Introducing… The Summer Bored Games!

June 11, 2018June 11, 2018 | Allison

Hello, dears!

I’M BACK! And I’m SO happy to be back, because I have some very exciting news! Clara, Megan, K. A., and I have been working on a secret project for months now, and we are FINALLY ready to show it to you guys! *grins* Ahem. I am proud to present… The Summer Bored Games!

The Summer Bored Games is a fun and creative way to bust boredom this summer, with dozens of wacky challenges, from thoughtful missions to completely random activities. Collect points by completing challenges, and enter to win an awesome prize!

CHALLENGE HOSTS:

Clara // Clara & Co.

Megan // A Barefoot Gal

Allison // A Farm Girl’s Life

K. A. // Cuddly Critters Blog

CHALLENGE RULES:

We four hosts (Clara, K. A., Megan, and I) will take turns posting a challenge post, one a week, for the month of July.

Each post will include 35 challenges, ranging from 1-4 points each – the harder the challenge, the more points you earn! Super hard or courageous challenges earn you Mega Points, which means 10 points instead of 1-4.

Participants collect points by successfully completing challenges. You don’t have to do the challenges in the order we list them, and you obviously don’t have to do them all (but then you won’t get as many points). However, you must complete any weekly challenges in that week alone for those points to count. If you miss a week, feel free to do the challenges just for fun, but they won’t earn you any points toward the giveaway.

HOW TO REDEEM POINTS:

In each of the challenge posts, a survey will be provided that participants can use to send their points from the completed challenges to a host blogger for a chance to win a prize (host bloggers are not eligible for the prize). However, if a participant would rather conquer the challenges just for fun and not win a prize, they can simply complete the challenges however they wish and not worry about keeping track of points.

PRIZES:

Prizes come in a three-tier winner system. Participants are entered for a chance to win the prize corresponding to their point range.

If, at the end of the challenge, you have 0-50 points, you are not eligible to win a prize. If you are in the lowest prize tier, which is for participants with 51-250 points, you have a chance of winning a $5 Amazon gift card. If you are in the middle prize tier, which is for participants with 251-400 points, you have a chance of winning a $10 Amazon gift card. If you are in the top prize tier, which is for participants with 401+ points, you have a chance of winning a $15 Amazon gift card.

At the end of the challenge, we’ll tally up each participant’s total points, fit them into the proper point tier, and random-generate the winners. If you work hard, you can earn yourself more of a chance for more of a prize!

DATES:

Challenge Post #1: Clara & Co. on July 2nd

Challenge Post #2: A Barefoot Gal on July 9th

Challenge Post #3: A Farm Girl’s Life on July 16th

Challenge Post #4: Cuddly Critters Blog on July 23rd

Challenge Winners: Clara & Co., A Barefoot Gal, A Farm Girl’s Life, and Cuddly Critters Blog on July 30^th

HOW TO SIGN UP:

The challenge is open to participants worldwide, and to ages 10-18.
Please get a parent’s permission before signing up.
Please sign up just once, on any one (but not more than one) of the hosts’ blogs.
Sign up to participate in the Summer Bored Games 2018 with the contact form below! (If you’re on WordPress Reader, the contact form probably won’t show up until you visit my actual blog.)

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

If you’re excited for The Summer Bored Games and want to let others in on the fun, we’d quite appreciate if you could share this post to Pinterest, Facebook, or other social media, repost it on your blog, or tell your family and friends! Even if you don’t win a prize, you can still have fun competing with your siblings or friends to see who can get the most points. 🙂

IN CONCLUSION:

Here’s a helpful (and pin-able) infographic to sum up the information above. 😀

SBG (15)

So. Are you usually bored during summer? Do you think the Summer Bored Games sounds fun? Will you sign up? ARE YOU EXCITED?!

Thanks so much for reading, dears, and have a lovely day!

***Allison***

Birthday Harvest {2018}

May 20, 2018May 20, 2018 | Allison

Hello, dears!

Today I am excited to FINALLY show you guys some of the gifts I got for my birthday! It took me a while to get this all prepared, but I’m pretty pleased with the pictures because… well, I shall tell you in a bit. 😉

Anyway, first the obligatory disclaimer about how this is the obligatory disclaimer that no, for those of you who have a nagging doubt, I am NOT trying to brag about my gifts (I never saw any posts like these that were, but oh well), I am simply making one of the practically useless but quite entertaining birthday posts that I enjoy reading for some reason. XD So hopefully you enjoy it too!

Now that that confusing paragraph is out of the way, let us move onto…. another disclaimer: these gifts are in no particular order. 😉 Also for the background I used a white sheet (that took a while to iron) and some confetti from Clara’s amazing birthday box.

