I absolutely LOVE the art we’re going to do today, but first of all… THANK YOU THANK YOU, GUYS, for all of the splendid birthday wishes. Whether it was a gift, a card, an email, or a comment, whatever it was – IT MADE MY DAY! MANY TIMES! You guys are SO SO SWEET and I am beyond blessed to call you my friends. ❤ (And yes, I am going to do a post about my gifts. 😉 But you’ll just have to wait for that, hee hee.) That thank you was way too short and small, but I’m guessing you want to see the rest of the post so I’ll stop now. BUT thank you one last time for making my birthday a wonderful day. 🙂 ❤ ❤
AHEM. Time for the art! I think this might be my favorite piece of art I’ve done for Art Lab, or at least one of my favorites! Here’s the stunning art inspiration for today:
HOW NEAT IS THAT? :O After pondering for a while, I came up with the idea of making the design into a constellation-type doodle with a watercolor background. I think the finished result looks gorgeous! Ready to start? Alright!
1. Selecting a canvas depends on your supply of both patience and time. You’ll need both for this project. 😉 If you have a limited supply of the aforementioned, I would suggest making this an ATC. If you’re bored and want to spend a while just making art, use a sketchbook page.
If you like clean white borders as much as I do, put strips of washi tape around the edge of your paper.
2. Paint a graded wash of watercolor, starting with dark blue at the top and fading into purple and then pink at the bottom.
3. Using a white gel pen, make a diagonal band of densely clustered dots across the top of the page.
4. Fill the rest of the page with dots, spreading them further and further apart from each other as you move away from the first band of stars.
5. Now for the fun (but tedious) part! Connect the dots. You don’t have to connect every dot to every other, but that’s what I did. For maximum impact, you’re going for a bunch of triangles – if an area has more than three sides, you missed a dot. Don’t cross over any lines or it will get too muddled.
6. Once you near the right bottom corner, take a break and sketch in the outline of a tree on a hill. (I should have done this before I started the stars, but I didn’t. I recommend learning from my mistake. 😉 ) Make an elongated cloud shape on a trunk, and “cut out” a few holes in the leaves and branches for extra realism.
7. Mark the sketch with a bunch of dots to connect later. Don’t do them too close together, but the fewer dots you use, the more geometric your tree will be.
8. Connect the rest of the dots.
9. Now take a black brush pen or Sharpie and color in between the lines. 😉
10. Ta-daa! Now for the great reveal…
SOOOO PRETTY!
I really love how this turned out, and I hope you guys do too! Do you think you’ll make this? If you do, I’d love to see it! Click here to see how to send it in and add it to our Art Lab gallery.
Thanks for reading, dears, and have a lovely day!
***Allison***
P. S. Not all the pictures are showing up on my computer, but I THINK that’s just the slow internet. Can you guys see everything alright?
Since I haven’t made a recent art post in a long time, I have quite a bit to show you today, including the remaining pages of an old sketchbook and the beginnings of a new one, decorated envelopes, and hand lettered quotes. Enjoy browsing through the drawings! 🙂
First we have the few remaining pages of my old sketchbook. I made these doodly mushrooms with the Micron pens I got for Christmas (see my mini review here), which are so fun to draw with!
This was a concept for Art Lab which I decided not to use after all. I watercolored the background, folded it down and smoothed it to make a mirror image, and then added the details.
This is NOT my usual style, but maybe I don’t have a style – I love all kinds. 🙂
I draw mandalas a lot because they’re just so pretty and I love circles. 😀 This was ALSO a plan/sketch/concept for the next piece of art..
Hee hee, I’ve never done this before. The wall was rather rough and ugly behind the toilet paper holder, and since we didn’t have the wall paint color with which to cover the fresh plaster, Mom asked me to paint a design onto it. It took a while, but I’m pretty pleased with the result, even if it is a little weird. XD (Also it’s painted on a corner, which is why the picture looks cut in half.)
Goodness, most of these pieces are actually plans for something else! XD I might actually like this sketch better than the finished piece, unfortunately.
And now we’re ready for my new sketchbook which I also got for Christmas! I got to draw the logo for Dad’s business card/website, which was pretty neat. These were just practices (AGAIN); I ended up mostly tracing an edited picture to get the desired effect. Oh well, I kind of like the practices
YAY, REAL ART. I was inspired by the first mushroom picture as well as the illustrations in a beautiful set of books (which I also got for Christmas). I think it turned out pretty cute, although I’m not normally a fan of earthy color schemes.
On the left we have the picture I drew for this Art Lab episode, and on the right we have a few lonely-looking watercolor bubbles.
Guys, I am not good at drawing hair. I can draw eyes and most of the rest of the face okay, but the hair is always pretty boring and lackluster. Therefore I attempted to improve my skills with this great video, and I think I did… but they still need improvement. XD That’s okay, I’ll get there eventually. If I keep working on it, that is.
And here is the finished piece of the pencil-sketched girl I showed you a while ago. The idea was to make a girl who looks like a fawn without actually using any non-human features like deer-ears or antlers. It didn’t really work. XD The face got kind of skewed and I rushed the background which didn’t turn out well, but everything else is… tolerable. If you cover up her mouth she looks better. 😛
(By the way, that’s a great drawing tip: if you’re drawing something (particularly a face), covering up parts of the picture helps you see which feature is throwing everything off. I think it’s the mouth and chin here.)
