Go! Go! Go!

Last weekend, my sister Teddy and I went to South Carolina to help my mom move back to Tennessee.  It was pretty uneventful, aside from two things.

1. We went to Tony's Famous Pizza in Georgetown, SC.  They have the best philly cheesesteak outside of PA.  All their food is good, but the philly is my favorite.  I used to work there when I was about 16 or 17.  It will always remain a special place to me, because its where I met my first boyfriend.  My parents were very strict, and didn't allow me to date, so Davey was my sneaky boyfriend...well, he wasn't sneaky, he was very nice...I guess I was sneaky...but it was a good memory.  He was the first boy that ever kissed me.  It was very awkward...as I assume most first kisses are.  But he was very sweet, and I am glad he was my first kiss.  Davey might not kiss you if you go eat at Tony's, but the delicious food will actually make sweet love to your mouth, so it is totally worth it.

2.  My mom actually drove away from a gas pump with the nozzle still in her tank.  Ripped the nozzle, hose and all, right off of the pump.  I saw the whole thing happen, and tried to yell at her to stop, but I was in the moving truck with the windows rolled up, and she didn't hear me.  I swear it happened in slow motion right up until the point where the hose actually pulled off the pump.  I guess there is a break-away feature, so she didn't completely destroy the thing, but they did have to hit the emergency shut off at a very busy gas station in northern South Carolina and call the fire department.  I really, really wanted to take pictures, but I also value life, so I refrained.  After I realized we weren't going to die, it was the funniest thing I have seen in a long time.

HILARIOUS!!!

This weekend, I am going to Ohio for my sister Jocelyn's son's high school graduation.  I am leaving tonight after work.  I bought some art supplies off of Amazon to take with me, as I won't be driving and I can practice in the car.

Prismacolor Premier colored pencils

These pencils are pretty awesome.  I only have experience with cheap-o colored pencils and these are very different in comparison!  I only got the 12 because I didn't know how different they would be, but even after messing with them for a couple minutes, I knew I should have gotten a bigger set.  

I actually went over this (poorly) with oil pastels...because of the white pencil issue...

I don't know if it is supposed to or not (I don't know why it would on purpose, but I am giving it the benefit of the doubt), but the white colored pencil in this set has a line of purple going through the entire thing.  You can see the really light purple markings all through the upper background and that is from the white pencil.  I think that is my one complaint...with these thus far.  I am going to see if I can find a store that sells individual prismacolors, so that I can see if all the white pencils have this going on...I will update you as soon as I know.

I LOVE THESE!!!

This is the other travel worthy thing I got from Amazon.  They are oil pastels, which I have never worked with before, but have figured out that I love.  I have read that cheap pastels aren't that easy to work with/they don't blend well, but for my purposes, these worked very well!  I am sure that if you could buy expensive pastels, they would be better, but for very little cash, these work great!

First time using oil pastels...pretty good results in my opinion...

I didn't take a lot of time in blending this, nor do I have experience, but for a first time, I think I did ok.

I accidentally grabbed the yellow one instead of the peach, so she looks a little jaundiced, but I like it anyway.

She looks kind of like Joan Rivers...

I did this on wet paper with water color pencils.  I was experimenting.  I think she looks like Joan Rivers.  

I am taking my oil pastels and prismacolors with me, so I should have some new things to share next week.  Oh, and I got a book called "Mixed Media Girls" (I think that's it) by Suzi Blu.  I haven't gotten to practice any with the instructions in the book, but I did read over it, and it is very good in my opinion.  She has a good way of writing that is pretty understandable.  I am taking it too, so hopefully I will improve my faces dramatically with her help!

What have you been doodling?

Have a great weekend!

~Sully

A little bit on paper

I have been working on my art with paper skills.  I warn you, they are minimal.  But nobody gets better without practice, right?

Smash book page

The dress part I made with a balloon punch I had...  I was trying to figure out different uses for things I already have, like I did with her bonnet.

Martha Stewart Crafter's Clay butterfly.  Pretty cool stuff, but it doesn't smell very good.

The butterfly is made out of Martha Stewart Crafter's Clay (using one of her molds) and then I inked it up a little.  The clay is pretty nifty, but it took a while for the ink to dry on it.  Hence all the weird shapes in the background...they made OK stamps...  And some bling...which I am on the fence about...but I definitely dislike the word bling...I prefer shiny stuff...although I don't think the pearls are too shiny, so maybe fancy doo-dads?  I don't know, but there's some on the page, so there you go.

If you look closely,  you can see the tiny word on washi tape:"trapped"

I had her bonnet for a long time.  It is actually a baby bib (if you look the picture upside down, it is easy to see...or perhaps it is even if you don't...) die cut from Jocelyn.  I just filled it in with some quotes because these are some things I want to keep on my brain:

"I want to be remembered as the girl who always smiles even when her heart is broken, and the one that could always brighten up your day even if she couldn't brighten her own."
"They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel."
"If you have good thoughts, they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely."
"Lighthouses don't go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining."

