The North Throughout the world isn’t at Jeff and Terri Campbell’s
house on West 11th Street, but perhaps it should be. With an
unimaginable amount of Christmas-lighted cheer adorning the manor
house, even Ol’ Saint Nick could mistake it as his own. The home is
fondly known by locals as “The Santa House.”

“AEL&P should
send me a Christmas humorist,” Jeff Campbell laughed. “We try to
increase our electric bill every year. That is our goal.”

With
more than 9,000 lights, about 20 Santa decorations and more than 70
others that insist 100 amps and seven dedicated circuits, his electric
bill triples during the holidays.

At the downtown home, soldiers step in the yard, reindeers prance, Christmas music plays and, of course, Santa jollies.

Campbell, who works for the body politic surplus warehouse, began
collecting the decorations nearly 15 years ago. Garage sales and
Salvation Army trips helped check for the cost. As his reputation grew,
so did donations of old Christmas lights. Some were even the newer

Hey, before I babble on. The Sugbo Jam No.1 is still available and if you folks don’t have a copy yet, better get going and grab one and lets be done with it. Help us komikeros to thrive in our own little non-threatening comic book scene here in Cebu and make our country proud like this guy here.

Anyways! (copyright by Motmot) Out of sheer boredom and I’ve got nothing better to do after the day job so this week has been kinda productive, artwise, in a way. When I am lazying out in bed reading and listening to my trusty iPod and zoning out over the week I decided to sketch a bit. Feeling guilty over the fact that I haven’t drawn for some time since the Sugbo Jam project kicked off and a lot of stack pile of pre-cut vellum 2.5×3.5 vellum boards hanging around collecting dust within arms reach I instinctively doodle a bit and stretch them stubborn drawing muscles of mine for kicks which led to the sketches below heavily inspired by Kikomachine Komiks Vol. 5 which was the one I was reading recently, kudos to Sir Manix…..

….which led to some off beat cartoony sketches below:

…which led to some superhero characters rendered unlike my usual style which I kinda like and will be developing later on over the weekend hopefully if all goes well. Maybe it was influenced by my reading online alternative comic book artist works:

…overall an interesting week for sketching. By the way, 2.5×3.5 sketch cards are still a pain to draw on but I am happy to say that I am getting the hang of it somehow, backgrounds and coloring this babies up still is a thorn on my side though. Comments and suggestions are highly appreciated on this one. Till next. Nuff said.

Before I get to Gint-a-cuffs, let me tell you about something that is severely underrated:  Fondue.  It may not be beer and brauts on a Sunday afternoon on a manliness scale, but seriously, at a fondue restaurant you spend a good half hour dipping things in cheese, at which point they bring you a plate of raw meat for you to cook to your heart’s content, followed by a bowl of chocolate and more ‘things’ to dip.  Good stuff – had a nice dinner at a fondue restaurant for the wife’s birthday and I could sure go for a bowl of cheese right about now.  

That aside, let’s get to Gint-a-cuffs, the one pack edition!!

You may be saying to yourself, “Self, didn’t Gint-a-Cuffs end a long time ago?”  Perhaps it did, but I recently purchased my first ever pack of 2009 Allen & Ginter and I wanted in on the fun.  Unfortunately, I never paid much attention to the scoring, so I’ll just make it up as I go.  

• #277 Kerry Wood -10 pts for a guy who never quite lived up to the hype
• #212 Mariel Zagunis +5 pts for a random, previously unknown athlete who signs TTM.  Add another 10 pts if she returns my TTM request

• #280 Shin-Soo Choo +10 pts for a funny sounding name
• #18 Clyde Parris +25 pts for a Negro League player who signs TTM.  Subtract 100 pts if he sends it back unsigned with a donation request

• #222 Akinori Iwamura +20 for a horribly miscut mini parallel. (It’s worse than it looks in the scan!) I would’ve thought this was incredibly valuable 15 years ago for being cut like this.  Hey… remember pogs?  I seem to recall thinking that miscut pogs were extra valuable, too.  Add another 10 pts for making me think of pogs.  Total for this one card: 30 pts

• #350 Jimmy Rollins +50 for a retro themed card featuring a retro themed advertisement.  

• #AGHS-11 Fransisco Rodriguez -100 for a card celebrating a ridiculously overrated (if not downright worthless) stat
• #NP62 Ryan Braun  -20 pts for the lame font used for Braun’s name.  Get creative, Topps!

