Sketchbook Tour + More

December 1, 2017November 12, 2018 | Allison

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. 😉

The Color Box {A Story + A Surprise}

September 20, 2017November 12, 2018 | Allison

GUYS. I AM SO EXCITED! I finally, FINALLY started an Etsy shop for my art, after working on it for quite a while! 😀 AHHH YAYAYAYAY!

Ahem. Anyway, let me tell you a little bit about it and why I’m so excited for it. Click on the picture or the link below it to visit my shop.

The Color Box Studio

Story Behind the Shop // My Mission:

I’ve loved art my whole life and I’ve always dreamed of selling my art and crafts as a business. It was (and still is) my dream job. That’s why I’m so overjoyed to actually be doing it! I believe God gave me what talent I have to use it for his glory as well as to bring myself and others joy. 😀 I hope to build a collection of fun, beautiful prints that will brighten people’s homes and add unique, handmade pieces to their décor that you can’t buy just anywhere.

Behind the Name

After much deliberation, I named my shop The Color Box Studio because I love colors and have a box of 72 Prismacolor colored pencils that is among my most treasured art supplies. 😀 Plus I just think it’s a cute name. XD

What I Sell

Currently I’m just selling art prints, but I hope to add some original and custom pieces soon. (If you have a custom request, just let me know and I’ll be happy to work with you!)

I have four prints available so far and I can’t wait to add more soon! Here’s a peek at two of the listings, and you can see the rest here.

Click on the pictures to visit the listing.

What is Gicleé?

The type of prints I sell are called gicleé (pronounced jhee-CLAY). Gicleé uses a certain process and materials to create super high-quality prints with bright colors and fine detail. I decided on it after some research and trial-and-error, because it’s basically the best-quality art print you can get and looks almost exactly like the original. Each piece of art is printed on thick, white, archival-quality paper to ensure it will last a looong time – a minimum of 80 years! I use this printing company and I absolutely adore their products and customer service.

So yeah! That’s my announcement! 😀

****************

Also, since I realize the news is probably not as thrilling to you as it is to me (and this post would be way too short otherwise XD), I wrote a little story for you guys at Mercury‘s suggestion. 🙂 I hope you enjoy!

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The Color Box

The air was heavy that day, laying on her shoulders and sitting on her head like a great flock of birds. It was November, bleak and colorless, and Kira was wandering the streets as usual. Her long, gray-brown hair hung limp and forlorn in the miserable weather and she walked slowly, so she could notice everything.

Kira was an Observer. She collected things with her mind. She had a whole room in her brain filled with the small wonders she had seen: mist rolling in mysterious clouds along the street; a striped snail sliding over a little white mushroom; three cats following an old woman with an enormous straw hat… She never took the things she saw; she just looked, and remembered.

Her favorite part about Observing was the colors. Her city had precious little color to brighten its weary streets, so whenever she found a yellow flower springing from a sidewalk crack or a bright bluebird flashing by, she smiled her soft, slow smile and closed her eyes to be extra sure she would remember it.

Today, a piece of color caught her eye and her heart leapt. It was a color box. She saw it flashing in the sunlight, peeking out from under a heap of dry leaves and crumpled papers, and she hurried toward it.

When she opened it, she breathed a shuddering breath of delight. She had never seen so many colors at once. All the colors of the rainbow, and even more besides! The pencils were lined up in an uneven row, some blunt and some sharp, some tall and some short, and they were all beautiful.

Kira looked at it thoughtfully, and made a decision. For once, Kira collected with her hands as well as her mind. She would use it to draw the best memories in her collection so she could never forget them.

She began at once, smoothing out a crumpled piece of newspaper nearby to draw on. At first she tried a flower, one of her favorite finds. Kira chose a periwinkle blue for the petals and a bright green for the stem and leaves. Her pencil scratched and scraped on the paper. Her eyebrows drew together in concentration and she caught her bottom lip between her teeth to keep it from trembling with excitement. Finally Kira sat up and looked at it.

