Shrink Plastic - the world 10 times smaller

This is not a great photo because I don't have any artificial lights that I can use with my camera and at this time of year, the moments of good natural light are few and far between.

I was recently asked to teach a class on shrink plastic. This was supposed to be one of the items that we'd do in the class (although my plan had been to get the students to colour and decorate theirs) but it takes nearly two sheets of plastic to do this and I neglected to mention to the store owner that she needed to get in lots of shrink plastic.

It uses one of the Creative Expressions trunk box stamps, stamped onto shrink plastic four times with either StazOn or Jet Black Archival (if you're using Jet Black Archival you need to leave it for longer to set). Each panel is then cut out and decorated, then shrunk independently as you can't get shrink plastic to bend once shrunk - well, not easily. These are stuck together using a really strong glue. I've used E6000, but that is so difficult to buy in the UK. Any good strong glue that dries clear will do the job. I started by sticking the front and back panels to the bottom. Then I stuck the flaps to the front panel and the flaps inside the box to the back panel. The flaps for the bottom were stuck on the outside. Then, I stuck two of the little tabs to the edges of the top panel, waited until it was dry, then attached the flaps to the top panel on the outside edge so that I could angle them outwards a little so that they would fit neatly over the top.

Ah, gay Paree

Paris is wonderful. If money were no object, I'd be happy to live there. But until I can speak the language better, it is not something that I would do.

Getting to Paris was easy. Get the train from our local station to Paddington, then Tube it to St Pancras. We thought we'd be able to withdraw and change money there, but no, everything isn't open yet. So we grabbed a snack and checked in. We left on the Eurostar just after 12 and 2.15 hours later, we arrived at Gard du Nord. Metro'd it over to our hotel and dumped our bags.

We walked up towards Bastille and I whipped out my camera - only to discover that I'd left the card back in the printer at home. We found a shop that sold cards and continued walking to Bastille where we found a North African restaurant to have dinner in. It was a little disappointing as far as North African food goes, but then we both like exciting food.

The following morning after a leisurely breakfast, we caught the Metro up to Clignancourt where you'll find the largest flea market in Europe with over 2000 stalls. Unless you're looking for rip off Dolce & Gabanna or similar, it isn't cheap. We had crepes and other great street food for lunch and walked our feet off. I found a great store that sells any number of watch parts that you might want. I picked up about 30 watch faces for €10. I saw some really cute old Lâncome ointment tins but he wanted €4 each and I didn't think they were worth it.

We caught the Metro back into the city, made our way to the river and walked to Pont Neuf where we picked up a boat tour and went up the Sienne where the picture of the Eiffel Tower was taken. We then went up to the Jewish Quarter in Marais and found a lovely Jewish restaurant where we were served a variety of things that went with bread until we were stuffed. We tried to get to see a movie but the only cinema nearby was only playing things dubbed into French. We gave up and went back to the hotel.

On Monday morning, we had another leisurely walk to Bastille, this time following along the top of the Viaduc des Artes which is an old railway track that has been converted into a green space running nearly all the way into Bastille, so named for all the little shops located in the railway arches underneath. We picked up the Metro at Bastille and went up to Montmartre, where we found the most wonderful fabric shops. Although I was tempted by lots, I restricted myself to six metres of the most wonderful purple/red shimmer fabric which I hope to have made into a blouse.

We had lunch in a lovely little brassarie and learned a great lesson for Paris: if you want good food, stick to what the French know how to do best - French food. After lunch it was a trip on the finicular up the hill to Sacré Coeur - beautiful but they don't allow photography inside. However, we did do the roof walk and got some fantastic photos - look, there's the Eiffel Tower again.

We gave into buying a few things in the local souvenir shops but managed to avoid the artists who were touting for business and started the gentle stroll down the hill taking photos as we went. You see, Zandy has a new camera (a beautiful Digital SLR) and so everything became a photo op.

We got back down to the main drag and walked along to Blanche and found a lovely patisserie that was doing baklava and suchlike and each picked up a snack. We walked down to the Moulin Rouge and took a few photos - well, I did anyway. Zandy's camera can't cope with as low-light situations as mine can.

