Mailbox makeover

I finally got around to painting our mailbox on the 4th. I chose to do a golden eagle on one side and an American flag on the other. It looks much better now that just a dented, white and rusting box.

Happy privacy patch is happy to protect our identity on the internet, yay!

Gold lore drake sticker

It's probably been about ten years since I've played with any of my vinyl sheets. This is just a quick one I cut out last night with my exacto knife pen.

Did someone say "fondant"?

Well, I have the strong possibility of a wedding looming in the near future, and what's one of the best things about a wedding? ................ CAKE! Well, to me it is :)

However, cakes tend to be expensive, especially if you want a nice one. And this presents a problem for me, as I tend to have very little cash for anything. Dang, I knew I should have planted a money tree!

So, it occurred to me that one solution to this problem would be to create my own cake. And that means getting my hands on the right materials to experiment with. Fortunately, I just happen to have a cake decorating kit from a couple of years ago, compliments of my awesome mom.

Anyway, I've been playing. See for yourself:

One of the first flowers I made was a rose. It didn't exactly turn out spectacular, but we all have to start somewhere.....

I moved from roses to daisies, and I started playing with dyes, as well. After that, I tried using edible pearls on some forget-me-nots.

Then I tried some dogwood blossoms. I don't think they turned out too bad. My hope is that I can use these - or possibly some improvements - on my own cake. It's a far cry from a breathtaking professional cake, but it's a lot cheaper, too.

Featherbrained

A few weeks ago, I got bit by the urge to start making things with feathers - jewelry, specifically. Thus far, I've made several pairs of earrings, though I do have some other crafting projects in the works. The middle picture is of a pair I made for myself!







I've gotten a little carried away with all of this stuff. I think this last picture speaks for itself:



In my defense, one of those totes belongs to my mom.....the smallest one. All the rest of the mess is mine, and the feathers I have consist both of some that have been purchased and some that I've picked up while out adventuring. I have a couple of the latter that I'm still trying to identify a species on. At first I thought they might be hawk, but now I'm leaning more toward turkey vulture. Exciting stuff for a nut like me!

Kareel bookmark

Several days ago, I made a wonderful discovery: inside a box stashed in our art closet, I found a set of brush tip pens in pristine condition! I have been wanting to begin learning how to color with markers, but have been lacking the money to go out and buy some, so this was a very happy surprise. And it just so happened that I was able to find a project to try them out on!

This is a character belonging to a friend of mine. She's a black phoenix with blue highlights named Kareel. I find her coloring intriguing, since it's such an opposite of the traditionally bright, warm colors you'd think of for a fire bird. I had a lot of fun drawing this bookmark for my friend, though I did learn a couple of things along the way. First, card stock and ink do not always function well together. Second, any paper that intense of a blue hue is going to obliterate bright colors placed on it. Third, never use tiny scissors with a metal handle when cutting out that much detail. Ouch.

Done in micron pen, brush tip pen, and colored pencil on card stock. Kareel is copyright Aubrey Jensen.

Blue and Buttons

Another photo! I'd like to do a rainbow of these, so the next in line would be purple (yep, I started at green)

I decided to try putting some of my art on a couple of buttons, finally. I've been wanting to for a while, but couldn't really find drawings that I liked enough to go through with it. The second picture shows my first-ever buttons, and I love them! They're a little smaller than I thought (about one inch) but it's still pretty cool to have something like this. The resources available through the internet still astound me.


I'm kicking around the idea of holding a little giveaway over at Outskirts of Gaia with buttons like these for prizes. If I feel I can garner enough interest for such a thing, I think it would be fun to do :)

Black, green, and red

Man, I hate days where you're feeling off kilter. Pretty much, I've been a slug today because I've contracted some bug that saps my energy. Wish I could blame being stupid on it, too, since I'm sure there are more productive things I could have done than to draw this :) Whatever, he makes a nice thumbnail. I was trying to do a speed drawing to test out some recording software, but it ended up taking about 2.5 hours.....not so speedy.

Haven't had as much time for drawing this week, since I've been trying to get more writing done. The last month has been woefully lacking for progress in the writing department. Plus, I've been learning to knit, a hobby that's surprisingly fun. See my pretty scarf?