Korea: Morning Commute from Hwajeong-shi

A necessary ritual in many modern lifestyles is the morning commute, the pilgrimage from a suburban respite into the bustling business centers of the city. My time in Korea was certainly marked with this ceremonial passage, morning and evening, as I made my way from the northern residential burb of Hwajeong down to Seoul proper to set up for the day. Every so often, I would get to work and begin setting up only for a coworker to awkwardly approach and ask if perhaps I'd misread the schedule, or maybe they had. Typically it was my fault that I'd misinterpreted my shift, and I'd end up having to find a way to fill the handful of hours at my destination until the shift began. Given how far out of the way Hwajeong was from, say, Lotte world, it didn't make much sense for me to go all the way home only to turn right back around and return, so I'd explore the nearby shopping centers or parks. As annoyed as I might have been in the moment for missing out on some additional sleep I might have garnered by staying home, it was generally a good thing that I explore these areas. The various Fun Caricature locations operating throughout Seoul are placed strategically in high-traffic touristy areas, after all, so the neighborhoods I'd coincidentally find myself arriving at too early in the day would have ample ways for me to entertain myself. 

The commute itself, though, had its own merits. While many mornings I'd take the time to catch up on podcasts, e-mails, or various threads on Reddit, the scenery wasn't unpleasant to look at by any stretch of the term. As the seasons evolved from one into the next, the scenery, too, would shift in shades and texture, providing an aesthetic affirmation of nature's workings. Depending on the time of day, I might pass a food stall with billowing plumes of dense and delicious steam flooding out onto the path, or vendors with freshly procured produce offering their wares.

The short walk to the train station, in and of itself, became a precious sort of journey. That green sign to the right in the photo above? That was my go-to market after returning home from work, as I could pop in and find most of the groceries I could possibly want at a reasonable price. E-mart, too, was just a bit further down the street on the trek home. There were several other groceries, department stores and markets all scattered about nearby, and there was a rather large one tucked into the basement level of the train station, too. No shortage of options available, that's for sure. Never underestimate the sheer convenience and walkability of the city of Seoul and it's suburban branches! It will truly spoil you to live in the area... I miss being able to walk to a store at any given time of day or night and find a hot meal or cold bottle of soju/beer/wine, or fried chicken, sweet and chewy egg bread... but I digress! I could write tomes about how tasty and bountiful the food is in Seoul...

Vegas: Accidents and Nature

Accidents happen. In a city where alcohol consumption is highly encouraged and made highly accessible, accidents might happen at a higher than average rate. I certainly have no idea whether the driver of the vehicle pictured above was drinking, and it was rather early in the day, but who knows. Life is mysterious and full of many unknowns and unanswered questions. One thing we do know for certain is that the driver of the aforementioned vehicle was not having the best day of her life, no sir. 

Hopefully things have all been taken care of, as this occurred several months back now. No one was injured, except for perhaps the driver's pride, but considering that it was a highly trafficked parking lot with a lot of pedestrian traffic, things really could have gone much worse. 

And while I wasn't involved in any direct way, I do have to admit that seeing car accidents can cause my anxiety to go up a wee bit. So, lucky for us, Antho happened to snap some nice shots of dew drops forming on grass, along with some other nature scenery, to take the edge off of the unfortunate collision of metal above.

There we go, much better. Look at those lovely shades of green! A lush oasis is hidden in the Vegas valley, in the midst of the Mojave desert! Lovely. The blue sky above speckled with scattered wisps of clouds, clear and bright. I mean, we all have accidents in life from time to time, and while it can be easy to dwell on the pain and inconvenience they can cause, we should really be grateful that we're able to walk away from them. There are so many ways to blink out of existence and be gone before we know what hit us, each day we make it out alive is a triumph over the odds.  I know that for me, that realization has made a profound impact on how I view aging and birthdays. It's a literal leveling up, and a lot of us drop out early in the game. I'm going on my third decade in life now and I can honestly say I'm glad to still be here, which wasn't something I necessarily expected to be able to say at some of the harder stages of my life. It hasn't always been easy, and there will be many challenges yet to come in the road ahead, but if we can confront them with gratitude and wisdom gleaned from time passed, we're on the right path. 

Of course, if you'd like to see more bent metal, there are more photos below...