If you look closely at the bigger picture, you can see little words on washi tape saying things like trapped, afraid, indecisive, frozen, alone.  These are things that float around and pester me all the time, so I added them in.  But I am trying to concentrate on the good things, that's why they get the prime territory on my head...

The big words are a quote from a Lucinda Williams song called "Copenhagan"

I have a thing for words, and song lyrics especially stick in my head.  I think the line above is a really good metaphor for hearing something you don't expect to hear.  I just had to draw a little picture to go with it, and then some journaling stuff.  I actually like this drawing a lot.  Clearly it looks like a child did it, but you have to start somewhere, right?  Oh, and there are shiny snowflake confetti on the page too.  I don't know if you can tell that they are shiny, but they are.  I always check out confetti if I see it.  Even the word sounds fun...CONFETTI!!!  I think anything sounds fun if you capitalize and throw three exclamation points behind it.  Maybe not, because if you do the same thing with, say for instance, the word 'fart', then it just sounds like you should run in the other direction.  FART!!!  See, you just got up and ran away from your computer for a minute...

Wimpy page...

This page was an experiment...mostly, I strongly dislike the page, but I did learn from the experiment, so it wasn't a total loss!  I had written on the other side of the page, and it bled through, and I wanted to cover it up.  I decided to try some modeling paste that I had recently gotten, and blended it with a metallic copper paint I had.  This was a failure...the paint just turned a dirt colored brown when mixed with the modeling paste.  At least now I know...no metallic paint in modeling paste for me.  I tried to make the best of the situation, so I glued down some die cut leaves I had, drew some veins on them and then wrote: "And green things kept growing out of the dirt, thriving on things below that are causing me hurt."  I had originally liked the "GOOD.", which was already on the smash book page, but then it just doesn't fit with the rest of the page at all to me, so I may go back over it with some more dirt colored paint.  I think I would actually like the page much better if I did that.

Line is from a Josh Ritter song "The Curse"

I drew this with charcoal and it's shaded with chalk pastels.  I am pretty happy with the face.  I think it shows improvement over past faces I have drawn, and that's all I am aiming for.  Her poor boob looks really wonky...botched plastic surgery and all, very sad indeed...  Also, that song is very cool.  It's the only song I have heard from Josh Ritter, but I like the lyrics, so I will have to check out his other music.

Acrylic paint on an actual canvas...fancy!

  Lastly, here is a little painting I did.  I saw a picture somewhere online forever ago that I thought was really cool, but it was before Pinterest came into my life, so it has been lost to me in the stream of time.  At any rate, the image stuck in my head, so I used it for inspiration and painted this up.  The amount of happiness I have over things I make never directly correlates to the amount of ascetically pleasing-ness people (other than myself) would have looking at the things.  In other words, even though this looks like a third grader did this, and I will be 29 on Saturday, I really like it.  Except for the girl's face...If you do a close up on her, she is kinda creepy...  I will probably just paint over her face at some point...I don't know yet.  I am giving her time to grow on me.

Have you been doing anything awesome?  Tell me about it in the comments below!  Any comment is very much appreciated.

~Sully

For Buttons

Disclaimer:  This has absolutely nothing to do with actual buttons...so if you are reading this title thinking "Huzzah!  I love buttons...I will check this out...", you will be sadly disappointed.  Just a warning!

Instead, this has to do with my younger sister, Teddy, who is pregnant.  Teddy and Buttons...  Buttons is what we are calling Teddy's baby.  She got tired of me calling her unborn baby 'it', and so from about a week after we found out she was preggo, we have called 'it' Buttons...  This Friday, we get to find out whether Buttons will be a girl or a boy!  (If Buttons cooperates, that is...)  I am excited, because I get to be there!  I can't have any kids of my own, so Teddy is lovingly letting me be a big part of her pregnancy experience.  So as a little surprise, I am giving Teddy a smash book.  (I almost called this post Baby Smash Book, but all I could think was how terrible baby smash sounded, so I decided against that...)

At any rate, smash books are kind of like a scrapbook that you fill with all kinds of ephemera and words and whatever you want.  You can definitely make your own if you were so inclined, and there are lots of cool tutorials for smash books/ junk journals all over the internet.  But I didn't want my limited paper crafting skills to get in the way on this present, so I went with the real deal from K & Company.

This one:



I also got her a bunch of little stickers and doodads to put in the book, gender neutral, as we won't find out till Friday what she is having.