Her face fell. The colors were beautiful, but the flower did not look like the picture in her head. Kira was discouraged, but then she set her mouth firmly and promised herself that she would make a better one.

All day Kira worked. She drew flowers, she drew snails, she drew her fingertips with their broken nails. A little beetle crawled onto her paper and she drew it too. Twice a pencil got too worn down and she had to take a break to sharpen it with the dull sharpener inside the box. Finally, as the sun was setting, Kira drew the same periwinkle flower one more time. She smiled slowly in satisfaction. It still did not look like a perfect match, but it was much better than her first try.

She could hardly wait to try again tomorrow.

The next day she decided to try and draw the face of the old man who always sat on the weathered bench beside the curb. To her dismay, faces were much, much harder to draw than flowers. But as before, she took a breath, selected a new crumpled piece of paper, and started again. She stared at him for minutes at a time, taking in each wrinkle, each hair, the color of his eyes and skin and lips. And then she drew.

Day after day, she tried again. Sometimes she drew faces of passersby or people who looked out of the windows, but most of all she drew the old man who always stared ahead at nothing, rubbing a thumb over the a brown mark on the thin, wrinkled skin of his hand.

Finally, one day she was satisfied. She looked from her drawing to the old man’s face and grinned. Shyly, she stood up pushed the paper into his lap.

“I drew this for you,” she said quietly. The man blinked and looked down slowly. He stared at the drawing for a long time, and then looked up at the girl. He smiled.

The next day there was an old woman beside the man on the bench. When he saw Kira he beckoned her toward him and said, “Can you draw her too?” Kira could.

Thereafter Kira drew a new person every day. After a while she got tired of drawing with the same colors, so she chose different ones. Kira drew people not in the colors she saw with her eyes, but in the colors she saw inside of them – the colors they really were.

Her solemn gray-brown eyes looked at you unflinchingly, looked and looked until you felt she was pulling your secrets, good and bad, from your eyes, and you dropped your gaze. Kira found the secrets one by one and from those she could tell the color of the person. Some people were bright yellow and orange and pastel pink, and others were blue and gray and purple. One man was only black and white.

Every day Kira drew, on newspaper and scraps of cardboard and paper bags. When she was finished, she hung them on lampposts all over the city, so the people she had drawn could find them. Slowly the city grew more colorful. When people saw the drawings they would stop for a second look, and walk on with their inside colors shining more clearly on their faces. And Kira herself was no longer composed of grays and browns but of all the colors of her pencils, for they had bled into her fingers and crept into her heart, so that they were a part of her.

Nowadays Kira still collects things – the room in her mind is heaped to overflowing – but her favorite memory was and always will be, her color box.

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Hee hee, that was a fun little story. 🙂 I hope you liked it and my Etsy shop. What is your favorite listing I have so far? And what is your favorite “color box” – colored pencils, watercolors, markers, etc.?

Thanks for reading, my dears, and have a most wonderful day!

***Allison***

My County Fair Entries for 2017

September 5, 2017November 12, 2018 | Allison

Hello, my friends! 😀

I know some of your were looking forward to seeing my fair entries and what prizes I won, so here you go! This is for you. 🙂

Here’s a picture of all my entries except the photos. It’s… kind of hard to tell what’s what, so let me show you a little more clearly…

A strange little octopus. 🙂

I like this one! Two little gnomes in a flower house. 🙂

Look how tiny he is!

A doughnut turtle! She’s so cute. 😀 (Also note you can find this and the previous three clay things at my Etsy shop.)

This is a lil’ hippo I made for my little sister’s birthday to hold trinkets and such. She said, “No, Allison, do you have to enter it? I need it to hold my things!” XD 😀

I also won a sweepstakes ribbon for ceramics, so that was really exciting!

I made this tissue paper flower from a DIY book.

