Hello.

Cheeseburger pincushion/needle book

2009-03-22T20:26:24Z

This pincushion/needle book combo I made has been pretty popular on the ol' Craftster lately, so I figured I'd post it here too.

The top of the bun functions as a pincushion.

...and the lettuce, tomato, cheese, and hamburger patty are needle book pages.

There's a line of ketchup on the bun that serves as a hand way to keep track of needle threaders and safety pins. (It's made of elastic.)

I kind of want to make another of these. I didn't plan this one out very well and I ended up doing things like sewing the ketchup on after I'd almost finished attaching the domed part of the top. Also I think I could make it look quite a lot better (like by using thread that actually matches the color of the bun).

On the other hand, I also have a long list of other things I want to make, so a second burger might not end up happening. We'll see.

LEGO lamp!

2009-03-19T23:05:05Z

When my roommate moved out of the room that is now mine, she left behind several useful items, like a throw rug, an extension cord, and an odd sort of light-on-a-string. It's basically a socket for a light bulb on the end of a long cord, with the switch about two feet from the plug (and about five feet from the socket). I needed a bedside lamp, so I decided to make one - using LEGO bricks.

Here's what the light looked like at first. I have no idea what's up with the weird plastic bit surrounding the bulb. It was easy enough to remove it, so I did.

As everyone who's ever played with LEGO bricks knows, an important first step in any construction project is dumping out your box of bricks.

Since most of my bricks are opaque, and I wanted my lamp to actually give off light, I sorted out all the clear and translucent pieces for the "lampshade" part.

...and here they are! Along with Lucius Malfoy and the Orange Scuba Diver.

Top bit is nearly finished (though I ended up redoing the bottom part of it):

Hey look, it works!

I wanted the switch to be as close to the lamp as possible, so all that extra cord had to go somewhere. I coiled it up and built the bottom around it.

After I finished the bottom (I used an arch piece for the cord to go through and put a big flat base on it), I flipped it over and realized that the socket was kind of lopsided.

:(

So I added some bricks to the inside to hold it more securely.

I put sloped bricks around the top and between the two levels to give it a more finished look, and then I was done!

Ta-da.

And it works, too, check it out:

It's not the most sophisticated lamp ever, but it serves its purpose and I like it.

Firefly/Serenity stenciled T-shirts

2009-03-14T23:31:23Z

I'm a big fan of the (unfortunately canceled) TV show Firefly. So I made some T-shirts with quotes from the show.

When you first meet Wash, the pilot of the spaceship Serenity, he's playing with plastic dinosaurs. This is one of the more hilarious bits of that exchange.

I gave this shirt away (it was part of a craft swap on Craftster), so of course I had to make another Firefly shirt for myself.

This is probably my very favorite quote from the whole series. Since River Tam is the one who said it, I put her on the back:

That's her silhouette from the Serenity DVD cover art. (Serenity is the movie sequel to the TV show.)

Both of these shirts were made using the freezer paper stencil technique. If you are unfamiliar with the process, it goes like this:
1. Draw your design on the papery side of a sheet of freezer paper. (The Wash shirt was freehand, but I traced the River shirt because I wanted to use a particular font and also I am not especially good at drawing people.)
2. Cut out your design with a craft knife, making sure to save any loose bits that might be necessary (the inside of the letter "o," for example).
3. Arrange the freezer paper on your shirt shiny side down.
4. Iron it. The freezer paper should bond to the fabric.
5. When your stencil is secure (pay attention to the edges in particular), put cardboard inside the shirt so your paint doesn't bleed through, then, using a sponge or stiff paintbrush, apply a thin layer of fabric paint or screen printing ink or what-have-you. (I used acrylic paint mixed with fabric medium.) Use an up-and-down dabbing motion rather than brushing on the paint, because it's less likely to get under the stencil that way.
6. Apply as many coats as you feel are necessary, letting each one dry completely before you do the next.
7. When the final coat is dry, carefully peel away the freezer paper. You can't use the stencil again, but I like to save mine and tape them to my wall because I'm weird like that.
8. Strut around town in your shiny new shirt.

Craft blog?

