My tattoo

This is the tattoo I got the day before yesterday. I had mom snap a pic of it, so if it looks a little wonky, it's because I was contorted in the corner of the bathroom. Also, there's a little bit of scabbing that might be starting in a couple areas. EEEEEW, sorry, TMI!! But it still has to "settle" so the colors will get more muted. It was painful, but not as much as the one I got on my ankle, for some odd reason. But yep, this is for my daddy.

Seared fish

I didn't make this, I ate it!! I keep doing real food posts, probably because I like to eat :-D. I had seared ahi (with some kind of aioli sauce) and brown rice for lunch. I really love fish prepared that way. They just take a hunk of raw fish and flash fry it in a pan so that only the outside is somewhat cooked, but the inside is raw, baby!! Oh, and I thought I'd try being healthy with the brown rice ;-). Honestly, every time I eat brown rice I kind of wish it was white. That other plate is my mom's. She had lamb chops with mango salsa. I guess you'd call this kind of meal an "haute plate lunch".

Mice shooting marbles

I used to see the little boys shooting marbles in the dirt when I was in grade school and was always intrigued (this was when I wasn't playing kickball with them, my absolute favorite). Not so much by the actual game, but by the gorgeous glass marbles in their stashes. I had to buy my own. That is, when I wasn't buying Japanese stickers to fill up my albums and trade them during recess. I have my own stash of miniature glass marbles now, so I made two mice in a "dirt box" playing the game....whatever it is!

More grilled fish and bananas

A fellow food miniaturist friend of mine wanted to buy the grilled fish and salsa piece that I submitted to IGMA, but since I donated it, I made it over again. I left off the salsa, but she said that she wants salsa, so now I have to add it to the naked fish. Notice that this time I did add a bit of "juice" ;-). The other pic is just more bananas, with some unripe ones thrown in.

A miniature Bootsy from Patricia!!!

My buddy and miniaturist extraodinaire, Patricia Cabrera, gave me a wonderful gift: a miniature Bootsy!!! And she is just like our real-life Persian kitty!!! She is sitting right next to me, and I shall treasure her forever :-). Thank you so much, Patricia!!!!

http://woolytalesminiatures.blogspot.com/

Breakfast, then bring the pain

After a hearty breakfast at my favorite pancake spot (the pancakes are so light and fluffy that they practically float, accompanied by scrambled eggs and fried potatoes. Mom had corned beef hash, fried eggs, rice, and banana pancakes), I had an old tattoo on my ankle worked on. It was just a simple butterfly, incredibly blah. I wanted something like a vine with leaves snaking up behind the butterfly, but the guy convinced me to get something a little more unusual. He freehanded the background design, whatever the hell it is. I didn't want anything too tribal looking, though. Now I just have to go in again and get the actual butterfly worked on so it's not so plain looking, but more colorful and ornate. I had forgotten how painful getting my flesh carved.....err, tattooed can be (and I have a pretty high threshhold for pain!), so I pretty much went as white as a sheet as I was lying there. I mean, to the point where I'm having second thought about getting my right shoulder worked on next week :-/.  I'll probably do it, since I have wanted something of a memorial to my dad for awhile now. The other picture is some Chinese writing on the inside of my ankle (Chinese for Pisces). My ex-boyfiend and I got matching tattooes, since he is a Pisces as well...*snort*! THANK GOD we never opted to have eachothers names put there!! Nope, a Pisces should never date another Pisces, especially one with raging ADHD, among other things ;-).

Gift Basket

This is the picture that was giving me some grief. I tweaked it and removed most of the shadows. I think. I sometimes lighten pictures so much that the details get "washed away", so I wanted to make sure that didn't happen with this. With the first pic I took, the bananas lost almost all of the detail when I lightened it, so I had to go in and manually lighten only certain areas. I'm still not wild about it, but it's better than it was before, methinks :-/.