These didn’t win a prize because I accidentally grabbed a falling-apart one from my collection. XD Oops.

I made this cute little elephant in a sewing class. It was rather hard to make, but I love how it turned out!

Just a bonus picture of a butterfly that was passing through. 😀

Here’s the picture of my friend Aria from the last post. Sadly, it didn’t win a prize. Oh well! I like it anyway. 🙂

Strangely enough, this won third prize, even though I think the portrait was a lot better. Perhaps they were judging by creativity?

Okay, now for the photos I entered. I entered this in “Abstract,” but it didn’t win a prize.

This was for “Action.” It also didn’t win a prize.

I entered this in “Close-Up,” and it won first prize!

“Architecture,” and no prize.

“Artistic,” and it won third prize! 😀

“People,” and no prize.

“Pets” – isn’t Clemmy so cute? Sadly, no prize.

“Landscape” – no prize.

“Rural _____,” with third prize!

“Wildlife,” and no prize.

“Humor,” and first prize! Heh heh, isn’t it funny? XD

And that’s all for this year! Altogether I believe I got 12 prize ribbons out of 21 things entered, plus one sweepstakes ribbon. Not too bad!

Well, I hope you enjoyed looking over a summary of the stuff I made and photos I took in a year’s time. 🙂 Do you like to enter things in your fair? Did you win any prizes?

Thanks for reading, my dears, and have a lovely day. ♥

***Allison***

P. S. Guys, please pray for the people in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey and the ones possibly in the path of Hurricane Irma. I can’t even imagine how hard it must be. We’ll keep you in our thoughts and prayers, friends! ♥

How to Edit Photos, Part 1: The Basics

January 23, 2017February 1, 2017 | Allison

Hey, guys! 😀

Grace recently wondered if I could do a tutorial on how to edit photos, and I thought that was a great idea! I decided to make this a mini-series, covering basic photo editing, adding effects, touching up photos of people, and maybe a little bit of graphic design and collaging too. I’m really excited!

Anyway, let’s get started. Today I’m going to go over the basic photo editing tools and then show you how to use those tools to fix two common photo problems.

Introduction

I use PicMonkey for pretty much all of my photo editing, and I highly recommend it! It’s very easy to use, and it’s free – although you can pay to upgrade to Royale and get some extra features. (I have Royale, by the way, and I would definitely recommend it if you edit photos a lot. I’ll talk more about Royale later in the series.) But don’t worry about that for now. All the tools I’m going to go over today are completely free.

So, open PicMonkey, and hover over the bar at the top of the page where it says “Edit.” Open the photo you want to work on. The section of the editor that pops up is called “Basic Edits,” and that’s what we’ll be using today.

Basic Edits

Crop: The first tab of the “Basic Edits” section is “Crop.” Cropping is quite a valuable tool that allows you to cut out ugly surroundings from the corners of your pictures, make the composition of your photo more interesting, or simply zoom in closer to the subject.
Canvas Color: This just covers your whole picture with one color. You won’t use it to edit your photos, although it’s great for graphic designing.
Rotate: The rotate tab allows you to flip your picture any way you want. It also allows you to straighten your photo, which is very helpful if you were accidentally holding your camera crooked and your subject looks like it’s sliding off the picture. 😀
Exposure: In my opinion, this is the most important tab in the Basic Edits section (well, maybe it’s tied with “Crop”). You can work wonders simply by adjusting the exposure of a photo, and we’ll be using this tab a lot, later in this post.
Colors: This tab includes sliders for saturation and temperature, as well as a mysterious button called “Neutral Picker.” Actually, it’s not that mysterious. 🙂 Basically, when you click on the parts of your photo that should be white, the Neutral Picker auto-adjusts the temperature to turn those off-colored spots white again. Temperature controls how warm or cool a photo is – in other words, whether it has a red (warm) tint or a blue (cool) tint. And saturation, as you probably already know, makes the colors of your photo more saturated and bright.
Sharpen: Sharpness and Clarity actually ARE different – just a bit. My unscientific description is that Sharpness yields a more subtle effect and focuses on sharpening the details, while Clarity is bolder and boosts the contrast of your photo while giving it a gritty effect at the same time.
Resize: This simply downsizes your photo to a smaller file size so it takes up less space on your computer (or blog). Anywhere between 800 and 1280 (and even a bit larger) would be a good size for sharing online. One thing to keep in mind is the smaller the size, the lower the quality of the picture.