Ouch, a total score of -10!!!  Not good.  Despite the low score, I did find myself enjoying this pack.  I won’t go crazy buying the stuff in the future, but I can see myself using its $5 price tag to round out an even twenty dollar bill at my card shop.  There are certainly worse ways to spend the money.  I’ve already sent the Parris and Zagunis away for TTM attempts, but if you need any of the others to complete a set, let me know!

Last Saturday’s meet up with Cebuano Komikeros made an impression on me and the boys specially the awesome John was there, but what intrigued us was what the great Kat was doing and making money out of and that is drawing sketch cards. It peaked our interest to no end and made us decide to practice on doing some of it ourselves for kicks and maybe some due compensation. Aside from the Sugbo Jam deadline we manage yet again to make room for trying out on drawing on a typical sketch card of 2.5×3.5 inch board and to think drawing on huger paper was hard this one seems harder. To cram something on a tiny drawing area is a feat in itself and just by looking at forums and other related sites on the matter those guys are pretty damn good at it, skething, inking and to coloring it all in there. Kudos. Below are my feeble attempts at doing a sketch card art minus the colors for now till I find some suitably cheap yet effective marker to color it with. Hope I can pull it off. (tnx Motex for the vellum boards)

Eternity/Beyonder

The Impraggable Hulk

Ghost Rider

Rittenhouse posted some of my cards this week to promote the Spider-man Archives set.

I tried to take the time to do them up right. These were 4 of my favorite.

I must have been easily pleased as a kid.

I always seemed to get the random, obscure action figures …especially from Star Wars.  My request for Darth Vader and an AT-AT resulted in General Madine, Chief Chirpa, and two Bespin Security guards.  I was fully prepared to re-enact a scene from the craft services table at any moment.

AT-AT Commander: “Hey, Madine, how’d shooting go?”

*swallows cookie*

Madine: “Pretty good.  I think I’ve got a chance with that Mon Monthma chick.”

Cloud Car Pilot:  “These Hamdingers are fantastic!”

Maybe this can account for my obsession with Nein Nunb references.

Every now and then I head over to eBay to see what baseball cards I can scoop up. Generally I am looking for nothing in particular so I just type in something of interest and sort by ending soonest and at time poor decisions follow. eBay and auctions in general are a funny thing, you go in looking for nothing really and then you come out with a few new things that you potentially got caught up in the moment and overpaid for. End rant.

Well I got a few baseball cards in the mail yesterday that I forget I even won and bought on eBay – always a nice surprise. I paid about $4 total for these two cards, and sure if you compare it to the “book” I might have been taken for a ride, but when there are no local shows except once a month – sometimes eBay is the way I scratch the itch.

Without further ado, here is what was in the ol’ mailbox yesterday afternoon:

2009 Topps Allen & Ginter – #AGHS12 – Yankees Farewell Tribute Parallel

2009 Topps Allen & Ginter – #AGHS8 – Derek Jeter Parallel

There you have it, sometimes when you are in between shows and tired of busting nothing but junk from the retail stores that have all been searched, sometimes eBay is a fun way to get your baseball card fix!

FlippingWax

Morning ladies! I’m just sitting here enjoying my coffee…   What’s up for today? I received my crate from L’il Scrappers yesterday containing my 2 DT kits for March.. yum!! Going to be digging in today! So I have a few things set aside for the week while I scrap away! Today I have the 2S4Y card to show you… haven’t had much ‘extra’ play time recently, but did manage to get this done and CPS for the week (which is coming tomorrow).

This weeks fabulous sketch comes from Laura over at 2S4Y!

Materials: Basic Grey Porcelain 6×6 pad which I received in the mail yesterday for a birthday gift.. *Scrumptious*, Prima Velvet Daisy Trim, Misc. ribbon, Hero Arts Pearls, Cricut Expression, Wild Card Cartridge for Sentiment. (I think… if not it was Storybook). lol! Buttons are MM!

Well ladies that’s all for today… as per usual my ‘to do’ runneth over… Have a wonderful day!!

I was doing my daily eBay search of Pelfrey, when I saw this:

Pelfrey Sketch Card 09

Wow, Im wondering why they would make one of him? Big Pelf is my favorite player, but I dont think hes worthy of a sketch card. Plus, its really ugly. Eh, who cares, im gonna bid on it!

How much would you be willing to spend on this?

Johnathan Jett was the winning bidder on the GHOST ZERO sketchcard that was on Ebay, and managed to walk away with a nice piece of art for $1.25!!

Nice Score, John!