Megan requested this camera for a blog project (picture by Megan). I rather like it because it’s PURPLE and it’s A CAMERA. 😀
I drew this from a gorgeous aerial view of Ashdown Forest, the inspiration for The Hundred Acre Woods. The photo was prettier. XD
We have now come to the end of the sketchbooks so far, and will turn to various other artworks. First, envelopes. I absolutely LOVE decorating envelopes for my pen pals, and I think I prefer the recent envelope art I made to the stuff in the sketchbook.
Ooh, this is one of my favorites! Adding touches with the white gel pen really helped bring the scene together.
I was trying to decide how to decorate this envelope when I saw the pretty pattern on my Chemistry notebook and decided to use it as inspiration. What do you know, something nice can come of even Chemistry. XD
I made this envelope after reading The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling, which has some great art tips and tutorials in it! (For instance: did you know that the three primary colors are not red, blue, and yellow, but magenta, cyan, and yellow?! I was astonished! But he showed and explained how it makes perfect sense.) I think it’s neat how a few pen lines can transform some abstract watercolor blobs into a landscape.
I outlined the daffodils with some lovely oil pastels my dear friend sent me, and then used the watercolor resist technique to fill them in. The colors are so bright and cheery, aren’t they? That’s why I love daffodils. 🙂
Ooh yes, another one of my favorites! ❤ I like the bright, summery colors and almost vintage-poster-like quality the sun rays give it.
My mom liked the envelope so much that she wanted me to make a real picture to frame, so I did!
Okay, this is kind of strange, but Megan wanted me to draw on a church bulletin for one of her friends (don’t ask XD). I believe Megan took these three pictures. I like how the music notes show through the watercolor in this one. 🙂
This, um, didn’t work TOO well because I didn’t have enough time to finish the faces (particularly Megan’s on the right :[] )… but it was a good challenge to try, anyway.
I like this one better. 😉 Our friend loves snakes, so I drew this one, also loosely from the Nature Journaling book.
Here are a few more quotes I copied, for my pen pals. (The next few pictures are black and white because I took them in a rush and the lighting was HORRIBLE. XD)
And last but not least…
And that’s all for now! Which piece of art was your favorite? Which do you prefer making: sketchbook art, envelope art, or hand lettering?
Thanks for reading, dears, and have a lovely day!
***Allison***
P. S. Also in case you’re wondering, I’m planning the post about the old letter next! I would have done it this time, but it’s taking a loooong time to translate. XD Stay tuned!
GUYS GUYS GUYS I AM SO INCREDIBLY EXCITED. Because, as you probably guessed, I’M GETTING AN ART STUDIO. 😀 I have wanted my own space for arts and crafts for practically forever, and I can’t believe I finally get to have one!
My new studio is actually in a closet. XD We definitely don’t need all four closets in our bedroom + bathroom at the new house, so Mom thought I could make the biggest walk-in closet into my studio!
It’s basically a small room, complete with a window and shelves for storage. It’s only about 60 square feet, but I think it will work great for just me. 🙂 However, it certainly wasn’t set up for a studio at first, and that’s what I’ll be showing you today: how I turned a closet into a space for a studio!
PLUS, Photowall contacted me and wondered if I wanted to do a review for them in exchange for a free product, and I was like, “OH YES PLEASE.” (I didn’t actually say that.) XD Are you as excited about this post as I am? I DOUBT IT. XD
Alright, let’s get started! First, this is how the closet looked to begin with:
Doesn’t exactly look like a studio yet, huh? Well the first step toward that goal was to get rid of the shelves and to take off the door for more space. I decided to keep the shelves in that little cubby above because really, it was too small and had too low of a ceiling to turn into anything else.
My brother Jeff helped me with the demo, and then Dad spackled (or plastered) over the marks where the shelves and hinges had been (and where Jeff had applied the crowbar a bit too vigorously, heh heh). After a few coats of plaster and some sanding, it was ready to be painted! I painted it in Valspar’s “Dove White” because I want the studio to look clean and bright, with pops of color.
I’ll get more into my color scheme and décor in a later post, but I’m thinking white, navy, purple, pink, and gold. ❤ Ahh, I can’t WAIT!
Anyway, here’s what it looked like after taking out the shelves and door, plastering, and painting. So much better already! Doesn’t it look a lot bigger?
Next, it was time to put up the wallpaper, and now it’s time for the review part of the post. As I said, I did get this product for free, but obviously I’m going to be honest about my likes and dislikes, because otherwise what use would a review be? 😉
Photowall is a Swedish design company that sells both canvases and wall murals/wallpaper. Also, one super neat part of their site is that you can upload your own image! So if you have a high-res picture, you can get wallpaper or a canvas with your own photo or art on it! I considered that, but decided to go with a more clean, modern look, like the White Grafo pattern I ended up choosing.
I went with the premium wallpaper instead of the standard, because hey, why not? It was wonderfully thick and almost rubbery-feeling, like it would wipe off easily. The pattern was printed beautifully as well.
