Showing posts with label birthday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label birthday. Show all posts

Tantrums

Dearest blog readers,

It has been one of those days, nay, one of those weeks. Yes, it has. Just a parade of indignities, marching one right after the other. I'm not going to indulge myself with the full list, but let me give you a single example; I exploded my fave cooking dish last night. Seriously, it exploded. I wish I were joking. I was boiling water in the aforementioned dish, and all of a sudden, KABLAM!!!!!! Glass and a flood of hot water across the stovetop. It was awesome. I know, sarcasm doesn't always work in print, so lest you think I'm being serious, I am not. It was the worst. 

So, to summarize, the week felt approximately like this:

And now, it's after 11pm on the eve of my 31st birthday, and I'm still working. You'd think that my birthday might perk me up... but it's just been that kind of a week. So I took a break from this current job, and I threw an art tantrum.

And you know what? 


I might actually feel a little better.

Birthday

Busy, busy day today... but still plenty of time to do a wee birthday painting for the best sister a girl could hope for.

Happy birthday D!


Birthday

Halloo everyone!

As some of you might know, I seem to be marking a significant number this year. I've been thinking a bunch about growing up this year and made a recent (albeit fairly obvious) discovery - you can grow up without becoming a grown up! Woooah! Amazing.

So I made a little birthday list. 


Now take a closer look... At one item in particular...


I got home late last night, just around midnight, and walked in to find that my apartment looked like this:


My ever-amazing bf had filled our ENTIRE apartment with balloons!



I thought it was amazing...


The cat, however, wasn't convinced.


Fun With Paper

Hallooo all,

Work life has been busy of late. I recently started freelancing in-house at HarperCollins a couple of days each week doing design work in the children's department. Awesome stuff. It's nice to add some variety to my work week. But it does mean less free time for updates and random projects. Much of my painting time these days is for freelance jobs.

I did, however, have a little time in the past few months to make a few birthday cards for a couple of friends who live across the country. My camera is behaving a bit wonky right now (it may, in fact, be time for a new one...), so I only have one of the cards documented. And some of the images that I do have are only so-so.

Anywho, for the holidays, N sent me an AMAZING paper-cut chicken (which will soon be hanging in my kitchen), and inspired me to play around a bit with paper. I had an idea of what I wanted, but I knew it was going to be fragile.

The first card I made was paper-cut text glued onto a solid piece of construction paper. For this second card, I decided to get fancy and do a couple of paper-cuts layered together. First, I cut out the main text.


And the different sets of secondary text.

birthday text in process

birthday!

instructions under construction 

instructions!

And because this one was a bit more fragile, I decided that it needed a case.

I'm a sucker for birds, and I just happened to have a bit of old wrapping paper lying around. It wasn't quite big enough, but with a few construction paper additions, I had myself a shmancy looking custom case.


Once I had the case and all of the text cut out, I got to gluing. I love the smell of proper paper paste - it reminds me of sunny, dusty libraries and old books. No photos of in-process gluing - I didn't want to get any glue on my poor, malfunctioning camera. It certainly didn't need anything else gumming up the works.

Ta da!





Craftitude

Halloo blog readers!

So in addition to the usual sorts of art-working things, I've been doing a bunch of crafty things - birthday related projects, in fact. I made a certain someone with a new job a "cube" decorating kit. When you work amongst a sea of cubicles, you need some fun stuff for your desk.

In addition to photos, a mug, tea, snacks, and random toys, I also personalized a couple of notebooks. I hate being a brand snob, but I love my Moleskines... love love love. Other than something handmade, they make my fave notebooks ever. If I'd had a bit more time, I probably would have hand bound something... but for lack of free time (in light of recent publishing internship), I bought a couple of moleskines and proceeded to personalize them. It's always helpful to have somewhere to organize your thoughts, soooo...

Work Thoughts:




and Creative Thoughts





In addition to thought-organizing and all of the other stuff I mentioned, it's also nice to have a little work buddy...

As of yet unnamed -




I've actually gotten a lot of good responses from my teeny weeny goldfish bowl, so I may be making more of them. (Hard to tell scale here, but it's made in a votive holder.)

Until next time!