Okay, I’ve got those creative itchies again. I’ve been making shrinky-dink jewelry all morning, and now my finger are a little sore from closing wire rings without pliers. Luckily I have something to post, to give my poor fingers a little rest. I was staring at my computer screen a few nights ago, thinking “ugh, now I have to go to bed,” when my desktop caught my eye. It was pretty boring. A few weeks ago I had changed it, hastily, to a reminder to pray for Japan, but I had kept all my Desktop goodies from my last make-over. The result was haphazard and utilitarian, which describes half of my life (the other half is haphazard and just for show).  I was staring at this rather pathetic surface when an idea came to me. I had just taken a hundred pictures of a teapot, because my life really is that exciting right now, why not use one of those as a springboard for something tranquil and efficient? So that’s what I tried to do.


Although, efficient might not have been the best adjective.

This is where my real skills come out, because finding all the components for this is little more than researching, and that’s what an English Major is all about (and you thought all we did was read. . . ). I knew I wanted a vintage feel, I’d been siting on the Faber Castell pen and Gramophone icons for a while and the hazy image of used tea leaves called for something elegant and old world. So that morning I went in search for some complementary icons for the other things I keep on my dock and desktop. I also downloaded this interesting app, which converts pictures to .icns. Nifty. It means I no longer have to worry about downloading png. files. Most of the icons on my dock come from Babase’s Old School set, but here’s the run down on the rest:

 

Hardrive: Teacup

Random Folders: Vintage folders (I normally keep these folders off my desktop, but the vintage folders just had to be used, so I pulled them out)

Misc. Pics Folder: Old world camera

Safari: Samurai compass

Firefox: Wooden tablet

iTunes: Gramophone 

iPhoto: Antique Camera

Textedit: Faber Castell

Booxter: Fedora  . . . . or not, but equally cool. 

Numbers: Baking Containers (I thought they looked like the graph bars on the standard icon)

iTaf: Coffee pot (iTaf wakes me up every morning – I thought coffee was an appropriate symbol)

 

 

As for the other goodies on my desktop, I’m using the Bowtie theme “Geeky 2.0” by Laurent to keep track of iTunes. The rest is all Geektool. I thought the sunrise shell was a cool idea, and I’m  so happy to finally have found a weather script that actually works. I can’t make these scripts myself, but I can copy and paste like the best of them! Halfway through this project I tried switching to Geektool 3 (which I didn’t even realize was out. Sadness) but . . . shell text can’t have drop shadows? Eh? Besides, somehow in the switch my words from 2.1 were stuck on my desktop. Saved, but not transferred to 3.0.  So I just switched back and pretended nothing happened. 


Changing my desktop is the closest I can get to rearranging the furniture in my room, which is what I did in college whenever I needed a change. There’s something soothing in looking at a space, sizing up your resources, and making something new out of the two. So soothing that I actually zoned out for a while on it, working from seven ’til ten without even realizing how much time was going by. Today I’m going to try to cut out some fabric pieces (test run of project runway 2848, in a blue cotton knit), and make some decisions regarding a car. Looking at this background I can believe that it’s all doable, especially if  I stop to brew a pot of tea first.