Happiness - finished

Here's my latest work, finally finished! I'm loving the flow of this piece- the waves and the curls together reminds me of the ocean, and the pops of yellow and green are so spring-y and happy. My next piece is going to be mostly black and white, which will be a big change from this one.

Birthday Party

 

 1.You Are My Fave

2. Makoodle

3. Good Life Eats

4. Oh Happy Day

5. Kara's Party Ideas

"What color would you like for the decorations for your party?" I ask my almost-three-year-old. "ALL the colors!" He replies enthusiastically. "And what color for your cupcakes and food?" I ask. "ALL the colors!" he repeats.

The kid knows what he wants, party-wise. I'll see what I can do.

 

Happiness - in progress

Here's a peek at my latest quilling commission. I'm loving the colors - blues and purples with pops of yellow and pink. It's very spring-y, which is just what I'm in the mood for lately!

Friday Five - 3/29/13

 Here's what's been on my mind this week:

1. Macarons. I can't stop making them- 4 batches this week so far, and probably another tomorrow. Luckily they freeze well, and I have friends and family who are willing to pitch in and help me out by eating their share. I've tried a few different methods, ranging from the most fussy (aging the egg whites for days, letting the piped shells dry for hours) to the most basic (as outlined here) and I've had the best luck with the simplest approach. Yay for simplicity, and for cookies, but BOO to Martha Stewart and her ganache recipe. There's no way that ganache was going to work as a filling for macarons. You owe me $8 worth of chocolate, Martha!

2. The sound of silence. I turned off the radio in my car. All week long I've been driving without music, and I'm finding that I'm much more calm. Perhaps rocking out to Scandal isn't so good for my nerves. I'm enjoying the quiet (for now).

3. Cross stitch. After my recent embroidery experiment, I think I'd like to give cross stitch a go. I saw some patterns at the art supply store, but they were all... well... kind of old fashioned, and I'm a modern kind of gal. I don't want a watering can full of flowers. The search continues.

4. Easter. Easter eggs, specifically. This post on Oh What Fun, to be exact. I would have loved eggs like that when I was a kid. Maybe the bunny will bring some this year?

5. Exercise. (What with all the cookies, it's only natural, right?) I've been doing Pilates for a few months now, and recently stepped up my routine. I feel stronger, and feeling stronger makes me feel good about myself. Even if my body isn't looking much different, I feel different, and that's what counts, right?

Oh and if you are looking for pictures of quilling, expect an update early next week on my latest!

Friday Five - and some quilling

Five things that have been on my mind this week:

1. How we talk to ourselves. Changing "ought to..." or "need to..." to "it would be a good idea to..." has made me hate myself a lot less. If I tell myself "I need to run to the store on my lunch break" and then don't do it, I've failed to do something I needed to do. I can go to the store any old time, it doesn't matter if it's on my lunch break or after work or on the weekend. I don't need to do it over lunch. I am realizing how much the way I frame things in my mind affects my self esteem, and how easy it is to change the way I talk to myself.

2. Making my house smell delicious. I stumbled across this post at One more Moore and my first thought was "what a tragic waste of lemons that could otherwise be eaten" (I have a minor obsession with lemons.) But then I tried it and holy potatoes! It smells fresh and clean and happy and not overly food-y. I dislike when the house smells food-y. Even if it was food I liked eating, I don't really want to smell lasagna all day.

3. I think I'm in love. With this lamp. ("Do you really love lamp, or are you just saying that because you see a lamp?")

4. Television. I don't have a TV, but I have Netflix on my laptop. Now that my son is older, we enjoy watching a movie (or part of a movie) together on the weekends. Maybe I should possibly get a TV? I don't want to turn into a couch potato, or turn my son into one. I'm hemming and hawing about it, which I suppose means it's a bad idea, right?

5. Here's my latest commission:

A remix on one of my first pieces. It was fun to revisit an old favorite. I've just started another commission, and I think after that I'm going to take a break to work on one or two ideas I've had bouncing around my head for projects of my own.

Nothing to see here

No quilling, that is. I do have things to show you, though. I've been busy. Busy not quilling, clearly.

I've lived in my current house for over two years. My son was about 5 months old when I moved, and those first months here all I cared about was sleep and keeping the dust bunnies relatively under control. I don't think I even hung any pictures on the wall for at least six months. Then the boy began to walk and all hell broke loose. My main concern became keeping him contained in a safe-ish environment. Decor kind of took a back seat, is what I'm saying.