2009-03-12T16:54:03Z

So I think I'm going to turn this into a craft blog, since I haven't posted in ages and crafts are pretty much what I'm doing these days. I'll be deleting (or possibly friends-locking) some of my older non-crafty entries. I don't know why I felt the need to mention this, since I doubt anyone's reading this thing anyway, but there it is.

Um...yeah. And then I found five dollars.

With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes...

2007-11-01T04:37:52Z

Check out my Halloween costume!

I was a jester. It was AWESOME.

Earlier in the week (okay, since like September) I'd kicked around several different ideas for possible Halloween costumes that would be fun and nifty-looking and reasonably easy to make. My "class notes" from about mid-October on are really just pages of concept sketches. At various points I was convinced that I wanted to be a robot (spray-painted or aluminum foil-covered cardboard body, flexible dryer hose arms and legs, various fun light-up buttons and bits of wire and dials and things), a day-glo ninja (I have these spiffy lime green and neon pink ninja swords around which I was going to base the costume, but unfortunately they are a four-hour drive away at my parents' house, so that idea got scrapped), an ant (long-sleeved black T-shirt, black tights, another pair of black tights stuffed and sewn to the sides of the shirt, attached to my actual arms with fishing line, and of course a headband with antennae on), a spider (just like the ant, but with another pair of black-tights-arms and six extra eyes painted on my head), and a big orange screw (I go to the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, you see; it would've been amazing but I couldn't really figure out the logistics [though I'm quite sure that a cylinder of orange posterboard would feature prominently]). Also a jester. For one reason or another, the jester won.

My original plan was to buy two pairs of crazy-colored tights, chop them both in half, sew two mismatched legs together into a new pair of super-crazy tights, and put the other two legs (sans footly bits) on my arms (perhaps attached to a small T-shirt so they wouldn't slide down to my elbows). Then I realized I already had a long-sleeved red shirt and a pair of dark blue leggings that matched the colors of my juggling balls pretty much perfectly.

Serendipity!

So now all I needed was some green and yellow fabric to make some sort of tunic with and so pull the whole thing together. I scavenged the green from a failed Slytherin cloak (it wasn't finished in time for the book release party, so I abandoned it), then it was off to the local cheap-o store for yellow fabric and jingly bells!

I sure do loves me some jingly bells.

I also bought a mask but I ended up not using it because it was a piece of cheap plastic junk for which I paid seventy-seven cents and got ripped off.

But! The yellow fabric was a steal, I got a yard of it plus the jingly bells and craptastic mask and paid about five bucks for the whole shebang. That is literally all the actual money that I spent on this costume.

I set to work late Friday afternoon, since some friends of mine were going party-hopping that night, and I ended up skipping the parties, finishing the shirt part of the tunic and most of the hat, and going to bed at one in the morning. My costume was nowhere near finished, but the real party was Saturday night anyway.

So I got up at eight the next morning and got back to work. I was still putting on the finishing touches two minutes before we walked out the door that night, around eleven o'clock. Good times.

So, how did I make this thing? Good question. I pretty much made it up as I went along, with the help of a lot of crappy homemade newspaper patterns.

I started with the top half of the tunic. I had a vague idea of what I wanted out of it - four panels, alternating between green and yellow all the way around - so I traced a quarter-shirt pattern onto newspaper, using a T-shirt that fit me pretty well as the template. I sewed up the front and back seams first, then sewed the shoulder seams, pinned the sides, and tried to put it on.

What I had failed to realize was that the T-shirt I had traced was made of stretchy knit fabric, whereas the stuff I was sewing with was more like bedsheets. The thing didn't fit me at all. I ended up having to put in an extra green panel (maybe two inches wide) on each side to allow me room to get in without ripping it.

The hat was more fun.

Six green and six yellow triangles. I sewed each point from two triangles, flipped it inside out, and pinned it to the blue (which was the top bit of an old sheet that happened to be the right color). I flipped in the raw edges of the sheet scrap and sewed one line down the whole thing, catching the open sides of the triangles and the sheet edges at the same time. Then I measured it around my head and sewed the ends together.

And naturally I had to put jingly bells on it.

I added the red stripe Saturday evening. I had to prioritize everything with this costume, since I was making it super super last-minute. So the shirt half of the tunic came first, then the hat (every jester needs a hat), then the skirt half of the tunic, then the collar

(adding bells at random points along the way), then the shoes...

