Projects! (or A Cupcakes and Sewing Adventure)

Nutella yumminess

Oh yes. After buying nutella to make holiday crepes with a friend, I had a ton of the stuff left over. What to do? Make nutella cupcakes, of course!
These are a chocolate cupcake with nutella buttercream frosting.

mini cupcakes, no chocolate drizzle

I’m not posting the recipe – after all, it’s not mine anyway, just a cobbling together of recipes I found on Pinterest – but will share some tips.
For one: for the cake itself I used a standard chocolate cake mix (Betty Crocker chocolate fudge, I think). Why not? It will save you time.
Two: the buttercream frosting I did do from scratch. A little too sugary for my taste, so don’t be afraid to add/reduce as you see fit.
Three: since Nutella is part hazelnut, most recipes suggested topping with a hazelnut candy, like Ferrero Rocher. Well turns out Ferrero Rocher is hella expensive. I used a giant Hershey bar with almonds and toffee pieces that I broke up (after putting in the freezer for a bit. Everyone loved it!

Hershey topping makes them look more gourmet…

…and of course, Four: chocolate drizzles (if you’re lazy like me) are not the easiest. For example, say you try melting some chocolate chips in the microwave. So you do 10 seconds, check it – not melty yet. 10 more seconds, and it’s so hot it’s practically frying and turing into some hard lump. Bleh. But, I find that if you let that lump cool a bit while stirring in some veggie oil, you can get a sort-of drizzle.

chocolate upon chocolate

So that was last week’s cooking experiment. I also did a sewing experiment.

I have loved circle skirts since forever (what little girl growing up on Disney didn’t like the princess dresses? – which are essentially really long circle skirts), and especially since I grew up and sprouted pear shaped hips. Circle skirts look awesome on any shape I think. So, knowing nothing about sewing, I gave it a try:

Ta-da!

This was a rather horrible adventure.
Firstly, swishy fabric was a lot pricier than I expected, even with a 40% coupon at JoAnn’s. I ended up with this mint green polyester “linen-like” fabric from the suiting section. It does have a nice swish.
The bigger problem: of course I choose the one DIY tutorial that had terribly written instructions, and didn’t find this out until after. For example, it advised me to fold the fabric into quarters and measure and cut a radius and a length curve (thereby making 2 cuts and ending up, when unfolded, with the full circle with a hole cut out for the waist). That is good advice. The problem was that it said the radius should be the waist measurement divided by 4. Apparently you’re really supposed to do waist plus 1 or 2 inches and divide by 6.28. Geez, math. Anyway I divided by 4 and got a waist that could have fit 2 of me. So I had to chop a huge section out, then sew that together, ending up with an extra ugly seam.

Looks pretty good here. Can’t tell how horrible I was at this!

That was just the start…. I also didn’t know how to sew a hem, how to sew a zipper, how to adhere the waistband, how to close off the thing with a fish hook or button, or how to do anything really. So I just completely guessed. I actually like it! Except there is 1 thing that looks really, really bad:

the horrid zipper

That damned zipper. I will have to resign myself to reading up on this, because my guess work did not pull through. I think I sewed it in okay except for that bottom which is just a slap dash mess.

Still has nice swish!

Oh well! I think the waist ended up being 26 inches with a length around 28. Hard to say because whatever I measured at the beginning is not what I finished with. Oye!

Also, maybe a good idea to build in a lining, because you can totally see my shirt tucked in.

But please don’t let that scare you from making one. If I, being utterly clueless, can do this, think of what you can do if you actually read directions!

the best for twirling

Mini Peacock

Gonna be part 2 of a 4 part bird series…

Now time for dinner. Tofu parmesan risotto – good or bad idea? About to find out!

A Year Closer to 30

There’s nothing wrong with being 30, but it’s a little bit of a wake up call to realize that I’ve only got 2 more birthdays until then. I had such a great time at Disney for my birthday (where else?) that I *have* to post about it! Since it’s not art related, in obligatory art news: I sold my first jewelry commission and first international order this week. International shipping is a lot more involved than I thought. Who knew?

As for Orlando…

Lake Eola’s iconic fountain

I brought my 50 mm lens with me…first time I’ve ever brought a decent camera to Magic Kingdom. You can’t zoom (in or out, at all) with this set focal length lens, but it works well for low lighting.

look familiar?

