Full Moon Madness

There’s madness in the air – must be the full moon, or maybe it’s something in the water down here in our Devon household.  It’s been a heck of a few days!

For those of you not in the know, I had a little brush with the out of hours doctor and emergency services over the weekend (am much better now).  They say nurses make the worst patients and I suspect this is true, as I spent most of the time pathetically saying, ‘isn’t this something my GP could deal with?’  hoping to be given a few meds and sent home.  I really wanted one of my nursy mates to take my blood, as they are actually really good at it, whereas the person who was attempting to get the samples wasn’t!  anyhoo – we survived.

T had one of those days on Monday where events piled up, so that she spent 12 hours at work, but the real fun began last night:

Picture the scene:

Terri took the chicken from the oven and set it aside to rest.  The delcious aroma filled the kitchen as she split an avocado and popped out the stone with a knife.  Sam wandered in, all angles as teenage boys are,

‘Is Mum home then?’

‘No, why?’ Said Terri, a puzzled frown crossing her forehead as she sliced the fruit and added it to the salad.

‘I heard a ‘plink’ noise and someone’s running the shower in your room’

Terri put the salad ingredients on the counter and walked to the bottom of the stairs, head cocked to one side, listening.

‘you’re right, there is water running.’  Terri bounded upstairs three at a time, with Sam in hot pursuit.  They both stood open mouthed as water gushed from a large crack in the lavatory cistern in the top-most bathroom. 

There is a well-known law that says  if a cistern is going to spontaneously crack wide open it must be the one at the very top of the house, so as to spread water as generously as possible.

‘Find some towels.’  Terri yelled at Sam.  ‘I’ll find the stop-cock.’  Sam sprinted away, returning seconds later with a small burgundy hand-towel with which to stem the (by now) torrent.  Terri stared at the tiny fluffy square with disbelief.  ‘More towels, Sam, all of the towels you can find.’

‘Dunno where they are,’

‘In the linen cupboard.’

‘Where’s that?.’

‘The one in the spare bedroom.’ 

‘Uh?’

‘The cupboard in the spare room next to the shower that you use every morning.’  Terri’s voice was beginning to sound a little brusque as she scrabbled in the tight space behind the lav.

‘I dunno, do I’  Sam clumped away on a quest for terry cloth.

There is a second unwritten law that in an emergency you will not know how to switch off the stop cock – Larry The Handyman to the rescue!

I arrived home from work to find the place awash with water and sodden  household linen.  There was the pleasant tinkling of sparkling streams as they made their way from light fittings into buckets and mattresses.

Still, it had been a really muggy day, so we all enjoyed the paddle and I expect a bit of DIY cistern replacement will be just what we need on our holiday to stop us being bored.  I always find home plumbing such a relaxing pastime, don’t you?  If that’s not stimulating enough, there are a couple of ceilings that could do with a paint. 

The third unwritten law is that the worst affected ceiling will always be the one that you have most recently decorated.

I thought I might have a day off from writing my two novels today.  I expect I’ll wash a few towels and wait for the moon to wane.

Job Search for Health Care

I’m also writing a series of articles on how to find work within the health care sector, as there seem to be a lot of people who need a decent income, or even a second income.  some of the articles focus on becoming a carer in the home, in residential care, or with an agency, and I have articles planned about how to find work within the NHS, so watch this space.

How to Read The Tarot

I’ve done a whole series of articles about how to read the Tarot, as it seems such a popular pastime nowadays.  You can read How to Choose A Deck, How To Store A Deck and How to Read the Tarot, on my Hubpages site, whereas you can read about what the actual cards mean on my Helium site – www.helium.com, where I write as Georgina Crawford.  Happy experimenting!

Snowdrop Pictures, Moretonhampstead

How to Draw Pop Art

Pop art began in Britain in the mid 1950s, and spread to the USA later that decade.  It took its themes from popular culture, such as comic books and advertising,  and mass production, using mundane objects. 

Probably the most famous pop artist is Andy Warhol, with his iconic pieces depicting Campbel’s soup and Marilyn Monroe.

The style which set out  to parody the banal and kitsch within popular culture is often typified by bright colours and bold designs.

When beginning a piece of pop art, it’s important to use an easily identifiable theme, so for this piece I chose the pentangle, or pentagram, which is easily recognisable and is often identified as a Pagan symbol.

As I wanted the colours to be bold and fairly smooth, without obvious brushstrokes, I chose to work in artists acrylic paints.  These provide strong pigments, similar to oil paints, but they are water soluble and have a quick drying time, like water colours, so you don’t have to wait days for successive coats of paint to dry.

However, as I wanted to scan the finished piece into the computer so that I could upload it on to Zazzle.com (click here to view more of my art) I chose to work with paper suitable for acrylic paint, rather than canvas; using a  medium weight Daler Rowney Acrylic Paper. 

I set out to use a repeating Pentagram design, but wanted some variation, so used four different sizes of Pentagram in a random pattern.

I’m sure I could have designed this and done it all on the computer, but call me perverse, I actually get pleasure out of drawing things by hand, and spending two weeks completing the finished piece.

The background needed to be as bright as possible, so I chose a fluorescent red acrylic paint (Daler Rowney 544).  Daler Rowney has a really good range of fluorescent colours – there’s a fluorescent green I’m itching to use somewhere!

However, when I repeat the design (see later), I will use a standard bright red, as my scanner just couldn’t cope with the fluorescence, which came out off-white!

The background took several layers of paint, before I was satisfied that the intensity of colour was just right.

I then painted random Pentagrams jet black, and the remaining ones violet.  The black required only one coat of paint, but the violet required two in order to obtain the intense colour.

