You've bewitched me body and soul

Ms. Starpup

So. Since my last post we've made more progress in preparing for our trip. Last weekend we booked all of our flights for flying from country to country in Europe and I am pleased to say, we scored some smokin' deals. For 6 flights it came out to $359 a piece. Crazy! It would cost that much for one flight in the US. Sheesh.

The only things left to do are figuring out/booking our lodgings, buying our Harry Potter London Tour tickets (can't risk us getting there and them being sold out), and making final outfit decisions. I had this goal to wear a cat themed outfit for every day of our trip but that hasn't worked out for me so far. I thought that finding a cat print dress, skirt, sweater and leggings (I wouldn't wear all at once, of course) would be easy peasey but in reality it's turning out to be quite difficult. Grrrr...I guess I'll just have to make due with what I already have. I already did a trial run to see how much clothes I could fit into my carry-on suitcase and everything fit even with some spontaneous outfit additions so that's a relief. I wanted to bring a mini backpack as my purse and ordered one off Jansport but it came in the mail today and was friggin' ENORMOUS so now I have to return it. Returning things is such a pain in the butt :(

Only 2 months to go. I can't get over how close it is!

Other than freaking out about my trip (in a good way) I've been super busy crafting. Here's some photos of my recent work:

Jiji (this one I made for me :3)

Lumpy Space Princess Hoop $34.00

Pink Squid Hoop (a gift for a friend)

Pusheen Hoop $33.00



Squirtle Hoop, $35.00

Bubbline Hoop Set $78.00



All of the hoops with prices attached can be found in my Etsy store www.iggystarpup.etsy.com

I'd like to have a giveaway sometime next month so I'll have to make a special hoop for that. You'll be able to enter from Tumblr, Instagram or Facebook. I'll post more about that when I actually have a hoop to give away, haha!

Another thing that's been going on lately is that I've fallen madly in love with "Pride and Prejudice". I finally got around to reading the novel 2 weeks ago and since then I've watched the Joe Wright film adaption about 4 times (once with the director's commentary--I love listening to commentaries), watched the mini series with Colin Firth (100% babe) twice and tonight I'm going to be watching the Sir Laurence Olivier version. I'm just soooo in love with Mr. Darcy. I can add him to the list of fictional characters I'm madly in love with. Doesn't look good for real men at this point. Not. Good. At. All.

It's Poetry in Motion

Le Me

 Thanks to modern technology something magical happened yesterday. Two friends who live an ocean away from each other got to have a face to face conversation via Skype. To be honest, I was pretty nervous worrying that she might hate my voice or think I was weird or something. I've met a few online friends in person and it's always exciting to hear their voice after only imagining what it sounds like. Usually, people tell me that my voice is a lot higher and girly than they imagined it would be (I'm not sure why people would assume that I have a scary deep voice).

It was so cool to get to see her wee face (I had only heard her voice once in a video she made me over a year ago) and hear her adorable accent again. I love loved seeing her laugh and just being super cute. It made me really happy too how well we got along. It think it'll be a  great time. We're both very enthusiastic and excitable girls so I think there will be a good energy on the trip.

My favorite thing she said was when I asked her what kind of stuff she wanted to do on the trip and she said, "Oh, I don't know, take pictures of you when you're sleeping." (SO GOOD)

The Lovely Melissa

We organized this meeting to discuss plans for our upcoming Europe trip since I'm going to be meeting Melissa in Glasgow. I had had some free time so I did some research on cheap and/or free things to do in each city we're visiting (free might be my favorite word in the English language). In case I haven't already mentioned it, here's an updated list of the cities we plan on visiting during our Euro Adventure:

*Glasgow
*London
*Amsterdam
*Copenhagen
*Berlin
*Paris
*Versailles

I was surprised by how many things we can do for free in Europe but I guess some of the best things in life are free, right? I'm just super stoked to simply wander around and explore these cities and soak up all of the history and culture. There are a few museums I'd like to visit but we found out that many of them don't charge any admission fee (party. bonus.) What's probably going to cost the most will be transportation and lodging but we're going to try to get transportation cards whenever we can and stay at youth hostels and maybe a few b&bs. I'd like to take a train at least once but for longer distances we'll probably be flying since flying is getting cheaper and will save us some time (maybe).