NOW! First, some super cute succulents from my sister Megan! (Also I REALLY REALLY LIKE THIS PICTURE. 😀 )

These succulents are really fuzzy and soft – kind of like Lamb’s Quarter.

She got these succulents from Leaf & Clay, by the way, which I think is a great site!

Sweet Laura sent me this adorable pot – I actually had seen it before on Amazon and loved it. 😀 (Fun fact: I was obsessed with pandas when I was little, and I still like them.) Doesn’t it look SO CUTE holding a succulent?

My Grandma and Grandpa gave me this lovely dish. I believe it was my great-great-grandmother’s. O.o So that’s pretty neat. 🙂

My dear friend Aria gave me this bath bomb, which I can’t wait to use! I always take showers, but Megan and I actually have a jacuzzi ( :O ) in our new bathroom at the big house, so I shall use it when we move in to celebrate. 😀

I don’t wear very much makeup at all, so my makeup collection is pretty sad. XD Aria sent me this and I think it’s so pretty!

I was so happy to get this paper because my other scrapbook paper isn’t cardstock, and I love the thicker paper. Plus this is so cute! The amazing Clara gave me this gift. ❤ (Psst, if you like this, you should check out Megan’s giveaway to have a chance of winning it!)

I love the metallic accents on this journal from Aria! Also it’s good to have new notebooks since I use mine up for school, like *cough, cough* CHEMISTRY. Eh.

Stickers! I actually have very few stickers, so yayyyy! Also I love these colors. One that cracks me up says “buy more stickers.” XD

Clara gave me this really fun washi tape crafts book! I got a lot of good ideas from this, heh heh. I really want to do some sort of washi tape wallpaper in our new bedroom like in the second picture.

Clara also gave me this fun doodle prompt book! I was originally going to do one every week but decided that probably wasn’t realistic, so. XD It has some neat ideas in it, like…

Aria also gave me this very pretty and dainty best friends’ necklace. ❤ (The blurry spots have cutouts of the states where we live under them.) I’m trying not to wear it every day… 😉

Aria found me this other giraffe thingy… not quite sure what it’s called, but it’s SPARKLY, and it’s PURPLE! Particularly PURPLE! 😀 It’s also quite fun to shake up.

My grandparents gave me this camera remote, which will be SO nice for using instead of the self-timer. YAY!

Megan gave me these super cute and pretty washi tapes. ❤ I love them, particularly the gold succulent one! 😀

Aria gave me several pretty tapes too. I figured out that the plain white ones are great for painting, like with watercolors, and the gold ones are actually shaped cutouts instead of your regular rectangular tape! Pretty neat. 🙂

Also I took all of the above pictures with my next present: softbox lighting from my Gram and Grandaddy! 😀 Ironically the softboxes themselves are rather hard to take pictures of, so I’ll just use one from Amazon. 😉 Their lights are super bright and especially good for indoor and project photography, which is not my strong suite. Let me know if you guys would be interested in a full-scale review sometime!

LimoStudio 700W Photography Softbox Light Lighting Kit Photo Equipment Soft Studio Light Softbox 24"X24", AGG814

{via}

I had these next two presents on the table, but for some reason forgot to take pictures of them with the rest, so that’s why they don’t have the same background. Anyway, Aria gave me these pretty paint pens! They’re very opaque so you can color over printed words and such – it’s basically like paint in a marker.

She also gave me this mug, which I love. XD Isn’t it so cute and funny? (She calls me a giraffe since I’m tall (5’10”), by the way. That’s why she got me giraffe presents. ❤ 😉 )

And one last present… A DESK FOR MY ART STUDIO! My parents let me pick out a desk I liked and they bought it for me, which I was so happy about! I picked this lovely desk from Ikea:

{via}

Here it is in my art studio! Except… we accidentally ordered the wrong (larger) size, so we’re going to get a new table top that should fit better soon. But otherwise, I LOVE it! I think it’s perfect for the space. 😀

gift 23

Welp, I suppose that’s it. 🙂 So many other people gave me the sweetest cards and envelopes and little birthday packages, but I didn’t have enough space in this already very long post to show everything. 😦 If I didn’t show something you gave, please know that I still truly and honestly loved it and you made my day by sending it. ❤ THANK YOU SO MUCH, EVERYONE, for a great birthday! I felt incredibly loved – my family, and myfriends online and offline were so, so sweet! I am now officially 18 – strange but true. Yikes. 😛 Am I too old to use emojis now? I hope not, because they’re very helpful…

Before you go… what is one thing on your birthday list? Did you find anything here to add? 😉 And isn’t the softbox lighting great?