I ordered about 6.7 square meters, which cost $243. Preeetty expensive, especially considering you can get wallpaper at Home Depot for $0.79/sq. ft., compared to $3.67/sq. ft. at Photowall. :[] I also ordered the wallpaper kit, which you can get separately for $20.
However the shipping was free – and super fast! The customer service was also great, in my experience. Here are the boxes the products were shipped in:
The wallpaper box included the following:
wallpaper (duh)
wallpaper paste powder
instructions
And as for the kit box, I was surprised at how many different things were included! It seriously has EVERY SINGLE THING you need to put up wallpaper, except supplies pertaining to mixing up the paste (water, a bucket, and a stir stick).
paste brush
wallpaper brush
trim guide
seam roller
spirit level
knife
pencil
And now for putting it up! It took a bit to mix up the paste and let it set, and it was definitely more work than using pre-pasted wallpaper (or so my mom tells me), but it seemed to work pretty well. Thanks to my mom for taking the next two pictures. 😉
One helpful feature of this wallpaper is that the panels are numbered. It’s not just one big sheet, it’s split into several sheets that you cut apart and then paste on. You do have to match up the seams, but it feels more manageable. 🙂 It still took about 2 ½ hours, though, with Mom and I putting it up together.
It looked SO good once we got it all up, eep! But one thing that really scared me was these brown patches that appeared on the paper as it was drying:
Yikes, what a terrible picture. :[]Thank goodness they don’t stay! It must just take a really long time to dry (more than three days, in fact), but that’s probably because it was cold in there and not super well ventilated. And now, this is how the studio looks thus far:
Thanks to my sister Megan for taking this picture. 🙂
AHHH I LOVE IT. The wallpaper actually made the space feel bigger for some strange reason, and it definitely made it feel more like a room than a closet. I’m really happy with my pattern choice and with the product itself. 🙂
To recap…
PROS
Fast, free shipping
Excellent quality wallpaper
ENORMOUS selection of beautiful prints and patterns
Easy-to-use website and instructions
Great customer service
CONS
Very pricey
Doesn’t come pre-pasted
Fairly long application and drying times (at least for the premium paper)
Basically, I absolutely love everything but the price. I would highly recommend the product and company itself – the wallpaper is beautiful, high quality resolution, and scratch/tear-resistant – but I personally would go with a cheaper option if I did it again and not for free.
If the price doesn’t worry you, though, or if you just want one of their beautiful and unique murals you can’t get anywhere else, then Photowall is the company to buy from! Even if you don’t need any wallpaper at the moment, you should totally check out their website – remember they also have a huge selection of canvases, and I’ve heard they’re pretty great too! 🙂
I hope you enjoyed reading this rather lengthy post, and stay tuned for Part 2! In the next art studio post, I’m going to furnish the studio and put up at least some of the decorations. ❤ YAY!
Thanks for stopping by, dears, and have a lovely day!
Unfortunately I couldn’t make my Art Lab post on Friday, but I have time (and data XD) to do it today! In this post I’ll show you a few tips and tricks on lettering, plus show you plenty of font inspiration to copy or use to think up your own fonts. (Because I usually run out of ideas after, like, three fonts. XD) So. Ready? GO!
Technique: Hand Lettering
Hand lettering is super fun, and also very useful for when you want to spiff up an envelope or gift tag or any number of things.
Fonts
Let’s start with one of my the most common and prettiest fonts in handlettering: fake calligraphy. Lovely name, isn’t it? 😛 That’s because it allows you to get a calligraphy-like effect without using any special calligraphy tools. It’s also super simple to write. See?
Step One: Write out your desired words in the neatest cursive you can.
Step Two: Find the downstrokes. Downstrokes are the places in a letter where you move your pen down the paper, like the little pink arrows show in the picture.
Step Three: Widen and color in the downstrokes to get the look of a calligraphy pen. Ta-daa! Pretty, isn’t it?
This is a great base font, especially when paired with a simple sans or serif.
So basically sans doesn’t have the little “tags” on the ends of the letters and serif does. I like writing all caps sans and all lowercase serif. 🙂
And now, here are a bunch more simple fonts I wrote out to look through and use as inspiration or copy yourself. Which is your favorite?
Accents
Now that you got some fonts under your… um, pen XD, it’s fun to add little accents and flourishes to fill in the space beside the lettering. Here are a few ideas to get you started, and you can find a bunch more on Pinterest and the “Doodly Accents” section of PicMonkey. 🙂
Inspiration
Still need some more ideas to get your creativity flowing? Here are a few of my recent (and not-so-recent) lettering pieces.
You can hand letter with any medium you wish! Here I used my watercolor brush pens which are super fun for lettering.
Quote from Jane Austen’s Emma
For this one I used a blue notebook marker + a blue ballpoint pen. I love adding vines to letters, but it does take a bit of time and patience. 😉 Another fun thing to do for fonts with thick, solid bars of color like below is to add zigzags or circles or other patterns inside the bars for more interest.
