I Heart Art: An Etsy Experience

I love Etsy and can spend hours pooting around on the site, looking at handmade soaps and jewelry and wall hangings and clothes, and daydreaming about spending thousands of dollars.  Unfortunately, I don't happen to have thousands of dollars to spare, so I've never actually bought anything.

Until I saw this store!  This artist hand paints lovely little portraits onto actual pages from vintage books.  Having a bit of a book fetish, I thought this was the coolest thing ever.  And her prices, for originals or prints, are very reasonable.

So when I saw the sweet couple dancing in front of the Eiffel tower, I had to do it.  I bought a print (which is actually enlarged and is bigger than the original book page painting), and a set of note cards.

The artist is in England, and I was a little afraid of the possibility of the prints/cards getting bent in transit, but she packaged everything so well that the artwork reached my eager hands in perfect shape. And she even sent me a bonus note card as a gift, which was so nice of her.

Here's the Eiffel tower print, in a plain black 11x14 frame (I hung it by my bedside table):

The notecards were such good quality, I decided to frame one of those, too, and I put it on my dresser:

I'm sure this is obvious, but I do want to make it clear that she didn't compensate me or anything for this blog entry, I just wanted to share her stuff because I was so impressed with it.

And I'm so not kidding when I say I am really, really, really tempted to buy this, a giant octopus wall decal.  Neat!

Me + Harry Potter = Love

** Warning -- Harry Potter movie and book spoilers within! **

So many books just suck, right from the beginning, and I bail immediately. Life is too short and there are too many good books to waste time slogging through badly written junk. Some start off promisingly, but then let me down with lazy plot devices, unrealistic dialogue, not fully-realized characters behaving in ways that are psychologically inconsistent. But the HP books, in my humble opinion, are all completely wonderful, perfectly crafted from beginning to end. I loved the characters, I loved the wizarding world, and I love JK Rowling.

Of course, the movies must disappoint, given the industry's inclination to make movies that are less than 10 hours long. (sigh)


Worst Movie Omissions/Inaccuracies:

1) Mad-Eye Moody not saying "CONSTANT VIGILANCE", even once.

2) Who Moony, Padfood, Wormtail and Prongs are, and why they created the Marauder's map. That just broke my heart! Don't even get me started on how the patronuses often just looked like shields instead of animals.

3) The detail about the Weasley family in general. I feel like Percy's betrayal has not been shown adequately, poor Bill has been completely ignored (as well as his engagement to Phlegm), and Charlie has only been mentioned briefly (in relation to the dragons at the Tri-Wizard Tournament).

4) The house wizards in Hogwarts never having been shown in any movie, especially poor little Winky (sob!) and Hermione's SPEW initiative. I feel like house elves and their rights and powers are an important theme in the books and are a factor in the end, and at this point they'll have to take it out completely or show it in a way that lacks the depth and meaning of the books.



Best Movie Moments/General Movie Coolness:

1) The neato swirly smoky effect when wizards zip around, particularly with the Death Eaters. There is nothing like that in the books, and honestly, what is it? They are not apparating/disapparating, they are not flying, so... But still, it looks awesome, and I won't question it too much.

2) The appearance of all the characters. Pretty much every single character looks exactly like I pictured them in the books, especially Voldemort's weird snake face. Eeeek. My one nitpick is how Hagrid's size seems to be inconsistent, even within each movie.

3) The moviemakers really did justice to Fred and George's amazing departure from Hogwarts. Fred and George are rock stars, their leaving was legendary, and it looked GREAT in the movie!

Most Embarrassing Personal Harry Potter trivia:

I made my own Harry Potter t-shirt to wear to the last two book release parties. And if I do say so myself, it's SUPER. I took the lovely Mary Grandpre drawing from the first page of the first chapter of the first book, with the title under it: The Boy Who Lived. I added a tiny bit of color in Photoshop and used CafePress to have it made, and it's so cool. Stop laughing at me!

How to read a 900 page book overnight in one sitting:

1) Sit at a desk or table. 900 page hardback books are heavy after the first 8 or 10 hours.

2) Have plenty of caffeine handy. I prefer Diet Mt. Dew or Coke Zero. Actual energy drinks are bad, as most will cause you to crash at some point, and you need to be awake for the duration (up to 12 hours or more, depending on how fast you read).

3) Snacks are important, but any snacks that are going to leave ook on your fingers and get on the pages (like Cheetos) are bad. This is not the time for the fried chicken leftovers. Maybe some nice saltines... but make sure not to drop any crumbs in the book.

4) Your spouse/family/friends will try to talk you out of it. They'll say it's silly, that you are actually hurting yourself by depriving yourself of sleep, that you probably will be too tired to fully understand what you're reading. Do not listen to these "helpful" people. Persevere!

5) Know that you will need the next day, and possibly two, to catch up on sleep and recover. Give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back, and bask in your superiority! Think of all those other silly people out there; why, the book was released almost 15 hours ago and they haven't even read it yet. Tsk.


“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” - Albus Dumbledore


Oh, the terrible dark future of a life with no more new Harry Potter books to read, EVER. :(

You Can't Have Too Many Books

Someone asked today about how many books one might have in each room of one's house. I love books, and we have approx 1 buttload of books. Er... maybe 2 buttloads.

Breakdown of current book totals in each household location:
Kitchen: 8 (all cookbooks, several from library)
Living room: 161 (not counting magazines, photo albums, or yearbooks)
Dining room: 5 (library books that are waiting to be returned)
Office: uncountable zillions, literally
Hallway bathroom: 0
Bedroom: 6 (one on each bedside table, 4 stacked on top of dresser)
Master bathroom: 0 (we are not read-while-pooping people)

So, when we bought our house, we wanted to turn the second bedroom into an office. We don't have kids and don't plan to have kids, and we do have multitudinous office-y type stuff (computer, mucho misc computer accessories, books, files, etc). When we first moved in, we figured we would make it an office/library, with a computer desk and shelves. Lots and lots of shelves. Shelves covering at least two walls. Big walls.

We briefly considered making it a spare bedroom for guests, but quickly said Fuck that! and bought a sleeper sofa.

We looked at hiring a carpenter person to come in and build bookcases. We had a designer give us an estimate to design custom shelves and a built-in desk. We priced those bare wood shelving units that you can paint/stain yourself. All of a sudden, it's a year and a half later and what have we got in our office? Big piles of boxes of books! At this point, dusty boxes. Ugh.

We are really not thinking we will stay here forever. We plan to sell this place and buy in a better - or at least, different - location in the next 5-10 years. We decided that putting in anything permanent would probably not help us when it comes to the resale value, since there are only two bedrooms. So, what's the obvious choice?

Cheap-o crapcases from Wal-Mart! Woo! The funny thing is, we have so many books that we are going to have to buy like 6 of them. We have one of those electric screwdriver dealies, so it shouldn't take too terribly long to put them together.

Next week we are both on vacation all week to A) celebrate our 4th wedding anniversary, B) buy a half-dozen shelving units from Wal-Mart and put them together, C) enjoy many happy hours sorting and alphabetizing our beloved books, and D) other miscellaneous home improvement projects including, but not limited to, painting the master bath.

Yay!