Using Your Tools

Now that you know what everything does, let’s put your tools to use! I’m just going to show you a few examples and walk you through what I did. (Note: the “before” pictures are on the left, and the “after” pictures on the right. Just in case you couldn’t tell. 😉 )

Isn’t it amazing what the Shadows slider can do? That’s seriously all I did. I moved the “Shadows” slider to -44, and that’s it.

This is a more subtle edit, but I think the “after” picture definitely looks more vibrant. The photo on the left is kind of drab and gray, so I upped the saturation a bit and adjusted the exposure. I also straightened the photo so the ocean isn’t tipped to one side like that. (And hmm, I might have lowered the temperature also, but I can’t recall for sure. Oops. XD )

The main difference in this photo is that now you can actually see the cute wittle kitten instead of losing him in the surrounding scenery. I told you cropping was a helpful tool! 😀 I also straightened the photo so the kitten wasn’t falling off the face of the earth, upped the “Sharpness” slider, and adjusted the exposure just a tad.

Wow, so much better! This picture was washed out to begin with, but by lowering the brightness and shadows, and adding a little bit of contrast, it looks bright and beautiful again like it’s supposed to. And speaking of over-exposed photos, we should move on to the fixer upper part of this post. (By the way, I l♥ve the show Fixer Upper! Have you ever watched it? It’s sooo good. Ahem…)

How to Fix an Over-Exposed Photo

An over-exposed photo is one of my most common problems. But thankfully it’s easy and fun to fix!

This is the photo we’ll start with:

Eh. The content is good, but the lighting is off: it’s too bright and has a sort of bland grayish-white wash over everything. We must rescue this poor photo in distress!

Pretty much everything you need to fix an over-exposed photo is in the Exposure tab, so go ahead and open that up. The two main things to do for an over-exposed picture are to lower the brightness and lower the shadows. Here’s a screenshot of what I did:

You can tell from the sliders that I lowered the brightness and shadows significantly (to -14 and -18 respectively) and added a tiny bit of contrast and highlights. And that’s pretty much it! (Note: I did also use the “Burn” tool to darken a few spots in the photo, but I’ll talk about that more in another post. For now, just concentrate on using the “Exposure” tab.)

Before and after. So much better!

How to Whiten a Photo

Sometimes photos have a weird yellowish or bluish tint, especially on the light parts of a picture.

Like in this photo:

This really isn’t a bad picture, but you can see a slight orangish tinge over everything, which makes it look dingy rather than fresh and clean. It’s especially important to get good, clean-looking photos of products you sell, and this owl just so happens to be in my Etsy shop. So, let’s clean him up a bit, shall we?

First, open the “Exposure” tab.

The main thing you need to do here is bump up the highlight slider, but I also messed with the brightness and shadows slider a bit too. Here’s a tip: use mostly highlights instead of brightness to brighten up a photo, because too much brightness will make the photo look washed out. “Highlights” brightens just the white parts instead of the whole photo.

Next I opened up the “Colors” tab. Since my picture is too red, I moved the Temperature slider down to -10, which added some blue to even it out.

And here’s the before and after. A subtle difference, but do you see how the one on the right looks cleaner, fresher, and more appealing?

Well, I guess that’s it! I give you a pat on the back and a virtual bag of chocolates if you read that whole thing. O.o XD

Heh heh. I hope that was helpful to you! Feel free to ask me any questions in the comments if you didn’t understand something. 🙂

Have a lovely day, lovely people!