Oh, man! I am just so excited for this! It's going to be such an adventure and we're going to make so many memories. I CANNOT wait to take a billion selfies with Melissa. Can you even imagine it? A buddy pick of Melissa and I in front of Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower? It's MADNESS! Only 11 more weeks to go! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

All About New Year's Eve

HAPPY 2014, MAH BABIES!

I'm really really stoked about this year. I have all kinds of positive feels for this year. I think good things are going to happen, which is rare for me but I dunno, I just feel it in my bones that this year is going to be awesome.

But before I start fangirling 2014, let's wrap up 2013 first. So my New Year's Eve was pretty good. Not great, but still good. I met up with my friend Ashley for dinner at Pita Jungle and I must say for a place called Pita Jungle their pitas kind of (really) suck. All of their other dishes are great but c'mon guys, let's work on making the pita bread edible. My jaw seriously hurt after choking down one pita.

Me and Ashley

Anyway, we finished eating around 8:30pm which was still super early but we had nothing else to do so we walked down to Crescent Ballroom. They didn't open up the actual ballroom until about 9:45ish so there was a lot of standing, eye rolling at creeper guys attempting to talk to us, and evaluating other folks outfits. When they finally let us in to the ballroom there was an opening band that's music wasn't very memorable for me (sorry, guys) but soon after a DJ came out and everyone started dancing. The first hour of dancing was pretty good but then it got SUPER crowded and kind of nutzo. It was just a wall of bodies in there and everyone had spilt their drinks EVERYWHERE so the floor was wet and sticky and we kept stepping on empty cups. I kind of don't get why they let people drink on the dance floor. You should have to drink your drink in the bar and when you've finished it THEN you can come out onto the dance floor. But that's just me.



I saw this dude who I was very briefly interested in but later rejected and he saw me too so that was kind of awkward. He kept dancing nearby wherever we were too so that made me feel a bit weird but at least he didn't say anything. I hate that. After midnight people got really crazy and were like shoving each other and we thought we were going to die. Ashley managed to plow her way through the sea of sweaty drunken bodies but I wasn't aggressive/strong enough to navigate my way through so I got separated from her for about 3 minutes and it was TERRIFYING. I kept thinking, "SHE LOST FRODO!!!" And I don't have a cell phone so that made it extra scary since I couldn't just text her. But Ashley had the good sense to wait for me outside so I wasn't lost for too long. When I found her I said, "Don't you lose him, Samwise Gamgee." and got no response u__u

After things had calmed down a bit we went back inside and danced a bit more but decided to leave at about 1:30am. By the time we got home it was a bit after 2am and I was friggin' exhausted but still didn't fall asleep until around 4am. Although I didn't work until 2pm the following day I awoke around 8:30am and couldn't fall back asleep. My work day was easy though since it was a holiday and it's usually pretty quiet on holidays. One of the residents at my work even brought me a whole plate of food! It was a FEAST!

I got out of work around 8pm and made a beeline for my friend Heather's house so we could watch episode one of Sherlock Series 3. I don't know if it was due to our lack of sleep (she had only gotten 2 hours of sleep that day) but we found the episode to be all over the place and hard to follow. Sherlock is our favorite show and we'd been waiting to see this episode for 2 agonizing years so we were pretty bummed that things didn't go the way we'd hoped they would. I don't want to spoil the episode for those who haven't seen it but I'll just say I hope the next two episodes will be better.

Alright, I guess that's all for now but I wish you all a very happy and healthy New Year!!

xoxo,

Courtney

National Lampoon's European Vacation

So I haven't written in a while (been working a lot and ya know, hanging out and stuff) but I have pretty big news so here I am.

Today I officially applied for my PASSPORT! AAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! My squees today could probably be heard in OUTER SPACE.

Having never been out of the country this is extremely huge for me. Like, life-changing huge.

Luckily my skin was having a moment of clarity so I zipped up to Costco and got my picture taken. If you ever need a passport photo, I'd highly recommend going to Costco. They took a great picture and it only cost $4.99. Also, you can enjoy a nice slice of pizza for $1.99 while you wait ;)

So anyway, today I went to the Municipal Court to apply for my passport and was prepared to have to wait all morning but was in and out in about 5 minutes! It was awesome! Even got told I was "gorgeous" by the security guy, haha.

