RATTLEBRAINED

Ah, the good old days when men were men and monsters were men too…

Sunday I was thrilled to receive a “love your stuff” message with a “how about a keyboard playing skeleton?” ending. So I puffed up my chest feathers and gave it some thought.

The truth is that I had already considered a piano playing skeleton last year but didn’t really see it in my head. Considering the time it can take to make a design I’m happy with I preferred to postpone it until the spark of an idea flickered somewhere which in fact meant I forgot all about it. Or at least it seemed that way until the above designed popped out on Monday. Always funny how you pass from days when drawing just doesn’t seem possible, you can’t get anything right, to those moments where designs seem to be almost impatiently waiting for you to captured them as long as you let them be themselves. ;-)

The blurb: This electric organ playing lady skeleton design has a tribal reminiscence of a bird in flight. Symbolic of the soaring sound of these great musical instruments.

July 3rd 2009
The Crawfish Blues Band will be playing in Neuchâtel’s port for in the Bateau Libre, organized by the Bar King.

Concert starts at 8pm.

July 11th 2009
Happy hour with the Crawfish Blues Band!
Restaurant La Capsule which is situated at the Plage de Chez-le-Bart.

Concert starts around 5:30pm.

Spent the week working on a website for a friend, did get to the studio too of course, but still after a week of too much computering my shoulders, arms wrists, hands and fingers scream at me. So I took a break in the form of looking for some inspiration for my rhythm bone playing since after 7 months of if I’m a bit in a rut or at least it feels that way. There are always these moments where you don’t seem to progress, and they can last too but you have to keep on practicing and trust you’ll get past them…

Anyway, I stumbled on the above which is beyond words. One comment says he (Jeff Leff) is playing a sirtaki dance rhythm but unfortunately and shamefully I’m too ignorant to know. What would my Greek grandparents think? :-(

BTW: There are more great videos on both his homepage and on his YouTube page.

There was a surprise in my spam box on Saturday, an offer to check out google adwords with a substantial sum, at least for me, to begin with. So I followed up on it and have plunged into the deep seas of rampant commercialism. I have no experience with this sort of thing but it wasn’t all that complicated to set up and I now have six ads running for three sections of my shop. Two each, so that maybe I can learn something from comparing which one does better. It’s actually kind of fun, sort of a rate your logic abilities test. I’ve already had to edit them 4 or 5 times. Since you want to maximize the chance that someone clicks on the ad because they are actually interested in your offer I’m assuming the keywords really need to be in tune with the ad and not just pop up for no reason.
I’m also thinking that it’s better if the ad only shows if someone is either searching for exactly that, or searching for something that shows that they could be interested in what you offer. The second seems the more interesting, after all when I search for my more successful designs, they are already listed so it seems a bit counterproductive to make ads for them. However the second also seems more delicate, I imagine you can lose your money fairly quickly if you don’t pay attention to all the parameters and I can’t say I know enough about most of them.

Anyway…

Because the show of an artist I knew was opening the other day, and it was warm and sunny and a good reason to leave the mountain top and head down near the lake side, I visited a gallery in which I rarely go to because I was wondering if I should try and go there more… you know what I mean… nudge, nudge… not enough to just make art, got to show it too!

And the reason I rarely go to this particular gallery was that the first time I went, it just felt blah, no atomic symbiosis, no sensations of pertinence, words where said but no real communication was made and that that was, was unsatisfactory.
But that was years ago so I got into my car, drove down, found parking, and went in. And wouldn’t you know, fell directly into a quick polite greetings, passing shot gallery to artist discussion that totally confirmed my long ago first impressions…

Things are often best when you float with your instincts and do it like you feel it’s best and today I feel that letting google expertly chose specific placement ads with the help of savant geek developed algorithms seems a good way to waste money…

A series of events this last week culminated in the decision to move Rattlebrained Designs to a US based host. This has been done and so I am happy to announce the opening of Rattlebrained Designs “dot com”!

Your will find utterly uniquely funny tees like the Beat It! Women’s T-Shirt above as well as other unusual gift designs.

Check it out, constructive criticism is always welcome and please update your bookmarks.