All my birds in a row...

I have always been a fan of finishing up a project by cleaning up my workspace and putting everything back where it belongs, and I tend to finish up the year in the same manner. I used to make a list of goals and resolutions, but I no longer feel the need to make a list of my lackings and instead I just continue on the path of my short term and long term goals as usual. I am a big planner, very goal oriented and a hard core workaholic...and as I am trying to not die young of a heart attack, I try to not pile on more then I have too. So I will save the goals for my own mind and instead take a moment to thank all of you...my friends, my family, my coworkers, my elves, my customers, my fans, my followers, my blog readers, my publicist (she seriously rocks!), those I have loved, those I have lost and those people that play a part in my day to life, no matter how small. This year has been one of enormous ups and downs, failures and successes and general craziness. It will be six years this January since Manic Trout was officially born and a mere three years since I started the online shop and focused on jewelry and painting...I had a slight breakdown in the shower today (I tend to reserve crying for in the shower) about the insane amount of hard work I have put into Manic Trout in these past three years and how amazing it is to start seeing what that hard work can achieve! Thank you all for believing in Manic Trout and in me and I hope to amaze you all in 2009!!!

Photo by the ultra talented Ella Moss.

My current obsession with brown...

I have never been into wearing brown...which is odd as I have brown eyes, brown hair and a complexion made for it...perhaps it was the years of dying my hair blond or a variety of other colors that made me stay away, but that has now changed! I recently had to buy a new wardrobe for my day job...for those of you not in the know I manage the restaurant of a private club and have to be considerably more dressed up then I have to when I am in my studio. In the past few years I have not shopped all that much for clothes anyway, as I have been building Manic Trout and living lean to do so, so I found myself with a bunch of date clothes and studio gear...not helpful...well after I finished shopping I was surprised to see the amount of brown I gathered, and you know what, I really like it! It goes great with all of my brass jewelry too...I wonder how much this will affect my designing?

Photo from Vogue, October 1948

Exhausted...but getting back to normal

I know, I know I have been a naughty absent blogger, but I have never worked as hard in my life as I did in the past 5 weeks and being a major workaholic...that's a lot of working. I am really glad the holidays are over or I would have had a mental breakdown...seriously. Everything is pretty much getting back to normal as of today...although I still have to finish cleaning my studio...and I was in desperate need of some errand running, which I finally got to today...like grocery shopping and dropping off the dry cleaning.

I also have had a chance to do some image browsing online and tonight I may actually get to blog jump, which I have not been able to do for weeks! I just bought some prints from Etsy too, as I have such a weakness for photographs and as I have sold a few paintings on manictrout.com (gasp, I know!!!) I have some wall space open. Thought I would share one of them with you, as its just too pretty to keep all to myself.

I have also been finally able to set up the new computer...a 17" Mac Book Pro which I adore and got all the software on both machines upgraded and everything networked, which has been so much fun to do...so many new possibilities!

I also have new jewelry up my sleeve, and it will be up soon as Valentines Day is right around the corner and there has been oodles of new press, but I have yet to update the press page, so you'll have to wait for that!

OK, now back to work for me, as it never really does end, does it?

Black & White Dahlia by Creative Apples

Merry Christmas and a Shout Out to my Elves!

It has been a whirlwind month here at Manic Trout, but all is back to calm and order now...I would never have been able to handle the huge, gigantic increase of orders without my elves so I wanted to give a shout out as I do thank you all so greatly! Jessi, Pat, Zach, Sara, Karen, Ian, Shanley, Shireen, Gillian, Holly, Thea and my mom Sheryl are all super stars and helped Manic Trout keep up with the orders this season!

As for all of you blog readers, my apologies for my absence, but I hardly time to eat and sleep, forget about blog...but I'm back baby and typing away on my new laptop...oooh mobil Manic Trout!

After I get the studio all cleaned up, I will finally have some time to sit down and design, I'll keep you posted on what is coming!

Holiday Shopping has ended...

Where on earth have I been??? Insanely, crazy and out of control busy with holiday orders!!! Thank goodness for my wonderful Elves...I could not do this without them! Today was the last day to order, and all orders will be shipped out by The 20th so they arrive to you on time! If you must have a Manic Trout bauble, you may order for overnight shipping this week, but there will be an additional $25 charge. If I don't have time to check in this week have a good one!

Its no secret that I am tulle obsessed...

So the other day I received a case of the hot pink tulle that I use to both wrap orders and make jewelry with and was so delighted to find that he shipper used massive wads of tulle as packing material...I promptly wrapped myself up in it and jumped around in glee...which made my sister Thea who was helping me out, grab my camera...


So when I saw these from the November Latin america Vogue, I thought...oh look I am not the only one who enjoys holding wads of tulle...


...and she is jumping aroung in glee!



I think being so busy is making me nuttier than normal recently...eh...at least I'm having fun!

Milla is so cool...

I am in awe of Milla Jovovich...she succeeded as both an actress and a model and then developed her own awesome clothing line...and she looks so hot in this Paolo Roversi photo that its almost painful to look at her...ah...late night musings after hours and hours of working are always so random...