Quote from Nancy Pearcey’s Total Truth
This is the first page in my second bullet journal. I like how the mix of colored pencil and ballpoint pen looks together. 🙂
Not quite the right season for this, but hey, it’s lettering! XD I think it looks really neat to overlap some letters, like I did with the ‘y’ and the ‘o’. Also a little extra line of a different color beside the downstrokes adds a shadow effect and makes it look more special.
And lastly, a lovely Bible verse that I copied completely in blue ballpoint pen. (By the way, these Pilot G2 pens are practically THE BEST PENS EVERRR. They write super smoothly and you can get them in a range of point sizes.)
That’s all I have for today, so hopefully you’re inspired by now. 😀 If you did make some hand lettering inspired by this post, we’d love to see it! Check out how to help us fill our art gallery here.
Today I am super excited to bring you the most requested post from my poll: a post of pen pal ideas! 😀 We’re going to look at gifts that you can send your pen pal in an envelope, fun things to include in your letters, envelope art inspiration, and more!
In this day and age (wow, I sound so old XD), a little handmade goes a long way. Emails are wonderful (and let’s admit, a lot faster), but you can’t beat the feeling of receiving a personalized package that a friend put time and effort into, just for you. I get so excited every single time I get a letter. ♥
Any letter from a pen pal is a treasure, but I love to think of ways to make each thoughtful little package even more special. Hopefully you enjoy reading through these ideas and maybe you and your pen pal will be inspired to use some of these ideas in your next letter!
Surprisingly, it feels right to say that. I’m usually amazed that the next year has come so fast, and I sort of am this year as well, but it doesn’t feel as weird as usual. 2018 doesn’t seem that strange to type or write, it feels good.
But before I delve into this new year, I wanted to recap the last. So here you go! 2017 in review.
Guys this has been quite the year…
~ Highlights of 2017 ~
We bought a new farm.
I started a new Etsy shop.
I reached over 3,000 followers on my blog.
I started my last year of school!
I took hundreds (probably over a thousand) photos, and better learned how to use my DSLR. You can find a lot of my favorite pictures from this year here, here, and here.)
I made so much art.
I (and my friends, of course) deepened friendships both in real life and through blogging. ♥ I especially enjoyed getting to know my blogging friends better – you guys are the BEST, and I love emailing/commenting/writing to you and reading your amazing posts!
My siblings and I raised and sold adorable baby bunnies.
My family went on trips to Assateague, Chincoteague, and Amelia Island. 😀
I played piano for church!
We went camping with family.
We creamed 150 quarts of corn. O.o
We watched the solar eclipse!
And so many more memories. ♥
I learned a lot this year, and I feel like God grew me as well (although not in size – I think I’m about done growing now XD). More and more often I found myself stepping back from the moment and seeing the big picture and the small blessings, and realizing that almost every worry loses its urgency and importance in light of eternity.
Ahem. Anyway, before we move on to the goals/resolutions, we must have the obligatory stats, right? XD
~ 2017 Stats ~
Views: 50,174
Visitors: 16,171
Likes: 10,656
Comments: 8,958
Total Posts (over all years): 456
~ Popular Posts from 2017 ~
Thoughts on… {Beauty} – I was blown away by how popular this got! (At least popular for my blog.) I’m hoping to do more “Thoughts on…” posts next year. 🙂
So those are some of you guys’ favorite posts… here are some of my favorite posts. Actually these are just the posts with some of my favorite photos from 2017 in them. 😉
~ Best Photography Posts of 2017 ~
Summer 2017: basically summer memories + a selection of summer’s best pictures.
Bunnies in Autumn: One of my very favorite photoshoots of the entire year! EEEE THEY’RE SO CUTE!
My County Fair Entries for 2017: The end of this post has some of my favorite pictures from 2017 and maybe a few from 2016 too.
And now for last year’s goals… Let’s see how I did.
Meet at least one more of my blogger friends. Sort of not really? I got to video chat with one of my friends, which was SO fun, and I saw pictures/videos of many others, but sadly I did not meet any in real life. Oh well, there’s always next year!
Grow my Etsy shop. If I was talking about my clay Etsy shop… not exactly. If you’re talking about my new art Etsy shop, yes! (Since I have two sales compared to zero when I started. XD) I think this year was sort of a practice run and I’m looking forward to digging deeper into this business in the coming year.
Start a Bible journal and keep it going throughout the year. Check! So far I’m in 1 Samuel, and I’ve hand lettered my favorite verse from all the chapters I’ve read so far. I cannot WAIT to see all the journals when I’m done, and I’m definitely going to continue this goal into 2018.
So what is my New Year’s resolution for 2018? Well, it ties in to one of the most important things I’ve learned this year: I can’t do it.
You know on Disney movies how they’re always like, “Believe in yourself”? That’s true, to a point… but only to a point. I’m not saying self-doubt is good or you should hate yourself – not at all! That’s way too far in the other direction.
BUT. The thing is, I’m a pretty poor thing to believe in. I’m broken and fallen and weak, and so are we all. But even though I know that, sometimes I forget, and think that I know best instead of God.
Considering moving and selling the farm and other things that are out of my control has shown me that I just can’t do this on my own. I’m not big enough, not strong enough to change the weather or the timing of plans or… well, anything.
