Sparkly Graduation Cap

In honor of the graduation season, I have a very special DIY project to share! When I graduated from High School I had to decorate my graduation cap! Our graduation colors were purple and teal... so I had no clue what i was going to do! I wanted to do something unique and different! I tried looking up fancy graduation caps on google but couldn't find any that met my expectations.

I had seen some projects where they used mod podge and glitter to sparkle-fy objects. LIGHT BULB! It worked out perfect I had an awesome grad cap that was unique and sparkly!

I taped off the corners first just in case I got glitter in places I didn't want it. Then I started adding layers of mod podge and glitter. I found it was easier and faster to add a layer of  glue and then sprinkle glitter over it, but make sure to do it in small layers otherwise it will become chunky. Another tip is make sure to let the bottom layers dry before adding one to the top, you will have to add many layers to coat the entire surface. First I covered the top in just silver, and as a final step I added bits of pink, purple, and blue. 

To top it all off I used an old belt buckle to add the final touch, I just hot glued it on.

Capstone Drawing: Progression of Emotions

Like other art classes, at the end of the semester means, chaos, stress, and capstone final projects. These projects are supposed to be examples of your creative capabilities (which hopefully you have some left by the end) and also skills acquired throughout the semester. For our drawing final we were instructed that we needed a set of three drawings We had the freedom to draw whatever anyway we wanted to. I decided to use charcoal, and draw figures. I hated figures before, but for some reason I had this ridiculous idea to have figures be my subject for my capstone! Maybe I drank to much coffee and felt super confident when I wrote my proposal paper, cause I have no idea what I was thinking! There is a reason why I never posted a picture of my self portrait. I hate drawing humans. dumb humans. Anyway I have included some parts from my capstone proposal so you can understand the inspiration from the pieces.

The capstone project I propose is that of a personal journey of strong emotions and growing up. It is a reflection on my personal emotional history. The first drawing is of a little girl’s hands clasped within a father’s hands. The next sketch shows a self-portrait of a bent head and outstretched hand. Last is the third sketch that shows a close up of eyes peaking out behind fingers and the gesture for quite. I also am inspired by the realism paintings of Honore Daumier. His paintings have a very sketchy characteristic to them. I was inspired by the boldness of his actions and how he was not afraid to stand and speak his mind through his art. He often exposed the un-glamorous side of life that many people in France at that time were trying to avoid. To me his paintings and prints have a lot of feeling and emotions packed into them. I wish to do the same in my progression of drawings.

Gift Wrapped Skeletons

For our final individual projects in my 3D class we were faced with building a structure using linear and planar materials to make a dynamic design that utilizes an interior structure

(skeleton) to create an exterior form (skin). The pieces had to have a transparent skin, windows for viewing the inside (which had to be a different design from the outside), and show our understanding of compression and expansion. 
We first built structures from straws to get a sense of what forms we hoped to render. From there we moved on to use balsa wood to build our sculptures. In the beginning I felt this project was going to be easy, and maybe even fun. I was wrong. I hate sculpture. Hate is a strong word. I hate sculpture. It may have to do with the fact I hate math. A lot. There is a reason I am an art student. I can't spell and I can't do math. To give you some perspective on how awful I truly am at math, it took me three hours to build a Hexagon! THREE HOURS! That's why I hate sculpture. And so I survived countless hours piecing this structure together which questioned my patience and what I had ever done to deserve such unfair treatment. I sure did have some bad karma with this one! but avail, like a gazillion hours later I finally finished the sculpture!!!

Naked sculpture

The Apple of a Pie

   It has been forever since I blogged, but the end of my first year of college is only two weeks away! Instead of writing a speech I decided I would waste my time away on my blog. hmmmm lets see what procrastination has in store for me!

   And speaking of procrastination that brings me back to the blog, and the fact that the project I'm showing is actually all the way back from Easter time.... whoopsy! And so my Easter *cough *cough from not to long ago..... was a lot of fun! We got a couple of close friends together to celebrate with a dinner. My friend from Chile hosted our little dinner party, and she made an amazing dish from her home country, Chile, which was AMAZING! It was made of salmon and looked like a strawberry smoothie BUT tasted nothing like it! It was super yummy!  she cooked raw salmon with the acid from lemon and limes and marinated it with peppers and onions. We also had a Korean stew, and rice. I also made mashed potatoes. Our food as well as the guests were from all over the world! Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Korea, Turkey, 1/2  Japan (hehe), and USA were all present. I also made a staple American dessert!  Apple pie!

So I figured I would show how to make some good ol' fashioned American apple pie for anybody that doesn't know!  So here is how to make and an apple pie from scratch with real apples!

Basic tools needed for the job

Ingredients you will need, you can use any apples you want though!

College Home Cookin'

 Boy am  I smart or What! I feel as if I have leaped over culinary perceptions of college cooking! I have discovered a super yummy way to make something like spaghetti, that tastes like spaghetti O's, within the realm of my very own dorm room. [cue dramatic music]

It is a big deal.

For all you people to fancy or who have the ability to actually buy real groceries let me introduce you to ramen a very cheep meal, and beside it is western family tomato soup another cheep contender in today's experiment. 

Mac Bling

Today I finally had the time to get a DIY project done! Being an art student and all especially as a graphic design major I wanted to add some personality to my computer. Everybody just puts stickers on theirs but that not so original after a while, and so I decided to make mine sparkly! Last year I mode-podged my graduation cap to be sparkly so I used the same methods to sparkle-ify my computer!

First step is to gather your supplies to customize your computer! You will need mod podge, glitter, a paint brush, and I would recommend using a case to put the litter on instead of directly onto your computer. Hard shell cases can be found on Amazon for cheep.  

The Never Ending Drawing

 10 hours is a long time. Especially if you spend 10 hours on one drawing!

That was our latest assignment in our drawing class was to spend at least 10 hours on our still life. That's 10 hours dealing with the joys of charcoal (I hope you could tell I was being sarcastic), 10 hours of squinting at a still life, 10 hours of frustration, 10 hours of stress, 10 hours of pure anger (people kept changing our still life, they better hope we never find who they were).

But 10 hours is really not that much to spend on a drawing that you want to do really well on, and we jam out to music in studio so 10 hours isn't probably as bad as it first seems!

So to begin our still life's we had to choose a spot, I gravitated towards the little piccolo. I have a soft spot for the instrument since I used to play it in high school!

Some of my sketches