But now the boy is almost three. He's a big kid now, as he is fond of reminding me when he tries to convince me to let him drive the car or scrub the toilet or saute mushrooms on the stove. (I'm such a buzzkill as a mom). Now I can think about making the house look pretty vs. making it babyproof. So I've been doing some decorating. Check it out:

This embroidery is inspired (aka shamelessly copied) from a project featured here. I like that it's graphic and modern and not too cutesy. I worked on this on my lunch breaks at the office over the span of about a week. So not an insurmountable time commitment. For now, it's chilling here on the side table with a ceramic dog:

 

But I'm thinking it might jump up there on the wall with all those other pictures. I like the pictures because they (sort of) camouflage the door to the cupboard under the stairs. (And no, there's no wizards under there. Just a Christmas tree and probably a spider or two.) 

But maybe that wall is saturated, picture-wise? I might hold on the the embroidery for another as-yet-unplanned arrangement on the other side of the room. 

Oh and see back there, above the coat rack? That's a foam deer head (from here, this is actually a replacement for this one from my old apartment) and a thrift store frame I painted white. The message in the frame says "Happy Trails" which makes me smile when I reach for my coat.

 Speaking of pictures, I also made this little print:

 

Because a) it's a nice message in general and b) it reminds me of Doris Day, who I love. The Man Who Knew Too Much is one of my favorite movies. We can talk about Doris Day movies all, well, day. That frame looks terrible, though, so I'm planning to paint it. Maybe aqua? It's sitting on top of a bookcase, along with a print of one of my paintings from college, neither of which I know where to put. I'm great at making things to hang but terrible at deciding where to put them. But on to the kitchen:

 

I hung a paper garland over the buffet (which - shh! - is actually a dresser, but the drawers are too shallow to be much use for clothing. For plates and napkins, genius!). The dresser buffet is secondhand, and the drawers are serendipitously lined with shelf paper in the same pattern as the wallpaper in my grandmother's kitchen. At least, I think it was wallpaper. Unless she wallpapered her kitchen with shelf paper, which I wouldn't put past her.

The garland was easy peasy to make. Just punch a bunch of dots from cardstock, then sew them together with a sewing machine, leaving a space of 5 or 6 stitches between dots. My little boy helped me put the dots in the sewing machine (very carefully), and we had such a ball that we made a rainbow one for in his room.

And one more thing. I'm painfully shy. You might have noticed, what with my lack of replying to comments and generally not posting a lot. Sometimes I need a little pep talk to face the world outside. I got this frame at the thrift store and glued cardstock letters over the bland sunrise (or sunset? I don't know) to give it a peppy message. It's a nice little reminder that if I'm going to change out of my PJs and go do stuff, I might as well make it stuff that's worthwhile.

So that's a little tour around some of the parts of the house that make me happy. It's nice to do some sprucing up, finally.

I have been quilling, actually, so I guess I lied to you at the top of this post. It's just that I don't have permission yet to share those pictures. Hopefully soon!

Letters!

I’ve had a few people ask me for advice on quilling letters. While I certainly don’t consider myself an expert, trial and error has led me to a few tips. When I started quilling, I used to print out my type on plain paper, then trace it (very lightly) on to the Bristol or whatever paper I intended to quill on. This certainly works, but I found that if my letters didn’t exactly line up with my marks, they would be visible in the finished piece. And it was near impossible to get an eraser in close enough to get rid of them. Also, glue + eraser dust is a bad combination.

Eventually, I bought a light box. Mine was about $65, with around 12” x 18” working space, plenty big for my usual size work (12” x 12”.) I’ve been very happy with it for about 2 years now. I’m able to project my design onto the Bristol, and really the only trick is to make sure everything lines up correctly before you tape things down- crooked quilling makes everyone sad.

All that being said, here are a couple of things I’ve learned:

Keep it Simple, Stupid

When I’m planning type, I play around in Illustrator with different fonts. I try to find a typeface that will reflect the feel I’m going for, while not being impossible to execute in paper. I usually stick to sans-serif fonts, especially for pieces with more than a few words. One fancy letter? Go for it. A whole sentence in a script font? Forget it.

Bigger is Better

It sounds obvious, but it took me a while to learn that trying to quill half-inch letters is much more difficult than quilling inch-and-a-half letters. Unless I have a compelling reason to make my letters tiny, I go for broke and make them HUGE. Well, maybe not HUGE, but at least, not little-bitty.

Measure Twice, Cut Glue Once

I think this is supposed to be about carpentry, but it applies to quilling as well. Make double sure your strip is the right length before you glue it down. Once it’s glued, unless you have a very steady hand and an extremely sharp Exacto blade, you’re not going to be able to trim or remove that sucker.

Bit by Bit

I’ve found it easier to do letters in pieces, rather than trying to make an entire letter in one go. It’s a bit tricky to glue down a whole “m”, but easy enough to tackle it in two or three sections. Try to make your sections meet at the corners of the letters, but if you need to join two pieces in the middle, be sure to tear the ends of your strips to give them an uneven surface- they will blend together better than a sharp straight overlap.

And I’m afraid that’s about it. There’s no magic to quilling letters, just trial and error. And patience. I hope these tips help, and happy quilling!