Thanks so much for reading, dears, and please have a lovely day! ❤

***Allison***

The Art Lab, Episode 44: Gel Pen String Art

May 11, 2018November 12, 2018 | Allison

Hello, dears!

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:

{via}

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?

Moving On {Part 2}

March 13, 2018March 13, 2018 | Allison

It has been way too long since my last “Moving On” post, and we’ve had quite a few adventures since Part 1! So, shall I catch you guys up on the news? Alrighty then. 🙂

Let’s see, where did I leave off? Oh yes, right before our cousins came to help us paint. Well… they actually didn’t paint much, but my aunt did. XD The kids played Dutch Blitz when we weren’t needed. We’ve all been playing Dutch Blitz a TON lately, and it’s so much fun! Have you played? Not many people have that I know, of but sadly it’s pretty hard to explain without showing you… Trust me, though, it’s great. XD

So now the Cedar House is all painted and furnished and it looks GREAT! We still have a few things to fix up before it debuts as an Airbnb, but it’s come a long way. (For instance, we replaced that carpet in the picture above after I took the photo.) Would you guys like to see a tour of the house once it’s finished?

Another thing we’ve been doing is learning to use the rebaling machinery. Part of what we do at the new farm is sell hay and straw, as well as make people’s large, unmanageable bales into smaller ones. Dad runs the machinery, the boys usually get the haybales prepared, and the girls usually stack them on a trailer. It’s hard work, lifting hundreds of 40-pound bales, but it’s good for us. 😉

The hay pictures are all in black and white because the light and surroundings usually weren’t the prettiest. XD I think they look really neat in B&W, though!

I guess Logan did help stack that time… maybe because I was taking pictures. XD

A few weeks ago we semi-officially moved down to our new place. We still have to go back to our old farm to pack up stuff and work once in a while, but we’re mainly down here now. 🙂

Since we’re mostly going to be down here, we brought all the live things we have to care for: namely, pets and plants. 😛 I really loved how the plants looked in the back of my car for some reason. XD Does it looks Pinterest-y to you?

They looked so pretty against the cedar siding. 🙂

We also brought the bunnies up! Most of the bunnies stayed huddled together at the back of the truck, but Basil was hilarious – she hopped up on a cat crate (with no cat inside) we put there and stayed on top almost the whole time. What made it funny was it was really windy up there, and her fur got blown about every which way, like she was under one of those super strong hand dryers that ripple your skin. XD She didn’t seem to mind, though. Maybe she liked the fresh air.

We also brought the cats down, but that was a little more… um, interesting. They were RATHER scared, and once Jinx decided he simply couldn’t wait to use the litter box till we arrived, so… yeah. He didn’t wait. IT WAS BAD. XD XD Ah well, we survived, and the cats are safely in the Cedar House now. 🙂 Maggie, our yellow lab, is quite enjoying the new space too, I think!

Dad had to stop to check on a vehicle at one point and I got some more lovely pictures of mountains at the overlook. ❤ You could see everything SO clearly!

Finally we arrived at the pineapple gates. I don’t know why there are pineapples at the farm entrance, but it’s pretty funny. Especially because one of the pineapples is literally yellow and green with lichen, and in exactly the right places! XD

In case you’re wondering if we have animals at our new farm, we don’t. Except for pets, of course. 😉 We’ll probably get chickens later (just not 24,000 like we used to have!), but for now the only livestock are the cows in the leased pastures. They’re not ours, but they are pretty cute. 😉 They also look lovely in the golden hour! Then again, what doesn’t?

When we first started staying in the Cedar House we didn’t have many forms of entertainment, so Mom thought of Four Square! We laid out the pattern in masking tape on the basement floor, and we’ve been having a lot of fun playing it as a family. 🙂

Another fun thing to do here is go fishing! We haven’t caught fish every time, but once we caught nearly a dozen in one day! That was fun. I’ll have more pictures from fishing in a later post.

Ooh, and one super fun surprise we found was a box of really old letters! Part of the big farmhouse was built in the 1850s, and I believe the farm itself is even older. We found some letters from the 1880s! Isn’t that amazing? This letter is one of my favorites, although it’s from 1922, so not quite as old. But LOOK AT THE HANDWRITING. (I blocked out part of the address.)

Isn’t that amazing?! We haven’t read it yet because it’s in German, but we should really translate it sometime. 🙂

Now I shall end this post with a sunset over the pond. ❤ I love sunsets in general, and reflected sunsets are twice the beauty!

