What I've been up to

Thursday night was the photo call for Issun Boshi,the show I've been designing. I thought I would post a few pictures that I took so that the family and friends that I've barely spoken to for a month can see what I've been up to. Some of the costumes you see here were rented some of them were things that we built. The pink princess costume and the orange and blue costume on the guy on stillts were hand painted. I'm very pleased with how everything turned out.

Butterfly Lady

So it wasn't Halloween but I decided the day before called for a little bit up dress up.

You know your a costume designer when...

You dig up dirt put it in a bowl mix it with water and...


Paint the mud on boots!

Happy October!

Today is October 1st and that means fall is really here now. We have had unseasonalbly warm weahter and then yesterday it snowed go figure, but I am really excited that it's October because this is the start of my favorite time of year from October to Christmas. I love to dress warm and cook "fall food" like stew and soups, and I like to go for walks and just look at the fall colors. It might be my mothers influence on me over the years but I just love Autum.

Yellowstone

Last week my friends Nate and MerAnda and I went on a quick camping trip to Yellowstone National Park. I have wanted to camp in Yellowstone for a while because it's something I haven't done since I was a kid(pre-teen) and I have great memories of it. Yellowstone is probably one of my favorite places and no matter how many times I see it I still love it and I'm facinated by it. Here are a few pictures.






This is a chipmunk at Firehole river my sisters and I used to feed them sunflower seeds when we were young. As I was standing there a little girl was feeding them, seeing that was very nostagic for me. I tried to get a picture but couldn't.



This trip I bought a wildflower guide so I took a lot of pictures of the wildflowers so I can try to identify them.



I don't know why but I have never been on the walk that goes around the old faithful area where you can see many more gyesers and hot springs Nate was surprised that I had never seen that part of Yellowstone before. This is Castle Geyser from that walk it was pretty cool looking and if we could have waited untill 10 p.m. we might have been able to see it erupt.



The famous old faithfull we sort of caught it coming and going but it's always fun to see even if your not right up close with the crowds.



We went in the Old Faithful Inn and when we walked in Nate said he had never been in it I was pretty surprised by that you can see him here looking up at the woodwork it was cool to show him something he had never seen since he had shown me a trail I had never seen.



This is Nate starting his famous "two match fire" which actually only took him one match to light but he says if you go around claiming a one match fire then you look stupid if it takes two. I have a feeling he could start a fire without matches if he wanted to but I was impressed with his one match and no newspaper fire.



Bison



The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone



We decided to drive home through Grand Teton National Park and boy am I glad we did



Nate thought that this was probably a moose it was far a way and this was the best my camera would do for a zoom shot.



And then the coolest thing I saw and have never seen before was this...Look closly.



A Grissly Bear! he's right next to the wood fence.

A Sense of Acomplishment

Well I'm pleased with myself because I just finished a big goal that I set for myself this week. While I would have liked to do something fun or go somewhere exciting (even my parents house, while normally not "exciting" would have been a heck of a lot more fun then hanging out at my apartment by myself) but instead of going and doing something fun or even being around people I have just finished my first rough draft of my first chapter of my Plan B Report which is kind of like a Thesis for my grad program. Now it's really rough and it will need a lot of work before it's even ready for my committee to review it(and then suggest a bunch of rewrites) but I set out to have the at least a very rough draft and I did it. Now I need to get out of my apartment and have some fun the only person I've had a face to face conversation with this week was a Borders employee and I'm bored out of my mind and a little lonely so this last week before school starts is for having fun. I have a short camping trip with friends planned for Tuesday-Wednesday and a friend's wedding in Salt Lake on Thursday but other than that what should I do? Any Suggestions?

Being Creative

I was a little bored yesterday so I decided to go to Micheal's and look around. For more than a year I have been looking for a late summer wreath for my door and haven't found anything that I like. I thought to myself hey I used to work in a flower shop I can figure out how to do this... so I bought a $4 grapevine wreath and some inexpensive silk flowers and I made one myself.

Here it is while I was working on it.



And this is the finnished product.




What do you think?