But see, this is not depressing or sad for me – it’s a relief. Because even though I can’t do it, God can – and he will. Why would I want to believe in myself and my weakness, when I can believe in God and his strength? I wouldn’t. I don’t.
So one of my “New Year’s resolutions” is to believe less in myself and more in God. I’ll have to put it into practice to even complete it, because I certainly can’t do that on my own!
So yeah. Those are my thoughts (and some pictures) from this past year.
I can’t wait to see what God will do next year. Eeep, it’s so exciting just thinking about it! Happy New Year’s, guys. I hope it’s the best one so far.
Heyyyy, dears! I hope you guys had a lovely Christmas – I sure did! There was so much fun, family, and food… it was wonderful. 🙂 And of course it was great fun to give and receive presents! One of the best parts about giving presents is seeing the expressions on people’s faces when they open the gift, and there were some pretty great expressions – especially the uncontrollable laughs. XD
I absolutely loved the gifts I received as well! If you gave me a gift or Christmas card… THANK YOU SO MUCH. ♥
Anyway, I decided to do a little Christmas haul post for you guys! And nope, I am by no means trying to brag by posting about my presents, and I don’t think I’ve never read a haul post that was… I just wanted to post this because I love reading Christmas haul posts, (though I despise the term “Christmas haul,” heh heh). What ’bout you?
~ Selected Gifts ~
Just a note: these gifts are in random order, not by how much I like them or anything. Pretty much by how they came up on the computer. XD AHEM. Let’s begin.
#1: Sealing Wax
This stuff is so neat! Basically you light a candle, put a piece of wax in the spoon, and hold the spoon over the flame until the wax melts, after which you pour it onto the area to be sealed. I tried it out and it worked pretty well, although there were a few bubbles and I waited too long to press the design in so it didn’t show up. It also made the spoon really black, but you can just wipe that away with a paper towel. Perhaps my sealing techniques need polishing too. HA.
#2: Macro Lens Extension Tube Kit
EEK I’m so excited about these! When you attach them to your DSLR lens, they let you take super close up pictures, almost like a mini microscope! The lenses are stackable, meaning you can choose how many layers to attach depending on the zoom you want.
Why do I love this picture??
Honestly I still haven’t quite got the hang of using them, but I can tell it’s going to be tons of fun once I do. 😉 Here are two test pictures I got so far, and I’m sure there will be lots more in the future! Let me know if you guys want a more in-depth review.
Behold… my pajama pants.
There must be some dirt on the lens or something. Tsk tsk.
#3: Stuffed Hedgehog
LOOK IT’S SO ADORABLE AND SQUISHABLE. Sweet Laura sent me this for Christmas and I love it! HOW COULD YOU NOT? ♥ It’s so soft and fuzzy and fun to hold. 🙂
#4: The Julia Rothman Book Series
I LOVE these books. I discovered them at a friend’s house and so enjoyed the charming illustrations and fun informative writing that I decided to put them on my list! My favorite thing about these books might be how pretty they are. XD The illustrations are beautiful and whimsical, not to mention the books are like mini encyclopedias bursting with entertaining and interesting facts. They’d be great coffee table books.
This particular boxed set is excellent, especially since it comes with 10 (I think) framable prints from the books! Here’s a selection of my favorites…
#5: Micron Pen Set
THESE ARE AMAZING. (I say that about everything, don’t I? XD) But seriously, I am SO happy with these pens so far! They come in a large variety of tip sizes, ranging from 1.0 mm to 0.15 mm, not counting the brush pen which can be different sizes depending on how hard you press. Guys, the smallest pen (a 003) has SUCH a fine tip, it’s barely visible! Okay, maybe not that fine, but you know…
I made these two ATCs to test out the Microns. I also used watercolors and a brush pen we’ll address shortly…
Here’s another test page, with lots of different vines in descending order of the Micron pen sizes, and labels for future reference. Look how thin the lines go!
#6: Black Velvet Brush
I don’t have many good quality brushes, so I was super excited to get this one! The great thing about this paintbrush is that it can hold a fair amount of paint and works for both good-sized areas (like behind the “hello”), and tiny spaces. Usually brushes don’t hold their point very well but this one really does! That’s my favorite part about it – the superfine tip. (As you can tell, I like fine-tip things because I love making and drawing tiny details.) I also used this brush in the watercolor pieces above.
#7: Black Brush Pen (Sakura)
Brush pens are so much fun, and I use the black one I already had a lot. This one is better quality than the one I have now, plus it comes with a refill! It’s also super fun to use and the ink is very opaque. (I used this for the “hello” word and outlines on the ATC.)
#8: Travelogue Sketchbook
A new sketchbook, EEP! I’m quite excited about this one as the pages are thicker and better quality than my current sketchbook’s, so it works better for mediums like watercolor. I used this for the vine picture, by the way, and it didn’t buckle that much – woop woop! It’s quite a bit smaller than my current sketchbook, but I like drawing small anyway, so that’s fine. 😉 I cannot wait to fill it with drawings!