Having caught the Metro back to Odeon we found a cinema playing English-language films and saw "Lions for Lambs" - fantastic movie, highly recommend it.

Tuesday was our last day and we really only had a half day. We went down to look around Notre Dame. Now, they have no problem with you taking photos as long as you don't use flash - so we took lots and lots of photos. The scale of the place is impressive. However, I'm less impressed than I would have been 16 years ago, because there are so many wonderful churches in Britain that (in my opinion) equal or better Notre Dame.

Still, the scale of the place is amazing and you can spend a lot of time wandering around it and still not see it all. We crossed over onto the south bank and wandered around until we found another cute brasserie to have lunch in. Our order had just been placed when our friends Lana and Toni discovered us, so the four of us had lunch together.

It was then back to the hotel to pick up our bags and head back to Gard du Nord where we arrived for our train with less than 10 minutes to spare.

Arriving back at St Pancras, we decided rather than rushing back to Paddington to get the first train out, hitting the rush hour and therefore probably not getting a seat, we instead went to one of our favourite restaurants behind Euston station before coming home at a leisurely pace.

I love Paris in the fall - Packing to go.

It's funny: when I pack to go on holiday, I have a methodology for working out what I need to take that starts with how many nights I'll be staying (in this case, three), then how much walking I'll be doing (lots) and how cold it will be (very). Normally, I would then pack my three warmest items of clothing, my most comfortable shoes and my warmest coat.

But this was Paris and you don't go to Paris in just anything.

I packed two pairs of my best jeans, then tops that would look nice on their own, but could be layered with other items and still look good. On the footwear front, I conceded that my walking shoes would have to be taken because there is no other way I can walk around any city for three days in anything less, no matter how grungy they look. And although it is the warmest coat I own, there was no way I was going to Paris in my flourescent yellow jacket with reflective stripes on it, so my full-length winter coat with fake fur collar was taken.

OK, there are limits to how good I'm going to look given the base that I have to start with, but the yellow jacket would have had people asking me directions and that wasn't an option.

Uploading photos - Vista, Grrr!

I've got some photos of work to put up and now I've found another snag that is preventing me from doing so: Windows Vista!

I can't find my original install disks for my Nikon camera (but it was bought when my computer was XP and Vista was just a beta product in Microsoft's eye), so I went to Nikon's website to download the appropriate stuff. Can't find anything there quickly. Knowing that I'm running out of time, I figured I'd just put the card into the card slot on my printer. Guess what? Vista doesn't recognise the card reader on my printer.

So, the only way I can currently read photos from my card is to put it into the PCMCIA converter I sensibly bought when I got the camera, and insert that into the PCMCIA slot on my laptop. Slight snag there: the laptop only has a 20Gb hard drive on it and it is too full to take all the photos on my card, so I have to send it to a shared folder on my desktop.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is: I won't have any pictures up just yet, but I made a really cool thing with shrink plastic the other day that I want to post, so as soon as I can, I'll have photos up there.

Blog Tagging

Oh no, Jen's tagged me. This is a problem because I'm not sure that I know 7 people who blog. I'll start with one and see if I can add others.

Here are the rules:

1. Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself (on your blog, we all want to know them).
3. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
4. Let each person know that they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog

And here are my 7 random facts:

1. I trained as a professional dancer - but you wouldn't know it looking at me now.
2. I am a computer geek who has the ability to talk to people - a rare thing in this day and age.
3. I've never had a career. I've fallen from one job to the next which has resulted in where I am today.
4. I constantly struggle with my artwork. I am often disappointed that what appears from my hands does not resemble what was in my head.
5. I appear to be very outgoing. However, I have a very negative image of myself.
6. I can block out things around me and focus fully on one task regardless of the mayhem ensuing around me, but turn on the TV and I can't do anything else.
7. My dream is to have a successful business running from my own back garden shed, with my (as yet, unborn) children with me.