These things were totally thrown together. I must have some good crafty karma stored up or something because for the amount of time and effort I put into them, they should not have turned out so well.

More pictures, because I like them so much:

right side

left side

inside

Here's how this went down: I got out my trusty newspaper, traced a vague pointy shoe-like pattern around a canvas sneaker, and cut four pieces of fabric (two green and two yellow) that were only kind of the same shape as the pattern. I sewed up the top seams first, then using the tried-and-true method of "hold it on the shoe and pinch the edges together where the next seam needs to be," I constructed the rest. I sewed the fabric to the sneakers at strategic points (namely, wherever I could get a needle to go through), tucking up the raw edges along the way. Then I sewed a couple of bells on and that was that.

The very last thing I made was this bag to carry my juggling balls in.

Three fat teardrop-shaped scraps of fabric, sewn together and hemmed around a ribbon at the top. I also stuck some blue fabric loops on there so I could put it on my belt.

The belt was a hemmed strip of the green fabric that I'd originally intended to use as the strap of a tote bag, but that fell through. It made a good belt though. And I used a strip of red fabric as a secondary belt, just because I felt there wasn't enough red on the costume without it.

As an interesting aside, here's what my room looked like upon completion of this project.

I have this unfortunate habit of tossing fabric scraps onto the floor rather than in a trash can. I guess that's the price I pay for being crafty...

So there's that! Happy Halloween everyone.

Hi, I'm back.

2007-07-16T17:09:44Z

And I made a shirt!

Last weekend I went to a frisbee tournament in Berea, KY. I played on Team Llama (named for the car-riding llama in the Honda Fit brochure) and our colors were green and white. I owned zero green shirts, so I went to Goodwill and picked one up.

Unfortunately, it was an XL.

I am not a huge person.

IT IS ENORMOUS.

So I cut and pinned and sewed and made it fit a little better:

...and then I put a llama on it.

Now I have a llama shirt! Because llamas are awesome, but llamas with frisbees are better.

We only won one game all weekend, but we had fun anyway. Llama love!

Minesweeper Quilt, Part Two

2007-04-02T01:01:52Z

To resume the thrilling saga of yesterday...

So yeah, quilting = finished. Not very well, mind you - there were several bits where fabric overlapped or threads got snarled or my supposed-to-be-straight-line-sewing wandered - but at least it was finished. Next I painted a yellow circle on the square at the top, for the New Game smilie face, you know.

Also I picked out ten mine sites and marked them with pin X's. The rest of the squares are number squares, so I marked them with the appropriate number of pins.

The picture makes more sense than my words are probably doing.

If I'd had more time I'd've appliqué'd the numbers & mine flags, or embroidered (ha, right) them or something, but since I was getting rather down to the wire in terms of getting the thing finished in time for the contest I busted out the Sharpies instead.

CLASSY. Also I painted black rectangles (badly) on the top bit for the Mines Left counter and the Time Elapsed clock. I wanted to paint the numbers as well but it would have required several coats and by this time it was literally less than half an hour before the contest submission period closed so instead I cut out bits from red felt and used red paint to stick them on. (What? I was in a hurry, and finding glue takes effort.)

I've never SEEN such slapdashery. Well, except when I made that Legolas costume that was primarily held together with bits of duct tape. Or when I constructed "leather pants" out of black plastic trash bags. Or when I needed a quick Halloween costume so I saftey-pinned cloth swatches to my pants legs, hung a cardboard peace sign around my neck, and called myself a hippie. So there has actually been a great deal of slapdashing in my life.

Also I never finished the edges. The (cropped) full-length photos look all right though.

So there you have it. You should all go to Craftster.org and vote for me. Er...I mean, take a look at all the entries and decide which one you like the best. _{and then vote for me anyway.}

Minesweeper Quilt, Part One

2007-04-01T04:19:07Z

Once upon a time Craftster had a quilting challenge. It went "Quilts Inspired by Games." I like Minesweeper. I decided to make a Minesweeper quilt. I assembled all the ingredients...

(I enjoy my colorful and varried bedding.)

...and went to bed. This involved tossing the ingredients haphazardly onto the floor, except the black thread, which I apparently chucked in a wormhole or something, because I had the devil of a time finding it the next day.

