Day 47

Posting yesterday's thing today because I was out late (what? I have some semblance of a social life now? I'm still kind of amazed).

My parents' gave me this book, The Daily Book of Art: 365 Reading that Teach, Inspire & Entertain, for Kids Day this year (a holiday my family invented between seven to ten years ago, that has since been made into an actual national holiday). I've really been enjoying it! Since it's really slow at my job during the summer I've been reading more than one of the entries per day, and I've also been going deeper into research about the topics they touch on. For instance the book has one page with maybe 200 words about Johannes Vermeer, but I went and read the very thorough Wikipedia page about him, which also led me to this list of all his paintings, as well as here, a really well done website about Vermeer where you can hover over his paintings and learn fascinating details about them. I am such an art nerd that when it mentioned on the wiki page that he was unique at his time in his use of natural ultramarine (very expensive) I had to read all about ultramarine here, which also then led me here, which is a Google Earth view of a factory in France that makes synthetic ultramarine. I think it is just so cool that you can see the blue all over the roof from the chimneys even when you zoom out several times.

ANYWAY. The point in all that is that I chose for yesterday's art to make some illustrated notes about Vermeer since I was finding it so exciting to learn about him. (Ignore my horrid sketch of Woman in Blue Reading a Letter; I had her face pretty good then erased it thinking I could get it better, and of course I couldn't.) Also, the weird looking Meer at the top is how he signed Woman with a Pearl Necklace, and is similar to how he signed his other works, as you can see here.
(Click on the picture if you want to see it larger.)

Day 46 - Catching Up

Catch up day!

I will try to go in chronological order as best as I can; I don't have exact dates for many of these.

In February, two days after my last blog post, I was at my parent's house and drew some pictures with my little sister, who was six at the time. She drew the two on the left (a mountain and me) and I drew the two on the right (an alien flower and my sister with pink and blue hair and green skin). 

I'm pretty sure I must have done something between February 16th and the end of March, but I have no idea what it was. -_- If anything...

Easter is traditionally a big day for churches all over the world, and at Connections, the little church I've been attending for a little over a year, Jeremy (our pastor's right hand man) wanted to do something to give to visitors that would also show how creative our church is. So he bought a bunch of green coffee beans and roasted them himself, and asked me to create the labels.

May I introduce to you Jittery Jonah (regular) and Mellow Mary (decaf). Click on the photos to enlarge.





















And here's what they look like on the packages! They printed darker than I had anticipated so some detail in Jonah's scene was lost, but they still look pretty sweet.

Connections often does series of sermons that sometimes have videos or dramas to go with them. In April they asked me to be one of the people in charge of creating sets for the dramas, along with a pretty cool guy named Jeff. Jeff and I had about maybe four days between agreeing to do this and the next series! We had to get a concept for the set that worked with what was in the mind of Josh, the guy who had written the drama, draw it out, and paint it all! It was a big project and I ended up pulling an all-nighter the Saturday before and having to skip church in the morning to sleep before going to work at 12:30. It was kind of a bummer. But the set turned out awesome and I got to watch the video later and be there for the next three weeks of the series.
Unfortunately, this set got painted over for the next series before I got the chance to take good photos (makes me want to cry every time I think about it!) but luckily there are videos of all four weeks of the series that you can check out here.
Jeff painted all the beautiful bolts of fabric and one of the curtains. He also bought all the paint which was AMAZING!
I drew everything out then painted the dress form, sewing machine and everything on the table (sewing scissors and a pin cushion), the shelves holding the spools of thread, the rest of the curtains, and lastly filled in the carpet and the brown parts of the fabric shelves.

Here's the sketch I sent to Josh for approval before we started in on the big panels. We didn't end up having a mirror and a few other minor things were tweaked.

I started working in February (part of why I stopped blogging- less time) and we have to wear our ID badges every day. They gave us these ugly green lanyards, but with how much I love beautiful things I really wanted to have something pretty to wear my ID on that could function as a lanyard as well as part of my outfit... so sometime in April (I think) I made this beaded necklace. Unfortunately since then it has broken and I've just been using a necklace I got at Claire's to hold my ID.

My dear friend Ruthilyn has decided that what she wants to do with her life is help women get through the junk in their pasts to be able to find true intimacy with their husbands, as well as gaining some confidence in their own sexiness along the way. She's a Confidence and Intimacy Coach and has been networking through public workshops and other events. I helped her create the poster for her workshops.
It was fun to do something a bit more on the graphic design side. Working with her to find fonts that conveyed the mood she was looking for (and to find a font that fit her need as well as being free to download for commercial use) was a nice challenge. I also got to refresh some photoshop skills I'd learned back in 10th grade - using gradients and learning some tricks with brushes, as well as finding, downloading, and installing a lovely set of lace brushes. I'm no master at photoshop by any means but it pleased me to be able to figure out a few things.

