I Am The (2nd place) Winner!!!!

It's been a while since I've last posted. Summer was awesome, I will try to post some pictures from my adventures. But in the meantime, I thought I'd show off my new baby. A MAGNUM of 2004 Stags Leap FAY. I won it at work as a second place prize for a wine-selling competition. Not too shabby.
I've decided to save it for my graduation, or something equally special.

-you can blame my photographer (Fabian) for the blurry picture. This is what the label should look like.


You get the point. Exciting!

10/11 Year High School Musical, I mean Reunion

Last weekend was Fabian and my 11th year high school reunion. We combined with class of 99 so that we would get a better turnout and to see friends in other classes as well. Even though I ended up being on the committee by marriage default, I was kind of dreading it, but it turned out to be really nice. I forgot how much I liked the people I went to high school with. It was held at the Mission Inn. The food was good, the DJ was pretty good, (although no one danced because the dance floor was so tiny).
It was kind of strange to see everyone drinking legally. I have a few pictures, unfortunately, I was not in the right head-space to take good pictures, but here are some that I did take.


In the Spanish Art room


Yeah, Ms. G showed up, and that was awesome! Gareth, why do you look so surprised?


Preggers Stephanie!


(Part of) The Committee Claudia, Fabian, and Kelly



Scott and Carina. Scott is a Band Director and Carina is a Doctor. Pretty cool.


Laura, Fabian, and myself


The Crew


The Mission Inn after a couple of drinks =)

Jewelry Critique

Today is the last meeting for the jewelry class I'm taking here at Cabrillo. It is taught by the fabulous Dawn Nakanishi, and I would be lying if said I wasn't sad it was over. Unfortunately today is all about clean-up, and I'm a little afraid.

The class was a lot more intense than I originally thought it would be, and I learned a lot about myself. For instance, I learned that I am very messy with solder. I break an unnatural amount of tiny saw blades. I secretly like smelling liver of sulfer (I know that's gross), and bezel setting isn't as scary as it looks.
Last week was our final critique.

Critique=Food

Everyone brought in a piece they recently finished and we all gave the mandatory Oooooh's and Ahhh's in response. There was some really great stuff presented. Mine is the Passion Flower Hairpin.

(Frida, Nydia's dog was my favorite accessory, by far)

Below Is a slideshow of the crit. To view on a larger scale, just click on one of the pictures and you will be transported to my photo sharing website

Hiking Class

Yes, that's right, I take a hiking class, and it's awesome. I decided to sign up for it last December because I wanted a good outlet for exercise and to learn my new surroundings a little better. There is unfortunately only one week left. Sad. Below is a slideshow of last week's adventure at The Land of the Medicine Buddha. It was Beautiful.
To see the slideshow on a larger scale click on one of the photographs below and it will link you to my Photo viewing website.

River Arts Festival and Kinetic Art Cruz

The Second Annual River Arts Festival was held last weekend in Santa Cruz at the San Lorenzo River park. The festival falls in the middle of National Bike Month and so there is a kinetic theme involved. It was basically a pedal power extravaganza! It was great to see the imagination and ingenuity poured into the bicycles that rode in the parade, but to be quite honest, they didn't hold a candle to the mobiles at the kinetic sculpture race in Arcata. That event is running this week, sorry we have to miss it.


Kinetic Sculpture Race, Arcata 2008


Kinetic Sculpture Race, Arcata 2008


Below is a slide show from Riverarts. Notice on the first picture a yellow blob on Fabian's shoulder. He got accosted by a drunk bumble bee. Poor guy.

New Print

This is my newest print. Two copper plates of profile cameos with left and right brain. I cut the plates with a jewler's saw to get the rounded edges. Above is the proof, to see how the design prints. I was influenced by few different things. First was a picture on the cover of the NYTimes magazine a couple weeks back.

Other influences come from the cut paper cameos of my brother and myself that my mom has hanging on her walls and from the Artistic Luxury show I recently saw at the Legion of Honor. They had some amazing jewelry as well as some pretty cool Art Nouveau prints.




The second step was to toproll the plate in a warm grey and chine collet paper under the ink. Toproll just gets ink on the surface of the plate leaving the etched lines blank. I used maps from our cross country journey for the left brain and children's history stories or Chinese rice paper for the right brain. I like that toprolling over such a detailed image gives my etching an ambiguous look from faraway. You really have to get up close and personal to see whats going on. I really like the look of the left brain with the atlas, but I am not quite satisfied with the paper on the right brain. I would rather use topografic maps on that side, but cant find any used ones.
If anyone has any old ones lying around taking up space, I would be more than happy to take them off of your hands.

We went to Big Sur and it was beautiful

Fabian with his sippy pack (of water)????


crossing the water like Moses =) (wait, never mind)

So last week Fabian got ants in his pants, and decided we needed to do something for my Spring Break since we didn't do anything for his. I chose and planned camping/ hiking in Big Sur since he had never been and I had only driven by once. It was absolutely gorgeous, but word to the wise, las palabras of the weekend ended up being horse poop and poison oak. If there wasn't horse poop on the trails, there was poison oak. We ended up unofficially naming our favorite trail, the poopoak trail or the oakscat path. It was a little exhausting being so vigilant, but it was definitely worth it. Especially because neither of us got struck by the dreaded leaves of three. (Sorry we didn't shoot a picture of the poop but this is what it would have looked like. Thanks google).
Yay Big Sur!