A Quick Note to Crayola

Dear Crayola,

I have always been a huge fan of Crayola colors.

I have more crayons than any adult has right to.

And colored pencils.

And markers.

If I ever have a daughter, I will name her Crayola Pavlov*.

Recently, I decided I was going to start illustrating my posts on this here blog with markers and colors.  It was going to be completely damned awesome.**

I stopped at the grocery store on the way home.  I had an excuse to go down the school supply aisle!  The yellow and green Crayola packaging glowed out at me, the logo smiling its rainbow smile.

Not only are these the best and most brilliant colors, but unlike the fancy shmancy Prismacolors that "professionals" seem to like so much, these were cheap, easy to find, and washable.

After some back and forth, I went with the largest package I could find of Crayola SuperTips.

Sure, I noticed that there were some "fun scented" markers in the package... it did not escape my notice that there were absolutely no large packages of markers from you that didn't have "fun scented" markers included.

I'll be honest, though... I thought when you said "fun scented", you meant something more along the lines of, oh, I don't know, fun for children in some way.

But honestly, I didn't think much of it.  I assumed that the scented markers would be mostly fruity smells and it would be akin to coloring with my old Strawberry Shortcake dolls' heads.

Mostly, I was just excited.  So many colors!  So.  Many.    I couldn't wait to get started.

I was a little disturbed that these so-called fun-scented colors were dressed all in black, like some kind of biker gang coming to crash the local debutant ball, but I still wasn't too worried.

In fact, I looked at them with growing excitement.  They might be fun.  I started opening them up and sniffing them without even coloring with them.

Yes, Crayola.  You did this.

You got me sniffing ink (and they didn't get me high (not that I was trying)).

And despite the little marks of red and brown around my nose, I was still mostly OK with it.  Cherry!  Oh!  That one is burnt marshmallow!  How fun!  

And then we got to the blues and greens.

I don't know about you, Crayola, but when I think "Forest Pine" or "Fresh Air" or "Bay Breeze", the first thing that doesn't come to mind is an opium den.

What ever happened to Raspberry, Lime, and Blueberry? Why did you do this to me?  Why?

If you are going to perfume your markers with THAT kind of fun, you should just be honest:


Fresh Air: A Teenager's Bedroom

Bay Breeze: French Whore

Forest Pine: Lysol

I would appreciate it if you would please update your labels.

Thanks so much for listening,

XOXO LOVE AND KISSES XOXO,

Leauxra

*I will also train her to respond to bells and whistles.


** Why YES, Virginia, Leauxra IS working on some new posts, and she's ILLUSTRATING them.  With Crayolas.  And  ***SPOILER ALERT*** They're about Hawaii.  First one comes out on Thursday***


*** I am trying to get back into a twice a week schedule... Mondays and Thursdays.

5 Shades of Gray

I'm talking about pens, here, guys.  Pens.

I managed to find my favorite Faber Castell pens in Hobby Lobby recently.

Please stop staring at my strangely shaped thumb

I can tell you aren't nearly excited enough about this.

Maybe you don't know what can be done with gray pens.  Your ignorance pains me.

For example, you can make a lot of dots and draw a picture of the scary thing in the woods using thousands upon thousands of dots.

Want to know why I haven't been blogging lately?  

Well.

I was making dots.

Move over, Pisarro.  I have gray pens and I am not afraid to use them.

The title of this piece is, "I Know, Let's Go for a Hike in the Scary Woods".

I was also traveling for work last week in sunny California. I had to pretend to be a Responsible Adult for four days in a row, while my brain kept trying to get me arrested (It puts the wallet in the basket, or it gets the security pat down from TSA again).  It was pretty stressful, and I spent most of my free time there playing my ukulele.

Why yes, I do play the ukulele.  And I bring it with me when I travel.  And take it with me through airport security.

Ukuleles are cool.

I was so busy making dots and keeping my damned mouth shut, that I failed to keep up with my imaginary friends here in the blogoverse.

It turns out that while I was away, I won some awards.

What the hell, y'all?  It's like you want to hear what I have to say or some shit.