I also was helping Ruthilyn brainstorm different names for her business and logos to go with them... neither of these were used but it felt good to have a reason to work on some sort of artsy thing (that should have been a clue - Jessica, DUH, get back to your blog!).

Next! My husband and I had a stretch where we were struggling a bit and I wanted something around the house to remind me to lean on God through it all... I started on this sign but sadly never finished. It quotes Matthew 19:26. I saw this technique on pinterest where you draw or write something with hot glue then paint over it and I really liked the look. I went through a lot of glue sticks! When I get around to finishing this I want to change the color from this bright teal to a cooler sea green color, and maybe sponge a cream color around the edges and on some of the words. Maybe.

In May my aunt commissioned me to paint a case for her new iPhone. I actually have an etsy shop selling hand painted iPhone cases and flash drives (and pretty much anything is a possibility for me to paint in this style). If you so desire, you can find my etsy shop here, and my facebook page here.  If you're wanting to see my best cases, the facebook page has a lot more on it at the moment (I sold quite a few cases and haven't made many new ones to replace them so unfortunately the shop is a bit bare).

Anyway - this is the case I painted for my aunt. This photo is not the completed case (wow Jessica, really representing yourself well!) because I forgot to take a final photo before I left the house to bring it to her. The last thing I did was to put a smaller yellow dot on top of every dot you see here, making the finished case look kind of like a galaxy of stars.

As a side note, under the case you can see my dining room table that I painted last winter before I started this blog. I'm thinking maybe one day I may do a post with all the projects I did before I started the blog. Good idea or no?

On Memorial day every year all of my aunts and uncles and cousins who live here (my dad's side) go to the different cemeteries where we have family. My grandpa tells us stories of each person who died before we were born, and if we knew them we tell stories we remember about them. For some reason it's always been one of my favorite traditions. Some years ago none of our flowers had bloomed by Memorial Day, so we painted flowers and hearts on small rocks and left those on each grave site... and we now do that every year, adding to our tradition. Occasionally they are still there when we go back the next year, which is always great to see.

The two rocks I am holding I made specifically for my Grandma Michelle, who died when I was twelve. She was so amazing; I really loved her a lot and often wish she was still here.

In December of last year I went crazy making snowflakes and putting them ALL over the house. My best ones I put up on our front windows for some decoration rather than hassling with lights etc. The trouble is that our windows still look like this in July, where it was 108 degrees earlier this week.

I didn't want to take them down until I had something spring-timey (now summery) to replace them with. I started making some paper flowers to put up there, but... never finished. Anyone else noticing a trend? So sadly my windows still look like Christmas while my poor poppies and daisies sit waiting for some purple and yellow companions. My husband teases me that I might as well leave the snowflakes up until it's winter again.

Sometime in June I had the fabulous idea that someday (within the next five years) I want to buy a used school bus and convert it into a traveling home! It has since been an idea that I am fairly obsessed with. I had even started drawing out plans, trying to fit everything we need into a 8'x40' (320 square foot) space. We currently live in a house that is somewhere around 1,100 square feet so... it will be interesting. But I have seen blogs about families of five and even families of nine living in house buses so... with just two of us it should be totally doable! ...Right?







For the last four or five weeks I have been participating in a weekly class based on the book The Life Model: Living from the Heart Jesus Gave You, which has been pretty great. For the second week of the class we were asked to bring a photo of something that brings us joy. I am ridiculously forgetful so I left for work that morning without a photo (plus I don't really have many photos anyway), sooo... during my down time between stuff at work I drew a picture of some of the things that bring me joy: all of my sisters and my mom, Mitch, wildflowers, music/podcasts (ipod), my house bus dream, paint and paintbrushes, and a big comfy chair with a book!

The series Connections is doing right now is all about marriage. There isn't a drama, but they wanted a nice little set in the background anyway. This one was SO much faster and easier than the last one. It only took me eight or nine hours by myself this time instead of 35+ hours with Jeff helping me.
I don't have a photo yet (I really need a camera) but there is a video for it! (Here.) Be warned, this was a talk about marriage, and they do talk about sex a bit.

