xmlns:b='http://www.google.com/2005/gml/b' xmlns:data='http://www.google.com/2005/gml/data' xmlns:expr='http://www.google.com/2005/gml/expr'> My Other Life

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Tuesday, March 30, 2021

Copic Markers vs. Artist Loft Markers

  I haven't posted in forever!!! Only reason I have time to do it now is I'm on vacation. I took inventory of my art markers this past week and cleaned them up. I thought I should share what I found over time with respect to durability and sustainability. Copic Markers are considered by many to be the best alcohol markers by professional artists and illustrators. I first bought some when I was taking an architectural drawing class from "My Garden School" and couldn't stand the odor of the ones they recommended. They used Chartpak and wow what an instant headache. But Prismacolor wasn't a whole lot better. Then I heard about Copics and I've been in love ever since. Then Michael's Artist Loft line came out with a cheaper version also called Sketch markers that were obviously a copy of Copic's Sketch Marker line. I bought some to try and at first they seemed very similar. However, now that I've had both for awhile, there are huge differences. 

1. The Artist Loft nibs (tips) are not replaceable nor are they durable. Even if you don't run out of ink, your AL marker will likely become unusable after a year or so. 

2. The Artist Loft marker is not refillable and even if you bought Copic ink and nibs it wouldn't work. The Copic nibs won't fit in the Artist Loft marker. Very sad because that means my AL markers are not sustainable. If they'd release replaceable nibs I could at least buy similar Copic ink to keep them going. 

3. The nibs become are not flexible and then become pom-poms. They go from a nice brush tip to worthless very quickly. 

4. They don't blend as well on marker paper as Copic. A few colors do but they are inconsistent across the colors offered. Notice how hard it is to get a good blend on the grays. 


Overall the Copic markers are $7.99 apiece at Michael's compared to $3.99 for the Artist Loft version if you bought them at the suggested retail price without a coupon and not in a set. The best price around for Copic is on Dickblick.com and there you can get them for $5.85 each. Refills are $5.39 as well and on Michael's they're $5.99. However, Michael's has some great coupons that could bring the price down a lot if you buy a marker at a time or a set. 

Let's pretend we won the lotto and we were going to get set A which has 72 markers. Copic has 5 sets for 358 unique colors. At Michael's they're $574.99 but at Dickblick.com they're $421.20. I wonder if the Michael's coupons usually exempt the Copic marker sets....It is not excluded!!!! Currently they have a 20% off coupon but next time they have a larger one I'm going to check again. With the 20% off one, the individual markers are now $4.79 even less than DB but the big set is $459.99, which is more than DB's online everyday price. 

To Be Continued!


Friday, August 11, 2017

DIY Art Journaling for Healing

Almost forgot that I was planning to make a self-help DIY art journal that's also therapeutic! I sketched up a rough draft when I was at the last American Academy of Environmental Medicine meeting last October in San Diego, CA. Here's a sneak peak.


First a little art from my planner! Did this out at the butterfly haven at Wildlife Prairie Park that was done for a patient of mine that passed from ovarian cancer. She was a very special lady. So it's very humbling to work as a master gardener volunteer there and remember her. 

My thoughts on a name so far...

Some more fun pages

Just a glimpse I have about a 100 page ideas. 

 So if I can put together a prototype anybody out there willing to try it out for me? Let me know and I'll make a you a "draft copy" if you will give me constructive feedback. THANKS!!!

Friday, January 20, 2017

We Have A Wrap For THAT!!!! And some we don't yet!

I've meant to do this for a long time so I'm going to start it today but I probably won't finish it. I've wanted forever to post these amazing manicures on Pinterest and then the Jamberry way to do the same thing. You can imagine, the Jamberry way is MUCH easier and cheaper.

So here's our first one and it's a no brainer. Wonder who had the idea first?




This one would really capture the look if you put it over the sparkle gels or another sparkle wraps.



Ok here's another one:

This one was described on Pinterest as Mermaid Toes. 

We have several ways to achieve this look. The most obvious is the TruShine Gel "Splash". Worn below and displayed on Instagram by @themanimama. Looking Great!





Ane_Li has amazing ideas on Instagram. Here's one of my favorites of her's. Matte Black and Moon Phases....

Yeah we DON'T have a wrap for that. Yet. But it does remind me of Cosmos which has matte black and constellations. 

