LadyGypsy.net – the blog of Kimberly Dowd of New Jersey

It’s been an interesting five weeks. I’m not hungry, I’m not craving anything and I still haven’t exercised.

I know. I know.

But I’ve still lost 9.8 lbs.!

Although I weigh myself every day, I’m looking for other signs of a change. I don’t feel any lighter. I don’t look any different.

But the other day, I finally noticed this:

Broke-ass belt

I’m down to the tightest hole in my top-of-the-line reversible (dorkalert!) L/XL size belt! Neat!

The work situation is lightning up a bit. We’re not publishing as many special sections anymore (a good call, imo) so there are fewer campaigns for me to schedule and that gives me more time to do better work on the rest of the things I have to do. Like making banner ads.

While I don’t have any formal background in banner ad design, it’s been part of my job for the last 10 years. I’d like to think I’ve improved greatly over that time.

Yesteday I got a request to build six (!) banners for a local fuel company. One of the banners is to “have a fuel truck pulling or towing a metal tank or container” across it. I couldn’t find any stock images of a fuel truck, so I decided to create one in Photoshop instead.

If this truck could be ANY cuter, Hello Kitty would be driving it. I deleted the logo because the customer hasn’t seen it yet.

Every Friday night, WM and I watch Lar deSouza (artist for “Least I Could Do” and “Looking For Group“) draw live on uStream. And I swear up and down watching him use Photoshop every week has made such a difference in how I use Photoshop in my daily work!

Something I’ve learned: Use highlights and gradients to create roundness and shadows to create depth. I can’t just tack a wheel on top of a truck, because the wheel actually resides inside a wheel well. That simple smudged “shadow” on the ground puts the truck on the ground instead of floating in mid air.

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Dream: There is a bat in the apartment. It hides in closets and tries to pluck out my eyes. Nobody will help us get rid of the bat, as it is part of a big MTV Punked-type reality show that’s filming my abject terror.

Today’s weight: 177.8
Weight change: -2.6

Happy Tuesday. I’m headed back to work today after FIVE days off. Five days in which every plan I had fell apart due to weather, apathy, and a myriad of other things. So I spent most of my five days here at home. After this much time away from people I fully expect to be crouched under my desk an hour from now, hissing at people while I slorp my yogurt.

So while I wait for my Proactiv mask to finish it’s work I wanted to show you the beady creations I made. (click on each pic to see it larger)

The first one (named “Concentric” for obvious reasons) arrived because I saw 2 strands of beads in Michaels last week – gray “Os” and black round flat beads. I thought “ME PUT ONE BEAD INSIDE OTHER AND MAKE PRETTY THING!” So I did.

The second one I’m pretty meh about. I wanted to see how to get three strands situated inside those cone endings. I crimped three strands around one loop and pulled them into the cone. It’s plain but functional, so I named it after the movie I was watching at the time, Helvetica. (LOVED the movie, by the way – my favorite line was by the aging hippie who blamed Helvetica for the Vietnam and Iraq wars.)

And the third one came because I saw a post on Craftster and thought “ME WRAP WIRE AROUND BEADS AND MAKE PRETTY THING!” So I did.

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In diet news, I’m the SAME WEIGHT I was when I left work last Wednesday, which makes me so happy!

And the WeatherPixie is going away after all these years…the site’s been down for weeks and although I was patient I’m tired of the blank spot in my sidebar. RIP, WeatherPixie

And that’s all. I’m going to go and crack the cement off of my face. Enjoy your day!