Get Rich By Copywriting

Can you get rich, by copywriting? Possibly. But even if you don’t get rich, you can earn a pretty good living at it, from home, without ever setting foot outside your door, and it’s FREE to get started. Read the full article here.

A few months ago, Kirstenblog left a comment on my How I Earn Money Online Hub, suggesting I write another telling how to earn money by copywriting, because that’s part of how I make a living online. It’s taken me a while to get round to it, but here it is.

Firstly, what is online copywriting? It’s pretty simple. Say, for example a wine merchant wants a few articles about wine to be circulated via wine wholesalers magazines, but they don’t have the time or creativity to do it themselves. They would contact an online copywriting agency (of which, there are several) with details of the work, how much they are willing to pay and when they need the articles to be written by. Writers like myself on the agencies books then bid for the work, stating how much they’d want to be paid (yes, you can do that!) and when they could finish the articles.

If a buyer likes your bid they pick you and you write your little socks off!  When the articles are done, they pay you – thank you very much.

So what’s the catch?  Well, there isn’t really a catch.  The agency extracts a fee from both the bidder and the buyer, but it’s not an ‘up front’ fee, and it’s only triggered when your bid is accepted, so you know the job is yours and payment will follow.  Most fees are reasonable, around 10% of the total project.

Being a freelance copywriter is a useful adjunct to other writing projects, such as writing for Hubpages, as there is a ton of copywriting out there to pick and choose from, and it’s regular paid work from the comfort of your home.

How It Works

Moretonhampstead Snow

At last, the snow is abating and schools are open again.  After a week of staying at home and sledging, Devon County Council is finally running school transport again.  The snow is melting, but we now have fog – just for a change.

Check out lots of snowy pictures by clicking here.

The Buddha, Geoff and Me – A Review

This is one of my favourite books, and every time I’ve shared it with other people, it’s become one of their favourites too. 

It’s a modern tale about a guy called Ed, who meets  a bloke in the local pub.  Said bloke is Buddhist and tries to give Ed some good advice, as Ed’s life is all over the place.

One lunchtime, after being given a warning at work, Ed visits the pub to drown his sorrows and there he meets Geoff, fiftyish, slightly balding and with a bit of a pot belly, who is also having a drink.  There’s a bit of a blockage in the gents loo, Geoff asks Ed to help him sort it out and they get talking before going their separate ways. Ed’s life begins to fall apart; a week later he bumps into Geoff again and finds himself pouring his heart out.  Geoff listens and offers to help Ed work his way through his troubles, by telling him about his Buddhist practice.

Poor Ed, he has a really tough time, but Geoff’s there to support him throughout.  Ed tries this new fangled Buddhism, with hilarious consequences.  In alot of ways Ed’s just like most of us, muddling through and trying to do the best he can, but it all works out in the end.

This is one of the few books I’ve read more than once, and one I come back to over again.  Read more about The Buddha, Geoff and Me.

How to Publish Your Book

Everyone has a book in them, or so the saying goes.  I have always been interested in writing, and around ten years ago even took a course in creative writing, but then did nothing with it.  A few years ago, I realised that the only way to become a writer, was to actually get on and WRITE SOMETHING!  I know that sounds daft, but until then I’d somehow magically thought that writing would come to me – it didn’t, so I knuckled down and took a look at my strengths and interests.

As I work part-time as a gardener, the subject was an obvious choice, and the first article I wrote was about onions.  I mean, who can’t grow onions, they’re so simple.  This article has gone on to be one of my best sellers, with feedback and comments a-plenty.  Since then, I’ve written on all sorts of subjects which interest me, not just gardening.  Some of these articles have done well, and some have yet to flourish, but just because they havn’t really taken off yet doesn’t mean they won’t do so.  A little tweak here and there, with a bit of rewriting and the article has a different slant and is off to another publisher.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is NEVER GIVE UP, there is a book inside everyone, or a magazine article, or a blog, but, you have to have a thickish skin.  Don’t be downhearted when your creative masterpiece is rejected, just think about how you can recreate the article and send it off on another journey.  In the few years that I’ve been sending my stuff out to publishers, I’ve had two children’s books published, several short magazine pieces and tons of online articles.  I’ve also added copywriting to my skills, and I actually tell people that I’m a writer now, whereas before I was too embarrassed to do so.  Since I’ve ‘come out’ so to speak, as a writer, it’s amazing how many people I meet say ‘Oh, I wish I could do that’ – guess what, they could, all they have to do is write!

How To Open a Small Business

In 2004, two friends, my partner and myself decided there had to be more to life than just working for the boss, and we decided to start our own business. Actually, it wasn’t quite as simple as that. We had many, many meetings together over many bottles of wine to decide what we could do. Eventually after several ideas we came up with the idea of opening our own continental cafe and chocolate shop, pictured to the right here? We had alot of skills between us, but were small business virgins so to speak and had to do a bit more thinking. We called our business The Chocolate Bar.

We set our business up from scratch, pooling our knowledge and resources and began expanding the business straight away. The Chocolate Bar paid my partner a salary and myself a small part-time salary. Our two friends remained in their other employment, but worked in the business part-time. They chose to take their money after selling up, which we did at the end of two years (with a decent profit for each of us), when the business was looking very solid and we were turning over in excess of £100,000pa. That’s alot of little chocolates and this is the story of how we did it.

If we can do it you can too, just think what your town needs, there will be as niche in the market somewhere.  The full article details how to go about starting your own small business from scratch, and gives useful information about how to promote you business online.  In particular the article gives tips on how to generate awesome, SAFE, backlinks to your site.