Next month I'm going to buy my plane ticket so that'll be HUGE. I'm kind of nervous about the flight but hopefully my excitement will overpower my nerves. I've never been in a plane longer than 6 hours and I think I'll be flying for like 13 hours that day (total travel time was estimated at 17 hours- yikes!)

I'm so ready to start getting stamps in my passport. I'll be getting 4 on this trip so that's a good start. Ideally, I'd like to start going on one big trip a year. I think that's a pretty reasonable goal. Here's a few destinations on my list:

*Hawaii
*New Zealand
*Bora Bora
*Canada
*Peru
*Japan
*Southern Europe (Italy, Greece, Spain)
*Thailand
*Iceland

Man, I can't believe I have only 3 1/2 months to go. It's so nutzo! I've been talking about finally visiting Europe for about 2 years and it's almost here. I think this is going to be a trip of a lifetime. 2014 is going to be one hell of a year. I think 30 is actually going to turn out to be a great time in my life. Maybe I'll finally find a boyfriend too (gotta stay positive!)

I'm ready!

I'll post images of my latest work (been super busy--drawing again too!) in my next post.

Good day, my lovelies!

Dancing Queen

I meant to blog about Halloween sooner but I've been feeling a little yucky this week. However, I'm happy to say that I had a wonderful time this Halloween and tried something NEW. Let me tell you about it. 

 The days prior to Halloween were a little stressful so I decided that I definitely wanted to go out this year and do something fun to take the edge off. I'd been meaning to check out Crescent Ballroom in downtown Phoenix for some time and so I asked my friend Hannah if she wanted to go dancing with me. When Halloween rolled around my friend Sharleen also found herself without plans so I asked her to join us.

At first the evening started out a little bumpy. Hannah had had a crappy day at work and was a little cranky. When we got to downtown she opened my car door a little enthusiastically and knocked a lower panel on my door off. I'm pretty protective of my car so I was pretty unhappy about that...but the evening got better. We got to Crescent pretty early so we only had to wait in line about 5 minutes. Usually when I go to bars or whatever I'm disappointed how no one (meaning boys) really talks to you but I guess since it was Halloween everyone was feeling more friendly. Plus, asking someone about their costume is a great ice breaker. We had fellas chatting with us all night but I must say we all were pretty babely that night.

I myself don't drink but Sharleen does so she had some liquid courage before we headed out to the dance floor. It was weird but I wasn't nervous at all. After the week I had I was ready to get out there. We danced for nearly 2 hours and it was so much FUN. A cutie tried to dance with me but I got too shy. What I learned that night was it's not the people who are dancing that look silly, it's the people who aren't who look LAME. There was a group of guys there that were all pretty cute but they didn't dance the whole time. They just stood there with their arms crossed or playing on their phones. It was like, "WHY ARE YOU EVEN HERE?!" And when you're dancing no one's really paying attention to how good of a dancer you are, they're just having a good time. So after a while I wasn't self-conscious about my goofy dance moves and just enjoyed myself.

We had originally decided we were only going to stay until 11:30pm since Sharleen had work in the morning but everyone was having so much fun that we didn't end up leaving until 1am. Aye carumba!

Sharleen's birthday party is this weekend and we're going out dancing again and I'm super excited. I'm so glad that I faced my fear and tried something that I've been avoiding my whole life. I had no idea what I've been missing but better late than never, right?

In other news, I've recently been working on a series of Animal Crossing embroidery hoops. Here's my latest pieces:







The Leif hoop has sold but the other hoops are still up for grabs on my Etsy. Check it out!

www.iggystarpup.etsy.com

Newsflash!