This is Cosmos and Matte Black. But you could get a glow in the dark polish perhaps and free hand the moon phases? If you are the artistic type over matte black. But then it would be a wrap now would it. 

Ok here's another one of Ane_Li's that reminds me of one of our wraps. 
She used 7, SEVEN different polishes and matte topcoat and then a nail stamper from bundlemonster.com to achieve this beautiful manicure. She has videos on instagram so that you can attempt this yourself. Or how about Autumn Romance. That wrap is very similar. 
Here it is worn by instagrammer michellelieh
If I ever figure out how to take such beautiful pictures of my own manicures I will share that as well. I have a feeling it has a lot to do with lighting. 





Impressionism and Pat Loebach

My husband, isn't an art critic, but he is a critic. Not in a bad way, he just naturally analyzes everything. I sent this to Pat because he asked me if Impressionist painted the scenes the way they did because that’s how they saw it (implying they needed glasses) or because they were applying color theory and probably took creative license to portray light and color in an aesthetically pleasing but not necessarily accurate way. I said neither. They painted it as they felt it.

Then Pat says, "So what do you think Van Gogh saw that made him paint balls of rotating fire in the sky instead of stars." And I said, "Stars." Just to annoy him. Because if he didn't get what I said then he's not going to and I'm not going to keep trying and get nowhere. But perhaps that's not fair. Maybe he is trying to get me to really explain it in a way that he would understand but it's hard because he's making assumptions. And a huge one is that the scene didn't really look like the painting.

So today I read this snippet about an astrophysicist that determines the exact time and date of a painting and figured that would help explain my point.

So I sent him this email.

You asked if impressionist painted what they saw or were just taking creative liberties.

Donald Olson, working with Texas State physicist Russell Doescher and a team of three students, used topographical measurements, planetarium software, and old-fashioned research to determine that “Monet observed this sunset on Feb. 5, 1883 at 4:53 p.m. local mean time,” Olson said in a press release. Their research is published in in the February 2014 issue of Sky & Telescope magazine.




 A researcher on the Texas State team holds a postcard of Monet’s “La Porte d’Amont, Étretat” (c. 1868–69) in front of the present-day scene


They described his methods as the Olson Treatment and have applied it to other paintings such as Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.”


He determined that the sky was red due to the eruption of Mount Krakatoa in 1883 which sent so much gas and ash into the atmosphere in 1883 the sky was darkened or coloured worldwide for months.
So you see Munch really saw the world like that when he did that painting.

So the answer is both. They saw the world the way they painted it but they also were painting their “impression” of the world so it’s the world through their own personal filter.

By the way the eruption was the loudest sound heard in historic times. So since my husband did sound I thought he'd find this really interesting.

This was copied from Wikipedia about the eruption of Mount Krakatoa:
On August 27, four enormous explosions occurred. At 5:30 am, the first explosion was at Perboewatan, triggering a tsunami heading straight to Telok Betong, now known as Bandar Lampung. At 6:44 am, Krakatoa exploded again at Danan, with the resulting tsunami stretching eastward and westward. The largest explosion, at 10:02 am, was so violent that it was heard 3,110 km (1,930 mi) away in Perth, Western Australia, and the Indian Ocean island of Rodrigues near Mauritius, 4,800 km (3,000 mi) away, where they were thought to be cannon fire from a nearby ship. The third explosion has been reported as the loudest sound heard in historic times.[2][3]:79 The loudness of the blast heard 160 km (100 mi) from the volcano has been calculated to have been 180 dB.[4] Each explosion was accompanied by tsunamis estimated to have been over 30 meters (98 feet) high in places. A large area of the Sunda Strait and a number of places on the Sumatran coast were affected by pyroclastic flows from the volcano. The energy released from the explosion has been estimated to be equal to about 200 megatons of TNT,[5] roughly four times as powerful as the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful thermonuclear weapon ever detonated. At 10:41 am, a landslide tore off half of Rakata volcano, causing the final explosion.