Behind the Scenes: Tie-dye photo shoot at Mount Charleston (part two)

A necessary evil of running any sort of online business (like, say, our Etsy shop full of tie-dye) is that eventually, you're going to need to provide photographic evidence of the items you are trying to sell. Not only do these photos need to clearly showcase the item itself in a clear and well-lit manner for people to judge the merit of this thing you're trying to sell them, but the photograph needs to be interesting enough to distinguish them from all the rest out there. There's no shortage of places to shop online, after all, and we're definitely not the first or last duo to ever make a tie-dye t-shirt. The trick is to find what sets us and our creations apart, and to try to capture some of that in the photographs. I don't know if we really accomplish that, at least as well as I really aim to, and I'm certainly not at the point where I would hang up my hat and consider myself a smashing success, but it's all part of the process. With each new photoshoot, and every photograph I go through and edit, refine, and polish I'm learning. If we can have some fun along the way, I think we're on the right path. 

Part of what makes us who we are, in my estimation of such, is our love of travel. I can not long live without some form of travel, lest I become bogged down with pervasive cabin fever and start to go a little nutty. Getting outdoors and into nature is absolutely necessary for our well-being, along with being a known boon to human health. Given as much, we try to get as many of our shoots done outdoors among nature now as we possibly can. More often than not, this gives us an excuse to go camping, though for this shoot we ended up making it a single day excursion rather than staying overnight. This was more a practicality, as camping locations at Charleston are mainly pay-to-play, and we're trying to be judicious in our spending as we prepare to take off for a new location. That's right, kids, this summer might be our very last in Las Vegas for awhile, because we're sick and freaking tired of all these motherf**king snakes on our motherf**king train! Haha, I kid... more so we're just sick and tired of the heat out here, of it, of how it saps the life from our pets, our plants, and us, not to mention all the additional vehicular stresses it adds. I've been driving the same car since college, and I've had to replace the radiator more than three times in the last decade. That seems....excessive...to say the least. My previous car suffered from a water-pump malfunction that left me overheated and stranded on the side of the road on my way to work (at the mall) on Black Friday, of all days. Suffice to say, it's hot, and I'm tired of being hot the majority of the time. Mount Charleston, while a nice respite from the heat of the city, is still not far enough away to break the umbilical. We must go further! And we will. Soon. 

But for now, enjoy these photos of the lovely Mount Charleston, a short drive from the Vegas valley. 

Vegas: Sunset Drive up Las Vegas Boulevard

Being born and raised in Las Vegas, I've seen the city grow and change so incredibly much over the years. Some of the most iconic hotels I knew as a kid have been dramatically imploded into their own footprint, while others have grown and risen up from the ashes like a phoenix. As a city, it's a constantly evolving amoeba, stretching it's tendrils out to the outskirts of the valley as it consumes the desert landscape around it and incorporates new acts and entertainments in it's never-ending quest for cultural relevance. It's a strange thing- this relentless pursuit of growth while interior areas of the city fall by the wayside.  Cul de sacs with blockhouses pop up like zits on a teenager's grease-riddled face, with all the creative ingenuity and diversity of those same pustules forming into their angry red whiteheads.  While the endless pursuit of growth is great for the construction industry, pockets of decay linger like abscesses through the meat of the city, festering into crime and desperation. This, unsurprisingly, leads the lovely city of Las Vegas to rank as the 4th worst city to live in, in the USA, for 2018. That's right, the glistening city of Sin, where "What happens here, stays here", nestles in right behind Detroit, Michigan, at number 1, Flint (also Michigan) at number 2, and St. Louis, Missouri, at number 3. That's right- between a city decimated by the dissolution of the automotive industry, a city made uninhabitable due to the toxic water contamination caused by fracking and humiliatingly long-standing inactivity or resolution to the issue as it lingers on, and St. Louis, where roughly a quarter of the entire city's population lives below the poverty line and the state's name speaks for itself... Las Vegas finds itself ranking so high due to the sheer volume of violent crime it experiences- 2,136 crimes for every 100,000 residents. While, thankfully, I myself have avoided any major incidents thus far, I have had encounters with crime that left a bad taste in my mouth. Whether it was the teenager who smashed my windshield in with a cinderblock, and tried to blame it on "marijuana withdrawals", or any given night on Fremont street that involves a police presence being needed, it shouldn't come as a big surprise to anyone that a city that builds glistening monuments to the winners relentlessly upon the suffering backs of the losers would be full of such poor unfortunate souls lashing out. 

