Well I am back from a trip around New Zealand, a really spectacular place.  You could hardly get a country more suited to agriculture if you sat down and designed it your self.  Perfect weather, perfect soil (deep volcanic), perfect rain fall.  Everything is so green over there.  Anyway now that I am back, and the year is truely underway I really need to get my businesses up and running so some income starts coming in.

I have got my van which I have always wanted which I am very excited about.  Back on Jan 28th I think it was I bought a 2001 Toyota Hiace for $10,000 which was in great condition.  The van is shown below:

I have never owned a car before so it is actually my first car which is exciting.  I have often needed to transport things around since I have been doing musicals as a hobby since high school, but also I have always wanted an easy way of transporting my mountain bike up to the hills and also to go camping, so a van is ideal for all of those things.  Even better, I will also be able to use it for my 10 Year Plan businesses.

Speaking of which, I really have to finish setting up my lab web site which will include the Lab Shop, and also set up a web site for my Face Painting business, Foundation Faces.  I need to start generating an income from Foundation faces and the Lab Shop so I can get a Wood Lathe and Bench Grinder to help me make the handles for the fridge magnets that I want to sell on the Lab Shop.  I also want to get some Giant Microbes whole sale so I can sell them on the Lab Shop as well.

The aim is to get to $50,000 to get a direct to garmet printer so I can start making my Lab Rat Lab coats and also witty science T-shirts.  The income from these combined businesses should see me through to the goal of raising $200,000 for Phase 2 of the 10 Year Plan.

But first of all my lab web site.

It is coming long and can be seen at:

www.neurolab.com.au

I am making up the graphics for it at the moment, as well as putting in the text for the pages.  Once the layout of the pages is done I will need to find a web programmer to set up the content management system I will need in order to have an eCommerce page for the Lab Shop.

I also need to work up my face painting portfolio too for the web site.  I haven’t made that web site yet, but I suspect it will be relatively easy.

I will practice some faces this weekend and try to get them down.  Below are some examples of faces I have done so far.

This one is an avatar face, the two shades of blue, dark for the face and darker for the stripes don’t stand out very well at a distance, so in a later version I added some light grey highlighting on the stripes and it looked much better.  I will have to get a picture of that.

This one is a leaf peacock design that I did on my nephew.  I think the light blue around the outside could be a bit woder so you can see it around the vines and the peacock feathers.  Initially I was thinking that the eyes were a bit dumb, but I am thinking they are not too bad now.  Perhaps they could be a bit more elaborate.

This is a neon butterfly that I was trying out on Tala.  I think some feathering on the black outline of the wings would be good.

Tried another type.  The softer edges in this one compared to the one above look better I think.

These are some zombies that I did for a skate show.

This is a dragon that I did on my arm.  The paint was a bit wet I think since there is bleeding around the edges.  But not a bad first try.

Lastly here is a neon tiger that I was trying.  I am not a fan of the white area above the eyebrows that I did, it needs to be blended a bit more I think and I could develop the lips more, and put some teeth in which is quite common for the tiger designs.