I'm tagging the one person I can think of now and hope she doesn't mind. Then as I find more people, I'll tag them too.

Sally Lynn
Becky

Shiny... Shiny...

It is here. The photo isn't as good as the publicity shot from Antec because I don't have a clean, white room to photograph it in. You can see all the cabling around it and just to the left of the photo you can see DH's computer tucked away. My laptop is sitting on the top and you can see my Quickutz Silhouette reflected in the front door.

It really is as shiny as I thought it might be. Now, the question is: do I Alcohol Ink it or leave it shiny and plain?

Altered computers - what will they think of next.

The cheek of some people

My day job is a computer consultant. I provide help, advice and goods to people whose lives are so busy that they don't have the time to do the research that I can do for them. One of the services I provide is sourcing computer equipment for them. Basically: they tell me what they want to do with a computer, outline all their issues they're having with their existing solution and I solve all those problems.

Mostly, I end up building computers specifically geared for their needs. You know: buy all the separate bits and put them together.

When I first set myself up doing this, I registered as a reseller with a supplier. In order to get an account with them I had to practically sign my life away in blood. I had to provide company registration documents and sign a lengthy legal agreement which said that I was buying these items specifically to resell and not for my own personal use. The upshot of this was that I was supposed to be able to buy this equipment a wholesale prices.

The wholesale prices that I'm getting just simply don't allow me to make any money at all. If I compare the prices I can buy individual items for with items on the Internet, my supplier might be one or two pounds cheaper. But, if you add their £14.95 standard charge on the top, when some of these Internet places will ship for free, suddenly their prices aren't at all attractive. Additionally, I don't have to sign any legal agreements with these people, nor do I have to provide them with any proof of my company. In addition, these people have a consumer-inspired returns policy which allows me to return something if I a) don't like it or b) ordered the wrong one by mistake - neither of which I can do with my supplier.

The only advantage that I can see for working through my current supplier is that I can usually get everything from the one place and this didn't use to be the case. But the competition have stepped up their game and I'm now finding that 9 times out of 10, I can get everything from one of the competition.

For example, I'm looking for a really spiffing case to replace the case of my computer which I've just sold to a customer. I've bought three cases from the Antec Performance One series for customers and I really like them. They've brought out a Special Edition (pictured above) with shiny polished case. Technically, under my agreement with my supplier, I'm not allowed to purchase this for my own use. However, I've just found it on another site for .30p more than my supplier is selling it, but with free P&P, making it £14.65 cheaper. I've ordered it and it should arrive on Tuesday - providing I'm around to receive it.

If wholesalers like mine aren't prepared to go argue with the manufacturers about the prices generally available to the Internet stores, I could be sent out of business. My only saving grace is that the majority of my customers don't come to me for cheap prices, they come for good quality service - which they get, every time.

How time flies

I hadn't realised how long it is since I last made an entry in my blog. I've been prompted to update for two reasons. Firstly, a great friend of mine has finally entered the world of blogging and I've added a new section of my Favourite Blogs with Jen's as my first entry. You really should check her stuff out.

The other reason is that we recently took a holiday to Darlington in County Durham which is where my Great Grandfather was born and my Grandfather spent his first four years after the family returned from Madagascar. All of the family has now either passed away or moved away from the area so finding references to Hodgkin was quite difficult. However, my Great Grandfather's wife was from the Pease family and his Grandfather on his mother's side was a Backhouse and that made things a lot easier. Pease and Backhouse were sponsors of Stevenson and his passenger railway and were the financiers behind the Stockton to Darlington Railway. As we wandered around Darlington we found lots of references to these two gentlemen and their predecessors. Backhouse was the co-owner of the bank that is now known as Barclays and Pease was in partnership with three others in a bank which sold out eventually to what is now Lloyds TSB.

The old family home is so big that not long after my Great Great Grandfather (Jonathan Backhouse Hodgkin) died, it was sold to a Methodist couple who donated it to the Methodist church and it is now Elm Ridge Church. There has been some modification to accommoate a large expanse for a church, but one of the rooms has a picture of Jonathan B's wife Mary, two of his watercolours on the wall and a photo of Jonathan B and Mary sitting on the back steps of the house. Ironically, the room is called the Hodgkin Quiet Room - you don't normally see Hodgkin and Quiet in the same location!