***Allison***

1,000 Followers Giveaway!

October 14, 2016October 14, 2016 | Allison

I STILL CAN’T BELIEVE IT, GUYSSSS! 1,000 FOLLOWERS! EXCEPT BECAUSE I TOOK SO LONG TO POST THIS, NOW IT’S 1,190 FOLLOWERS!!! OH MY GOODNESSSSSSSS! Just think… before being featured on WordPress Discover, I had 150 followers. That’s really pretty great! And now…. *GASP* It’s simply amazing.

Thank you all soooooo, so much! You guys are one of my top favorite parts of blogging. ♥ I’ve met Clara, Grace, Hayley, K. A., Misty, Rebekah, Josie and so many more lovely girls through blogging. I love you! ♥

In celebration of this momentous moment in my blog’s life, I’m hosting a giveaway (in case you haven’t noticed). 😀

» The Prize «

The prize will include two things:

A miniature garden kit to make a garden similar to this one. This includes the following:

1 glass terrarium globe
A mini-bag of soft, green, dried moss
A mini-bag of blue glass pebbles
3 clay succulents (made by me)
1 clay mushroom (made by me)
1 shiny, marbled clay stone (made by me)
Plus a few other tidbits I might throw in 😉

2. Your choice of one of the following coupons for my Etsy shop:

30% off any item
Free shipping on any item

» How to Enter «

If you are under 18, please get a parent’s permission before entering this giveaway.
I will need your email address and/or your address so I can notify you and give you the prizes. But of course I will NOT share either of those – they’re safe with me. 😉
To enter, comment saying you would like to enter (well duh), and include a bible verse, quote, or riddle (or all of the above) that you like.
NOTE: This giveaway is only open to my readers living in the United States. I’m so sorry about that, but shipping gets complicated (not to mention expensive) otherwise. 😥

» To Collect Extra Entries… «

Take my survey to collect one extra entry – but please take it only if you actually read my blog or it won’t help me much. 😉 (By the way, this is a new survey, so none of you have taken it yet as far as I know.)
Share this post on Pinterest or social media to collect one extra entry. (NOTE: You may share this post as many times as you like, but you still will only get one extra entry.)
Share any other post from my blog on Pinterest or social media to get one extra entry. Please pick a post you actually like instead of randomly sharing any post. (Again, only the first share will give you an extra entry, but I’m ecstatic if you want to share more! 😀 )

»When Will This Giveaway Close?«

This giveaway will close October 28th at 12:00 am, ET. You have only two weeks!
On October the 29th I will announce the winner. I’ll also add the bible verse, quote, or riddle they included with their entry, as well as my favorites from the rest of the participants – just to add a little extra fun. 🙂

AAAAHHH THIS IS SO EXCITING! Thank you guys once again for reading my blog. ♥

***Allison***

Some Clayations :)

May 4, 2016May 4, 2016 | Allison

Today I shall show you some of my many polymer clay creations (or “clayations” XD ).

First up, I started a little collectible series on my Etsy shop called Tiny Turtle Collectibles. They are mini turtles with unique and fun shells. The only collection I have up so far is the Sweet Treat collection. Here they all are:

Little cuties. 🙂 From left to right: Sprinkles, Cocoa Cupcake, Chippy, and Sundae Monday. (Sundae Monday, Sundae Monday, Sunday Monday… it’s so fun to say. XD ) Here’s a close-up of Chippy:

If you’d like to see more pictures of the teeny-tiny turtles, take a peek at my Etsy shop! The link is up there ↑ somewhere… aw, I’ll just give it to you again. 🙂 Wee Little Crafts

I made this lil’ cardinal for my grandma for her birthday:

And I made this bluebird pencil pal for my cousin’s birthday:

I put this birdie pencil pal in my shop. (It’s a blue bird but not a bluebird. XD )

Yet another bird. (Wow, I didn’t realize I made so many birds. XD ) This guy’s name is Oliver.

