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Perchance to Dream

It’s part of a line of Hamlet’s soliloquy in Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet. Most, if not all, of us were tasked to read Hamlet at some point in school, but it’s not surprising that most of us don’t really remember the phrase. I sure didn’t, but my husband with his degree in theatre arts chose the phrase as the title for his first short film after graduating from Texas State University. The film did begin at school, as a “if you were going to make a film, this is what you would have to do pre-production” project. He and his group had to come up with a script and do the leg work of approaching businesses that would be willing to have a film shot on their premises.

After we graduated, were married, and moved to Austin, he set the real production of the film into motion. Although I’ve watched plenty of behind the scenes featurettes of my favorite television shows and movies, it was a different experience to be a part of the behind the scenes. The ten minute short was filmed over a week in October 2009. I honestly don’t feel like I did much, I just shot photos, did makeup, appeared in a couple of shots as an extra, and did some running around when Eric would realize that we needed something from the store, like dental adhesive. Anyways, after several months of work, the film was ready to be submitted to festivals.

Eric submitted to quite a few festivals right at the start and found out that submitting to all the festivals available is impossible to do alone. Why? The cost. Each festival has a submission fee, and most of them, well, for us thus far all of them, have said no. There are more festivals for him to submit Perchance to Dream, where we will have a higher likelihood of being accepted. But he needs the funds to submit to the festival with. That is exactly where you can help out at.

By clicking this link to the right, you can easily donate $10 and receive a special thanks note on the Crimson Rose Productions website as well as a free DVD of Perchance to Dream. With a donation of $25, you get the thanks, the DVD, and a free poster signed by the director as well. So help a starting director out, and donate to get Perchance to Dream into festivals!

Let me tell a story

Ab Initio

I began Faire Treasures as a little side project while I was finishing up my BFA in photography at Texas State University. My first idea was actually to make purses and cloaks, giving me a good excuse to sew items I couldn’t 1st Pirate Hair Jewelsjustify making for myself. I had started building my pirate costume at this point and was trying to collect the perfect accessories for my look. I searched for beads large enough to fit over a small braid in my hair, but I kept finding the perfect beads that were much too small. Realizing that a removable strand of beads would work much better for repeated wearings, the first strand of Pirate Hair Jewels was created!

Thing was, I had to buy many sets of beads to get the mix I wanted for my strand. My idea had been that a pirate wouldn’t have had a full set of similar beads. He or she would have collected these trinkets over a long period of time, so although they should go together, they shouldn’t necessarily match. Then of course I wanted to keep away from plastic beads, trying to use what could have been available then: glass, shell, stone, wood, horn, bone, and metal. Collecting so many of each for just one strand wasn’t practical, so I decided to make more and offer them for sale through a site my sister had set up a shop on, a site called Etsy. I opened up my shop “CrystalKittyCat’s Faire Treasures” in July of 2007. Since then I have been selling my Pirate Hair Jewels to people around the world.