Speaking of the next day, that's when I began the construction process, starting with a sheets-and-batting sandwich on the living room floor.

I marked the game grid on the back, like so:

Then I pinned the three layers together, set up my sewing machine, and went to get that black thread I'd laid out so neatly the night before.

A casual search revealed no black thread. A more thorough search turned up a distinct lack of black thread. A highly meticulous, picking-things-up-to-look-under-them search did not result in black thread being added to my inventory. I can't imagine why I was unable to find it...

(^ My room. Impeccable organization.)

Actually I can. It was in the laundry basket, naturally, burried under several articles of dirty clothing, as I discovered when I gave up on my quilt in despair and started washing clothes. I was so overjoyed to find that black thread that I promptly ate lunch.

Cheese + tomatoes + mayonnaise = TASTY! (I have been a practicing vegetarian for a week and a half now. I hope I can keep it up for, you know, a reasonably significant amount of time.)

Also there were grapes.

Post-lunch the quilting began. Quilting on a not-long-arm sewing machine can be rather difficult. I had to take frequent breaks to peruse online comics and browse Facebook.

(My knee is probably under there somewhere.)

Things happened, the earth turned, the birds sang, the flowers grew, and eventually the quilting was finished.

WHEE. Now I am le tired, and will finish this when I awaken. Or perhaps later. Or perhaps never. WE SHALL SEE.

Update: I finished. Read part two!

"Bright Idea" Christmas Light Hat

2007-01-09T22:33:09Z

So I was trolling the Craftster boards and came across the crochet challenge. I figured, what the hell, I've got some time to kill before House comes on, why not whip up an entry.

So I did.

My medium of choice was a string of Christmas lights filched from my parents' house over break. Unfortunately, the largest crochet hook in my arsenal is a P, which hardly seemed adequate.

(Sad face.)

No worries! I'm good at improvising.

Enter Philippe, a wayward French curve left over from back in the day when I was an Architecture student. He has a curly bit at one end which will serve my nefarious purposes well.

Before starting any project it is important to assemble the proper tools for the job - in this case my Christmas lights, Philippe, cherry flavored Jones Soda, chocolate chip cookies, and iTunes with Flogging Molly cued up and ready to go.

Does the all-knowing Jones Soda cap have any cryptic words of wisdom to dispense before we begin?

Apparently, Old acquaintances are important this week. Good to know.

And we're off! I am making A Hat.

Things are proceeding apace. And by that I mean I am blissfully unaware that this hat is going to be quite, quite too small to fit on my head.

Still going. I'm using single crochet for this, by the way, and the little fiddly lights keep getting in the way. Grr.

(I made it to the intramural fields at 2:30, if you were wondering. We had impromptu Ultimate practice. It was fun, and nearly no one got hit by a disc.)

When it becomes clear that I will have nothing like enough left to crochet to the end, I start threading the plug in and out of the two rows I've managed to complete, in a half-assed attempt to give my hat some semblence of a crown.

Look Ma, I've got a wad of tangled lights sitting on the top of my head. Also, I may or may not be stoned. What was in those cookies?

It's far too small, and there's not much I can do about it but frog (this means "take apart," for all you non-crocheting types) the whole thing. This is a long and heartbreaking process (or it would've been, if I wasn't rocking out to Salty Dog at the time), and I took no visual record for fear the images would evoke painful memories.

Just in case the soda-and-cookies combo was bringing some sort of bad excess-sugar mojo to the operation, I switched up my plan of attack to include skim milk, Wheat Thins, and dried tropical fruits. Philippe didn't look too fatigued, so I sent him back into the fray, and I still had most of Swagger and all of Within a Mile of Home to play so Flogging Molly stayed on as well.

And we're off! ...Again!

This time I decided to ignore proper techniques entirely and do the thing in slip stitch.

Again, I only got two rows completed before I had to make with the weaving, but at least it fit this time.

Win!

ART

2006-11-18T22:29:24Z

Of all the things I don't need, a reason to waste more time drawing is...one of them.

But I'm gonna try the 100 Pictures Challenge anyway.

