Turtle time!

I haven't updated in a long while and haven't been taking pictures of things I've been doing.  I have no excuse. 

Here is a picture of my turtle playing xbox instead. :)

Tute Time!

So in an effort to make my teeny-somewhat-dark-entirely-beige basement apartment some life I decided to re-arrange the furniture, sew some curtains, and most importantly do over a 20 year old wooden dresser.  All of this was under $100 since I had some of the supplies already but it's cheap and easy if you have a free long-weekend.
Want to know how I did it?  Read on me cha-chas!

Cute n' Fuzzy Feelings

Lately I've had a lot of time off and rather than saying I'm going to do a lot and then laying on the couch watching W Network I've actually done  a lot of crafts.

For those of you not in the loop with the crocheting underground (the loop -- get it?), amigurumi (am-e-goo-room-e) is the latest trend.  I bought a whole book of patterns to fool around with but since I've been crocheting for about 10 years I can also just make 'em up.

Without further aidu, meet "Topsy" 

To Home Depot!

I recently invested in a hunk of press-board at Home Depot. Something to fill the gap left in my life since using up my last canvas some time ago (wood is much cheaper).

I had in mind a rather simple stencil for the 3 pieces but today after frigging around with PS I had an apparition and skipped my usual 2 hour nap to boud off and start what has become the longest art project of life...and I haven't started painting yet.

My thought was that I'd make a really classy painting from spray paint, creating a stencil out of tissue paper, duct tape, and bristol board.

What actually ended up happening was a 4-day-long epic involving sharp knives and protective masks.

Genisis: Pre-Day One
I had been thinking about a red/black/white painting for awhile. Something big and high contrast that would be striking on a large wall or above, oh, let's say my kitchen table.
As usual though, while looking for elements to photo-shop and collage together I ended up going in an entirely different direction.


Long story short I had a dream. One that involved a 4 foot sheet of press board and a stencil.

Day one
After nearly going stir crazy thinking of ways to scam an overhead projector out of someone lucky enough to have one I came up with the idea to import the picture onto my boyfriend's nintendo wii, show it on our TV and painstakingly (really, hard on the knees), trace the picture onto sheets of tissue paper.
This is me cutting out the giant stencil, it took me almost 8 hours to go from start to cut-out.
Day...18? I took a little trip in between
I headed outside on a surprisingly warm late-August day to start and finish spraying the whole thing. This turned out to be an ordeal in itself since the stencil would not lay completely flat and the paint would drip down.

Also a problem were the negative spaces which I may or may not have cut out of the picture entirely.

At this point I was putting in the red. I realized that I had to protect the black part that I had just done. I really had no idea what order to do things in other than the red had to go under the black.

In the end everything turned out pretty well. I wasn't patient enough to go out to get white paint for the background after I wasted an entire can without priming the wood. I regret that now because I think it would look a lot better on a white background rather than the beige.


So now I have two more pieces of wood and I'm just waiting around for inspiration. Now...where to hang this one...