This is the rose from Beauty and the Beast! The Beast’s Castle is a new feature in Fantasyland – basically a lunch/dinner restaurant with 3 rooms to choose from. The rose is in the dark West Wing, complete with thunder sounds and lightning.

We ate in the ballroom which was my favorite:

Talk about chandeliers!

It was even “snowing” outside the windows, which were made to look like night time.

Small World

Above is my favorite room from It’s a Small World. Another scene I like:

They still do the electrical parade with the same music… my mom got me a cassette tape of the music when I was a toddler, and we’d listen to it on every car trip.

Tinker Bell

Alice and Wonderland

dwarves’ gem cart

By the end of the night, we made our way to the front to watch fireworks:

pretty castle detail at night

No Photoshop – the castle was really that blue and the sky that red

Fireworks are the perfect birthday prezzie.

Should have been a metaphor…

2008

Did an awesome bird painting this past weekend but (in light of car troubles) haven’t had time to photograph, so..here’s this oldie. What is it supposed to mean? I dunno. This was a really fast thing in Sharpie and acrylic when I was angry with life in 2008.

I hate photographing paintings. I’m terrible at it. When I go to crop them in Photoshop, it’s always really out of balance and never in the sizing ratio it’s supposed to be in. Then sometimes it goes like this painting: where the top photo is blurry and the bottom is clear yet cropped too far in.

Bah.

Bah, linear problems.

DIY Tie-Dye: Photo Tutorial

Yeah! I decided a few weeks ago to try tie-dye and have become slightly obsessed! A couple nights ago I did a massive tie dye session (partly to try out a new range of dye colors, and partly for something that I have future Etsy plans for), and managed to document with photos. Though others have done tie-dye tutorials before and better than me, I decided to share my experience:

everything you need

See your “ingredients” above. Every source I read recommended to use soda ash, which is this white powder you pour into water that helps the cloth absorb dye. I bought this Tulip brand soda ash for $6 at Hobby Lobby. It comes with 2 packs. I also bought Tulip dye. The small primary color package costs $10; the Carousel package is $20 and has extra dye packets (but Hobby Lobby has a weekly 40% off coupon).
It’s also SUPER important to remember: use NATURAL fabrics. This tutorial is for fiber reactive dye like Tulip which is, from what I’ve seen, the easiest stuff to find, use, and buy. So – make sure your fabrics are cotton, silk, viscose, rayon….if it’s synthetic like polyester, it won’t bind with the dye (acid dyes are another story). See the end of the post to see what happens when you try to dye synthetics the “wrong way.” Oh, also if you’re using cotton – remember that it shrinks, so you might want to wash it first.
You need gloves, because this stuff will dye your skin. Seriously. I turned the garage into my work station by laying down plastic garbage bags.
First step: fill a bucket with water and pour in the soda ash:

Adding soda ash to water

What you want to do is stir in and soak all your fabrics for about 20 minutes:

Add and stir all cloth into the soda ash water.

Then wring out each piece and lay flat on the garbage bags. You DO want them to be wet when you dye them.

lay out flat…

Then you have to bind up with rubber bands all your fabrics. You can do a spiral, bulls eye, stripes, crumply style, etc….endless options. I won’t get into too much detail about how to do those, because if you get a Tulip dye kit, it has a “how to” guide.

Quick spiral example: from your laid-flat shirt, pick a point that you want to be the center of the spiral.

Hold the point and twist. Keep twisting until the shirt is fully wrapped; it will look kind of like a hurricane.

You can see the “hurricane” shape start to form. Try to tuck in the edges and end with a circular lump. Bind it with rubber bands.

Here’s a bunch of my shirts bound up.

Now it’s time to dye! Be very careful, because if it gets anywhere, it will stain.

Fill up the dye bottles to the line at the top. They already have dye in them. Then shake until all the powdered dye is dissolved.

A spiral example: the bound-up spiral looks kind of like a pie. Think of pie pieces when you dye it. Squeeze a triangle of 1 color and do the same on the triangle opposite.

Add your next color. I love overlapping to make purples, greens, and oranges.

Last, add the yellow.

Flip it over. Now dye this side. You want to put as much dye as possible – there will still be white places inside the folds of the shirt.

Primary colored spiral on the left, carousel colored one of the right

When finished, put each item into its own plastic bag. Wrap and leave for 24 hours. Tulip advises for 8, but you get nice bright colors with 24.