A mini fairy-village:

I’m kind of proud of the next thing. 😛 This is a little Noah’s Ark. I was so excited when someone bought it the same night I listed it on my shop! 😀

And lastly, my current masterpiece. XD XP After seeing this adorable doll made by Julia, I decided to try my own. I was going to make it a baby doll, but… as you can, see, it didn’t turn out like that. Although she’s not nearly as cute as Julia’s, I still really like how she turned out. 🙂 I want to do a photoshoot of her sometime. When I do that post, I’ll show more detailed photos and tell about her a bit more. (If you’re wondering why, in the last picture, she has a hole in her ear, it’s because I’m still working on earrings for her. 😉 )

If you’d like to see more of my clayations, check out this post, and/or type “polymer clay” in the search box on my blog sidebar.

I hope you enjoyed this clayish post. 😀 Which thing was your favorite?

***Allison***

P. S. I just listened to “Camp Granada” by Allan Sherman and “Ebay” by Weird Al. They are hilarious songs, especially “Ebay.” XD Have you ever heard them? If not, you should. XD

Recent Clay Creations

January 27, 2016February 9, 2016 | Allison

Hi, folks! How be-est thou? XD

I really like making things out of polymer clay (some of which I sell at my Etsy shop), so I’m going to show you a few little creations I made recently. Let’s start with a few fairies, shall we? They are super tiny – the littlest one, as you can see, feels quite comfortable on a penny.

Next up is a clay custom pet I made for my grandmother. It’s of her dog, Duke. I made him from a few pictures my sister Megan took (like the picture on the bottom right.) (You can click on the pictures to make them bigger.)

-Megan(snow, sleeping bag, Duke, clay stuff) 053 (1280x960)

And then we have this lil’ gal. Her name is Alice, and you can buy her here at my Etsy shop. Isn’t she so cute? 🙂 Here she is shown standing on the top of the gnomes’ house (more on that later) and the fairies’ toadstool.

-Allison(clay stuff, sunset) 015 (1280x960)

-Allison(clay stuff, sunset) 016 (1280x960)

I made a game called Pebbles a little while ago, so I made some polymer clay pebbles for the playing pieces. I really like how they turned out! They are really shiny because I glazed them with a really nice glossy glaze. The granite looking one was a lot easier than it looks, because the clay already came like that. 🙂 The purple one has little translucent spots on it, and the rest are marbled clay.

Now for my masterpiece – the gnomes! 😀 I also made a gnome-house and table set for them.

Here are the two little gnomes…

And here are more details of their house. I made this by first forming a skeleton of 6-8 sticks, draping it over a tinfoil ball, and baking them. Then I wove a green log through those sticks for a vine, and filled in some of the gaps with more sticks in different colors. I added a sprinkling of tiny pink flowers for more color.

I made and baked the top yellow flower separately. I started with the inner layers and progressed outwards, adding the texturing details after I put the flower together. After it was baked, I glued it to the stick-part with this Sculpey glue which bonds as it bakes. And that’s it!

Here is the table set. I might sell this on Etsy sometime soon, but I’m too attached to my gnomes and gnome house to sell them. XD

And that’s it! I’m not an expert, but I still really enjoy playing with polymer clay. Do you feel like “claying” now? If you do make something, I’d love to see it! (Here is a link to the kind of clay I use. I highly recommend it!: Premo Polymer Clay.) Have you ever worked with polymer clay before?

Thanks for reading!

***Allison***

P. S. We still have snow here, but it’s at that messy state between slush and snow. It’s kind of like the last remnants of nail polish that seem to stay on your nails for weeks after most of it has worn off. I always wish both snow and nail polish would last longer, and then just go away all at once. At least the snow still looks pretty nice, although I don’t know if I can say the same thing for my fingernails. 🙂 Do you still have snow?