Lastly, Today! A couple weeks ago I had kind of an emotional breakdown centered around having no clue who the heck I am. Mitch (husband) said, "You know how I turn my painful stuff into songs? You should be doing that with art," and I told him if I painted my feelings right now it would end up being a big paper covered in black scribbles, because I feel like a big mass of black scribbles right now. But then as we talked an idea formed in my head of how I could express how I was feeling without making a mess of black scribbles, and I have been slowly working on that for the last week or so. It's by no means a masterpiece but it's something. I'm making art and I'm figuring out how I feel while doing it.
I'm just going to show you a sketch I did before starting instead of how far I am at this moment, because with some art that is more personal to me I don't really like to show anyone until it is finished.

So, there we go, all caught up. Now I just need to start working on something everyday and keep blogging about it!

I REFUSE TO FAIL.

Day 187... or Not.

This post should be Day 187... but instead it is still only Day 46.

I have missed 142 days of keeping my goal to work on art every day and blog about it.

I did that thing I always did with journals growing up: I missed one day. That one day made it easy to justify missing another day, then I'd missed a week, then it was too overwhelming to catch up on everything I'd missed, then I just got depressed every time I thought about my failure, which made it even more impossible to start again.

But.

I am starting again.

I really want this blog to be a part of me, not just something lurking in my head making me depressed every time I think about it. I am choosing not to fail.

I have been struggling a lot lately with issues surrounding the question "Who the heck am I?" and I think a starting point is to get back into art. If I make a conscious decision to make art a part of me then I am just a little bit closer to figuring out who the heck I am, right?

So, first things first. I have done some artsy stuff  in the last 142 days, so I think I'm going to do one big post with all of those, then dive right back into my art every day and hopefully stick with it this time.

Here we go! I'm excited to be here again!

Day Forty Five

Valentine's Day!

This is the second Valentine's Day my husband and I have been together. I think Mitch must have been working last year because I cannot remember it at all, but this year was awesome. In fact, it's the best day I can remember! We didn't even really have gifts for each other or anything, but we spent the day together and both tried really hard to be kind and loving and let go of the things that bother us about each other, at least for the day. It was so amazing! I hope so much that eventually this can be how we are all the time... for now we're still working on it.

ANYhoo... since the hubs and I spent the day out having fun and being in love with each other, I didn't have much time to create anything.

I decided to make a Valentine's Day heart snowflake. I tried to make an elegant heart,  but yeah.... Mitch said it looks like emo hearts, and I think they look like evil nightmare owls that want to eat your soul. Not exactly romantic. At all.

 
But it's all good, I had a great day and I'm not going to let a failed art attempt ruin it! 

Days Forty Three and Forty Four

2/13/13 Just popping in really quick to say that I'm not dead and I actually have worked on stuff the last two days but I've just been lame and not posted it. Hopefully I will get it done tomorrow! Right now I'm off to bed. Sorry.

EDIT 2/15/13 Ok, I'm finally getting around to writing this post. I'm really excited about it actually!

So. I messed up dyeing my altered pants purple, so I bleached them white. I like how they turned out, so I may keep them this way, or I may eventually try dying them again, who knows. 

Here's what the pants looked like after I finished altering them from flares to skinnies, and then what they looked like after my sad attempt at dying them.

And then... what they look like now! (I'm slowly starting to figure out how to take more flattering photos of my legs, lol). 

I used this blog post to help guide me through the bleaching. Her shorts apparently took 31 hours (?!?) to be completely bleached, which is kind of confusing to me, since my jeans took only three hours. I probably could have done it longer to get them a little more pure white, but I was satisfied with them and I didn't want the bleach to hurt the fabric more than necessary. And it's a good thing I took them out of the bleach when I did, because on day forty four I had to do some repairs.

The bleach literally ate away at the hole where the button goes through the fabric!

I had to sew that hole up before I could attach a new button, but it's pretty rough since it wasn't just a cut, where you can just sew together the two sides, but a big gaping hole. I wasn't sure the best way to go about fixing that, so I kind of just pretended it was just a cut and pulled two sides together and sewed it all up, but it created gross puckers. A better way to do it probably would have been to put a piece of fabric behind it, but I didn't think of that until later when I had to fix the next thing.

Anyway, here's the new button I attached and the inside with my mess of sewing.

The next thing was that when I put these pants on for the first time after bleaching (then washing and drying), one of the belt loops ripped right out. I put a piece of the jeans (from where I cut off the extra fabric after altering) behind the rip and sewed it all to that backing piece. I also did this to one other belt loop that hadn't ripped out yet, but I saw some tears forming so I did it as a preemptive measure.

