2011 Fall Harvest Festival

Dan and I visited Underwood Family Farms in Moorpark for the Fall Harvest Festival. The weather was very nice this year. This year they had a pumpkin house. The pumpkins were placed on shelves in the frame of the house. We went by it again later and some one had removed some of the pumpkins in the middle of the walls to make windows.

It didn't seem like there were many animals out this time. Perhaps the weather was too warm for some of them, like the Scottish cattle. The goats were out though, catching some rays.

There were more varieties sunflowers this year. They seemed bigger and more colorful than last year.

This scarecrow seems to be enjoying them.

Of course, there were lots of pumpkins to be seen.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Last Saturday Dan and I went to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to see the California Design, 1930 - 1965: "Living in a Modern Way" and Tim Burton exhibits.

Here I am in the Urban Light outdoor sculpture in front of the museum. Urban Light was created by Chris Burden using 202 restored cast iron antique street lights.

This is the entrance to the California Design, 1930 - 1965: "Living in a Modern Way" exhibit. There were examples of furniture, ceramics, fashion, textiles, and, graphic designs from the 1930s to 1965.

This is Concrete, Metal, and Stone Mosaic by Margaret Bruton.

This is Rib Chair by Arthur Espenet Carpenter. It looked like it would fit well in the Tim Burton exhibit.

The Tim Burton exhibit was extensive, covering his work from the early 1970s to the present. There were sketches, paintings, sculptures as well as videos, storyboards, costumes, and models from his films. I especially liked the black light room with eerie glowing images on the walls and a miniature carousel with freaky little creatures.

Photos were not allowed in the exhibit but here is the Tim Burton book and playing cards I got from the exhibit shop. Also pictured is the book for the California Design exhibit it and some reproductions of vintage Los Angeles post cards.

Here is a closer look at the Tim Burton playing cards. The illustrations are from The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories that appears to be a dark book of children's poems.

A Taste of History

Another art show Dan and I saw recently was A Taste of History: The Story of Citrus Labels at the Santa Paula Art Museum. The exhibit had citrus crates and labels as well as vintage citrus packing items.


Here is part of a packing station with the tissue paper that was used to wrap the citrus fruit. The barrel in the back was for the powder used to make the crate label paste.

Here is vintage citrus crate on rollers used in the citrus fruit packing process.


This vintage citrus crate has its original label attached.

Some of the vintage crate labels for the different type of citrus fruit.
Old conveyer belt from the citrus fruit packing process.



The photos were taken by Dan.

Year of the Rabbit

It's already the middle of October and I haven't posted all year!

It's been a busy year with all kinds of things that had to be fixed. For the house it's been the roof, water heater, and furnace (so far). The vucanizer for my rubber stamp business broke so a new one had to be ordered. To top that off both Dan and I needed root canals done.

Fortunately, we were able to do a few fun things. We recently visited the Japanese American National Museum. The exhibit I particularly wanted to see was Year of the Rabbit: Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo. It was an excellent exhibit that showed original art work by Stan Sakai as well as the actual comic books, toys based on the characters, and works by other artists featuring Usagi Yojimbo.

The other exhibit was the ongoing exhibit Common Ground : The Heart of the Community. The exhibit covered Japanese American history from the early days of immigration to the present. There was a large collection of vintage documents, photographs, and objects including a section of one of barracks from an internment camp.

The last stop was the museum store. I got The Art of Usagi Yojimbo book that has a lot of the works from the exhibit. The Year of the Rabbit exhibit closes on October 30, 2011 and the store clerk informed me that Stan Sakai would be there on the 30th to sign books.

They don't allow taking photographs in the exhibits but this was set up where you could.

Happy New Year!

Dan and I were so busy this Holiday season that we were not able to get away for a vacation. We did go to Monkey House Toys to check out the Mr. Toast art show. The store is in an older section of Los Angeles where there is not much parking available. There were some construction trucks right out front so it was a little tricky to get there. The store is very small but has an eclectic array of toys including lots of monkeys! I purchased a Mr. Toast book, some Mr. Toast pin back buttons, and a couple of the 2010 Dunnys.

Cool Yule

December has been a very busy month. Our roof leaked during the rainstorms and the floor in one of the closets got soaked. Now everything that was in the closet is in the living room. It looks very festive next to the Christmas tree. We are finally done with the preparations for Christmas day and are trying to relax a little before the big day. We will probably watch Christmas Story and then try to get to sleep early as we have a lot of driving tomorrow.

The above photo is from two years ago and is of one of my favorite ornaments.

Have a Cool Yule!

The Holiday Season is Upon Us!

It's that time of year. I put up the tree and a few decorations but still have many things that need to be done. What I want for Christmas is time!

The photo is from an antique store I passed in Morro Bay. Dan and I went there just after Thanksgiving for a quick vistit.

Halloween Project Completed

Here are my completed Pumpkin Head vinyl figures. It took me a while as I had not painted in years. It was hard getting the brush strokes just right so I did a lot of re-touching.


I've named them Patrick and Jill. Here they are in a pumkin patch. I made the backgroung out of construction paper decorated with crayon. The tiny "pumpkins" are putka pods (also called pumpkin pods.) I found them at the Fall Harvest Festival in Moorpark.



Have a safe and Happy Halloween!

