I’ve never shown the internet my amazing horseshoe crab lamp I got on etsy in December, so here it is hanging out on my back. I pretty much went crazy over it during a period of being jobless (at the time), so when I sold my car, it was the first item I bought after friends’ Christmas presents who haven’t received gifts from me in years. Byebye Focus, hello beautiful wall light (and happy friends!)
So, last week during my off-time from work I’ve been compiling a long list of things to do, either for fun or for business.
1. Think of a decent name for my etsy shop. (SOIMPORTANTWHYAMISOBADWITHWORDSSOMETIMES?! CALLIPYGIAN!!)
2. Carve a stamp out of rubber erasers to use on business cards. (Only after shop name is created.)
3. Finish beading the tattered 1920’s dress Sarah Cork gave me so I can wear it to the first fancy thing I can think of.
4. Make antler bobby pins.
5. Make a tote bag for groceries! I’m terribly annoyed with the recycled plastic ones IGA gives us now, because they smell awful and the cats claw their way into the under-the-sink cabinet to chew on them.
6. Bead some tights, kinda like in this tutorial or the maker of my favorite tights: bebaroque.
7. Make a short dressy cape. Maybe black velvet? Or maybe that’s too vampiresque…
8. Paint some frames to look cooler than they are currently. (One soon to hold my Caitlin Shearer print of Margot Tenenbaum!)
9. Re-design my website and blog. I know I just did this in October but…I feel like it isn’t me so much as my old. But Flash websites are kinda tired, so I need to combine the crafty, collage style of my old with the simplicity of my new.
It really is imperative I come up with a new shop name since “amaliaslash” is kinda boring. Extremely boringgggg. Any suggestions from you <5 readers? Words I like…chimera cloud key feather nest wood handheld paper gilded magic golden antler dream star aurora linen talon quill birdcage claw eclipse wing stitch prism vine
Brian thinks it should just be “amalia chimera” like my internet moniker/website, but I wanted something separate (but connected) for the store. Hmm..
Grapefruit juice in a giant wine glass. When you lack a dishwasher and work more than 40 hours a week, the dishes tend to pile up a little.
Brian has pulled many late-nights for his job (Turner Duckworth) this week, which makes me glad that I am a freelancer with an hourly rate instead of salary, where long days get unaccounted for in your paycheck. But he gets free dinners and alcohol and taxi rides across the city, which certainly doesn’t compensate for pulling an all-nighter for work (what is this, DAAP?), but is still nice.
This made my day in so many ways. My favorite part is the slow-motion dancing while Arnold searches in the crowd. It’s so eerie and BAMF at the same time.
Tomorrow I am going to a surf competition in Half Moon Bay and I will be imagining my own soundtrack for it the entire time. Danger just makes everything much more epic..
Every fashion blog & community I read has posted on this today, and I keep getting more down about it. McQueen, a visionary of fashion and pulling it into new boundaries, has died. I’m not even heavily involved in fashion (outside of personal style), and yet his style has affected the subjects I photograph. A depressing day for fashion and art all around.
ps I wish Gemma would come back to modeling. She has the face of an alien crossed with an angel, in the best way possible.
Hmm. So I have had bad body image for a while and it needs to change, that’s for sure. I also have bad portion control habits and that needs to change, too. I once was thinner and athletic, and now I am very soft. I like having curves, a lot. I just like my smaller curvier self better, and not wobbling when walking. So, I have been changing my habits. Lots of vegetables, and using late buses as an excuse to walk a mile or two. But it’s a lot harder to change the first part, to be able to look at myself in the mirror and accept what is there as something beautiful. It’s happening, slowly, mostly in part to self portraits. Even if my vision of myself is distorted in the mirror, the truth is in the instant photograph in my hand.
I saw one of these rugs on Design*Sponge today and fell in love. I followed the link to Angela Adams’ website and fell more in love with all of these nature-inspired rugs. They cost thousands and so I am unable to afford them, but, at least due to the internet I can bask in their beauty. Rugs can’t get dirty and require daily Roomba-ing from cat hair over the internet, right?