The next day, it’s time to wash out the dye! Here’s a piece fresh out of the bag that’s dyed “bulls eye” style. Put on gloves…

Wash out the dye until the water runs clear. Some sources say use cold, some say warm, some say hot and fade to cold. I’ve tried it all 3 ways, and they all work. I prefer cold first, then warm (gets more magenta out), then finish with cold.

Then take your rubber bands off (cut them if it’s easier) and keep washing. This shirt is done; now I can hang it up until the rest are finished.

After rinsing out, you’ll then need to put the items in the washing machine. I use warm water and detergent. The colors will fade but only slightly. Here’s the finished bulls eye shirt:

finished bulls eye

Back to the washing:

This one is a double spiral with crumpled ends.

…with the rubber bands off, still wet

Here are some more of the final products:

carousel spiral…oh, the carousel kit also has black dye, but I decided to save it for later, because I didn’t have enough cloth for the dye as is.

primary color spiral

spiral and a crumpled shirt on the right. Both had some nylon components. You can see how those parts didn’t take to the dye, just very faintly.

a closer look at the nylon with only faint dye

Why synthetics don’t work with reactive dye: Left side – polyester socks; all of the pink, teal, and purple washed out during the rinse. Some light blue remnants stayed even after the washing machine.
On right – nylon capri tights with a small amount of spandex. These are actually kind of cool. The dye is just much lighter, and even was when I originally applied the dye.

So that’s it! Now you can tie-dye!

Marimo

Marimo! Marimo! They’re so cute and fun to say! I just recently learned about marimo moss balls. The story is that they’re these algae globs that form into spheres when pushed by the currents in their natural habitats, lakes. In Japan, they’re considered national treasures. Well, I guess certain ones are, yet somehow you can buy them all over the place in America. People call them “pets.” They must grow them in labs….

Anyway, my friend’s birthday just passed, and I had no idea what to get her. She had been on a cat-for-a-pet stint for a few months but ended up not being able to have one since her boyfriend’s allergic. So I thought “I know a pet that would totally work!”

Marimo! So cute.

Okay, maybe that doesn’t compare to a cat, but still.

Pebbles I bought for its habitat.

So I bought the marimo and a tiny apothecary jar for it to live in with pebbles to sit on. They’re easy to care for; you just change out the water (use bottled or tap that’s sat for a while to air out the chemicals) every week or so.

Getting ready to wash the marimo and change its water. I heard it can get dirty when you squeeze them (do that underneath water, by the way), so I wore gloves.

Squeeze under water, gently.

the marimo in its final habitat…it was a lot bigger than I planned on! Should have gotten a bigger jar.

100

My 100th post! I started this whole thing to give me motivation to do something artistic regularly, which I struggled with because of all my other commitments (day job, social life, family). I’m really glad I did it, but at the same time, there are weeks I really have to push to do the “one post a week,” sometimes against other art commitments. Things like Etsy, paintings people want, personal projects. In other words, I am doing art regularly. Mission accomplished. I still want to continue this blog, but I might not do *every* week. There are bigger and better things going on (like One Spark, see below.)

But in celebration of 100 posts, I did a mini painting this morning:

Black swan art card

“ACEO” sized art card – illustration board… look how tiny!

Coming down from my swan obsession…next I’m doing a mini peacock painting.
Anyway, One Spark is in Jax this week. Went after work to check it out last night. So fun! Everybody local should come out. There’re food trucks, music, art…tons of projects, and you can vote for any of them that you like. It’s crowdfunding, so you can donate $ to the projects you like or, just be voting, those projects have a chance of winning $.

One Spark! Part of Doug Eng’s project (#36). Giant vinyl photographs to spruce up our urban areas – Jacksonville has a lot of abandoned buildings these would look great on.

More of Doug’s pictures. How awesome are these? It took 2 weeks to print out all the giant photos.

I love me some giant animals. This giant floating “rubber duck” is exactly what Hemming Plaza needs.

More giant animals! This is the “Rat Queen.” The idea is to do a sculpture of each of the Chinese zodiac signs and use them in parades, events, etc.

I don’t think this is part of One Spark…?..but I’d never noticed this painting above Chamblin’s Book Mine before.

Inside MOCA

House made out of shirts!

Anyway, there are TONS of projects. Check it out. It’s going on rain or shine…