Easton, PA area

So my hunt for the next book in the Twilight Saga, Eclipse, was fruitless. I did however take some happy snaps of the area.





While I was taking photos of this building a man stopped me and excitedly asked me if I was a tourist.Such excitement for meeting a tourist I have never seen. I felt like I was this man's tourist attraction. It was almost like he wanted to say, 'so the legends are TRUE tourists do exist in Easton!'

As a tried to side step the man I answered, yeah sort off. Not fully considering myself a tourist since I am only here because my husband is consulting at a client nearby.

The man whom I viewed with my normal suspicion and avert-ness I have towards 'stranger danger', continued by telling me that the building had gargoyles, and there was another building down the street that also had gargoyles.

Why the gargoyles was important, I'm not sure, I'm not even sure the building had gargoyles, unless my concept of gargoyles differs from his. But I smiled my 'stranger danger' smile, and moved on. My shyness stand in stark contrast to the outgoing and confidant Americans.

But Im happy I could bring pride to the city folk by them thinking they're getting tourists. Luckily the stranger did not notice my accent, otherwise the thought of foreign tourists might have overwhemed him :)

I continued my walk to the Lafayette College. The campus has an array of beautiful historical buildings. From a time when American architecture was attractive, I have no idea what has happened in the last few years especially on the west coast. The innovation just seems dead in most parts. Anyways It's been a dream of mine to live in a historic house, they just cosume my imagination. And the detail those homes have are exquisite.

Here are the snaps from the College :



I found this (above) across from the Visual Arts building.




The studios in the visual arts building looked so awesome, the word envy comes to mind. What's cool about this building is that the bricks are warped and slightly curved. It brings to mind Salvidor Dali's melted clocks. And makes the walls look slightly warped.






The university is on an elevated piece of land. If it was Europe there would probably have been a castle.





Homes around the university








This Hogg House made me think of Harry Potter.

My blogger lite keeps crashing when I load more photo so I'll post the rest in a new blog.

East coast trip

I find myself in a town called Easton, philadelphia. My husband had to travel to the east coast of the U.S. To consult, and I decided to come with to spare him the back and forward flying and to see what the east coast has to offer.

The hotel we're staying in for a couple of days called The Grand Eastonian has such lovely ceilings, I love how the the cement and pipes are visable.























The town however is quite strange, the vibe is peculiar and people dress badly. It's deathingly quiet and hosts a large amount of tobacco shops. It's also home to the crayola factory and museum. I visited the factory but will probably skip the museum. I think what this town needs is to make the largest crayon in the 'world'/U.S. ;) bring the tourists in. The downtown architecture is lovely lined with buildings from the 1700s.



















Anyways I'm not sure if the town's creepyness stems from the fact that I was reading New Moon. A great read suggested to me by my sister, that I finished and gobbled up greedily in a flash. I havent been able to finish a book like this in a long time, and i used to enjoy reading when i was younger. It's just annoying how
commercialized the series has gotten and I refused to see the film until I finshed the book. I've also read Twilight and have not seen the movie yet. But I am burning with curiosity. It will however probably be a great disapointment... Like the movie Stardust, the book was amazing, the movie was great but it's annoying how they change things in the story.

So my mission today is to pull up google maps on my phone, and locate a bookstore before I set off to wander down the streets of this strange little town. I need to get the third book in this twilight series. My husband is using my laptop for work, his is in for repairs, and I refuse to watch senseless TV, which is more commercials than actual content.

But otherwise I am feeling inspired and have been considering writing a book myself. An adult sized book with some illustrations ;) I always wondered why novels don't have atleast some illustrations. I always find myself intently looking at the cover every so often when I try to imagine the decriptions of the author.





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Giclée Prints

I recently discovered a printing method called Giclée, while looking for ways to transform my walls into my own mini gallery. There are such great artworks out there and walls should be filled with awe-inspiring creativity. If not only for the hope that surrounding yourself with talent... might inspire your own creativity ;P then for your human soul, because down to basics... viewing beautiful things makes you feel tingly and happy inside ;)

So to quote Wikipedia: Giclée (pronounced /ʒiːˈkleɪ/ "zhee-clay" or /dʒiːˈkleɪ, from French [ʒiˈkle]) is an invented name for the process of making fine art prints from a digital source using any high quality ink-jet printing and is often used in galleries and print shops. Giclée is generally a fine art term, that has come to be associated with prints using fade-resistant "archival" inks (including solvent inks) and the inkjet printers that use them. These printers use the CMYK color process but may have multiple cartridges for variations of each color based on the CcMmYK color model (e.g. light magenta and light cyan inks in addition to regular magenta and cyan); this increases the apparent resolution and color gamut and allows smoother gradient transitions. A wide variety of substrates are available including various textures and finishes such as matte photo paper, watercolor paper, cotton canvas, or artist textured vinyl.