Project for Halloween

September is almost over and it is time to start thinking about Halloween. I purchased a couple of Pumpkin Head vinyl toys by Rose Art. They are called Color Blanks and come with markers and stickers for customizing. You can also use acrylic paint which is what I plan to use.

While working on some designs for my pumpkin heads I was inspired by some old-time Halloween decorations. Here are some sketches I made based on some of those decorations.



I just need to pick some designs and start painting!

Ventura Harbor

We recently visited the Ventura Harbor. Dan wanted to test his new Flip video camera. Unfortunately there were some issues with the batteries so he didn't get much footage. Still we had a good time walking around and looking at the sights.

We stopped at the The Robert J. Lagomarsino Visitor Center at Channel Islands National Park. There are exhibits on the Channel Islands wildlife as well as some raised relief models of the islands. They also have a small tide pool exhibit with various fish and sea creatures. Here are some anemones and a halibut.



Some of the sea creatures are faux, like the limpets and the sea urchins. I'm not sure about the mussels but the lobster is real.



There is also an observation tower at the visitor center. It's usually windy up there but the view is great.



We walked around looking at the various boats in the harbor. There were mostly sailboats with some fishing boats mixed in.



Here are some different types of boats that we saw.



We stopped by the Ventura Harbor Village Carousel. There are various arcade games, a candy counter, and of course the carousel. Here are some of the carousel animals.



Off to one side of the carousel is Ziggi the Clown. He looked so sad I had to go talk to him. I also put fifty cents in the machine. It was kind of loud in the arcade so I could barely hear what he said - something about picking out something special for me.



The egg that popped out contained Happy Bunny stickers. I'm not sure if I should be glad it was kind of cool or disturbed that it was a Happy Bunny product.



The arcade also had a penny smasher so I got some of those for my collection.

Comic Con

Once again it's Comic Con International time and Dan and I couldn't be there.

These are the first day covers I made for the Marvel Comics Superhero stamps that came out in July of 2007 at a special event at the San Diego Comic Con. They made stamps for ten Marvel comic book heroes. I was only able to make four designs. They were created from sketches I made inspired from Champions character sheets and various comic advertisements. The sketches were imported into Adobe Photoshop were I added color.

Each hero had a "head shot" and comic book cover postage stamps. I had to make envelopes for Spider Man And the Hulk.

The Thing's comic book was the Fantastic Four so I included the whole team.

I included Walf with my favorite, The Thing. This is the fifth appearance of Walf on a first day cover.

The fourth appearance of Walf is on an envelope made by my friend Keith (along with envelopes for the other nine heroes!) Keith also chose to portray Walf with the Thing. His envelopes were all drawn by hand and colored with water colors. I received his envelopes before I had even sent mine out for the cancellations! Unfortunately the Post Office chose to use the plain cancellations on his envelopes.

Odd Toys From Europe

These are some toys that were sent to us by Dan's sister who is currently teaching in England.

This is a set of Barbabapa characters from France. They are from a children's book by
Annette Tison and Talus Taylor. There is also a series of short children's cartoons that can be seen on YouTube . They are a family of shape-shifting creatures.

Here they are out of the box. The ones in this set are:

Barbapapa - The father of the group. He's the big pink one.
Barbamama - The mother of the group. She is the black female holding a baby bottle.
Barbotine - One of the daughters. She is the small orange female holding a turtle.
Barbalala - Another daughter. She is the small green female holding panpipes.
Barbidur - One ofthe sons. He is the red one who has shape-shifted into a little devil.

There is another set that has Barbapapa shape-shifting into a heart and his other four children.


This is a MiroStars 3 Player Pack. It is a blind box assortment of plastic soccer figures. This box also contains instruction sheet on how to make squads with the figures (they have player stats on the bottom of their bases) and three tiny bags of jelly beans.


The ones we got were:

Bridge from Manchester City
Brown from Manchester United
Eduardo from Arsenal (he is one of the 8 players who are only available in the three player packs.)

These guys look like they are from a Jib Jab greeting card.

Photo Studio In-A-Box

Once again I've been a slacker and neglected my blog. I have been doing things -really! Dan and I took a quick trip to San Diego in early June. We bought new computers to replace our old ones (it was time to say goodbye to Windows XP.) We have been transferring the data from the old computers to the new ones while getting used to Windows 7. I've been working on the art room and recently got a "Photo Studio In-A-Box". It is a portable light box that folds into its own carrying case. It came with small tripod, two small lamps and a reversible background. Very useful for taking photos of small items for ebay.


In this photo, taken in my fabulous art room, I am preparing to take a photo of one of my collectible figures.

Here is my Ugly Doll Ice Bat Action Figure. They are bind boxed and come in 6 different glow in the dark colors. Mine is regular glow in the dark and is 3 inches tall. See how nice and even the lighting is!

This is something we found at Mitsuwa Marketplace in Torrance on our way to San Diego. I don't know Japanese but after poking around the Internet I found they are from a children's book called Dzukan Dwarfs. We decided to get two of them.

They come with a background card that has information about the character in Japanese. If you look closely there is another of these creatures in the window and some others between the refrigerator and the cabinets. This one is about 1 and 1/2 inches tall (including the stand.)

This one is flying high. I wish there was a translation for these, they are very mysterious.