The first award is from Erica over at Touch of Embellishment.  Erica is one of those overachievers that actually illustrates her blog (just like almost everyone wishes they could), and is ridiculously funny on a regular basis.  She consistently makes me laugh, and also makes me think I should be doing more with my blog:

She has nominated me for the "Beautiful Blogger Award", which makes me incredibly happy in so many ways.  Thank you so very much.

The second award that I received while I was out gallivanting around the countryside is from BeeBee at  Beebee's Blog.  She is the only blogger I have ever seen who has illustrated a picture of her unicorn impaling Chuck Norris in a single blow.  Seriously.  Thank you, BeeBee.

So both of these awards have all these rules and things, but I thought it might be fun to just combine these into the single most awesome blog award of all time.


I call it the:

I Want to Wear Your Head for a Hat Award:

It might not be quite as prestigious as the "Your Skin Would Make a Nice Rain Coat" award, but this one is still full of awesome.

The rules:

1. Link back to the person who tagged you.  Say what you will.  It doesn't have to be nice.  Just know that I will find you.
   
2. Run like hell and hope that that crazy bitch who is following you doesn't saute your tongue in a butter and garlic sauce.
   
   Wait wait.  That isn't right.  That should read, "that crazy bitch that 'joined' you in Google Friend Connect."
   
   Or circled you... or whatever the hell these crazy kids do these days.
   
   Aw, fuck it.
   
   Run.
   
3. Nominate some OTHER bloggers and ensure that they will never sleep again.  

Were you nominated?  Hrm.  Let's see.  Is your blog over on the right there, under "Stuff I Read"?

You're it.

Congratulations.

Is anyone else hungry for some fava beans and a nice chianti?  Is it wrong that I'd rather have beer?

Thar Be Trolls in Them Thar Woods...

I haven't been talking about the trolls as much as I should.

No, I am not talking about people who make inappropriate comments on the internet.

I am talking about the large angry beings that live in caves, or deep in the woods, and generally hate us and maybe want to eat us.

They do too exist.

Let me start at the beginning...

Boyfriend and I decided to go for a little walk in the woods.  Being in Colorado, this means that we were going for a 2,500 vertical foot, 6 mile one way climb up.

...just a relaxing walk in the woods...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Where should we hike?" I asked boyfriend, "The Park, maybe?"

"Hmm," he replied, "It says here that there is a lot of ice on the road up to Bear Lake because of the storm last night."

"Yuck," I said, "Maybe not."  I hate driving on good days, going up a narrow, curvy, slick road with big drop-offs was not my idea of fun.

We were quiet for a minute.

"What about..." I said, "Signal Mountain?  I haven't been up there in years."

Signal Mountain is at the end of a dirt road that turns off a county road on the highway that heads into the mountains.  It is only about 45 minutes from my house, and rarely has anyone on it.  In the summer, the switchbacks up the west-facing hill are brutal, and it climbs something like 1000 feet in the first mile.  This time of year, it should be pretty nice.

Once you get to the top of the ridge, it's a much gentler "up", and has nice views of the Divide to the west.

We packed up our backpacks and headed out.

It was a fantastically beautiful day out.  The chill in the air was just enough to keep us from overheating.

I was feeling pretty strong, and we made it up the steep part in a relatively short amount of time. The breezes kept it from being too hot.  It still got cold enough at night that the trees hadn't budded out and the grass was still dead from winter, but it had a stark beauty anyway.

I believe this is a misprint.  It should be "Bullwark's Ridge" because the troll's name is Bullwark, and this is his ridge.  Obviously.

The open meadows gave way to lodgepole forest, and we came to a fork in the trail.  Signal Mountain, that-a-way.

"I always think this part of the trial is weird," I said.

Boyfriend, "Huh?"

Me: "It's so quiet.  When M. and I climbed up here we got totally creeped out."

He didn't answer.

I know, let's go for a walk in the scary woods.

We were quiet for a while, and walked a bit farther.

Our footsteps were muffled in the deep pine needles as we went, when I heard a strange noise.

It was the sound of something... big.

I froze, and looked back at Boyfriend.  "Did you hear...?" he started to say, when something made a deep groaning noise.

"What the fuck was that?" I said.

"I don't know," he replied.

"Was it a bear?"

We both fell silent.

