hello and welcome!
Hello and welcome! Welcome and hello! I am trying out this whole blog thing, and linking it to facebook updates. This is a collection of a variety of interests. I like lots of things. I enjoy making and doing things with and for my 4-year old daughter. And I wanted to share ideas and to inspire creativity. And, as my daughter once said, “I like to make to make things I think is beautiful.”
i dreamed a dream
Who doesn’t want to cry all through a movie while people sing beautiful songs? I’ve loved Les Mis since I saw a community theater (and I’m sure tamed-down) version as a kid. I love drawing faces. I like stretching them and playing with them–not to the point of ridicule, but just to slightly alter what’s there, and have fun with the shapes. I love the style of Eric White, and when I first saw his work, I thought, “Well, dang–that’s exactly the direction I was going in!” He has such EXTREME detail in his work (“hyperrealistic,” they call it), that I can’t even come close. Still, I love a good face, especially in movie stills.
My agent once asked for a few caricature samples, and since I hadn’t drawn a famous WOMAN in a while, I thought I’d give Anne Hathaway a whirl. It takes several reference shots sometimes to get the right feel for a face, and it’s helpful to combine things from different photos to make up the look you’re going for. In the end, I thought that a pic of Fontaine at her deepest, darkest moment was maybe not such an “upper” for a promo piece.
Perhaps with all the “Hatha-hatred,” I should’ve had a newspaper tabloid in her hand…
finger monsters
Remember finger puppets? We were looking for a kid-friendly project one day, and I remembered these. I got some white card stock, doodled a few monsters (with no legs, of course), and cut holes out for little fingers. The fun part was letting her decorate them. I put a variety of sparkles, sequins, plastic jewels and puffs in a muffin tin and let her go wild!
(PS: The little walrus-toothed guy came from a drawing from a college buddy, James Stowe, who runs a website called Sidekick Quests. He has a thing called “Fiendish Fan-Made Fridays,” where he takes kids’ doodle monsters and makes fancy grown-up versions of them. This one was a “Toelizer,” a monster my girl made up…)
more sharpie goodness
Sharpies are super cool. I got this plain $4 t-shirt at the store, and wanted to jazz it up. My daughter loves dragons & dinosaurs, but I wanted something softer than plain ol’ black. Gray sharpie to the rescue! I wrapped him over her shoulder so she’d feel like she was carrying her around all day like a pet.
Sharpies on shirts seem to hold up pretty well–one key is to heat it up to set it once you’re done drawing. You can throw a quick iron over it (the easiest for me) or throw it on a hotter setting in the dryer. While there’s always a little fading, the stretchier shirts seem to fade and look worn more quickly. I’m pretty sure the gray should hold up pretty well.
So try it yourself! Grab a sharpie, try the color varieties, and start doodling!
sharpie footstool
Sharpies are awesome. Our kid needed a footstool to reach the bathroom sink, but I can’t stand those boring plastic ones. Instead, I got a simple, plain wooden stepstool from The craft store, doodled on it with sharpies, and BAM–magical awesome stepstool. Ya know, like ya do. I think I sprayed a layer of acrylic varnish over it to seal it, but mainly only for kid-messes.
the fabric dollhouse
When my daughter was around a year old, I found this tutorial on UK Lass in US for a fabric dollhouse, and was consumed with making my own version of it.
I made some minor adjustments, and little improvisations, made a few happy accidents, but overall it was a pretty fun project! I’m quite mathematically challenged, so even the simplest measurements confuse me…I remember having to re-do a part of it, due to it not folding out properly. The key to most projects and improvising with them is being able to visualize what it will look like when it’s finished. Once you know that, you can modify any parts you like as long as it doesn’t interfere with the basic structure of the piece. I added pockets on the side walls to hold the tiny painted-rock owls that “live” in the house. I made yarn “nests” and all kinds of fun things to give it a foresty feel.
My daughter’s 4 now, and doesn’t play with it much. She’ll sometimes stuff a dinosaur in there, but overall, it was still fun to make.
hello? is this thing on?
Welcome to my blog! A place for me to share doodles, drawings, projects and crafts! I am a busy perfectionist. I am an overachiever and a super mama. This means I have a habit of involving myself in constant projects. Here you will find all sorts of doodles and things (namely for the sake of not bogging down my own personal facebook page). 🙂 Welcome & hello! Hello, and welcome!
busy mockingbird 