We also spent some time in the Quaker Burial Ground behind Darlington Meeting House. There, all the relatives are lined up in a row. Unfortunately, some of the older headstones have been laid against a wall which is now being intruded upon by the roots of the trees, but on the whole I got lots of photographs, including a photo of my Great Grandmother's grave. The members of the meeting didn't understand why Lydia was buried in Darlington when she'd originally come from down South. I tried to get them to understand that she had probably held with the view that when you marry, you take on your husband's family. When she died, she died a Hodgkin, so it was only fitting that she be buried with the rest of the Hodgkins.

I'd like to go back and spend some more time in the library at Darlington Meeting House. There is a whole wall of bookcases full of books by family members that I'd like to sit and look through. I mentioned that there is a Hodgkin Pedigree Book (which I thought was unusual) that has the entire family listing in it, and was told that there was also a Backhouse and a Pease Pedigree Book. Finally, I can learn how the families meet up. Until three generations ago, Quakers didn't marry non-Quakers so the same names creep up a lot in a Quaker family tree.

No photos of completed work yet

I would have loved to have some photos to show you of finished work, but I simply haven't had time. I have some photos of the Moxley Retreat, but this one seems to capture the essence of how the weekend went. I drank far more than I should have but it was a blast.

Zandy and I took off to France for four days at the end of April to celebrate 20 years of marriage. We packed the small tent into the Mini, along with the air mattress and the huge sleeping bags and found ourselves a small campsite in a village called Condette, not far from Hardelot and used that as a base to go exploring. The mornings were started with a walk to the Boulangerie to pick up croissants and pain au chocolat, then a simple lunch of bread, cheese and salad (and on Saturday, sand as well) and lots of opportunity for walking. The weekend was a little marred by Zandy getting mild sunstroke on the Saturday. He had less than one glass of wine at dinner and then started acting like he'd been drinking all day. He had sufficiently recovered by the Sunday evening to eat something, but for a while there I thought we were going to have to come home early.

I seem to have developed a fetish for French ironwork. Nearly every house we walked past had the most beautiful ironwork on it, from large doorways like the picture here, or small details above the door. I love digital cameras because I could take loads of photos. Charging the battery for the camera was a slightly trickier task as we got a pitch without power. I took the charger with me to the shower each morning and set it to charge while I washed, hoping that no one would "adopt" it while I was in the shower.

But I didn't stop at photographing just the ironwork. I now have hundreds of photos of stone fretwork. I am hoping that the beauty of some of it, will inspire me in my artwork in the future. This one, was taken in Abbeyville, where we stopped for dinner on Saturday. The light was perfect for getting crisp, clear images of the detail.

The Moxley Retreat

Well, I got back from the Moxley Retreat on Sunday evening and this is the first opportunity I've had to post about it.

What a brilliant weekend we all had. This has got to be one of the greatest bunch of people that I have ever had the honour to play with. Barring a couple of minor problems, everyone was friendly and uncomplaining and we all had a blast.

It was so lovely to see Martha Murphy again and to take her classes. Martha's and my styles are so far apart that every time I do one, my boundaries are pushed to the limit. What Martha can do with solid-coloured cardstock is amazing.

I would have liked to have participated in more of the classes but we spent so much time partying that I was too tired in the morning to be up for the first classes. Becky gave me a challenge - it was one of those little easel cards, so I inked it and stamped on it and it came up wonderfully. But I gave it to Becky so don't have a picture to put up.

I did work on one other piece and I'll put it up as soon as I can get a nice photo of it.

Making the move

I've been posting to LiveJournal for a while now but been frustrated by the ability upload larger photos of my artwork (I'm sure it can be done, but it's not my forte). If you want to view my previous posts they are available at http://judip.livejournal.com/. But I'm leaving it open for the moment until I've managed to cope with the transition across.