Happy St. Valentine's Day!

I'm usually not one to care for February 14th, but my group of kids this year have warmed my heart. Though most of the sweet gifts are actually sweets. Lots and LOTS of sweets. They've also showered me with wonderful drawings and hugs. A very warming gesture. 

So instead of me posting my own work, I'll be posting all the wonderful art pieces done by my very own little monkeys. Enjoy!

 "Colorfully Abstract"

Jason-1st grade 

"Heartfelt"

Lesly 1st grade

"A Flower a Day"

Yuli 2nd grade


"Queen for a Day"

Melany, grade 1


"Self-Titled" 

Zayden, grade 2

"The Proposal"

"The Bling Ring"

grade 1

"The Pretentious Tutor"

Hey, don't be fooled by the rock that I got! ;P

Oh, the wonderful gifts of a young child. I'm sure some of these were just items they found and/or received and didn't want...so they "gifted" them to me. haha But whatever, I love them kiddos. Maybe I can snag a few pics of the Valentine Owls we were making today. They're a HOOT! 

 Hear dem owls!

The Mother load!!!

 The kids bombarded me with candy as soon as I stepped out. My dress pockets literally looked like a chipmunk when it stuffs its cheeks full of acorns.

Thank you kiddos!!

Te Amo!!

A Doubtful Drought...

I haven't spent much time with my arts collection since my last Landscape Architecture class. I would say that's about a few good years. So I haven't really played around with the various mediums I've acquired over the years. That includes, watercolor paints, ink, chalk, chalk pastels, chalk pencils, color pencils, fancy art markers, charcoal (my personal favorite), crayons, and sewing materials.

When I do decide to pick something up I'm undecided as to which medium I'm actually going to stick to, on each project. It's quite a dilemma. Therefore, you'll find most of my art pieces are mixed medium. For this sketch piece I decided to work with colored and chalk pencils. I'm not a fan of color pencils, because I don't think they blend as beautifully as chalk and charcoal. But they're always conveniently nearby.

Well, that's enough texty-text. Here are i pesci (fish) for this surprise rainy weather.

The B/W version:

Pencil sketch of Angel Fish (upper left); simple fish (right); eel (lower left)

Here's the color version I'm still working on...

Angel fish (top left); mechanical fish (right); eel (bottom left)

....as you can see it's a work in progress.

For those of you that know me or have scanned through my pieces, you'll notice a reoccurring mechanical nature to my figures, and that has a lot to do with my interest in Steampunk and Steampunk culture. There's this wonderful playfulness of soft and hard/harsh textures that make objects so interesting.

I may start over on the yellow Angel fish just because I'm not quite happy with how the chalk took to the color pencil surface....because of the waxy-like texture of the color pencil obvi. ugh. I like my mechanical fishy waaaaay better in blending. I started with the chalk pencils and did some highlights in color pencil. It can use more highlights, and shadowing.

I still don't know what I'm going to do with the eel yet. I want to give it an luminescent look. I may attempt using watercolor for that one. Just because watercolor can give it that transluscent quality.

The background was initially going to be charcoal black..but I didn't want to create too much contrast. Sadly I have not a dark blue medium in chalk. I may just paint over with a deeper shade of blue or stick with a charcoal black background. 

I think I'll play around with my watercolors and ink next. I love the flexibility in light-dark shades of color.

Tutti Amo! <3

That's So Clutch? *_*

I've been wanting to making my own wallet for a while. I had initially started with these ideas...

Hand-drafted ideas of what I had in mind. (sorry for the image quality.
It was tucked away, got wrinkled aaand I didn't feel like scanning) :/

and initially was going to use these materials....

Kitten & sea foam green cloth 

However, that project ended up hiding away in my sewing bag. I even had put placement needles in the green cloth. Finally after some intense Pinterest'ing (gawd I <3 pinterest) and youtube searching I found another way to make a wallet/clutch-thingy. The materials would be more to my liking (as opposed to the very thin and flimsy cloth) and it wouldn't take as much work. 

(Note: I had broken my last needle for my sewing machine so I needed a more hand-stitch friendly project)

So this is what I started with....

Gold napkin, multi-colored (neutral) woven placemat,
scissors, gold yarn, placement needles

 I bought the napkin and placemat at Bed Bath & Beyond for $2.99 (mat) + $1.99 (napkin), coming out to $5 dollars total. I also found a pretty pastel green placemat at the Dollar Tree! I may wait to get some needles for my sewing machine for that one. I liked the colors of the placemat and napkin here (above) more for matching most my outfits, so I got started with this one first. 

I cut the napkin and placemat so that it was a bit smaller. The actual placemat was 14"x14" and napkin was about 1 inch longer on all sides. I wanted my clutch to be smaller so I cut it down to about 8 inches. After cutting to size, I lined the mat with my napkin and pinned it. The napkin wasn't necessary, but aesthetically I thought I would be nice to have a lining. I had to tuck away about 1" of the napkin to fit the size of the mat. 