To me a smash book is a very cool, easy way for her to keep track of what its like to be pregnant.  Teddy is one to notoriously put things off, and I don't want her to forget anything that happens.  The smash book seems like a good way to get her to record things, in just a few sentences if she wants, with pictures, or other memorabilia that she can just toss in when she feels like it.  To me a smash book is like a casual scrapbook...where you don't worry too much about how polished it looks if you don't want to.  They are also neat (especially for people like Teddy) because they have the little smash stick (which is a fine tip sharpie on one end and a glue stick on the other) attached right to the book.  That way if you are out somewhere, you can smash stuff right then and not forget about it...pretty smart...

To help Teddy get over the blank page jitters, I did the first page in her book.

Here is the blank page:

Before...

And here is the after:

And After...  Get it...a book about buttons...cause we call the baby Buttons... genius!

On a really cool side note, those button die cuts came from one of my other sisters, Jocelyn.  The library where she lives has a huge die cutting machine that you can use if you bring your own paper!  I checked out my local library, but they don't have one (which made me a sad panda).  But it may be worth checking into at your own local library.  Besides, libraries are awesome in general, so its not like the trip would be wasted.  Plus, some libraries keep a rack of old books and magazines for sale (mine does do this) year round that can be a great source for paper crafting supplies.

I also did the back of the page:

Good quotes!  The yellow is a pocket for a little card I am making...I will post that when I get it done...

I didn't go overboard on the whole decorating end of it.  Teddy is not super crafty, and I didn't want to freak her out with some crazy fancy whatever that would make it be intimidating for her to add to...  Also, while the thick layers of stuff look cool, in reality, it makes it difficult to do the pages that follow...so I kept it simple...  I am trying not to give her any excuse to not just 'smash' the crap out of this smash book!!!

What do you think of smash books?  Any thoughts, I would love to hear whatever you have to say!

~Sully

In the works

Last night I started a little project with some beads I got while visiting my sister Jocelyn.

Everything except for the leaf beads came from my trip to Jocelyn's house in Ohio. 

I don't have a large amount of experience in jewelry making, but it's fun to try new things.  I think the best thing about the internet is the ability to find out how to do just about anything.  And good old trial-and-error is never a bad thing!

I am kinda ridiculously proud of this picture...it looks all professional and beyond my photo-taking  abilities!

I really think it is not a bad attempt, but there needs to be something added to it...

The coloring in this photo is a little off.  I had to do the professional thing and take this picture in the bathroom mirror.  The lighting in there is terrible for this kind of thing.  I am really going to have to figure out the timer on my camera!

It looks kind of blank on the bottom...I must think of something to add there.  Jocelyn says I should take off the leaves and make this have an ocean theme with some kind of shells possibly, but I don't know...  The colors work well together for me, and  I don't have a huge stash to search around in.  Considering the amount of other craft stuff I have, my jewelry-making supply could be described as minuscule!

Not a great picture, but pretty accurate colors...if I could get it all together in one photo, I would have major photographer skills!

I guess I just need to ruminate concerning what to add in the middle...any thoughts?

Let me know what you think if you would like.  Any suggestions or comments in general are welcome!

Thanks in advance, 

~Sully

How I Spent Last Night

For some reason, I have noticed I am kinda loving the bunting trend...  I don't know why, they just seem so cheerful!  I saw this nifty little tutorial  HERE, and decided to give it a go.

And here we are:

Bright bunting necklace

I am liking it!  I did give mine some very sloppy stitches to keep it together, instead of just fabric glue as the tutorial suggested.  For my purposes, I don't mind that they are kind of wonky stitches on this...it seems to go with the funky fabrics...

On a body...

Next time...oh yes, there will be a next time...I think I will take a little more time (and use sharper scissors) to cut the fabric.  I am not even kindergarten level at scissor using...as you can see by my wonky edges...I bet I could use pinking shears to hide, and that would make the necklace be even sweeter!

I did wear this today, and I noticed a couple things that kind of annoyed me but I think I can fix (possibly two birds, one stone even).

First, the buntings kind of smash together.  I think that if I just add a little bead or something in between it will be much better.  I imagine you could also glue the pieces in place on the necklace, but I am a weirdo and wanted to be able to remove the pieces.

Second, I noticed that my fabric was fraying a little.  I think a little fray-check glue stuff will be in line...or if I used the pinking shears mentioned above, that might be just enough to stop it.

The other thing...probably also fixable by gluing (my brain is not working tonight...I keep looking at gluing and thinking "That is not spelled right...should be glueing.  or glue-ing...anything but gluing...) the fabric to the chain (or if I wasn't such a cheapskate and stopped refusing to just buy another chain...) is that the buntings flip upwards occasionally.  I actually think this could also be fixed by adding a bead as a spacer between the fabric pieces.  I will have to do a little experimenting.  If that doesn't fix it, I think that I could sew a little charm on the bottom of each bunting (is that what the individual flaggy things are called? Maybe pennant is a better word...) and that would work too.  And be extra cute...I may have to try that too...

More experimentation soon...but off to bed for now.

~Sully