"MAYBE WE SHOULDN'T BE QUIET!" I said in a loud voice, "SO WHATEVER IT IS WILL GO AWAY."

"PROBABLY NOT A BAD IDEA," said Boyfriend.

"What should we do?" I asked.

We looked at eachother helplessly.

"If it can smell fear, I totally reek right now, I just started sweating like a pig."

Boyfriend snickered.

We stood quiet for another moment, and then started up the trail.

Immediately, there was another thick noise from the woods.

"Shit," I said.  "What is that?"

It feels like there are eyes everywhere, watching you.  Maybe the forest was awake. Or maybe there are trolls.

I scanned the trees, my heart racing.  They were too dense to see more than a few hundred feet. There could be anything out there.

We looked at each other and turned around and headed home.

There are other places to hike.

"Do you think it was trolls?" I asked.***

"YOU ARE NOT HELPING, LEAUXRA," he replied.

I fell silent.  For about a minute.

"It's really quiet," I said, "I'll bet the other animals are afraid of the trolls."

"Is there a such a thing as wood trolls?" I asked.

"I don't know," he said, "I am not up on my troll lore."

"That probably pisses off the trolls, don't you think?"

I glanced behind me.

"STOP DOING THAT!" he said.

"I feel like something is looking at me, you know?  Like eyes on me."

Boyfriend gave me an exasperated sigh.

Obvious evidence of troll activity.  Trees knocked down and strewn about.  No, it wasn't the wind.  It was trolls.

"Check it out," I said, "Evidence."

Boyfriend looked at me.

"OBVIOUSLY, the troll got pissed and knocked down some trees."

Boyfriend didn't respond.

A spectacular view through burnt trees.

"Maybe we should get some bear spray," I said.

"Do you think that would help?"

"You're right, a troll would probably think it was seasoning, but it would make me feel braver if it was a bear."

"You know," he said, "It was probably just an elk or something.  Remember when we climbed Ypsilon?"

"Huh," I said.

We saw a grouse.  No, it totally wasn't a mountain chicken that scared us.

"I wonder if it was a chicken of the woods," I said later.

"What?"

"Check it out.  A grouse!"

Boyfriend said, "Never speak of this."

"Don't worry," I said, "I'll tell everyone that I hurt my knee or something."

"You're planning on blogging about this, aren't you," he said.  It wasn't a question.

"It's why we hike," I replied, "So I have something to blog about."

So in the spirit of truthiness, I have to say... ahem...

"I hurt my knee while hiking, so we cut it short."

The End.

***Reason #45 why dating me is hard: I have an over active imagination and I share it.  Sorry.

I'm Gonna Melt Old Age Right out of my Skin

I’ve been hiding at my desk this week, hoping nobody notices me.

This is not because I accidentally melted my face off earlier in the week, although I will admit that that was a bit disconcerting.

It was an honest mistake.

I use to have this awesome lotion/exfoliating soap from St. Ives that smelled like apricots and felt like loving sandpaper. It would scratch the top layer of dead skin off my face and make me feel young and beautiful again.

Of course, I had that stuff back in about 1998, and apparently things have changed since then (I still think of the late 90’s as “recent," so I may be a wee bit out of touch).

My skin has been unusually dry and itchy lately, and it was getting to the point that I was scratching my face constantly throughout the day and I was a little worried that I might wear through my cheeks.  I had to do something.

So... I borrowed my mom’s St. Ives Apricot Exfoliating Face Wash to use before I moisturized the shit out of my face.

I just assumed that it was the same apricot shit that I used back in my 20’s, and that the only thing that had changed was the packaging.

Let me repeat that.

I put some chemical shit on my face and just assumed I knew what it was without reading the label.

Anyway.

The next morning, I noticed that my "treatment" didn't seem to work very well because my skin was still way too dry, so I washed my face with it again.

I woke up the next morning, and I looked like I had a five o’clock shadow, only instead of stubble, it was my SKIN molting off. Or sloughing off? Is that a word? Sloughing?

My whole lower face, just flaking, and painful, and burny.

The part of my faces that I used the Apricot shit on.

Maybe I should look at the motherfucking label, you know?

Yeah.  That Apricot Scrub shit was was completely different from what I thought it was, and the active ingredient was Salicylic acid and I had just washed my face with freaking alien blood.