Nail Polish

There is almost nothing in life that I love as much as taking time to pamper myself. One of my favorite things to do is to give myself a manicure and pedicure. I love nail polish. When I was younger in my early college days I used to wear all kinds of crazy shades of nail polish most of them in the purple shades. Although I did once have a black polish that I wore with a glittery topcoat called "Millennium". I remember that, because, I used to say that the two together were Black Millennium and my friend said that maybe that was a little ominous since it was right before 2000. As I have gotten older and, I like to think, a little classier I no longer wear bright colors on my fingernails, I always wear a french manicure. I think it's classy and it goes with everything. That, however, doesn't stop me from wearing bright colors on my toes, in fact my conservative nails might be why I like to go a little crazy with my toes. I have over this summer been searching out new fun colors for toenail polish.

And you have to admit nail polish color names tend to be fun. the colors pictured above are from left to right Basket Case, Coconut Kiss (how they got that for purple I'll never know), Moonlit Madness, It's up to Blue, Tree Hugger, and Tangerine Tint.

This week my toes are purple.

Stuff that I do

So my mom asked me last week why I never post on my blog any more and my response was that I don't feel like I have anything interesting to blog about. Then the next day I was up in the grad studio helping Nate with his model for Glass Menagerie (I'm his assistant designer) and I thought about what I was working on and to me it's just everyday stuff that I don't think of as interesting but I'm sure my mom would find interesting and I thought that maybe the rest of my family might like to see it as well. So I will apologize if your really not interested in this stuff but then again maybe you will be.


This is a 1/4 inch scale model of a chaise lounge it's not finished yet it will still need to be painted and have some detail work done on it.


This is a table in the same scale to give you and idea of how small it is I set a ruler behind it, as you can see the table top is probably less than an inch long.


This is the table in progress. I use balsa wood and cut the pieces to a rough size then carve them with an exacto knife and sand them with an emery board nail file to get the shape I want. then I glue the pieces together with super glue gel. Then I paint them with gesso.


I will be finishing these pieces and making a few more. When I do I will post more pictures so you can see how they turn out.

Costume Design

In a recent e-mail conversation with my sister I mentioned some design projects that I have been working on and she asked me what it means to "design" a show and I realized that this is something that I talk about allot but that my family and friends who aren't involved in professional theatre may not know what I'm talking about when I say that I'm designing something so I thought I would post my response to her explaining what I do.

Hmm what it means to design a show... I guess that's a little tricky to answer but I'll try to explain. First to design costumes I read the script and make notes about it, then I talk to the director about their ideas and we decide what direction we want to go with the show. then I go do research on period and color and style and I usually make tons of photocopies so I can reference my research while I'm working. Then I usually start with rough sketches and show them to the director to make sure we agree with my approach. Then depending on the type of show it is I will either refine the rough sketches into final renderings or as in the case of The Good Doctor I just went down to costume storage and started pulling costume that I thought would work well for the show. for Ishun Boshi I will have to have good final renderings because we will probably build most of the costumes for it because it is so specific. ( in costumes we call it "building" a costume rather than "making" or "sewing" because allot of times they are more technical or specialized then sewing regular clothing) I will give copies of my renderings to the costume shop manager and she and I will talk about then and she and I will oversee their construction. I will need to chose fabrics and trims because all of the creative choices have to be made by me. Then when costumes have been pulled and altered or made from scratch I have to oversee fittings to make sure everything is right then I have to go to dress rehearsals to make sure the whole show looks right, and that everything works together.

Homemade Pay it Forward!

My sister is doing this cool thing on her blog and I'm going to try it too. What happens is if you are one of the first three people to comment on this post I will make something handmade and send it too you sometime this year and it will be a surprise! How fun is this but to play you have to post a similar blog and do 3 handmade gifts for someone else. Now...this doesn't have to be something big and certainly not expensive but just handmade and then once you've posted on your blog come back and let me know that your doing it too!

Costume Shop Hijinx!

Well it's the new year and I'm back at school, and boy have we been having fun in the shop. Let's just say that we have some fun together at work. Last week we decided to play a game and this is what happened.