Top is pinned. Bottom is all sewn up. 

So here is the inside lining and outside of what my clutch will look like. Now onto the next step...sewing up the sides!

Here we have a nice bag 8"width x 9" height (open) & 5" height (closed)

 Almost finished!!!

Time for some embellishments. 

Added a shell button? and a little button hidden underneath (like a pearl!)
Also, a nice off-white, gold-trimmed ribbon which wraps around the clutch

Here's what the clutch looks like closed and open

Side view (empty)

Side view-with items inside

Just another side view with items inside

My hand-sewing could use practice and cleaning up, but it's decent enough that it holds this project together. I used a mix of cross-stitch, button stitch, and other ones that I can't even name. I swear it holds well.

I was going to add a gold chain so I can wear it as a cross bag or purse, but decided against it. It looks nice just as is, and the whole reason for the clutch is that it was small enough to hold items, for me to hold and not be bothered by a purse swinging as I show off my badass dance moves on the dance floor.

Which brings me to the point of why I finally got around to this project. I wanted a clutch to take out for NYE. Unfortunately, I didn't have the time to actually finish it before I went out. But now I have a pretty clutch to take out on my next dance/bar-venture. 

So, Eat Your Hearts Out Designer-pimpin fashionistas!

... and Happy New Year!

Santa's Theatre is Now Open!

Lesson planning is difficult when you are trying to think of ways to both educate and entertain a large group of fussy first graders. They're still trying to grasp basic concepts, learning how to communicate, and decipher words on paper. They even struggle to read their own writing! Which makes writing assignments extremely difficult and time consuming. A mixture of poor teaching skills by their day-school teacher and no pressure at home to practice reading and writing makes for some bad news for these little guys. They are so behind in their reading and writing skills that I have to do something to get them excited about writing and story telling. I mean, they ALWAYS want to tell me stories...So why not give them their very own theatre!

For the theatre lesson, I taught the kids about story elements (character, setting, problem, solution). They are then to create their own Story map in prep for their very own story telling assignment that will end in them telling their story via puppet show. After creating their story map, the students must write 4 sentence about what happens in their story. The kids, so far, have done alright. They still struggle with a lot of spelling, grammar, and coherency...buuuut I'm getting them to write and think about how their story progresses. So, that makes me happy. 

For this task I used a large cardboard box, made a few cut outs and added some color. Thus became Santa's Theatre. I'm excited to see their reactions to their theatre. I'm hoping the kids will be more excited about writing!

...From what I hear, there will be some ninja elves. hehe

updates: The kids LOOOOOOVED their little theatre! :)

Repurpose Your Purpose

Long time no post, right!?

First off, I apologize that I haven't kept constant on my posts. I've been out and about creating new stories and finding inspiration, because lately I've had creator's block. Yes, that's the equivalent of writer's block. Now that I've found inspiration, I'm excited to share.

So let me just inform you on the whole repurpose concept. Take an old shirt or something you find at a thrift shop and make it into something more YOU...Cut it up, tie it up, sew it up. I've become quite familiar with my mom's old sewing machine :3 I've taken my dad's old work shirts and made an apron, an patriotic dress-shirt, took large t-shirts and made them into grocery tote bags. Today I bring you a a men's tank that I got at a thrift store and a shirt I had taken apart before and cleaned up the rough cutting.

Men's Large Tank -->split back women's tank shirt

front view

side view

back view

So yeah, there's the split back shirt. I saw these shirts on pinterest and thought they were so cute.  So I looked up a few d.i.y. ideas. Unfortunately, I came up empty on any 'how to' tutorials. :( So I just guesstimated on how one would go about creating the split back style. Cut the tank right down the middle (backside) and sewed it back up like a racer back, only sewing it closed a quarter of the way down. I'm satisfied with the way it came out. Now compare this $7 repurposed tank to what you find on the net/stores. Yeah, I'm a beast!  

 Blouse --> halter-racer back

front

back (w/bow)

So I took a blouse I had hidden among shirts I never wear and decided to tear it up.  Sorry I don't have a picture of what it looked like before.  So I took apart the sleeves completely. I didn't like the sleeves, they had that slight poof to the shoulders. Kind of like the sleeve below:

Yeah, the style can be very feminine and cute, but I had far outgrown the shirt, but I really like the nautical-like feel the blouse had and didn't want to part from it. So I changed it up. I looked up ideas on Pinterest (a great site for d.i.y. ideas) and found a few no sew repurposed shirt ideas.  First I had two straps going down the back that met at the bottom center- knotted at various points.  However, that looked too messy and bulky. So I took away all the tie-knots and sewed up pieces to make it look more clean. Cleaned up the arm area cut outs and added a bow at the bottom. Vuola!