Twice.

Because chemical burns are really good for removing dead skin and acne.

And live skin. And my flesh.

But no, I am not hiding because of that.

And no, I am not hiding from the office zombies that want to eat my brains. I mean, seriously, those things have an awesome sense of smell, and would totally find me at my desk, especially since I keep putting this Oatmeal and Shea Butter lotion on my burny face… holy fuck, y’all. I just noticed this lotion is totally from St. Ives, too. Those Swiss bastards are probably going to give me boils or some shit and call it “invigorating” for the skin.

Anyhoo. What was I talking about?

Right.

Hiding at desk.

And failing.

It turns out, you can’t actually hide from your email, especially when you are sitting at a computer all day, even if you are getting up every five minutes to add moisturizer.

How to Draw a Comic

I am a little overwhelmed by the response to my comic. Y'all are awesome.

Being me, any kind of positive feedback makes me doubt myself.

Can I still do this? Can I even draw? Holy crap, I am a total failure, I can't even draw at all, can I? Otherwise, I would totally have been drawing this whole time. That's why I stopped, isn't it? Because I suck? Why do I even try? I should just hide in the cabinet under the sink and never come out.

Somehow, thoughts like these don't make me not try.

But I'm pretty sure I'm doing everything wrong.

Still, I've made you a photo tutorial, in case you would like to fail at this as badly as I do.

How to Write and Draw a Comic, a Photographic Instructional Blog Thingy Written by Leauxra

1) Design.

I usually start with a rectangle, and then start writing words.  I rarely have any idea what the page will look like before I start.  I try not to.  If I have any expectations, I will fail, and then I will never finish.  So I start with a rectangle, maybe a sentence or two and a vague idea.  This is the design phase, and requires a good eraser.

2) Pencil.

Pencil in more of the details because there is no way you can really trust yourself with a pen if there is any kind of  detail to be done.  Pencils are safer.

It is also good to note that if you are at a loss as to what to do in a small panel, a close-up of the eyes usually works.  It makes the character seem more emotive, even if you don't care about your character or your character's feelings.

3) Trace.

Trace your lines with a pen.  There are talented comic book people out there that use a quill or a brush and inks, but having a big box of pens of various widths is much more useful if you want to sit in front of the TV and draw.  Do what you feel comfortable with (but pens are better.  Totally).  Also: don't mess up.  If you mess up now, you will regret it for the rest of the page.

4) Erase.

Let it sit for a few minutes after you finish tracing your page.  Otherwise, when you start erasing the pencil, you will smear the fuck out of everything.  And for the love of all that is holy use a good, clean, eraser.  I like the white Magic Rub types. No, this isn't sexual, that's the name of the eraser.  Shut up.

I also use a soft make-up brush that has never been used for make-up to get rid of the eraser bits.  Your hands are probably covered in graphite, so you need something that won't smear anything.  Blowing on it doesn't work, either,  at least not for me, because I always end up spitting on it by mistake in my effort to get every last bit of eraser off, and then I get pissed off and throw things.

5) Fill it in.

Once there are no eraser bits left, black the big spaces.  You could use a Sharpie here if you are a glutton for punishment... those fuckers will bleed through to the center of the earth and destroy your paper, your sanity, and maybe even your soul.  But any OTHER kind of felt tip will work.  And if you're really patient, you can use a fine tip, but you will totally destroy it in the process.  Blacking in the dark areas makes the thing start to look done-ish.

6) Letter and Detail.

Time to write the letters and fill in details!  This is my favorite part.

After you ink in letters, you will think of about a million better ways to say what you just wrote, and it will be too late.  You will also realize that if you haven't drawn anything in months, you will completely SUCK at this.  Seriously, what the fuck?  I use to be GOOD at drawing hands.  This girl looks like she has flippers.

7) Keep going.

Keep embelishing until you can't stand it anymore.

8) Done.  Finally.

Take a photo of the finished product, because you'll be fucked to try to figure out the scanner.  You're feeling kind of lazy and you had a bad day at work, so to hell with extra efforts.  You'll scan it in LATER.  For now, you'll take a slightly blurry picture under the tungsten lights and then boost the contrast and put it in "black and white" mode.  Done.  Finally.