This post is going to show a bit of that decay, along with some of the glistening monuments. This is Vegas, my Vegas. It's not always glamorous. 

Behind the Scenes: Tie-dye Photoshoot in Valley of Fire

It had been one heck of a whirlwind weekend... We drove out to Mesquite and explored the area, checked out a new fishing park they had, scoped out some of their local casinos, then gone out to St. George, Utah, and played in the beautiful Historic Downtown park and water facilities, checked out a crystal and gem shop while discovering where Vanticore won't fit (the hard way), climbed upon a giant rock, driven through so many little off-freeway towns and rural areas... and now, at the end of our second day road tripping (yes, it's only been two days!), we found ourselves at Valley of Fire state park trying to squeeze in that damn photo shoot I'd been angling towards all day. Not to say I didn't enjoy the rest of our day- I absolutely did! It was so much fun exploring the new towns and areas, seeing a side of our state and the Southwest I don't normally get out and see. Absolutely awesome! But all play and no work makes Nau go cray. So despite the odds, and the waning sunlight, and the packed campsites and scenic areas, we found a place to pull over and guerilla-style shot the shirts. It went pretty well, and we made a point of it to be well out of the road long before any cars came close- which was exceptionally easy to manage because the place we stopped had excellent views (and acoustics) so we not only heard the cars long before they approached but were able to spot them, too. It's not unusual to come around a bend in the park and find a family posing for a shot in the middle of the road, and we did NOT want to be those people. Like, I get it- the photos in the road look cool. But you've got to plan for them, and plan for the fact that roads are primarily intended for cars to travel upon. Don't stand around a bend, where cars won't be able to see you until it's too late. Keep your ears and eyes open and be hyper aware of your surroundings. Not only are there cars, but rattle snakes, scorpions, random places you could trip or hurt yourself. It's wild out there, so be smart, my friends. 

We didn't have long to work, and the moon was bright long before we were even halfway through our quick shoot. Antho was able to get some photos of the big pearl in the sky which aren't half bad considering he didn't use a tripod and it was taken with my little point-and-shoot digicam. Someday I'll invest in one of those fancy, expensive, cameras, but this trusty little Casio has been through the ringer with me and keeps on clicking so I've got no complaints. If you like what you see, the shirts are available in our Etsy shop!

Korea: Simple noms at work and home

Tornado potato!!! These are one of those foods that you see in all the travel blogs and videos espoused as a "must-try" street food... I had walked by a few places that sold it, but never stopped to buy one for myself. Well, lucky for me, one of my amazing coworkers at Fun Caricature grabbed one for me to try while they were out on their lunch break! I think they got the onion flavor? Whatever they chose, it was delicious! To make these pretty looking spirals of spud, they'll take a whole potato and cut it in one go before deep frying it to crispy carbtastic perfection and drenching it in flavored powder fresh out of the fryer. Delicious. It's a bit of a novelty- I mean, it's just a glorified potato chip / french fry hybrid, but you only live once so get you one if you ever get the chance. Live a little. We can always eat more kale tomorrow, right?

 

Of course, a girl can not live by potato alone... though some have tried... so I had to round out my night after getting home with some more carbs- ramen. I gussied it up with some form of crustacean I found at the market, along with soybean sprouts. It's not fancy, for sure, but it was an easy way to stretch my budget and get a little more bang for my buck. Kongnamul, or soybean sprouts, are extremely cheap and fairly healthy. I'd add a heaping amount to any bowl of ramen, so that the bowl was more bean sprouts than noodles! If I had it, I'd toss in an egg, too, and some green onions. Since I had the crustaceans/mollusks here, I opted to skip the egg this time. Not every day living abroad is going to be an epic adventure of hiking a mountain or eating unusual new foods that you picked live out of a tank. Sometimes you just want to go home from work, kick off your shoes, eat some junk food and watch a bad movie. It's okay. This is real life. 

 

Check back next time for more adventures!