Phew, that was a lot to cover in one post. I hope I didn’t leave anything important out… XD Oh well, I can always tuck it in later if need be. I hope you enjoyed the update and the pictures, and tell me…

Have you had interesting experiences traveling with pets? Have you played Dutch Blitz or Four Square? And would you be interested in a post with more about the Cedar House when it’s finished, or about more old letters and other interesting artifacts we’ve found?

Stay tuned for more posts like this in the future, because we still have the big house to finish fixing up. Man, it’s taking a while. There’s just soooo much to paint and work on. Ah well, it’s going to be incredible when it’s finished, and I can’t wait to move in!

Well, thanks for reading and I hope you have a lovely day, dears!

***Allison***

Bubbles, Selfies, and Strange Goings-On

March 8, 2018 | Allison

Hello, dears!

I was originally going to post a “Moving On” episode, but I’ve been doing a lot of complicated, less lifestyle-ish posts lately and I felt in the mood for a good ol’ photography post – one of my favorite kinds to read AND write. 🙂 So I’ll save the moving post for a later date, and hopefully you enjoy these various portrait photoshoots in the meantime! 😀

Bubbles

One day when the sun was setting and it was lovely and golden outside, I asked my littlest sister Carmen if she wanted to do a bubble photoshoot with me. She agreed somewhat reluctantly, but started having fun once we commenced, as usual. XD

It was fun, but VERY difficult. The hardest part was getting the bubbles in focus. I could have used a higher f-stop, but I wanted the nice blurred background and… anyway, these are only a fraction of the photos I actually took. XD

Another difficulty was that the bubble wand handle was broken and we kept having to fish the rest of it out with a, um, small scissors. Why didn’t we use a tweezers? You know, I’m not really sure. XD Maybe we couldn’t find it, I forget. Anyway, it worked… sort of. 😛

I can’t believe I got a picture of a bubble popping! I wasn’t even trying, which is probably how I got it. XD

After Carmen got too cold and went in, I attempted to take pictures of just bubbles by myself. IT WAS EXTRAORDINARILY HARD. The wind always blew the wrong way at the wrong time, just as I clicked the button, of course. *sigh* Oh well, out of perhaps at least a hundred, I DID get a few good ones. Two, in fact. *weak smile* I do love the color, though! (They aren’t edited.)

Selfies

Guys, I practically NEVER take selfies (although I do use the self-timer occasionally). Why? Probably mostly because it’s such a stereotypical teenager thing to do, and thus I don’t (XD). Anyway, the other day I found a charming patch of speedwell, a weed with adorable tiny blue flowers, and decided hey, why not. 😛

Oooops, didn’t exactly point my camera at the right spot… but it works! XD

An edited one just for fun…

Hee hee. XD This might be my favorite.

Strange Goings-On

My sister Megan and her friend MacRae do very strange things together. Trust me on this – VERY strange. Like taking rocks for a walk or racing earthworms. I don’t know if Megan wants me to tell the reason behind these pictures yet or not, so for now let’s just say it’s another of their interesting ideas which they wanted me to photograph. Heh.

That blob of fur in MacRae’s lap is my rabbit Willow. XD

BAHAHA, poor Willow is a little alarmed at their antics…

GOOD JOB, WILLOW. Escape is obviously the best option here. I don’t know what Megan’s doing here… contemplating the taste of a spoonful of mayonnaise? XD

And then Willow, who was obviously the star of the show, got some headshots…

What do you say, does Willow look good in a mustache? True, she kind of already has one… XD

Since you never really saw her eyes, I had to include one last one so you can tell that she is actually a living creature. Hee hee.

And that’s it for today! I have another sisters photoshoot but it’s pretty long, so I’ll save it for its own post. 🙂 I hope you enjoyed these! Which was your favorite photoshoot, and which was your favorite picture? Do you feel sorry for Willow? XD

***Allison***

P. S. Speaking of bunnies, I have some sad news… Diamond and Lily are gone. 😦 Lily was got really sick so we had to put her down, and I don’t know what happened to Diamond – maybe she just died of old age or something. *sad sigh* I’m really glad we still have the other four bunnies, though, and hopefully we can have baby bunnies again soon! But… RIP Lily and Diamond. 😦

ART STUDIO {Part 1 + Photowall Review}

March 1, 2018 | Allison

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:

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!

***Allison***

Hand Lettering + Font Inspiration

February 17, 2018November 12, 2018 | Allison

Hello, dears!

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.

envelope 8 — 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.

***Allison**

The Ultimate List of Pen Pal Ideas

February 12, 2018June 1, 2020 | Allison

Hello, dears!

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!