 

 

All fixed up! I like how these jeans turned out. Hopefully they're still strong enough that I can wear them for awhile without them falling apart. Though I may be getting good at jean repairs in the near future...

Day Forty Two

Sooo... Today I dyed some jeans. (The second pair I altered). I dyed them purple!

I just dyed over the already existing blue with its fading and everything, trying to get a look like this:

It seemed to go well. I followed all the directions and checked around online to see if people had other helpful tips. I used two dye packets because I wanted them pretty dark. After about 45 minutes in the dye I rinsed the jeans and put them in the washer. I was pretty confident I'd done everything right... so I was surprised when I pulled them out of the wash.

For one thing they weren't very dark, and I knew they'd get even lighter once I put them through the dryer. So that was pretty disappointing.

THEN, on the front were all these blotches and streaks where it had barely been dyed! I was shocked! I don't know how this happened... I thought I stirred them around in the dye plenty, but I guess it wasn't enough.

So now I guess I'm going to have to re-dye them. I think that if I try to do it again as it is, the lighter spots will still show up, since the entire jeans will get darker at the same rate (So the parts that did get dye will get darker as well as the un-dyed spots, so those spots will still end up lighter. If that makes any sense at all). What I'm going to have to do is bleach the entire thing white and then redye, which will end up with a look more like this:

A more solid purple, without the darks and lights created by the blue behind it. I'm ok with this too, and I may end up liking it more, but it just means more work and having to wait longer for my purple pants! I'm also worried about the bleach weakening my poor jeans.

I'm just so bummed that this didn't work out today. Sad face.

Day Forty One

Still making "fabric." I'm just making a bunch... I should probably actually find a bag pattern and figure out how much I actually need.

But knowing me I probably won't.

Day Forty

I finished the pattern I started yesterday, but then as I was taking a picture of it I accidentally took another picture which I find much more interesting, so I decided to post that instead. I just put it through Photoshop really quickly to turn it black and white and up the contrast a bit.

I really like how the fake wood grain of my floor turned into these lovely lines that look almost like they are flowing. Or like long soft fur or something. Anyway, I like it a lot even though it was completely accidental!

Day Thirty Nine

Just continuing designing my "fabric."

The finished bag will have plain black (from black garbage bags so I don't have to color a whole white garbage bag with Sharpie) mixed with different black and white patterns. I'm hoping that the fact that all the patterns are the same colors unify them and prevent the bag from becoming too busy. If it does end up busy, I'm ok with that too. I wish I could use an accent color in the patterns but I know if I do that then I'll get over matchy later and only wear it with outfits with that color in it. I want a bag that can go with anything, so I'm limiting myself to black and white.

Day Thirty Eight

I decided I want to make myself a bag like the ones I did at Christmas out of the plastic bags. So for today I just have the very beginnings of the project, which will take awhile. I have to create all the "fabric" first before I can sew anything.

I want my bag to be all black and white, mostly so it can be pretty versatile with outfits.

After coloring the design with Sharpie (or a similar product) you turn it inside out so the ink doesn't get messed up and ruin your iron, and then you layer more plastic behind it so that it ends up as decently strong material.

Day Thirty Seven

I finished the second pair of jeans today! Hooray!

I like how the first pair turned out better, but I I think they fit me better in the first place, so there's not much I can do about that. I think I'll dye that pair dark blue and this pair purple!  Or maybe white with cool designs in black. I can't decide.

This is not my favorite photo of me (or at least my legs) for several reasons, but whatever. I'm not a model, I just alter jeans, and that's what I'm showing you, not my fab bod!

Day Thirty Six

After a for-the-most-part great day, I hadn't made or worked on anything artsy... funny (not really) how feeling good makes me not get any art done because I'm actually being productive and social, and feeling bad makes me not create anything because I have zero motivation and I tend to wallow and/or become apathetic. Great.

So after my good day I just had some nice alone time listening to a podcast I'm addicted to called Snap Judgement and coloring. Whoo! Gotta love it.

Hopefully I'll start being original soon. I really need to start doing some more research on artists/art I love. Since I got a job instead of going to school this semester I sort of promised myself that I'd continue educating myself by doing research on my own, but look how that's gone so far... yeah, it hasn't. Come on Jessica.

Day Thirty Five

I started sewing my second pair of jeans today. It seemed like I spent ages on them but I got barely anything done, which is always so frustrating. The first pair went way faster than these ones, which seems odd to me.

