Craft of the Month: Photography

    Hey its October (even if I'm late af). This month's craft is photography. Yeah I know that's not technically a craft, but its creative okay? I've checked out some photography books, I'm going to try to take one photo a day, and I want to finish the film in my film camera. Obvi I will update later (even if it's in November).

First Attempt- Bead Crochet

Let me start off: On Instagram I saw a beautiful, rope-like beaded necklace. When I liked it more started appearing on my feed. They had all different designs; snake-like or more abstract. Unfortunately all of the pictures I found were in Russian (and Instagram's translation feature is a little lacking). Eventually through frenetic Googleing I found "crochet bead rope necklaces" (catchy title). I found a book on it at my library and bought all the stuff from Michael's. 

 First start I ran into some problems. I'm not that good at crochet so my first attempts were more lumpy blobs than elegant ropes. I restarted so many times I ended up rubbing off the paint (stupid cheap beads...).

 I recommend that any one interested in this check out this excellent tutorial. After an awkward beginning (you can see the lumpyness above) I powered through and some how did it.

 For some reason I decided to randomly string the clear beads for a design (its not like I ran out of purple beads) and finished the bracelet.

Attempt 2 (I am addicted) I strung green matte beads and the previous purple beads. I ran out of green beads, but I think the bracelet is just long enough if I add a clasp so that will be the contents of a future post!

Gloss Coat Failures

or why medium is not the same as varnish.

When I paint dolls I gloss the lips as well as the eyes (I wish I could remember who I picked up this tip from, but it makes the dolls look so much more life like). I picked up this Liquitex gloss medium to use and I liked the result (though you have to be careful because it kind of melts paint similar to nail polish top coat on nail polish). A unit of time later I made some polymer clay items. I looked up what sealants I could use (here, it's a good resource if you actually read it). I read "Liquitex" and I have Liquitex so I went ahead and painted all my pieces and then waited for them to dry. Then waited. And waited... They never dried. I gently touched the eye of a doll I painted over a year ago. It wasn't dry. D: I then actually read the website and discovered that you should not use the medium (green label) but the varnish (orange/red label). Woops. So I've ordered the varnish and eventually I'll update on how it works.

Quilt Update

    What an inspiring title. To be more specific this is an update on this quilt:

I am nearing completion. Half way through I decided I would try out Frixion erasable pen. If you some how don't know, this is a pen that is popular with sewers because it can be erased by heat, as demonstrated in this video below:

I'm so amazed by how well this works. Next quilt I'm going to make I'll draw a more elaborate design.

January PL (part 1)

     Hi Everyone! Today I'm showing two pages of January's Project Life. I mentioned earlier that technically this isn't Project Life because I'm using Studio Calico but I'm too used to calling it PL and also because more people search for Project life ;)
    I only have two pages today because only two pages worth of pictures came in. I ordered these square pictures from Persnikety Prints (but none of the others because PP prints are so expensive!) and only my PP prints came in. (And I'm not waiting so I can keep up with my one post a week goal. Man blogging is so hard).
    So any way these two pages are from my vacation to the Dominican Republic.

    I had the idea for this first page before I even went on vacation. I love taking sky pictures and wanted a whole page of them. I feel I should acknowledge that one on the bottom right. Here is the original:

    If you can't tell this is the top of a bonfire at night. The over all quality of the photos was good, but this one came out dark and then taking a photo of the photo turned out black. Of well, that's why its been exiled to the corner.

    This page covers the tour in Santo Domingo. The middle top is a really interesting mural that included a picture of a peacock. I never think of peacocks as fancy because I always associate them with the zoo (both of the zoos where I live have free roaming peacocks. Is this normal?). But I guess some times peacocks can be elegant. The bottom of this page is a big panorama of a balcony in Christopher Columbus' historical house. I'm not sure if I like the fact that all the pictures were printed with a white boarder. I think its broken up enough with just the fact that there are different pockets. Oh well I'm always learning.
    Hopefully next week I can show you all the others (and my album).

UFO List 2016

An unofficial goal of mine is to finish more stuff than I start. So here is a list of all of my Unfinished Objects as of the start of 2016.
1. Lounge Pants
    Uh, they have pockets... I'm holding off on these because I want to finish sewing my dress.
2. Flying Geese Quilt
    I think I have every thing cut, but I want to finish my other quilt.
3. Hexagon Blanket
    I know this is going to be on going because its a dump for worsted scrap yarn.
4. Blue Lace Scarf
    I kind of forgot about this. 
5. Bonnie's Wish
    Its my new year's resolution to finish this. 
6. Vintage Dress
     I've kind of put this on hold because I'm not sure if I want to wear this. The only thing I have left is the hem.
7. Triangle Quilt
    I'm on the hand quilting portion.
8. Plastic Bag
    A bag made of plastic bags. Its slow going. I think I'm going to start the handle (one day) soon.
9. Random Mending
    I don't want to make a list of everything I have to do. It includes pants and socks and that's  all I'm going to say.

2016 Resolutions (+ reflection on last year)

    I know New Year's resolutions are falling out of fashion, but whatever, I like setting goals. First, lets take a look at last years goals (which I think I set in Feb for my birthday).
    1. Take one picture a day. I sort of accomplished this. Some months were better than others. I think around the summer I did pretty good (because I had nothing else to do).
    2. Donate 10% a month. I've set aside 10% though I haven't gotten around to donating it all. I like it though and I'm going to keep it up next year.
    3. Knit Fair Isle mittens. I think I had this as a goal last year too. I finally figured out that I have the wrong yarn for the Lizbeth Uptis book.
    4. Read 12 books. I blogged about this earlier. I read 25 books!
    5. Apply for 6 jobs. So I kind of failed this because the first job i applied for I got! So this isn't a real failure because obviously the real goal was to get a job
    Now for the new goals!
    1. Save 50% for a car. I really, really want a car so I guess I should buckle down in my savings. I know I can't save up enough in one year, so I won't even make buying one a goal.
    2. Finish Bonnie's Wish shawl. I started this in 2014, but I'm on the last part. I could finish it this month if I really tried, but I know I'll finish it if I make it a resolution.
    3. Read 13 books. One more than last year.
    4. Use my film camera. I bought a random camera from Arc. Obviously I will blog more about it in the future.
    5. Blog more. As in once a week (every Friday).