Final explosive eruption

The pressure wave generated by the colossal fourth and final explosion radiated out from Krakatoa at 1,086 km/h (675 mph). The eruption measured an ear splitting 310 dB, loud enough to be heard perfectly clearly 3,100 miles away.[6]:248 It was so powerful that it ruptured the eardrums of sailors 64 km (40 miles) away on ships in the Sunda Strait,[6]:235 and caused a spike of more than 2 12 inches of mercury (8.5 kPa) 160 km (100 miles) away in pressure gauges attached to gasometers in the Batavia gasworks, sending them off the scale.[note 1]
The pressure wave was recorded on barographs all over the world. Several barographs recorded the wave seven times over the course of five days: four times with the wave travelling away from the volcano to its antipodal point, and three times travelling back to the volcano.[3]:63 Hence, the wave rounded the globe three and a half times. Ash was propelled to an estimated height of 80 km (50 mi).
The eruptions diminished rapidly after that point, and by the morning of August 28, Krakatoa was silent. Small eruptions, mostly of mud, continued into October 1883. By then, less than 30% of the original island remained.

No wonder the poor guy in Scream was holding his ears. So you can see why I think Van Gogh saw the stars that way. Plus ever since Lasik surgery my night vision has sucked and I see all lights heavily starred and they rotate. So maybe it was an eye problem after all.

Saturday, December 10, 2016

The Big Clean Up of December 2016!

Many of you know my office has been a disaster for months now, maybe a year. Honestly I can't remember the last time I cleaned it except a Facebook memory came up yesterday that I cleaned it in December 2014. That may have been the last time. Well it was beyond ridiculous and had reached biblical proportions of disorganization so that it finally was to the point I couldn't find anything. I couldn't get anything done. I was in chaos. It was probably all #becauseofjamberry. HAHAHA! We're always sharing stories of great things that happen because of Jamberry but this was one of those not so great things. BUT I set out to change that this month. I bought a labeler last month from the Container Store and it's a life changer! In fact this story should be called #becauseoflabelers!

Well I've figured out the secret for me to be able to clean and reorganize a room is pretty simple.
1. Take everything out of the room. Or almost everything. I didn't take the furniture out because it's heavy and I didn't want to change the layout.

2. Sort into piles all the stuff that belongs together. So I put all the Jamberry stuff in exam room 3. The medical stuff in exam room 4. Other stuff in the hallway. It was a huge mess at first and my assistant, Ian stopped by right about that time and I'm sure he was worried about what Monday would reveal.



3. With all of the crap out of the office I cleaned all the shelves, vacuumed the floor and fired up my old Macbook iTunes spinning mixes.

4. Put stuff back in an organized fashion and purge, purge, purge! I threw away so much stuff. Mostly paper. Articles I meant to read or already read. Now days you can google or library search everything so no reason to keep that stuff. Cleaned out some of my desk drawers and credenza as well so room for stuff to go back in but really tried to throw away the majority of it. 

5. Really thought all the Jamberry stuff would fit on that one long shelf but it didn't and I realized it was hard to get to there. So the Long Shelf Plan became the Wrong Shelf Plan

6. Meanwhile I also had picked up more than just containers at the dollar store. See I got my fancy labeler at the Container Store because you know their labeler has to be best. BUT as to spending Container Store kind of money on containers? Yeah not so much. So to the Dollar Store and while getting containers I also cleaned them out of nail care supplies. Sorry about that.


7. So I made up a Mason Jar Door Prize gift. Just one for now. I needed to get back to cleaning my office. 
8. So I moved everything I need to be able to access daily to above my head. Not the nail application stuff you only need to access that every 2 weeks. Why? Because Jamberry manicures last 2 weeks if you can keep yourself from chainging them just because you can! (The struggle is real.) Current mani!
Teal the Show! LOVE IT! Trushine gel bottom and top coat under and over the lacquer.

9. Ok sorry for the commercial break. Back to the Mailing Station Shelf. The Nail Station Shelf. And the trunk hides my in-home party rolling bag and one-on-one bag. The catalog station shelf. I have already made up packets for in-home parties on my mailing shelf in one of those drawers. I have opportunity packets in those drawers. I have hostess packets IN THOSE DRAWERS!!!! Samples ready to be mailed in those drawers. Thank you's in those drawers. Ok wait that's 5 and I have 4 drawers. Oh the opportunity packets are in same drawer as hostess packets. Whew! Scared myself for a second. And I found my JamCon2016 stickers and figured hey one sheet can go to decorating my mail station. The other one? My new Jambaby Samantha!!!

So I hope you enjoyed my office re-organization and by posting it all here I hope it helps me keep it this way! Thanks! Over and Out!