2015, Award, News + Lots of Photos!

December 31, 2015December 31, 2015 | Allison

Happy New Year! Okay, get ready for a long post, because today I will be reviewing my 2015 bloggy year, doing an award, and telling you one of my New Year’s resolutions. Ready? First up, my blog year – it was a great year, and a HUGE year, at least compared to last year. Taking into account the fact that I only blogged 7 months last year instead of 12 this year, still, the stats increased A LOT. And thanks to all of you, I now have almost 60 followers! SQUEEEE! 😀 😀 Here are the yearly stats for this year and last year:

Last year (in orange)

This year (in orange)

And here is the little WordPress year in review thingy they sent me:

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 3,500 times in 2015. If it were a cable car, it would take about 58 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Now for the award. I don’t usually do awards, but I decided to do this one because it wasn’t just random questions, and I thought it was interesting to see when other people did this. So… I was nominated by Genna and Mercer Creative. Thank you so much!

1. Thank the person that nominated you
2. Start a blog post and answer the questions below
3. Add 1-3 of your Favorite\Best blog photos
4. Nominate up to ten people

1. How long have you had a blog?
I started this blog in May of 2014, so I’ve had it for about a year and a half.

2. Why did you start blogging?
I kind of forget, but I think it was probably because my sister started with her school program, and it made me want to start a blog too.

3. Do you like photography?
I love photography! 😀

4. Did you start your blog on your own?
Yep. Well, my sister and mom helped me.

5. Why do you like these photos so much?
It was kind of hard to choose just 3 of my favorites, so since it’s a review of 2015 anyway, I’m just going to do some of my favorite photo pictures and posts from 2015. XD

I think one of my all time favorite posts was this dandelion post. Here’s a picture from it:

I just love how crystal clear and beautiful the pictures turned out. I also love this Lily (The Flower) post – I love dewdrops!

A few of my favorite bunny posts are this funny bunny post, these two Lily (the rabbit) posts here and here,

and this Christmas post from the bunnies. Because they are just so CUTE!

My favorite other pet post might be this Joy the kitten post. I like the angle of this photo, and Joy was just adorable!

Here are some other pictures I really like that I took in 2015, and a few from 2014, which are captioned “2014.”

Whew! That was a lot of pictures! I nominate Hayley from Flourishing By Restful Falls for the award.

OK. Now for one of my New Years’ Resolution (the news part of the title). I want to start an Etsy shop! I’m going to be selling things I make online there, including polymer clay animals and other polymer clay things, and maybe stuffed animals like this one. But I need more ideas! I would greatly appreciate any suggestions with what you would like me to make that you would buy. If you need some ideas from what I’ve already made, click on the category “My Creations” on my category cloud on my blog sidebar. Thank you!

So, that’s it! Thanks so much for a great bloggy year, readers!

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

***Allison***

P. S. See you next year!

Allison Marie

Photography, Artsy Things, & Lifestyle Inspiration

Etsy

Sketchbook Tour + More

The Color Box {A Story + A Surprise}

The Color Box Studio

Story Behind the Shop // My Mission:

Behind the Name

What I Sell

What is Gicleé?

My County Fair Entries for 2017

How to Edit Photos, Part 1: The Basics

Introduction

Basic Edits

Using Your Tools

How to Fix an Over-Exposed Photo

How to Whiten a Photo

1,000 Followers Giveaway!

» The Prize «

» How to Enter «

» To Collect Extra Entries… «

»When Will This Giveaway Close?«

Some Clayations :)

Recent Clay Creations

2015, Award, News + Lots of Photos!

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Story Behind the Shop // My Mission:

Behind the Name

What I Sell

What is Gicleé?

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Introduction

Basic Edits

Using Your Tools

How to Fix an Over-Exposed Photo

How to Whiten a Photo

Share this on:

» The Prize «

» How to Enter «

» To Collect Extra Entries… «

»When Will This Giveaway Close?«

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