#9: Lined Notebook
This is SO pretty and classy, don’t you agree? Clara sent it to me for Christmas and I love it! Thank you so much, my friend. ♥ The padded cover is light pink with gold accents and bookmark, and the clasp is magnetic. The paper is lined, with a fun border. 🙂
#10: Micromagnets
And last but not least, we have these super neat micromagnets! They are SO fun and addicting to play with, hee hee! Micromagnets are tiny magnet balls that you can build and mess around with to your heart’s content. 🙂 They’re super strong, but still flexible, almost like magnetic cloth or something. It’s kind of hard to explain what they’re like, but they’re amazingly weird and fun. XD Look up micromagnets and see if you can find a video maybe?
And that’s the end of the gifts! That wasn’t all of them, but it would be way too long of a post if I included all the delicious candy and snacks and fuzzy socks too. So I’ll spare you the details. XD
~ Select Christmas Adventures ~
My brother got a sticky bug toy that climbs down the wall, and he, uh, threw it a little too high and it stuck. XD He got out his new fishing pole and tried to poke it down, and then Grandaddy got his enormously long bamboo pole and after much prodding and laughing, he got it. XD XD
We had some rather interesting food in our several Christmas celebrations so far. For instance…
Tripe: pickled cow’s stomach. IT TASTES LIKE RUBBERY VINEGAR BUT WORSE.
Divinity: a sweet marshmallowy macaroon type thing. Yum.
Scrapple: basically the leftovers from butchering a pig made into a sort of meat pudding and then fried. It’s actually quite good if you don’t think about what it’s made of…
Hominy: corn without the hull, so it’s soft and tender. Quite yummy; tastes similar to potatoes.
Baklava: a Greek dessert with delicate, super flaky pastry and honey and nuts. DELICIOUS.
Have you had any of those?
My brother got a drum for Christmas. -_- *covers ears* XD He’s actually pretty good at it, it’s just REALLY LOUD. HELP.
Carmen got a beta fish, and she’s still undecided about the name. Which do you think is better, Gilbert or Bobo? (Hint: PLEASE PICK GILBERT. XD)
We always measure the grandchildren at my grandparents’ (on my Dad’s side) Christmas, and this year I was 5′ 10.5.” O.o I think I’m done growing now, heh heh. I hope so, because it’s almost impossible to find clothes that fit as it is. Oh dear… XD
Annnnd that’s about it! I hope you enjoyed reading this (rather large) post as much as I enjoyed making it! 😀 Thanks once again to everyone who gave me those lovely gifts. 🙂
How was your Christmas? What was your favorite gift?
Thanks for bearing with me through all these Christmas posts, dears. I believe this is the last one, so congratulations on surviving the overload! *applause*
***Allison***
P. S. I doubt anyone will notice, but just in case, I wanted to let you know that I may post a bit irregularly over the next two months, since we’re pretty busy fixing up the new house(s) for when we move. 😉 AHH I’M SO EXCITED.
Heyyyy, guys! Goodness it’s been far too long since I’ve done a recent art post. I have been sprinkling in a few pictures for CPC and Art Lab and such, I guess, but today I want to do a round-up of (most of) the pictures I’ve drawn in my sketchbook since the last art post, along with miscellaneous other art. I hope you enjoy browsing through the pictures! 😀
My current sketchbook is almost filled with drawings and crinkly painted pages, so I put a new sketchbook on my Christmas list. 😉 Filled up sketchbooks are so satisfying!
Alright, I’m going to go in chronological order because it’s the easiest. XD Just note that I did make a few more drawings than this, but I didn’t want to you every single one or the post would get even more ridiculously long than it is. 😛 Anyway, this first drawing is just a fun, stylized, pen-and-colored-pencil doodle. I rather like the quote.
One night I was bored so I decided to try the three marker challenge (drawing a picture with only three colors) with Sharpies. I like some parts of it, but… well, it’s certainly not my best work, heh heh. Oh dear.
Um, this is a super strange drawing of a mini world on someone’s finger??
Now this drawing I actually like. I drew it from a picture in one of Loren‘s posts which is sadly eluding me. HELP. If anyone knows which one it was, could you tell me please? Thank you muchly. UPDATE: Katie found the post for me! Thank you SO much, Katie. 🙂 Here it is.
I told you I liked the quote… XD I was trying out sketching with a colored pencil instead of a normal pencil and I like how it turned out!
WARNING. VERY CREEPY DRAWING AHEAD. Okay so apparently I have a REALLY hard time drawing deer (at least without a reference). SORRY GUYS. I did draw some better deer, but that will come later on.
*Sigh* Two bad drawings in a row? DON’T WORRY GUYS, IT GETS BETTER THAN THIS, I PROMISE. Anyway, this was a drawing that I tried to do for a CPC story (which you can read here), but it, um, didn’t turn out. But hey, it goes to show that although bad art is inevitable, that doesn’t mean you should give up. ART IS TOO AMAZING TO GIVE UP.
Ahem. Oh yes, I drew this little flurry for an online magazine I contribute to! Some are good and some are bad, but hey, you can tell they’re snowflakes. Does anyone else have a hard time making snowflakes symmetrical?
I like how this looks so far (it’s a vast improvement on some of my other hair drawings), but I don’t know if I’ll ever finish it. Oh well. 🙂
I really like this little guy, hee hee! Megan and I ordered a shirt for my brother that said “I FROGET” since that’s the punchline to one of his favorite terrible jokes which I cannot remember at the moment. XD There are plenty of online sites where you can design your own t-shirts, so I made the art and Megan did the rest of the designing.