Altogether both shirts took only a few hours in a day to complete. The tank to split back was really quick. I think it took me like 2 hours max to get it cut, pinned, fitted, and sewn. The blouse to halter took longer because I had to fix previous errors from my last repurpose and then figure out how to make it work using the materials I had left. If you have a sewing machine I highly recommend getting to know how to use it. You'll save yourself lots of money by finding bargain pieces and taking old clothes and making them awesome again! Also, sewing is a great skill to have.

Ok, before I end this post I have a question for my viewers. I have this small boys black t-shirt. Anyone have any suggestions/ideas of what I should do with it? I'd like to hear your thoughts :)

F.Y.I. you can buy any woman's Large/X-large blouse and make a dress out of it by adding a belt :) Just make sure it's the right length.

CIAO <3 <3

Aye Aye Captain!

So I was doing an activity with my kids (the ones I tutor) that involved a boat, a crew, and some really silly instructions. Swab the deck! Ships Ahoy! Draw the Anchor! and many more as the kids quickly followed in the Simon Says-like activity. Twas pretty fun for both the kids and I. Aye, but that's not why we are here right!?

Not to say that the little sidebar there isn't relative to the sketch. Another sleepless night I spent thinking of things I might do other than ol computer and drain (<-getting sucked into a computer screen until I pass out...zzz) So I picked up my sketch pad and sketched away. Well...sort of.

A day prior I had gone through my art bin, the one with all my art papers, mags, and landscape notes. Did a little spring cleaning and it got me into the ol creativity mode again. Grabbed my huge sketch pad (I have 3-4 different sizes..this one is like 11"x 14" I think. Scanned through unfinished sketches or ones I could build on. Found my page of bird sketches and went at it. Vuola! I've been kind of lagging the upload time. I hesitate because I still don't feel it's quite finished. So check back for updates. I want to give this guy some color.

11"x14" sketch pencil/pen on sketch paper

Meet Plink! My little scissor-tailed flycatcher inspired friend. I saw an image of bird with a long, beautiful tail and thought it was the coolest thing! Looked up some more google images of "birds with long tails." The Quetzal is another bird with a similar anatomy. Just an F.Y.I. The flycatcher uses it's long, wispy tail in it's aerobatic stunts catching its food. These must be the most graceful hunters to watch. So I drew a sketch of a bird with a long beautiful tail. :)

I played around with beak styles. Going from long and curved (like that of a hummingbird) to very stumpy and sharp. I finally compromised with a little of both. I originally wanted to mirror the tail in the head feathers, but took on a Hermes helmet approach instead. The double winged headpiece kind of deal. It has a military feel to it as well. I was trying to make the bird more mechanical in its features to have more of a SteamPunk-ish feel. I also looked some images up of SteamPunk air-pirate costumes so as to incorporate something into my drawing. Maybe it shows...maybe it doesn't.

As for the wings...I couldn't decide how to design them. Like I said, I wanted a more mechanical feel for the bird. However, I was having difficulty deciding what I wanted. I ended up with bat-like wings. I suppose it works. The wings still need work as far as mechanical details (how the wing is supposed to extend out and other logistics). Looks like I need to study some Ornithology. So I best get started!

Aye Mate, until our next embarking!

Research & ReConfigure

This is a model of the Landscape Architecture building for my LDA model making class. I failed to take any pictures of the front and sides before I took it apart. I had a lot of fun constructing the model and doing the research. Unfortunately, the fun ended when presentation time came and the teacher began to critique. She was one hard ball. I guess you have to be when you're in a male dominated career that is HIGHLY competitive in itself.

Some cool notes about this project:

-Researching the different bike racks was mind-blowing. The one I used here was the coolest and most efficient for the small space in between the building's two longer sides. The building in the middle is some kind of test lab..for what? I do not know. I think plants maybe. The Geology department and I think another department shares the building. Next store is the Plants Sciences building..I don't know. Bad department situating planning?

-I found some really interesting porch swings and waterfall-like porch covers. One inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright himself. Seriously...ARCHITECTURE IS WAAAAY COOL! Maybe I should have posted this in my other blog..merps. Ohswells! :)

-I spent a lot of time designing what I thought were pretty awesome planters. F.Y.I. professor didn't like my ideas or project all that much. gah! Talk about heart breaking. I guess my awesome research didn't quite show that well through my model. Though she kept telling us "abstract! abstract!" In my head that translates as "glarbitty gloobin, glarbitty gloobin"...in otherwords, I dun know whatcha talkin bout sista!
Momentary digression...
So like I said, spent lots of time coming up with cool ideas for the planter and being proud of what I had thought up. Good times, good times. :)

Yeah, so I don't have much to comment on this project. I promise I'll update with something more interesting on my next post. I'm slowly recovering my artistic tendencies. I've spent too long away from my pencil and pad :(