Continue reading →

~ Etcetera #2 ~

January 24, 2018January 26, 2018 | Allison

Good gracious, guys, my unposted pictures are backed up all the way to October. XD So as you can see, it’s high time for another random photography/thoughts/etc. post! Enjoy the bits and pieces. 🙂 (And warning: this is going to be a VERY long post.)

Flowers + Butterflies

I love this next picture! The flower and colors are so incredibly bright and cheery. 🙂

At the new farm we’re kind of in the middle of nowhere and at the end of the line, so it’s really hard to get Internet. You can get it, but it’s quite expensive past a certain monthly amount of data – and we already used that up, halfway through the month! O.o And even worse, the things that use it up the fastest are watching videos online and BLOGGING. HELP. XD Thankfully after you use up the data you still have Internet… it’s just really, REALLY slow. Like barely-moving slow. -_- Hooray.

I was excited to be able to get decent pictures of a monarch butterfly because they’re pretty rare around here!

I just finished reading Emma for school. Anyone else read it? I don’t know if I like it or not. It’s definitely very well-written, but it’s also rather boring – life in the 17th century seems to consist of going to dinner parties and getting married?

A bunch of other butterflies and moths and bugs came to the zinnia patch as well. 😀

Guess what? You know how I mentioned we might turn the Cedar House into an Airbnb? Well if we do, and we probably will, my parents are thinking they’ll let me be in charge of it! I am SO excited. That means I’ll get to decorate it, clean it, and add all sorts of fun touches for the customers – eek! 🙂

I think I found a new favorite word – to say, at least: verisimiltudinous. ISN’T IT GREAT? XD

Carmen got a cat laser toy for her birthday and Tom (one of our cats) LOVES it. Mom says she feels sorry for him because there’s not actually anything to catch. XD

Fall Forests & Fields

I took these pictures at my grandparents’ woods which are lovely and gold in the autumn. And the light… ♥

Ahh, mushrooms. I love taking pictures of them and drawing them, but I don’t like eating them, heh heh. I used to absolutely despise them but I don’t mind them as much now – at least raw is okay.

Speaking of food, I’m not a picky eater, but I think two of my least favorite foods are black walnuts and goat cheese. They both taste so pungent and strange, and I think goat cheese tastes like goats smell. SORRY. BUT IT DOES.

This one kind of looks like an art prompt, doesn’t it?

I took this picture when we were having a Nature Study on hickory trees with our friends and went to search for hickory nuts afterward. I LOVE the lighting. 🙂

I rather like how you can see two pictures at once here.

Etcetera

Bittersweet berries are beautiful! There’s a huge vine of it up the hill from our (current) house.

My friend and I randomly did a photoshoot after church one day when I had my camera along anyway. I won’t put the pictures of her on here in case she doesn’t want me to, but here’s one of the pictures she took of me. 🙂

The maple tree outside our church is AMAZING in the fall!

Ooh yes, I really like this one. I edited it quite a lot to make the chopper and wagon into silhouettes, but I love how it turned out!

Here’s a kind of similar picture. I took this right before we went on the nature walk: one of us spotted a deer on the hill and it walked right along the top so you could see its silhouette. Doesn’t it look neat?

My siblings put colored lights around the trampoline a while back and they look AMAZING at night! And as bokeh and light painting photos. 🙂

I’ve also been reading a phenomenal book called Extreme Devotion. It’s a daily devotional, but I’m just reading it as a normal book because it’s composed of many short, very inspiring stories from Voice of the Martrys. One of my favorite quotes from it so far is this:

God, I do not ask You to make my life easy; I do ask You to make me strong.

– From a Jewish child, in a note found in the rubble of a Jewish ghetto in Poland after it was bombed by the Nazis

AHH THIS PICTURE. Doesn’t it look so warm and bright and sunny? ♥ It makes me happy just to look at it. Actually lots of things make me happy just to look at them. 😛

Have you ever exploded Ivory soap? If you haven’t you should – it is SO fun! All you have to do is take a bar of Ivory soap (only the Ivory brand will work) and microwave it for a while until you see it start puffing up like a marshmallow. It’s so weird and neat. I did this one day with Carmen when she was bored. 😉

And now let us end with a picture of three of our adorable bunnies. 😀 ♥ I haven’t posted much about them lately, huh? Probably because we don’t take many pictures of them in the winter when it’s cold and gray. Hopefully I can do another photoshoot soon, when it warms up. 🙂

And there you have it! One long and random post. XD I finally cleaned up at least SOME of the leftover pictures, which feels great. I still have plenty left, though, so be on the lookout for another Etcetera post soon!

Which picture or topic was your favorite? Do you have the same problem of taking too many photos to keep up with? Are you enjoying winter or ready for it to be over?

***Allison***