In the past 2 weeks I've accomplished 2 goals that I've been putting off for 2 YEARS. Firstly, I finally had some business cards printed. It's going to be so awesome to hand someone a card now instead of scribbling my contact information onto a post it note or God-forbid, napkin. Second, I finally made my own website!! This is probably the biggest news since you're pretty much a nobody in the art world these days if you don't have your own website. I will say that making the business cards was a lot easier than making the website. Mind you, I didn't make it from scratch but even using a template was a major pain in the butt. My computer would slow down like crazy every time I'd start to work on designing my website so it took about 4 days (and 3 template changes) to finish it. But I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out and all of my friends have been telling me that it looks awesome so I'm happy. It you'd like to take a look, just go to:

www.iggystarpup.com

In other news, I recently did my first photo shoot as well. I know how important image is for an artist so I thought it was about time people start associating my art work with me. So I asked my friend, Mr. Daniel Funkhouser, if he'd be able to take some photos for me to promote my business and he obliged. Next on the order of business was to get the perfect DRESS. For ages and ages I'd been wanting a Wednesday Addams-esque dress but I had never been able to find one. I rarely order cloths online but I thought I'd take a chance this once since I wanted this photo shoot to be perfect. I did a search for black and white peter pan collar dresses and found the most amazing dress on Modcloth. It was a little more than I normally spend on a dress but I figured I'd wear it forever so it would be worth the money. Also, Modcloth has a handy dandy feature where real women post their size and how the dress fit them "in real life". Everyone concurred that this dress was true to size and that they absolutely loved it. That was enough for me so I went ahead and bought it. I am super happy with this dress and am now a forever Modcloth customer.

Anywho, I'd been working on one of my anthropomorphic animal illustrations of a kitty wearing a black and white peter pan collar dress sitting on a tombstone in a grave yard. Since I'm using "Courtney Doom" as my professional name I thought, "That would be a cool idea for my photos!" So I asked Daniel if he knew of any interesting cemeteries around town and he said he did. We got there around dusk and I was kind of nervous since I'd never really modeled for anyone before but he did a good job of making me comfortable. It helped too that since I was going for a gothic look I didn't have to smile for the photos. We only had about an hour before the sun went down but Daniel said he thought we'd gotten some good  shots. Since I had had to sit so long without moving though, I had become a perfect buffet for all the local mosquitos and went home with about 10 bites (but it was worth it.)

My friend finished editing the photos a few days ago and sent me over the best ones and I couldn't be happier! I love how they turned out. I'm very lucky to have so many super talented friends that are able to help me out with stuff like this. Very lucky, indeed.

So yeah, I hope that the combination of the business cards, the promo photos and the website finally being out there that I'll see an increase in my audience and ultimately in my sales. Being a professional artist isn't easy but I think I'm doing a pretty good job.

Wish me luck!

Mwah!

 

 

 

Time Capsule

Today I'm going to do sort of a time capsule post so years from now I can remember what I was into when I was 29. It's interesting to see how parts of ourselves tend to remain constant while others seem to be constantly changing.

My Life in 2013:

Favorite Films: The Big Lebowski, Amelie, Howl's Moving Castle, Bridesmaids
 What I was listening to: Phoenix, Two Door Cinema Club, Foster the People, Ellie Goulding, Florence + the Machine
What I was reading: 1Q84, Kafka on the Shore, Harry Potter (always), Game of Thrones, and Rebecca
Shows I was watching: Frasier, IT Crowd, Orange is the New Black, Adventure Time, Game of Thrones, The Big Bang Theory, Sherlock
Trends I was into: peter pan collars, bright colored tights, baby bangs, cat eye glasses
Trends I hated: neon everything, floral everything, long hair with one side shaved
What I was driving: Buick Regal
Who I was crushing on: Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hiddleston, Aidan Turner, Richard Armitage
Games I was playing: Animal Crossing: New Leaf, Wind Waker HD
Best Friends: Ashley, Rosalynn, and Melissa
Favorite Restaurant: Krua Thai
What I was looking forward to: My Europe trip in April 2014 
What I was most proud of: my business/audience growing, getting active and healthy
Dream Pet: PUGS!!! 
Favorite color(s): turquoise, dark purple, mustard yellow
Most Used Words: dude, yay!, bummer, kaykay, cute
Favorite Food: Cashew Tofu
Pet Peeve: people being on their phone when you're hanging out with them
People I admired: Hayao Miyazaki, Jennifer Lawerence, Twinkie-Chan, Kristen Wiig