Themes:

1. Introduction
2. Love
3. Light
4. Dark
5. Seeking Solace
6. Break Away
7. Heaven
8. Innocence
9. Drive
10. Breathe Again
11. Memory
12. Insanity
13. Misfortune
14. Smile
15. Silence
16. Questioning
17. Blood
18. Rainbow
19. Gray
20. Fortitude
21. Vacation
22. Mother Nature
23. Cat
24. No Time
25. Trouble Lurking
26. Tears
27. Foreign
28. Sorrow
29. Happiness
30. Under the Rain
31. Flowers
32. Night
33. Expectations
34. Stars
35. Hold My Hand
36. Precious Treasure
37. Eyes
38. Abandoned
39. Dreams
40. Rated
41. Teamwork
42. Standing Still
43. Dying
44. Two Roads
45. Illusion
46. Family
47. Creation
48. Childhood
49. Stripes
50. Breaking the Rules
51. Sport
52. Deep in Thought
53. Keeping a Secret
54. Tower
55. Waiting
56. Danger Ahead
57. Sacrifice
58. Kick in the Head
59. No Way Out
60. Rejection
61. Fairy Tale
62. Magic
63. Do Not Disturb
64. Multitasking
65. Horror
66. Traps
67. Playing the Melody
68. Hero
69. Annoyance
70. 67%
71. Obsession
72. Mischief Managed
73. I Can't
74. Are You Challenging Me?
75. Mirror
76. Broken Pieces
77. Test
78. Drink
79. Starvation
80. Words
81. Pen and Paper
82. Can You Hear Me?
83. Heal
84. Out Cold
85. Spiral
86. Seeing Red
87. Food
88. Pain
89. Through the Fire
90. Triangle
91. Drowning
92. All That I Have
93. Give Up
94. Last Hope
95. Advertisement
96. In the Storm
97. Safety First
98. Puzzle
99. Solitude
100. Relaxation

There are other lists, natch. I just liked this one in particular because it had "67%" in it. As number 70.

Oh P.S., I have uploaded scads of things to my DevArt account and you should all (yes, all two of you) go look at them.

Everybody wants a rock to wind a piece of string around

2006-05-28T21:49:53Z

My poor laptop has been DEAD AS A DEAD THING lo these many weeks. Alas, alack. Apparently I need a new hard drive, wtf.

But! I have hijacked the family computer to update my leagues of adoring fans on the minutiae of my daily life. Such as: I have made Art! (When was the last time I posted art? Dude, ages ago.) And it's real media too, and in color. Will wonders never cease.

_{SKETCHBOOK YAY}

Exhibit A: Sunset. Or sunrise. The magazine was unclear on this point.
Prismacolor pencils, Sharpie

Exhibit B: Viceroy butterfly, apparently. I opened the National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Insects & Spiders and went "Ooh! Pretty!" and drew it.
Watercolors, India ink, Prismacolor pencils, acrylic paint, and I think a bit of White-Out

Exhibit C: Tyger. Like from the William Blake poem:
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Same as the butterfly, but no White-Out

Also, for those who have been wondering, it looks like I won't be going back to camp this summer. :( I sent in my application and didn't hear back so I sent Laura an e-mail and still haven't heard back, so the ball is most thoroughly in her court and she can contact me or not as she sees fit. I want the job, but I won't beg for it. Definitely got hired two days before the campers showed up.

On a happier note, there will be far too much CSI in my very near future (like, tomorrow at 1:00 PM) and I should definitely stock up on the Jones Soda.

The girl is crafty like ice is cold

2006-01-27T06:39:27Z

I made this messenger bag ages ago, like last August, but since I have a digital camera that I didn't have then (albeit a marginally crappy one) I'm going to show it off RIGHT NOW.

This project originated from an annoyance with trying to hide seams when sewing - you can do the whole right-sides-together thing, and fold bits under and use topstitch, and get iron-on binding or whatever, and it's all really irritating to have to deal with. So I figured, why not flaunt the seams instead? Denim looks pretty nifty when it's all frayed.

The fabric I used is all from one pair of cargo pants (I love pockets), and I used the zipper from one of the zip-off legs to close the bag. The strap is a leather belt which was no fun to sew through, I had to use pliers and broke at least three needles in the process. :P I made the bag specifically to fit my laptop (and it does, barely, I should've left more room for seams I guess), and I lined the main compartment with a double layer of quilt batting for protection. Also, because I was paranoid of the strap ripping off due to the laptop's weight, I ran a few strips of duct tape underneath the lining connecting the cut ends of the belt. I stuck a couple of rivets in, too, and it seems to've held up pretty well.

