Thing-a-day.com

Well it’s my own version of a haiku, i guess….

Sitting in hotel
Thinking about future
Ignoring articles

 Woot Woot just made it! 

I know I have already done one today, but this is what I worked on after dinner and I just couldn’t wait to post it.  Plus I have to do a new project for tomorrow.  

This was really fun! I asked my partner to hand me something I could hold, but I didn’t look to see what it was. I drew the big one in the middle first.  I knew what it was right away, of course, but it was interesting how details I could only feel were different than ones I could see. Next was the lower right one - looking only at the object, not at the paper at all. I think it’s my favorite. Top right, only the shadows. Lower left, concentrating on texture. I remember now what the fifth one should be - draw only the outside edges of the thing. I’ll probably add that in, *maybe* even re-scan it. Later.

This is a Page A Day page that was inspired by a page in my sketchbook years ago, which was inspired by the lid of my colored pencil box seen here . The tips of the pencils left subtle gentle marks on the lid as the box jostled around in my bag. I was really mesmerized by that beauty and recreated it here by dropping my colored pencils over the page.

-Robyn

 Joann’s has Studio by Sculpey on sale for 25% off…still a bit high in my book. But I decided to pick up a few packs and give the new clay a try.  I am impressed with it.  When I first felt the packs, they felt kinda mushy and I thought the clay would almost turn to liquid in my warm hands….but surprise it didn’t.  Rolled it through the #8 setting on my pasta machine and no sticking at all.  The mg turned out well, however, I am a translucent girl and I’m kinda disappointed that she didn’t include any.

I’m not sure of the durability yet.  I’ll have to make mask and see how it holds up.

Mokume Gane Slab

Slices from the slab

This weekend I have the pleasure of attending various events and performances to support my friends: USA States Dance Competition, and a friend playing Bernardo in West Side Story. I started baking cookies as their “good job” gifts, and ended up making a lot more than I had expected. I suppose these will become Valentine’s treats for my friends in the upcoming week.

I knew I wanted to make cut-out sugar cookies with lemon icing, but I wasn’t sure what shapes to use. Therefore, I ended up making small letter cookies of the initial of the cookie recipient. Lemon-y royal icing colored pale pink to be festive and bagged with a tag that says “A is for Alice” (or whatever the letter/name). They look kind of lumpy, haha.

The picture above must be so random (freakish? popish? fashiony?) but I wanted to practice my photoshop skills and try colorization. When I first learned how to use photoshop (late high school on my own, as my skills probably show) I used a lot of my time entering online contests where you could compete against other people to see who could create the best blends, images, etc. I quickly searched for a colorization challenge online today and found Abyssfull Challenges. The image below is the original one given to colorize and the challenge website doesn’t say who she is. I didn’t do it to see if I could make the image better (I like black and whites) but more of to put what I know into practice.

I’ve been wanting to make these microscope slide pendants for a long time, as you can see I even carefully collected all of the supplies. Months ago. Today I decided to actually try it, another great side effect of this Thing-a-Day.

Can I just say that soldering is fabulous, fun, and has a bit of a learning curve. While I enjoyed making this, I will have much more fun next time now that I know all the ways to do it badly. Most of the ways, at least. I can’t possibly do it worse.

Another thing I did today was get a manicure by a  two year old. Her passion for all things girly has extended to my fingernails as well. As you can tell, I keep them short for, well, all the crap I have to do all day. Now they are short and badly painted. Awesome. Here I am showing them off with my badly soldered jump ring.

Now, the clamp thing? Totally necessary, unless you’re into burning the flesh off your fingers. This particular clamp thing? Way stronger than needed for this job. It broke my badly constructed pendant. Lessons learned. Fun had. That’s a thing.

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I was playing around with patterns today and came up with this floral Easter theme design.

This is the artwork that I will use to screen print for another Thing-a-Day challenge.

For Day 9, I will print and frame some inspirational photos for my yoga area.

Awhile ago my mom had a dream that I was hanging out with Andy Warhol. We apparently picked her up and then proceeded to drive her through San Francisco. That said, it got me thinking of my famous “friend” and his art. I found a postcard of a flower paint by number he did, which inspired me to create my own flower. I also love this Maya Angelou quote - “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel”.

This poem, culled from words in a newspaper article, is inspired by the work of Austin Kleon, writer/artist, who originated the “black-out poem”. See his work here: http://www.austinkleon.com/portfolio/newspaper-blackout-poems/

Unfortunately, all I had was the letters to the editor section of an old Reader to work with. Next time I’ll have to plan ahead and get a real newspaper.

This was a photo of my shamrock flowers.  They are generally viewed as small and danty blossoms but this sure gives them a grand profile.  In both images I used Picasa2 to edit my photos.  I’m not brave enough to tackle photoshop.  Hope you all like.  This was day 8. 

This is day seven’s work.  Not much really but it was a great photo of water being reflected onto the ceiling.  My son had pointed it out and as I am a lover of odd shapes that occur randomly…it became a photo op.

Finished the third anatomical knitted heart of a custom order for my etsy shop. It’s not very adventurous since I’ve made a few of these before, but my hands were working on something nonetheless.

My original anatomical knitted heart was inspired by a friend who was going into heart surgery a couple of years ago. I was worried about her, so I knitted her a new heart. She took it to her surgeon and told him that they were actually going to perform a heart transplant instead of her planned operation, and presented my homemade heart. He didn’t crack a smile, but I really enjoyed her effort.

I’ve thought about rigging it to actually “beat”. It’s on my list of things to do….

so i hastily slapped a coat of paint on Mr. Step

painting models is not really my thing and i really wanted to get this thing over with so i could move on.

first some black rubbed in to the texture of his skin

look at them choppers

I started about three different things today before I settled on this one idea.  A simple self Portrait.

day 9 ( a little early- but at a place where I have access to fast internet- which i may not have till Monday…)

Today I made one of our favorite Japanese dish, tonkatsu, sliced pork tenderloin that is battered and coated with panko (Japanese bread crumbs) and then deep fried.  This dish is typically served with raw shredded cabbage, rice and miso soup.  YUM!

Felt like I needed a sense of direction right now, so I decided to write out what I want and tape it up on my closet doors. Even spending half an hour trying to be as specific and elaborate as possible sets my priorities and reminds me of my intentions. Time to get moving again.