I wanted to do the inner seam right (I didn't on the first pair- I did it the easy way and now it looks a bit weird, I'll post pics eventually) so I found this tutorial on how to do it... but I didn't realize until I had already started sewing it that you have to be able to open it otherwise you'll just sew the seam to the other side of your pant leg. If that makes sense. Since I had sewn the other side first, I can't make the inside seam the right way, and I had to rip out the stitches I did before realizing.

Point is, it was frustrating and took a long time and I didn't even really accomplish much. Grr. And for that reason I do not have a photo today.

I hate how half of the sentences I write start with I. It's true that this is basically a me centered blog, but it still really annoys me. Hopefully as I keep writing I will improve and get better at avoiding that.

Day Thirty Four

I had a pretty mellow day, doing a lot of reading, and went to a Superbowl thing to socialize a bit. I just did some more coloring... what can I say, the kid in me loves it. Colored pencils are just fun! I've always loved layering them to create shading and new colors, especially when drawing plants for some reason.

I switched coloring pages and I'm liking this one a lot better, I think because I love the green living look of it... I can't wait for spring! Winter is not my cup of tea.

The art I'm coloring is from D. Palmer and can be found at the link on day 31 & 32's post.

Day Thirty Three

I started the first stages of altering my second pair of flare jeans today.

I put them on inside out and pinned them close to my legs, as skinny jeans would fit, then used a pink hi-liter to draw along the pins. Then I took the pins out, took them off, and used a ruler to mark cleaner lines with a black sharpie (this may bleed through so if you do this be smarter than me and avoid the sharpie. If you have it, use sewing chalk or something removable). This time around I remembered not to cut away the excess yet (to give you mess up room while sewing).

Day Thirty One and Thirty Two

I missed posting for a couple days there... and I feel like this post, an effort to catch up on those days, is only barely legitimate. I only got enough done on those days to be able to tell myself that I did do something and I didn't fail. But it wasn't enough for me to feel like it was post worthy, hence it not having been posted until now when I need to post something else but have to post this first. If you followed that train of thought I congratulate you. Anyway, the reasons for this almost failure:

I got a job! I haven't started yet, but I've been having to do paperwork and a drug test and had to fill out stuff for a background check and sign lots of stuff. I'm pretty excited to start, but I have to wait another week or two before starting, and in the meantime I just feel useless and blaaaaaaahhh. Depression kills any motivation to create that I might otherwise have. We've also been spending time with Mitch's best friend and his wife before they head back to Texas.

All THAT is why I have been utterly lame at working on anything and posting it. I apologize to anyone out there who actually cares.

So the sad excuse for non-failure I have for January 31st and February 1st is this:

I just started coloring, because that's somewhat therapeutic, and I wanted something to erase all the stress from tax forms etc, etc, relating to this new job.  But because of all that other stuff I barely got anything done on it. By the way, it's really hard to see what I'm coloring in because I printed it very lightly so that the lines aren't visible when (if) I'm finished. The blue things look kind of like finger nails at this point, but they're meant to be gem stones- sapphires I suppose?

I found this site with lots and lots of free downloadable and printable coloring pages. Most of the coloring pages on the site are for kids and would be great in a classroom, but some are good for adults (my favorite artist they have on the site is D. Palmer).

Day Thirty

I really want to dye my jeans (oh man I keep forgetting to put my pictures on here during the day and then when I write my post for the day I'm ready to go to bed and don't do it then either... sorry about that) but I can't get to the store to buy dye because hubby dear has our only car at work all the time. We're working on getting another car soon. So since I can't do the jeans and I'm sick of the rug (poor abandoned thing) I just made a couple snowflakes today. Mitch is so sick of my snowflakes. They are ALL OVER the house, and I always get tiny little paper scraps everywhere.

I was more ambitious today... I made PEOPLE snowflakes.

First I tried a dude. he turned out ok. Proportions are a bit off.

Then I tried a Marylin Monroe-esque woman, who turned out much better. I didn't use the best scissors so both are a bit messy.

I drew arrows to the face that is the best: the further down the fold is when you're cutting, the weirder it looks. If that makes any sense. And sorry the photos are a bit blurry. Shame on my for not checking and re-doing them.

Day Twenty Nine

Another quickie... just made a little snowflake in the last few minutes of the day.

I made it out of a page from a book about tumors... so the front (which I like better) is just text, and the back has a photo of a magnified tumor. Gross, but I actually think those photos look pretty cool and can even be beautiful.