Now we’re getting into some Christmas drawings. (By the way, CAN YOU BELIEVE IT’S DECEMBER?! I CAN FINALLY DO CHRISTMAS STUFF.) These next two I also made for the aforementioned magazine. I used my watercolor brush pens for this one…
And acrylic paints + a white gel pen for this one. I love how the painting turned out!
Here we have a lovely bad quality picture of a NeedtoBreathe quote, also for the magazine…
This is just a random Thanksgiving doodle with my watercolor brush pens again…
A strange-looking hawk I drew using one of my brother’s other shirts as a reference. 😛
And now we’re caught up with my sketchbook! Next we have the “Beyond the Sketchbook” part, a.k.a miscellaneous drawings.
I drew this wrapping paper for our cousins’ birthday because they put these pets on their list (though they obviously knew they wouldn’t get them 😉 ).
Ooh, I really like the next one! I saw a photograph like this on Pinterest (right here) and thought it would be a fun challenge to draw. It was! It turned out a bit streaky, but I’m pretty proud of the lips, which are usually hard for me. XD
I’m pleased with this one too! I drew this for the custom art in my recent giveaway, from photos Gracie gave me. Isn’t Gracie’s cat so pretty? ♥ I love her blue eyes.
This card was for my grandma who was recently in the hospital. I’m happy to say that she’s home now, though, and recovering well! ♥
Megan wanted me to draw this card for one of our friends. We always like to debate about… well, a lot of things, so we gave her a handy reminder of the right way to say and use things. 😛 (Note: the border is scrapbook paper – I didn’t draw that part, heh heh.)
OH, YAY! Next is my favorite of all of these pictures! Probably one of my favorites I’ve ever done, just because it took SO LONG to draw. XD My friend Aria commissioned me to draw a vintage-looking NYC poster from some photos she took while she was there, plus various other details she wanted, like song lyrics from one of her favorite songs for the border.
I believe this is the biggest art project I have ever done, both in size and effort. :O
Aha, here we have the better deer picture. XD I painted this for my Etsy shop, The Color Box Studio, where you can buy the original.
And lastly we have two coloring pages, also in my Etsy shop. I want to start making more of these because they’re fun to use and inexpensive to buy, not to mention you can print them out as many times as you want!
I made this as a custom page, but after she orders it I plan to make it available to everyone (for a lower price). 🙂 You can see the listing here.
And this is the newest addition, and Christmas countdown coloring page! You’re supposed to color an ornament each day. I rather like how it turned out. 🙂
Phew, you did it! Thank you so much for reading this super long post – I hope you enjoyed! Which piece of art was your favorite? ARE YOU EXCITED FOR CHRISTMAS?
***Allison***
P. S. LOOK, IT’S SNOWING! ON MY BLOG! I love that effect. 🙂 If you’re reading this through email or your Reader, you’ll have to actually visit my blog to see it. 😉
GUYS, THIS IS THE LAST CPC. :O I’ve enjoyed coming up with ideas for this super neat and creative challenge, but I will also be glad to get back to normal posting. 🙂 I hope you like this final entry: the sequel so many of you guys requested to my last CPC post. Here’s a little refresher from the previous story…
And so as they walked slowly back to Aeryn’s house, he gradually pulled their past out of the mist. And the twins, listening with wide eyes, almost wished it had stayed there.
Ready to uncover the secrets of the twins’ past? Okay, let’s do this.
Prompts Used: 2
Photos Submitted: 2
Art Submitted: 5
Total Points: 17
~ e x p e d i t i o n {Part 2} ~
“All this started way far back and a long, long time ago; so far and so long that you have to close your eyes to see the palm trees waving and close your ears to hear the ocean whispering at you.
There now, you see it? That’s my island. It isn’t really mine, but I like to think so, and that’s where the problem is. Everybody likes to think it’s their island.
“As far back as our minds can reach, there were two different kinds of people who lived there and two different kinds of people who wanted it for their own. One was white like you, one was black like me. And they hated each other. If you set your foot on the wrong side of the island, the side where the other folks’ lived, you weren’t gonna come back anytime soon. In fact, you weren’t coming back at all.
“Both people invented all sorts of ways to hurt each other, and the worst way was banishment. They built a rickety ol’ boat whose main feature was its leakiness, then they trussed you with vines, plopped you in that boat and shoved you off to drown, starve, sink, or all of the above. Sometimes, the two sides even banished their own people, particularly if they weren’t strong or looked funny. See, both sides thought maybe if they weeded out all the weak people, they’d finally be strong enough to conquer the other side.
“But sometimes the weak ones were really the strongest and we didn’t even know it. There was this girl…” Terence swallowed hard. “I’m mighty ashamed to tell this part, but I have to. There was this girl who looked the strangest I’ve ever seen. Some of her skin was black and some was white, all splotched and patched together.
“We hated that girl. I hated that girl. We wanted to banish her, but she was the chief’s daughter and he wouldn’t let us, even though he was always banishing other people. But one day we gave him the slip and sent her off, thinking we’d seen the last of her.”
