roserouge lane

…is another’s treasure. Some results of recent thrifting expeditions…

The books were awesome finds: nearly-new condition and only $1 each. Oh, soapmaking? That’s for a probable-future hobby.

An unknown piece of houseware + fabric: $0.75. Hmm..shall these be reincarnated into a sumptious 1/6th ottoman or a low table?

Vintage patterns: $0.25 each. Given that these are uncut, nearly 40 years old, and the styles can still be integrated into today’s wardrobe…hot deal! Got the Simplicity one just for the little red number. Think it would look cute with some modifications..perhaps a round collar and shorter sleeves. But I will pass on what Miss Matronly-Kerchief-head is modeling!

Things have been hectic but are slowing down…which is good and bad. These creative muscles have been dormant for too long. *flexflex* So, self-prescribed exercises as follows:

• Practice painting more male dolls
• Dioramas! (began collecting materials, but haven’t outgrown procrastination)
• Sew more. Seriously. 2009 will be the year to tackle the fabric stash. Reduce, and bring forth pretties!

In the works:

• dolls from previous post
• various 1/6th heads
• dress for SD
• a new bag in anticipation of spring
• learning to use Nikon D70S (finally replaced the Fuji S2 Pro. Can now take pics with less grumbling/swearing. Well, once I get the controls down cuz my fingers haven’t adjusted to the fact this isn’t the S2. ^^;;)

I’ve been trying to order some stuff from Volks’ international site since yesterday. However, every attempt of mine was thwarted by a server error 500 either trying to access a particular product’s page, logging in, or during checkout process. What’s going on? T_T Just now I managed to make it to the very last stage…I entered my credit card info, only to be to greeted with this message:

“I am sorry, it cannot deal with a visitor’s credit card very much now.[CODE:1G971FOR]”

Alas, rejection! Although…I’m not certain on the exact meaning or discern what the trouble is from the Engrish. Maybe it has something to do with it being a foreign credit card? Needless to say, I am really frustrated at this point. And it’s my first time ever ordering from Volks directly. >_<

EDIT: Well, my credit card company just phoned a couple of minutes ago. Turns out it’s a fraud prevention thing they have in place and they wanted to verify over the phone if indeed I was trying to send a large payment online. So now that they’ve removed the block, I tried again and my order went in ok! YAAAAAAY! Must give props to the CC company for their quick response. And bonus points to the lady for pronouncing my name correctly on the first try.

Yesh, I got a new lamp! No more being dependent on daylight! WHEEEEEEEE. I had been considering buying a daylight lamp this time last year but was hesitant to drop $100+ on one. But lately, I’ve been having some trouble seeing in low lighting so that spurred me to finally get one. =_=;; Guess there are some things you can’t scrimp on…

My first choice was the compact model. Bought one home to try…I had to place it quite close to me (about a foot away) to be within the maximum level of brightness. I also feared I would accidently headbutt the thing and send it knocking over my paint bottles and water. So I exchanged it for the desktop model and I LOVE it. This one can be placed at a more comfortable distance away, it lights up my entire desk, plus it can be used for photographing. DD Only thing I found rather useless was the magnifier it came with. Maybe I’m just not used to using one but it made me kinda dizzy after trying to paint under it for a few minutes. Furthermore, the lens was reflecting light no matter how I angled it and there is a degree of distortion. The head I was painting appeared horizontally stretched..that really threw me off! But otherwise, it’s a great lamp.

While at the art store, I noticed Liquitex acrylics had gone up in price from around $4 a bottle to nearly $7 (before taxes)! And that’s just for the series 1 colours. >_<