🍜

XOXO,

NAU

Brief life update 04/23/2018

I haven't been as on top of posting the last few weeks as I'd have liked to have been, and for that, I apologize. I'm still fervently trying to stay on top of my goal of doing a blog post every day for the duration of this year, even if that means having to backpedal and make back-dated posts at times to fill in the gaps. This post, right here, right now, is one such post. 

Why have I been struggling a bit this month, when the last few months went more smoothly?

Well, for one, our beloved rats are starting to get quite advanced in age. The ones still with us have passed their second birthdays, and it's not often that rats see their third, let alone a fourth. We've had to contend with various new issues presenting themselves, from the sweet boy pictured here, Zinni (short for Vizzini) having a seizure that impaired his balance, to cancer and respiratory infections. While we've always tried to dote on them and ensure their time in our lives was as wonderful as we could facilitate, it's especially important to us to be there for them in their final days to try to keep them as comfortable as possible. Rats are such splendidly gentle, affectionate little beings and they've made our lives so much more fun with their sass and squeaks. We certainly didn't expect them to be so sassy- we call them our "squeakers" because they're more than happy to vocalize when their siblings, or we, do something they don't agree with. Luckily none have ever gotten into any serious disagreements and injured another, and they've never seriously injured us. I will always recommend rats as pets. 

Then there's been the job situation. Antho and I worked an event called the Bluegrass Bender Jamboree, which exposed us to not only the entertaining twangy Earthiness of bluegrass music but the fun-loving, tie-dye-sporting, often super-friendly fans of the funky genre. While we were there as staff, everyone we interacted with was generally amicable, happy and having a good time so it was a really fun experience. The hours were rather long and involved a lot of standing or running around, so I had to plan ahead to account for being pretty famished after each shift, and while I was able to get blogs out I barely found time to feed myself. Shortly after the bender was over I starting a new retail gig, too. I'm still doing caricatures for private events and parties, along with volunteering with Critical Care Comics, so I've been feeling a bit stretched trying to get to early morning training shifts and events. Once a little more routine is established it should get better. I'm excited about this new position as it's with a different company selling some truly beautiful products in a lovely store. Should be a lot less exasperated faces like that one soon!

Overall, I think things are looking up for this summer. Our tie-dye and art creations has been in a bit of an unwanted hiatus, but we should be getting back into it pretty heavily here soon. While it hurts to see our pets grow older, it's a natural part of life, and unfortunately, rats lives go by at a much-accelerated rate compared to our own. The best we can do is love them while we've got them and give them all the care and loving treatment we can. And all the treats! Naturally. 

Thanks for stopping by.

💝

XOXO,

NAU

Behind the Scenes: Late March Tie-dye Photoshoot

While we can (and often do) spend an exorbitant amount of our free time making tie-dye for fun, we ultimately end up selling the majority of our creations as 710Visuals. As much as we love making them, there's just no feasible way for us to make full use of all the shirts (dresses, shorts, skirts, or bags) that we make, especially since we make items in sizes that we probably wouldn't be able to wear on a consistent basis. It makes more sense, logistically and creatively, for us to sell them... sometimes it's hard, you know, like sending a puppy you love off to a different home with a new family. You can't be certain of what the future will hold for that beloved little thing, but you have to hope for the best and send them off with a kiss and maybe, just maybe, a tear in the corner of your eye. Luckily we've had pretty positive reactions from our customers so far, and the more shirts we send off to their future homes the more customers will put their faith into us. I know I tend to be more trusting in shops with more sales and higher ratings, don't you?

The practical side of this need to send our shirts off to new homes is that we ultimately need to make time and arrangements to photograph them and try to do so in a favorable way (to show their best sides, naturally) so that they have the best shot at finding the right home. This has been a long and varied process over the years with a lot of ups and downs involved. There were mannequins, many amicable friends kindly aiding us by serving as models for us between conversation and fun with payments of food, and some silly outtakes... sometimes the outtakes make it into the actual product listing on Etsy or our website because they're just too fabulous (or funny) to not include! Besides, it helps show a glimpse of our personalities, too, which I think is a good thing. I know I tend to appreciate when the companies I choose to purchase from coming off as personable, approachable as if there are actual human beings involved in the process. It's nice to know I'm sending my hard earned money off to someone real, and it's even better if you dig the person's vibe. So hopefully, some of the good vibes we (purportedly) give off in person can be captured by a photograph. But photography is an art, and we're definitely still learning and finding our groove. 