You can purchase these high quality Giclée prints at Allposters.com. A lot of well known and not so well known art is for sale using this printing method. And if you read the description next to any of the Giclée artworks for sale at Allposters.com it says: "This art print was created using a sophisticated digital printer. The Giclee printing process delivers a fine stream of archival ink on archival paper, resulting in vivid, pure color and exceptional detail that is suitable for museum or gallery display."

So to make things even more complicated for myself I also decided since I have to frame a whole bunch of artworks, including the ones I plan to make in the future... I should buy my own framing equipment. So I took out some framing books from the library like the Home book of picture framing by Oberrecht, Kenn.

It sounded like a straight forward thing to do however, framing equipment can get a bit complicated, you have miter saws, routers, matt cutters etc etc. And then you have to get the various materials to make the frames..wood, glass, nails, matting board, framing tape, corner clamps etc etc, and the materials that touch the artworks has to be acid free archival standard, so your Giclee's will last longer. It's a lot of tools especially if you're routing your own wood, but I thought as an artist it might be worth the effort. I did find out later that you can buy the wood online routed to size but alas I have my equipment already. I haven't tried out the equipment yet, but I must say I'am a bit nervous about using power tools with large blades...eek...Let's just hope the equipment doesn't gather dust...I will have to report back later on my success or failure...hopefully with all ten digits in tact ;)

My husband and I decided for our living room to get old commercial or advertisment type prints, like the ones usually found under the vintage tag at Allposters.com. .

These are the one's we've selected:






Poster Advertising an Exhibition of the Collection Du Chat Noir Cabaret at the Hotel Drouot, Paris

Giclee Print

Steinlen,...


Buy at AllPosters.com



This cat poster is quite popular, and I'm not the kind of person that likes going for the popular artworks, but I like cats...;)








Le Frou-Frou

Giclee Print

Weiluc,...


Buy at AllPosters.com











Cycles Sirius

Giclee Print

PAL (Jean de...


Buy at AllPosters.com









Copertoni Impermeabili Moretti

Giclee Print

Mauzan, Achille...


Buy at AllPosters.com





There are so many prints to select from a person could go insane with choice!

Unfortunately we move around so often I haven't had the chance to purchase any prints or make any frames yet....;)

And if you're looking for more original Giclée prints artist Shirin Sahba http://limonana.blogspot.com/ is selling limited edition Giclée prints of some of her paintings. Beautiful stuff!!!
also check out her website at http://www.shirinsahba.com/

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Frilly Lilly has arrived

So the day has finally arrived, and my first Children's book has been published. I've taken some photos of the book. It is now for sale at Lulu.com and on amazon. The price on lulu.com is $12.72 excluding shipping and on amazon it's $16.95 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. I tried to keep the price as low as possible but colored books seem to be expensive to make.

qtFunk a dream come true!

I am a person who just loves do-it-yourself type of things, the idea of printing on clothing and even making my own furniture has always appealed to me. I guess it's just part of my creative nature. So my qtFunk shop was started when I humbly, just wanted to by a super funky creative pillow for my home. Well the searches led me to cafepress.com, a cool site were you can make a print for your own pillow! It has been so much fun I've hardly been able to contain myself and the ideas has been flowing along with the coffee and the joy.

I truly enjoy drawing and messing around on graphic design programs. I'm also in the progress of publishing a cute children's book called Frilly Lilly on Lulu.com, which is also a great passion and joy in my life. I've sent it for approval and I'm still waiting for it to be officially for sale. I love creating characters and hope that my characters will bring a smile to everyone that sees them...So visit my online shop at www.qtfunk.com and browse around. I'm also selling Frilly Lilly merchandise there. Here is a sneak view of some of the items for sale in my shop.
Faeriebee Throw Pillow

Faeriebee Magnet

Faeriebee Flip Mino

Frilly Lilly Large Wall Clock

Mr. Sock in Love Infant Bodysuit, character from the story Frilly Lilly

Dragonbee Jr. Ringer T-Shirt ( This character is also in the picture book Frilly Lilly)

Retro Squirrel Throw Pillow (the pillow that started my shop)

Retro Squirrel Tile Coaster

VISIT ME! http://www.cafepress.com/qtFunk

The Dawn of qtFunk

It's a very bone chilling day today, which makes it a wonderful day for writing a few words in my blog. I have recently finished my picture book entitled Frilly Lilly, I have hit the publish button. But as with everything in life there is a waiting period...so I have about another month or so to go before it will be for sale on Lulu.com and Amazon. Hopefully this time there will be no problems with the format and size.

But as always the creative juices are flowing and I am busy working on new ideas and new characters...it's all very exciting. I will also hopefully be able to upgrade my cafe press shop http://www.cafepress.com/qtFunk to a new fancy pansy site.