Front view, showing velcro/zipper pocket combo:

Close-up of cell phone pocket, on the side (my keys are in it too):

I lined this pocket with the remains of a funky colorful shirt, but I didn't have enough for the main lining.

So I used this instead. You can kinda see the quilting I did, if you squint.

Full o' stuff - laptop, notebook, Pratchett book, wallet, cards, pens and pencils, cell phone, etc.

It makes a good Ultimate bag, too. There's room for my frisbee, a jacket, clean socks...

...and I can hang my cleats and water bottle from the strap.

YODAAA!! I lost his hand somewhere. :(

All right, I'm through showing off.

T-TOWN THROW DOWN TOMORROW, YAY.

Two hours of sleep is not worth it, but I'll take it anyway.

2006-01-25T09:47:26Z

Drawing realistic people has always been difficult for me. Drawing realistic, recognizable people - that's a bitch and a half. They always turn out wonky. But, in the grand ol' tradition of doing something you're bad at until you're not bad at it anymore, I scrounged up some photos for reference and drew a few portraits of characters from CSI. Apparently I have a crush on that show. I watch the episodes, I read the fanfiction, I trawl the forums, and now I'm attempting fanart.

But in my defense, you have to admit that the cast is full of beautiful people whose portraits are just begging to be sketched. William Petersen is sex on legs. Gary Dourdan is too hot for television. George Eads needs a permit for that smile. Jorja Fox is so pretty it hurts. I just wish I had the talent to capture them ~~in a big pit, or maybe a net that falls from the sky~~ ...on paper.

Gil Grissom:

Reference picture

David Hodges:
(I fiddled and fiddled and could NOT get it right. :P But you get to see it anyway.)

Reference picture

Sara Sidle:
(generally, I am SO BAD at drawing women, but...I dunno, I'm kinda proud of this one. Even though the scan is CRAP.)

Reference picture

whee

2006-01-12T04:26:59Z

Every time I look at these they make me SO HAPPY. The juggling clubs, that is. (BRAND NEW and shiny shiny shiny) The pile of things under my phone makes me not-so-happy, seeing as how it contains my schedule (nineteen hours [which, okay, could be worse, but the longest semester I've had so far was fifteen], eight AM classes four days a week and a Friday lab that doesn't get out 'til six thirty-five at night [where's the justice?]) and the course book for Honors Calculus II (which is undoubtedly going to kick my ass because I haven't had any sort of math in a year and a half and I've forgotten pretty much ALL I KNEW from the AP test).

In other news, I have a DeviantArt account. Nothing new there, really, just another place to display my artsy creations.

Fun fact: juggling on the way to class gives you instant popularity.

Also, this icon cracks me up.

2005-12-30T06:17:37Z

The Twenty-Four Hours of Art was a resounding success, I took a six-hour nap in the middle of it and still finished with an hour and a half to spare. And now I have twenty-four shiny new drawings, although their realtive shinyness is debatable. Remember that bit about "they will not be twenty-four masterpieces"? Yeah, that came true. Although I am quite proud of some of them, the funky snake especially. He gets to be displayed here, while the rest of 'em are all lumped into the ugly picture-storage page if you want to have a look.

The Ridiculous Snake is a native of the deep jungles and lush rain forests of the world. While other animals use their coloring for camouflage, the Ridiculous Snake relies on its outrageous patterns to confuse predators - any animal with a color scheme that absurd, they assume, obviously can't be edible.*

Ridiculous Snakes shed their skin every month, revealing yet another bizarre coloring pattern. A single snake can go through hundreds of designs in its long life. Discarded skins of the Ridiculous Snake are highly valued as novelty ties.