On top of having to model the shirts and try not to look like a couple of awkward goofballs, there's lighting, location, framing, and color-key to consider. I never want to edit the photos too much, but I want the colors to be bright, vivid and true-to-life...which can be quite challenging in some situations. We tried shooting in our studio, which is a pretty limited space and had mixed results. 

But at least we have fun in the process, right?!

More photos below~

Art: March Tie-dye

While I haven't been posting about tie-dye as much this month, we are still certainly creating away! Recently we've been applying the dye directly to the shirts and then putting the ice on top so that we have a bit more control over the dye placement with the design of the folds. It's worked out pretty well so far, though I don't know that we use any less dye in the process... in fact, this might actually use more dye! Previously we would apply the ice first, then sprinkle the dye over the top and you get a very strong visual guide as to when you might want to stop as the dye immediately begins to hydrate and spread. One of the best things about tie-dye, though, is that you can't really do it incorrectly so long as you're having fun. It's such an abstract process that you can take all sorts of creative liberties- feel more traditional and want to do a single-color indigo shibori? Go for it! Want to make a prismatic rainbow alien smoking a joint? If you've got the skills to fold it, you can make it. 

Personally, I tend to stray away from overly intentional designs, like the aforementioned prismatic alien with a joint, because I get too stressed out and anxious in the process. I'm something of a perfectionist and from the point of choosing a particular image and trying to create it to the final unveil, it cranks my anxiety up high...and I don't want that. Tie-dye is supposed to be fun, relaxing, enjoyable craft-time. Doing the ice dyes is soothing, an exercise in patience that's rewarded with colors galore... I'm sure I'll try again and again in the future, to create that particular image I had in mind, but given the nature of the tie-dye it's better (for me, at least) to go in with some flexibility. Even if the design doesn't turn out the exact way I had envisioned or hoped, there's still someone out there who might love it for exactly what it is! Each shirt is unique, after all, just like people, and there's something kind of cool about that, don't you think?

We HAVE started to dabble in techniques for creating images on the shirts separate from the tie-dye, and we might experiment with screen-printing in the not-too-distant future, too. There's always something new to try, after all, and even if you use the exact same colors on the exact same size shirt with the same folds it might not be a perfect carbon copy, so the options are quite truly endless.

More photos below!

Art: Behind the scenes of early March photoshoot for 710Visuals tie-dye

Welcome to another behind-the-scenes edition of the blog! On this post we're going to be delving in to a photoshoot we recently undertook in our home for the Etsy shop and our tie-dye business 710Visuals. These are some of the shirts I've been showcasing the making-of process for, so we're super stoked to finally be showing their final form to you guys! It's been a long time coming and we're still troubleshooting the ideal photoshoot set up for ourselves, but this was... something. The blank white sheet is to help prevent the background from competing with the shirts as well as to provide a template for when I needed to go in and tinker with the colors after in editing. I never want to over-do it in the photo processing stage because I want the colors to reflect as close to reality as possible. I don't even edit out my zits the majority of the time, haha. Luckily, when these photos were taken my skin was doing pretty good- no real pimples to cover up, and I didn't feel the need for much foundation or powder. I normally use a BB cream with Too Faced's Peach Perfect Loose Powder patted on top to set, but for these photos I just patted on some Milani Powder foundation real quick to even and brighten things up a smidge. 

Antho, of course, didn't need any make up for his fabulous face (not that I need make up, but I do appreciate it's power and really enjoy using it). We did, however, opt to put some of my Lime Crime Diamond Crusher in Trip on his lips at the end, though. He wanted to feel fancy and why not? Guys deserve to feel fabulous and have glitter lips if they want, too.

The tie-dye shirts photographed in this shoot are all now available in our Etsy shop for purchase, should you happen to find any that strike your fancy. We had fun doing the shoot and experimenting, though we'll likely be doing things a bit differently in the future. If we choose to shoot inside our home we will do it in a different location and/or with a different angle as the lighting was rather difficult to get precisely where we wanted it to be. Everything is a learning experience, though, and we'll figure out something even better for the next round! Keep scrolling for more photos!