"Name Me" Contest/ giveaway

I have a problem.

It's my name.

Not actually MY name

(I'm actually kind of fond of La Sha)

but I need a new name for my business.

Long ago 

(5 years)

In a land far away

(Cupecoy, SXM)

I opened my Etsy account and called myself

LoveAboveAll.

LoveAboveAll holds a lot of personal meaning for me

and is kind of innocuous and friendly sounding.

As far as Etsy names go I could have done a lot worse I guess,

but now I need to unify my web presence if I want to move forward in my career.

I need a business name I can put on a sign above my booth at art festivals.

I need a name that is somewhat descriptive, or interesting, or creative that is versatile.

Currently my Etsy shop, my business website, and my blog (right here) all have different names.

I need one name I can use for all of them.

Coming up with a winning name is hard,

and that's why I need your help!

Let's have a contest to help me think of a new name for myself!

Leave your idea in the comments here or on my facebook page.

On Monday October 29th I'll pick a winner.

The winner will receive one of my paintings from the Daily Doily Project!

Hey winner, you can pick whichever one of these you want:

(scroll through my posts from September to see more pics of these)

Names I've toyed around with in the past:

The Life Artistic

(but when I say it out loud people always think I'm saying The Life Autistic, which creates confusion about what my website is about.)

LoveAboveAll

Doesn't say anything about me or what I do

Polychromatic Adventures

I like this, but a lot of people don't get that I'm referencing being an artist

la-sha

a misspelling of my name... doesn't do me too many favors when it comes to "brand recognition"

Cleverish

I still own the domain, but like LoveAboveAll it doesn't say much about me.

Chez La Sha

French for House of La Sha... I'm told it sounds silly.

And that's about it... I'm out of ideas. I need some from you!

By the way... feel free to take part in the contest no matter where you are- shipping's on me!

Spooky Season

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once said,
 "Where there is no imagination there is no horror."

I have an excellent imagination.

(Bats TDDP $25 watercolor on doily)

The Unwelcome Widow

This year I planted proper garden for the first time.
100% organic
I spent countless hours wrestling the weeds back from my veggies
while Elsie stomped through the rows collecting shiny rocks,
and bringing me the plant markers of things I'd just set out.
(Resulting in me having to play a lot of Guess-That-Gourd!)
Unfortunately, my gardening efforts brought not only blossoms and bell peppers
but also an assortment of small animals,
none of which were very scared of my goofy "guard" dog.

Then, one day a few weeks, as I collected the outpouring of banana peppers I spotted something I hadn't seen since I moved here.
A shiny black thorax
emblazoned with a tell-tale red hour glass.
I scooped up Elsie and headed inside
where I traded my shorts and tank top for jeans, with tall socks and boots, and a long sleeve shirt, and rubber coated gloves.
Back outside I was death incarnate.
With a vengeance I pulled up the straggly remains of butternut vines I'd allowed to list in the late Summer sun. I banished everything which no longer was bearing fruit, then coated everything that was left in a fine coat of seven dust- the most powerful poison I'd allowed myself to buy when I first started the gardening endeavor. I boiled water and poured it into the ant hills I'd uncovered.
I left no leaf unchecked.
No weed unpulled.
No venomous arachnid alive.

Still, every time I play out back with Elsie I can't help but imagine her tiny hands plucking a shiny black spider from the grass.  It makes my blood run cold, and makes the indoors seem instantly more appealing.
Thankfully Winter is coming
and the weather will finish what I started.

(Black Widow TDDP #Halloween $25)

The skull and the stones

Hey dudes.

Blogging consistently is hard.

Don't believe me?

Go check out the fifty bajillion blogs that are all 

"Welcome to my blog! I'm totally going to update it every day!"

Then there's like three posts a year.

Me? 

I hold myself to very loose standards when it comes to being consistent.

Some weeks I'll be bouncing around the internet every day.

Other weeks find me barely sitting down to eat

much less to write some goofy blog post.

SO... that being said,

I'm going to interrupt myself talking about art I hate to bring you some
Halloween-y goodness.

I'll finish Art I Hate week after I'm done with the new Halloween stuff...

or whenever I run out of better stuff to talk about-

whichever comes first.

Halloween post #1

 In my back yard is a small square 

outlined in stones

placed there by people who lived here before me.

I really and truly want to think that it's just the remains of a strangely placed flower bed,

but part of me can't help but think there's something other than roots beneath the ground there.

I've outlived enough pets to know what a back yard memorial looks like.

So I keep my trowel clear of that area.

Just in case.

Art I Hate Week Day #3 & 4

I absolutely meant to write a post yesterday, 

but then I got caught up in watching the Presidential debate.

Mitt was the clear winner, but it still seems like Pepsi Vs Coke.

Pretty much six of one and half dozen of the other.

Why do we have a two party system again?

If it keeps up like this I'm going to start voting Whig

and if that doesn't work, I'll just go Tory.

Anyhow...

back to the Art I Hate.

Which, by the way I just discovered a fabulous blog about truly hateable art:

It's called http://artihate.tumblr.com/

and if you're an art snob like me

you'll love it.

But since I'm trying to only use my own examples of Art I Hate for this week

(in an attempt to not seem like a Bitter Bertha or Jealous Jenny

by belittling others' work,

when there is just oh so much to hate in my very own reportoire).

I painted, and drew, and sculpted constantly as a little girl,

then fell in love with photography as a teenager

and put everything else away as childish.

When I started painting again as an adult I was so in love and thrilled by all my creations that I wanted to share them, so I'd roll them up in a postal tube and take them to the places I worked and give them away to any coworker or friend who seemed slightly interested in them. I'm not sure exactly how many paintings I gave away... somewhere in the dozens.

So now I have to live with the fact that

somewhere out there

people have very crappy paintings with my name on them.

So, as much as I appreciate them for being  the foundation for the skills which I've developed and use today,

I really hate all my early works:

Art I Hate week Day #2

For today's entry of

Art I Hate

I humbly submit

for your disapproval

fauxtography.

Real photographers spend so much time, effort, and money on their craft that it kind of curdles my blood when I see someone charging unsuspecting clients hundreds of dollars for poorly edited, compositionless, over exposed, under planned "photo sessions". These days it's become so much of an epidemic that there's even a website devoted to the "art" of fauxtography:youarenotaphotographer.com 

Everyone thinks they can buy a DSLR, run the crappy shots through a gauntlet of filters, and BAM! instant business! Now all that's left is to make a facebook fanpage for your "photography business", and start harassing every engaged couple you know about when they're going to set up their pre-wedding photoshoot. 

Photography,

GOOD photography,

is expensive- most real photographers have at least 10K in their equipment.

It's time consuming,

but most of all..

it's hard.

Buying a Nikon Coolpix and trying to charge your friends for your "services" is easy.

All that being said,

I'm guilty of fauxtography- against myself.

(I would never ever ever charge anyone, but I've taken a bajillion bad pics of Elsie)

Once upon a time I loved photography, and took my FM10 everywhere I went.

(I didn't want to miss something good for the yearbook!)

Now all I have is a little point and shoot that's been dropped and just generally abused so much that I'm kind of surprised it takes pictures at all. I have no photo editing software, so if I want to edit something I use Paint and usually end up ruining it. 

Dear Elsie,
Thanks for putting up with all my fauxtography efforts!
I love you.
Also, you're cute even in the janked up pictures I take.

For $500 I'll put a blanket on my kitchen table, toss out some old silk flowers around your infant!

For an extra $100 I'll make sure to overexpose all your pics!

Join the Fauxto Phan Club, and I'll manipulate the color saturation (badly) for free!