Try to pretend you are proud of your work even though you mostly feel like a failure and that you should have done better.  You'll look at it and see everything that is wrong with it.  They will never be good enough.  Accept it, and try to do better next time.

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A page like this will take me around four hours from start to finish although I usually have to take a break because my hands hurt and I can't see after a while.  These things use to take about three times as long, but apparently I haven't forgotten everything I ever learned.

And there you have it, kids.  Have fun.

Do These Make My Bones Look Fat?

Have you ever wondered where I got the name for this blog? I mean, I am not a health blog. Have you ever wondered, "What the hell, Leauxra?"

Well.

Today is your lucky day.

Ahem.


A long, long time ago, at a job far far away...

I was bored at work.

I could only dust the picture frames and vacuum the carpet so many times.  I also did not own a computer. If there was no one in the store for a stretch of time, what was I supposed to do?

One day I thought about writing a story, and ended up sketching this cute picture of a skeleton girl checking out her ass in a mirror, and a little light came on in my head.  Ten minutes here, an hour there... and eventually, I had 23 pages and a complete story.  I made a comic book.

And I haven't done anything like it since.

That was five years ago.

Five.

So.  Today, I am sharing this with you, in order to hopefully inspire myself to MAKE SOMETHING AWESOME again.

XOXO,
Leauxra

P.S. I am a little nervous putting a bunch of full sized images out on the interwebz.  Please, play nice.  If you want to use any of these images for... well, anything, please talk to me.  I will probably say yes.  KTHANKS!

P.P.S. These were all drawn on paper that was about 6" by 8", using pens I got at Walgreens up the road.  I didn't have a ruler, so I used the edge of a business card for straight edges and kind of eyeballed the width, which explains much of the crookedness of the images.  Just FYI in case that sort of thing bothers you.

End.

Boobs

Being all disdainful of meta-posts and talking about my blog, and things that are cliché, and being a big follower of my RULES, I thought if anyone tagged me in one of those little taggy blog posty thingys, I would politely thank them and then tell them that I don't "do" these things.

And then something awesome happened to me.

I got this:

And it made me feel awesome.

Fuck the rules.

I would like to thank all the little people... and give a huge shout out to Misty of Misty's Laws who tagged me.  She is some kind of funny, too, so if you don't read her blog, you should.   Go now.  The read the whole thing.  I'll wait...

Done?  OK.

How this works is that I tell y'all three things you may not know about me, and I tag three other bloggers that I would like to know more about.  Seems simple enough.

Three blogs you should be reading and that I want to know more about:

1. Stephanie C of Seriously??...Reeeally?... Seriously?:   If you don't read this blog, I don't even know what to say.  This is the only bloggy friend I have who can also hurt herself several times a day on stupid things JUST LIKE I DO, plus she has a Great Dane, and I freaking LOVE those dogs.
2. Stephanie of Clay Baboons.  She seriously hit the nail on the head with this new blog, and her illustrations via clay are phenomenal.  She is going to be big.  You should totally be friends with her before she's too famous to notice you.
3. Hoodyhoo of... hoodyhoo.  Of course you read Ms. Hoo.  Who doesn't read her?  I heard a rumor that she's back around after kicking the shit out of some of her internal organs.  Yay!

Three Things You May Not Know About Me:

1. I have a sinking suspision that my brain doesn't work right because I never learned how to crawl on my own. For real, this is a true story.  I did not learn how to crawl like a normal baby.  Instead, I developed what my mom calls a "schootch", where I would sort of slither/army crawl like a strange lizard hybrid changeling baby. 
   
   Thinking this wasn't right, Mom asked the baby doctor what to do, and he suggested having my older brother get down on the floor and teach me to crawl. The advice was followed, but I decided not to crawl anyway and got up and started walking almost immediately.
   
   Basically, I walked before I crawled, and this is why it's hard for me to learn new things. 
   
   That, and my first word was, "No!" ...for about 6 months.
   
   I was born contrary.
   
   I don't think it should come as any surprise that I don't have any children because I fear they would be like me.
2. I am not actually a nerd, or even a geek. I am just a huge dork.
   These things are defined, people.
   
