back from Lovely Lisbon and found that this had been posted on Twitter while I was away. So I've uploaded it to Youtube. I'm sure there'll be multiple copies on there but I couldn't find one.


Back to the holiday weekend! It was hotter in England than Portugal, which is just nutty, but it was still blooming hot enough for me. Our apartment looked really run down from the outside, and was opposite one of those tiny shops that sell everything, and had some very dodgy blokes hanging round outside from 11am till midnight - but the inside was really nice and airy. Not that we spent much time there, what with birthday celebrations and sightseeing, and of course, eating.

Here's a small picspam to whet your appetites for a visit one day - quickreaver I'm looking at you! I'm certainly planning to return, as three days wasn't anywhere near enough time to see everything.
One of Paul's photos of me in the castle - nice to see the warning after we'd walked all round the scary high walls with no guard rails... LOL( Read more... )

I was feeling a bit meh about it yesterday, and only did a little bit of painting, but today I forced myself to get in there and get on with it, and the net result is - I think it's very nearly done! Which is a good thing, because I had a call late last week to say one of my other designs has a sponsor, and so I have another car bonnet (I think he said a Mercedes) arriving sometime this week. Originally it was going to be a tight timetable for me, because the due date was 13th July, but now they both have to be painted and laquered before 27th which is much better.

So here's my latest timelapse, followed by a few still photos. I know you won't, but please don't share anywhere, as these are showing you the whole design, which isn't supposed to be revealed until August/September!
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I'm making good progress!