Oh, this one is by far my favorite and the most fantastic rug I’ve ever seen. It’s from the “Birds and the Bees” Collection, which is a fancy way of saying that the prices are too expensive to list on the website. Oh, to be rich and have an amazing rug that looks like a floor of moss.
This is also from the Birds and the Bees collection, except it is a cross-section of some underground plant activity.
My second favorite is Ocean/Seaglass, chock-full-of-shades of my favorite color, pale aqua. Although the top view looks a little like camo (blegh), I didn’t get discouraged and seeing the bas-relief makes up for it.
This one is called Spike/Pool and named after a maine coone cat. If you don’t know them already, they are the cats that grow to be kinda giant, and therefore kinda more awesome. I often feel like (my) Radar has a little maine coone in him since he is giant, but being shorthaired and having a raccoon tail, I doubt it.
It’s been mostly mild here – San Francisco winters are in the 50’s with a lot of rain. To combat this I required an umbrella, but Brian broke mine last year with a piece of ice on the day the first photo was taken. (I started the snow fight. He retaliated with ice on accident!) As of last week, I now have an umbrella that is tricksy, looks like a parasol but has umbrella underneath. Black lace covers the top, and it has a big point coming out like umbrellas of olden days. I can’t wait to use it in some photoshoot.
It does crack me up seeing people dressing like snow weather here when it’s in the 50’s. Heavy layers, fur hoods, thick scarves wrapped around faces…then again, I am about to go turn on my radiator, I don’t have much room to talk. We have such large windows that it’s almost as cold inside as it is out…
My etsy shop is finally full! Positively fat. Bloated from the 94 photos I got in the mail yesterday. Tired of printing single photos when people want to buy them, I instead got a large batch done. The past couple of weeks, instead of shooting photos, I’ve just been scanning and editing dust/scratches/eyelashes out of almost 60 photos for future prints.
So, if you were looking for a sweet large or small photograph of mine, please look into my store.
From a few weeks ago after thinking I have no talent/no one wants to hire me/blahblah, things have really turned around for me.
1. fulltime freelance work from an old job that I loved!
2. selling large prints at my etsy starting next week
3. wallpapering my bookshelf (types of ferns) and dresser (inkwell pen nibs in red for the top drawers, old Italian alphabet capitals in the bottom drawers.) Turns a simple Ikea piece of furniture into something beautiful. I also added these knobs that look like coated pieces of coral from Anthropologie (that I cannot find on their website)
4. Tim Walker: Pictures, a book for $125, but getting it for $50 on sale at Anthro. Oh yes. Extreme markdown on my second favorite photographer’s book!
5. happy friends
6. drinking champagne on New Year’s Eve
7. large omelets on New Year’s Day
8. good books – The Child Thief by Brom, HI by Ray Fenwick, A Year in Japan by Kate T. Williamson, Pride & Prejudice & Zombies (from Ame), Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits (from Grandma Mary), I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
9. good music – Ivana XL, Acid House Kings, Taken By Trees, First Aid Kit, The Like, The Smiths (haha which one is not like the others? Sad boy singers in the 80’s versus soft girl singers in the 00’s)
10. FFFFOUND! This site makes my life/freetime.
11. apartment finally replaced our leaking radiator and leaky kitchen faucet! Warm apartment without drips anywhere.
12. My mom was on My Parents Were Awesome! One of my favorite tumblrs.
13. happy cats that sleep next to you and on you all night :)
This blog is a compilation of the words, images, and the inspiration of Amalia Sieber. (Oh yes, her last name is not 'chimera,' but it is mythical.)
And more..
I am a photographer, designer, animator, all wrapped up in a neat little package of scraps.
I love film, I have rosy cheeks, I wear white dresses, I live in outer space, I live deep in the molten core of the earth, I have walked on the moon, I cannot do the Frug.