“But we were wrong. A couple months later, she was back in a better boat, and she had a white girl with her that had one brown eye and one blue.
{via Pinterest} Edited by me.
“And they were friends. Her story is awfully interesting too, but my stomach says there’s no time to tell that one right now.” Terence stopped for a moment on the steep path and panted. “Hey, are we close to your house by any chance? My stomach sure is mad at me.”
“We’re about halfway,” Aeryn said impatiently, “but you haven’t finished the story yet. You didn’t get to the part about us.”
Terence winked at the girls. “Alright, I s’pose a few more minutes without food isn’t gonna make a difference when I’ve managed for two days without it so far.”
Tasha looked horrified, but clamped her mouth shut when Terence began again. “Okay, where was I… oh yeah. When those girls came back, something changed. Their friendship and the fact that Kalea survived shocked my people straight off the wrong path and onto the right one. We realized we would be strongest when we united instead of divided ourselves. And we came up with a plan.
Very strange, I know. XD
“There’s a legend that the white prince started the scorn of weakness because his sisters were… different, somehow. We don’t know how because the prince’s father was so ashamed of them he made sure to keep them hidden – or perhaps they disappeared or died. It’s anyone’s guess. Anyway, the prince’s first act as ruler was to banish the two white twins of a palace servant because twins were not normal, and in his eyes, bad.”
Tasha’s eyes widened. “Where the twins us?”
Aeryn scowled when Terence nodded ‘yes.’ “We never stood a chance, did we?”
“That’s the sad part – you did, once. The prince used to love you two, and your parents were his close friends or something, even though they were servants. The prince was just a normal boy growing up, but as soon as he became ruler, something happened. No one knows what, but suddenly even the sight of someone different blew his top, and it’s said that your parents had something to do with it.”
“Who were our parents?” Tasha and Aeryn asked together, breathless.
Terence shrugged. “Don’t know. Your whole family and past is kinda covered in mystery. The prince took care to keep it that way. But even so (or maybe because of that), you girls have become a sort of legend on our island. I still can’t believe you girls are alive and that I found you!”
Aeryn looked thoughtful. “Yeah, but how did you find us anyway? Where you looking for us?”
“Well not you, specifically, but for people like you who had been banished and might have survived like Kalea did. We figured if we found some of the people the white prince banished, they would be so grateful that we rescued them, they would join us. See, we need all the help we can get if we’re going to unite the island again. And if you girls joined us… well, maybe you could shock the prince back on track too. If you lead us, my people will follow.”
The twins paled. Leave their beloved island to lead a people they didn’t even know existed, in a place they’d never heard of before? Talk to the very one who had banished them?
Aeryn stopped at a tall tree and said shakily, “Let us… let us think about it for a while. Everything happened to us at once. Our whole world and everything we thought we knew exploded in the space of a few hours, and we’re still reeling. But,” she said, trying to smile, “in the meantime, welcome to our… I mean my home!” Terence stepped leaned back to see the tree house and whistled appreciatively.
The girls jumped.
“How did you make that sound?” Aeryn asked curiously. “The one that sounded like a bird?”
Terence raised his eyebrows. “You mean whistling? Shucks, you girls sure have a lot to learn. But don’t worry, I’ll teach you. Up we go, huh?”
Aeryn climbed nimbly up the rope ladder, but Tasha climbed slowly and shakily. “Hey, don’t worry, Tasha,” Terence called from a few rungs below her. “If you fall, I’ll catch you.” He smiled his easy smile at her and she smiled back shyly. Finally they reached the top, and he whistled again when he opened the rough wooden door.
“This is pretty good for two girls, I have to admit! Say, where’d you get all this stuff? And what’s this?” He pointed to a rusty woven-wire basket on wheels that held a pile of treasures – old tin cans, pretty pebbles and bits of sea glass, and a jumbled mess of other things he’d never seen before.
Tasha beamed proudly. “The sea gave them to us. This thing was one of the things we found on our first expedition. We were so little we could hardly drag it up here.”
Prompt picture (not mine).
She selected a battered up pan from the driftwood shelf and set about preparing some clam soup for Terence, who was running his dark hands over the rusty metal cart. “Wow, I’ve never seen anything like this before. It certainly didn’t come from our island.”
Suddenly his eyes widened and he sucked in a breath. “Wait. I just thought of something. All the sudden everything makes sense. What if the prince banished you because you were from another island, one that he was afraid of? The one that all this stuff came from? Maybe he used your “weakness” as an excuse to banish you. Maybe that wasn’t the real reason.” He put his hands on their shoulders and looked into their eyes. “Tasha, Aeryn… we need to figure out your past. It just might be the key to my people’s future.”
________________________________
Dun-dun-DUNNNN! I know that was a cliffhanger, but you’re going to have to wait to see how it turns out… maybe for a long time. XD While I was brainstorming this story, I got an idea for a whole series! Kalea’s story would probably be the first book, the twins’ story would be the second, and I don’t know about the rest. So maybe one day I’ll write a whole book about the twins and you’ll get to see what happens! Maybe… 😛
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this, dears, and thanks for reading!
Oh well, there’s always next year!
Allison Marie 