*At the very least, it would taste funny.**

**HA HA HA.

hahaha, I love this icon

2005-12-29T07:10:40Z

I decided I haven't been drawing enough lately, so in the spirit of the twenty-four hour comic, I am spending an entire day doing just that. Not a comic though, I'm crap at things like plot and conflict, and I couldn't draw the same character twice to save my life. Instead I am doing Twenty-Four Hours of Art with the (hopeful) result being twenty-four separate drawings. Mind you, they will not be twenty-four masterpieces. Nor will they be twenty-four full-color, true-to-life illustrations. My goal here is twenty-four sheets of printer paper with pictures on. Design, composition, and realism can bugger off and die.

So far, things are going smashingly. I'm only ten hours in (I was dumb and started in the middle of the day) and I've already knocked out fourteen pictures, which, I hope I don't have to point out, is more than half. I've also knocked out a bottle of Jones cream soda and half a bag of chocolate chips. CAFFEINE IS MY FRIEND.

When I was in fourth grade, I dropped karate because some kid half my size made me cry.

2005-12-07T07:43:07Z

I am well pleased with what I accomplished today. I earned five points extra credit on my comp sci exam (bringing it up to a 99, woo-hoo!) by sitting in the lecture hall until the prof. came in and said that there would not, in fact, be a movie to watch, but we could all have the points anyway. Also, I repaired all the ripped seams in the denim jacket that I love so very very much (while watching TV, I'm so talented) and made five CSI wallpapers:

Gil Grissom

Sara Sidle

Warrick Brown

Doctor Al Robbins

Detective Jim Brass

Grissom's on my desktop right now, I think he turned out the best.

I also made a Harry Potter wallpaper, but it isn't nearly as exciting because it's just the logo. But it has funnier quotes.

So anyway, yes, productive day, and no class tomorrow (hurrah!) so I get to sleep in, which I think I'll get started on right now.

Art Dump the First

2005-10-07T06:23:10Z

Woo, finally have access to a decent scanner. I drew some of these ages ago, but only just now uploaded them. If the image is scaled down, click on it to see a full-size version.

I have thumbnails, too! Spiffing!

...To heal my heart and drown my woe!

Frodo and Legolas sing the Hobbit Drinking Song from Fellowship of the Ring. I drew this in, like, eleventh grade. o_O

Have a link to my devART 'cause I'm too lazy to muck about with anything else.

Rowling's description of the hiding-place room was so brilliantly brilliant I decided to draw it. I might color this eventually because I really, really want that fish to be red. 'Cause...it's a herring. Heh.

Let's play a fun game of find-the-object! I included bits and bats from various books and movies that I enjoy - there's the Luggage, Rincewind's hat, Daine's badger-claw necklace, one of the 882 pieces of Aztec gold, Captain Jack Sparrow's hat, the Holy Grail (á la Monty Python), and Amelia Peabody Emerson's sword parasol. And just for the hell of it, I also put in Easter eggs, a plastic baggie containing an unidentified powder, a Rubik's Cube, a feather boa, eight suspicious-looking bottles, a human skeleton, a black attachè case full of unmarked bills, and Waldo.

If we all had pencils for fingers, manicure sets would come with pencil sharpeners and sandpaper instead of fingernail clippers and emery boards. And we'd, like, make lines on anything we touched.

Er...yeah. I like drawing hands, but sometimes hands are boring so I put weird things coming out of the fingers.

Speaking of weird things coming out of the fingers, here's another.

Edit: ARGH I LIED, this picture isn't uploaded anywhere I know of anymore. It was a hand, with a tree growing out of the first finger. Trust me, you're not missing all that much.

There's more, but I didn't feel like putting everything up when it's all already on my website.

Come join me, and flip out, and you'll be a ninja too!

2005-08-17T17:57:10Z

I'm gonna flip out like a ninja, 'cause that's what ninjas do.
I'm gonna flip out like a ninja, and you should flip out too.

Because this song makes me happy.

We have more art!

2005-08-07T22:07:55Z

So it turns out I AM capable of doing a halfway-decent coloring job. W00t.

This must be Harry's arm, because of the Gryffindor sweater. Yay Harry. *waves red & gold banner*

Artness

2005-08-04T18:55:45Z

Woohoo, art! From HBP chapter twenty-eight.

Harry's POV, kneeling next to Dumbledore and looking at the locket:

I wish my scanner would scan pencil sketches. :/

Case in point:

2005-08-04T03:24:00Z

Few things are as lame as the first ever post in a newly-created journal.