   A nerd is a person who is really smart, and knows a lot about stuff, usually about a lot of stuff.  They are like a geek, but with an additional skill that allows them to learn about real things like science and history.
   
   A geek is like a nerd, but they keep their knowledge base to the realm of fiction.  They can tell you every single piece of trivia about Star Wars, Star Trek, The Lord of the Rings, the Dune series, etc, etc, etc.  A geek can also get into a fist fight about the finer interpretation of rules in Dungeons and Dragons, second edition.
   
   I am neither of these things.
   
   I am a dork.
   
   I am a person who hangs out with people who are smarter than me because I want to be a geek or a nerd, but I have no patience whatsoever for learning new things.  So I know a little bit about a lot of nerdy and geeky things, but not enough to actually gain geek cred.
   
   Basically, I am a failed nerd.
3. I am afraid of strapless dresses. (This is the boobs part of the post).
   Over NewYear's, I went to a fancy dress party. This is unusual for me because my normal New Year's Eve party consists of sitting around drinking beer and watching TV with the parents, and maybe pulling a cracker or two at midnight.
   
   But this year was different.  This year, my sister got me and my boyfriend a package deal to head down to the big city (Denver) to a fancy dancy hotel for a Roaring 20's Flappers and Gangsters party.
   
   It fucking rocked.
   
   Anyhoo, before the party, I had time to scour the internet to find the most fabulous but not too expensive and certainly not a Halloween costume dress that would make 5'8" curvy me look like a flapper.
   
   And I found it.
   
   

   

   This is NOT me.  My hair is much cuter than that.  IMAGE SOURCE: UNIQUE VINTAGE.  If you haven't been there, you should go.  They are awesome.

   
   It was, however, a little bit low cut, and even though it had cute little beaded spaghetti straps on it, I was constantly and hopefully nonchalantly checking out my chest to make sure nothing had slipped out.
   
   

   

   Although I DID manage to make a T-Rex face at the camera, of which I am proud.

   
   This is because I have a strapless dress phobia.
   
   I am not what one would call "well endowed". In fact, me gaining 40lbs over the last two years has given me something I have never in my life had before, which is boobs.  Don't get me wrong, I am shaped like a girl... I have just never been someone who actually needs a sports bra or an underwire.
   
   For most of my life, I avoided strapless dresses.  Having never worn one, I just assumed they hung off a girl's boobs, and since I didn't have big hangers out front, I figured the strapless dress was not for me.
   
   This makes the root cause of my fear somewhat baffling.
   
   I was going out with friends to New Orleans on night, wearing this cute little green and white strapless dress.  It had a vintage pattern, and was a bit shorter than I was use to, but with my platform heeled boots, I felt like a million bucks.  Or at least $200 an hour.  Really, I have no idea what look I was going for, other than "hawt".
   
   We were headed to a place called the Hookah Cafe.
   
   Being a not-terribly-girly-girl most of the time, I didn't have a clutch purse or anything like that, but a big canvas army-surplus map case that I used as a purse slung diagonal over my head and shoulder, and pushed behind me.
   
   I concentrated on not falling down in my awesome if slightly ridiculous boots, but still ended up in the front of the group as we walked into the resturaunt.
   
   It was warm and soft outside, so the air conditioning inside gave me goose-bumps.
   
   The host walked up, "Can I... ah... can I help you?"
   
   I smiled (remember, I looked like at least $200 an hour), and said in a flirty voice, "Chilly in here!"
   
   He didn't respond, his smile wilting a little.
   
   "Ah," I said, wondering if my lipstick was on my teeth or something and unsmiled my face, "Table for seven."
   
   The host scooped up some menus and walked us through the smoky room, not glancing back at me once.  I tried to walk confident, but I was starting to get nervous.  Were all those people looking at me because we were walking?  Because I looked good?  Because my boots made me look like a six foot-three drag queen?  What?  What was it?
   
   I sat down at the table, making sure my skirt wasn't hiked up or stuck in my panties or anything, and moved to take off my bag.
   
   And that's when I noticed.
   
   That my boob was completely free of the strapless dress, which had rolled on one side halfway down my rib cage.
   
   It must have caught on my purse when I put it on.  Back at my house.  Six blocks away.
   
   
   
   Bit chilly in here, don't you think?