Distractions

Here are some pictures of my desk. Some things have changed since this post from August.

The First photo shows the shelves on my desk. There isn't a separate photo for the very top as the photos I took didn't come out very well. Some of my dolls are displayed on the very top including my "Clueless" dolls from the T.V. show. There are also some of the McDonald's Madame Alexander dolls depicting characters from the Wizard of Oz to the right. You can see the Wizard and one of the Lullaby League dolls at a table and chair set from Re-ment. The Totoro is a paper toy that I downloaded from Cubeecraft.

The second photo shows part of my Re-ment collection - The "My Sweet Recipe" series and the "Donuts to Go" series. Also shown are some small vending machine toys.

The third photo shows toys mixed in with office supplies. Actually, a few of the toys are also office supplies. The cat is a marker pen, the alligator head is a staple puller, and the Felix tin contains paper clips, binder clips, and push pins.

The last photo shows an array of vinyl toys, wind-up toys, and small action figures.

Note: This post was edited because it had been brought to my attention that I hat not listed information about the first photo.

More Walf Illustrations

Here are some other Illustrations of Walf that I did. The Walf story was done in 1992 but never made it to an actual comic book. It was based on a story that my roommate told me when I joked about getting a hamster ball for Walf. I'm sure he made the whole story up to dissuade me from getting one...

The Walf Tarot card was made for a mini comic series called Kardz, made and published by my friend Keith O'Brien back in the early 90s. The series was based on tarot cards with an anthropomorphic theme. Various animals were used in the different suits and many artists sent in their artwork. At the end of the series a special custom deck was made with selected cards and a limited number were printed for those who were interested. Walf didn't make it to the deck but another illustration of mine was chosen instead.

Walf Mini Comic

This is a story Dan and I did back in 1989 about Walf, a hamster that belonged to a roommate of ours. The story was based on some facts but mostly embellished. It was for a mini comic called Acorn Comics which was self-published. Rick Schmitz also contributed a story and the back cover illustration. The comic was somewhat primitive looking and was published for fun.

Weekend Excursion

Dan and I took a short trip to points south this past Saturday.

First stop was the Los Angeles Zoo. It was a rather cold and gloomy day so not to many of the animals were out where they could be seen. A number were enticed out by food placed around their exhibits, but others were hiding out by heat lamps or in their sleeping boxes.

Our next stop was Burbank for lunch. We had hoped to have lunch at the Bob's Big Boy (the oldest remaining Bob's Big Boy in America) but the place was packed and we could not find parking nearby. We spotted Papoo's Hot Dog Show across the street and decided to try that instead. Dan tried the Red Dog which was a hot dog covered in barbecue sauce and I tried the Kraut Dog. Both were good but we really liked the sweet potato fries we ordered on the side which were served with barbecue sauce and ranch dressing.

On the way home we stopped at the Somis Nut House for some of their delicious peanut butter and other goodies.

Happy Birthday Barbie!

Today is the 50th Anniversary of the Barbie doll. Barbie Doll debuted on March 9th, 1959 at the American International Toy fair in New York city. She has changed in appearance many times over the past 50 years but will always be my favorite doll.

I got my first Barbie doll in the spring of 1968. She was a second hand doll purchased at a church bazaar. Although the doll was an older model, with straight-legs and a ponytail hair style, she provided many years of fun. In the early 1970s I received a few newer dolls to add to my little family of Barbie dolls. Unfortunately, I no longer have my original dolls due to some strange whim in my late teens that led me to give them all away.

In the mid 1990s Mattel started creating vintage reproductions of the older Barbie dolls. I purchased a few of them as well as newer dolls to add to my collection so the fun continues!

The photo above is of my Solo in the Spotlight vintage reproduction doll. I altered the photo using Adobe Photoshop.

Random Record Album Cover Project

One of my friends tagged me for this random challenge on Facebook.

Here are the directions:

1 - Go to "wikipedia." Hit “random”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to "Random quotations"
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.

5 - Post it to FB with this text (starting with "Here are the directions") in the caption and TAG the friends you want to join in. You can remove your tag if you don't want to do it, or don't want to have this show up in your photos.

My "band", Bodza, is a village in Slovakia. The "title" is from a quote by Nora Ephron. The photo is "Pelicans on pilings of a Saint Petersburg pier". I used a photo from the Commons on Flickr because I felt uncomfortable using someone's personal photo.

Adobe Photoshop was used to create the finished image. I also included the following statement when I posted it on Facebook just to make sure:

To avoid violating copyright laws, I hereby state that the flickr image I used in this challenge was acquired from the State Archives of Florida photostream in the The Commons http://flickr.com/commons.

Happy Pancake Day!

I hope everyone has a delicious Pancake Day!

This is a web banner I made for Dan to use on his school's web site. It was designed using Adobe Illustrator.