Royalty

When I was London I brought back a few of these flags for my sisters and my friends from work.

I could only get a certain number of flags, and one of co-workers Lisa expressed interest in having one, so I enlisted the skills of the boyfriend to re-make the flag with Lisa's head in place of Kate's on the flag. He is amazing at Photoshop and the flags came out amazing looking (I used some straws at work to complete the flag look), and I decorated her desk with the flags. She loved it and says she is never taking the flags down. Big thanks to the boyfriend for his great work!

Interesting...

Next time you ask your boyfriend "are my green shoes the same color green as this shirt" and he says "I don't know", now you at least know that he may just legitimately not know.

Hair Fun

Last night, I was feeling inventive so I decided to try and make the Heidi braid with my hair:

My hair is definitely long enough to achieve the look, but my hair is layered, making the ends not have enough space to braid the rest. This, combined with my hair not being extremely long, made the overlapping part extra tricky, resulting in this:

If I had someone else there to help me it would have looked better. Here's what it's supposed to look like:

Photo from: http://joannagoddard.blogspot.com/

And apparently, it's also the style this season to do the Heidi Braid with a ribbon braided into it:

Photo from: http://joannagoddard.blogspot.com/

Happy Valentine's Day - Update

Last night was so much fun, even though we didn't do hardly anything we had planned. I got over to the boyfriends place around 8 was just having a bad day for absolutely no reason. I was hungry and crabby and we decided to forgo the cooking and just go out to eat instead. We went to our favorite Mexican restaurant, which was surprisingly not crowded at all, and had a very nice romantic dinner. After dinner, we headed back to his place and he gave me my present.

Before I tell you my present, I need to fill you in on the story of how we met. My co-worker Jesica double-booked me and the now-boyfriend for lunch one day (May 13, 2009). Jesica and I had brought food to eat, and it was really nice outside, so we decided to eat out on the Navy Memorial, which was only a block away from our office at the time. The now-boyfriend works just a few blocks up from there, so he walked down and met us. We hung out as friends for about 2 months afterwards, and had our first real date in July, and have been happily together ever since

Needless to say, the Navy Memorial now holds a very special place in my heart. The boyfriend surprised me with a gorgeous, stunning, amazing picture collage of the Navy Memorial and Archives in a floating frame. He took a bunch of different pictures of the scene at different times of the day, and put them together into a collage.

I just want to preface the pictures below with the fact that they do not do it justice, the collage looks way more amazing in real life and it was hard to photograph because it was so reflective:

Painting

Here is the latest happenings with the painting for above my bed:

It actually looks way better in this picture than it does in real life. I'm sure that you're sitting there thinking "I could never do that" but in actuality, it's not nearly as difficult as you think. The first step is to come up with a concept of what you want to do. This can either be a vague idea of what you want to do, a picture of something you want to paint, or just an idea in your head. My concept was "a giant red flower". I'm not sure what it is but I love painting flowers, and I love painting with the color red. Red easily mixes with other colors to bring out the highlights and shadows making it my favorite color to work with.

After I came up with my concept, I got out some red paint and my giant paint brush and sketched out the center circle of the flower along with the different petals. I filled in the petals with just plain red and called it a night. A few days later, I came back to the painting and decided to tackle one petal at a time. I like to do each petal at a time so that each one looks different, just like how a real flower would look. I mixed the red with some combination of orange, light green, blue and dark green. I just swipe the paint brush in the red, and then just dab the brush in one or more of the accent colors, and then just fill in the petal. Along the edges I try to make it darker so that you can tell the distinction between the petals better, and because a flower would usually be more shadowed there.

If I mess up by making the filling bigger than what I had outlined, then I just go with it. I try not to think too much about what its "supposed" to look like (ie where an actual shadow would go, where a highlight would go), and just kind of let it happen on the canvas. Then, I step back and see if something looks off and then fix it. This is where I left off, and will fill you in on the steps as I progress. Hope you enjoyed the painting tutorial.

All Fired Up (Update)

For those of you who have been anxiously awaiting, my awesome roommate picked up my Elephant Bank yesterday for me from All Fired Up (thanks again). She informed me after she picked it up that I made the prestigious "Wall of Fame" at the store, which is where they put the pieces out on display for everyone to see. I was so excited, this totally made my day! Below are "after" pictures of the piece and the "award".

Painting

For those of you who don't know, I like to paint. The boyfriend snapped this photo of me painting last night. I hope to take pictures of the process, but here is session 2 of the work in progress, that I'm planning on putting above my bed. If you like what you see, you can check out others here (all are for sale): http://picasaweb.google.com/langmt/ArtCollectionForSale?feat=directlink#

All Fired Up

Saturday night, my friend Jesica ("The Bad", of famed The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly), invited me to paint pottery at All Fired Up with her boyfriend Chris. I had sooooo much fun and loved it! All Fired Up provided a very relaxing atmosphere to paint away (something I love to do), and the best part was you could even bring in your own food and drinks. The staff was super helpful if you had questions or needed ideas, but didn't bug you if you didn't.

For those of you who don't know how it works, you pick a piece from the wall that you want to paint. There's everything from little boxes, to plates, to mugs, to tiles, to figurines. I was very impressed by the array of options. After you've picked out your piece, you pick out your paint colors, and paint away. When you are finished painting, you leave your piece and they fire it for you, and you pick it up in about a week.

After much debating, I decided to paint a Elephant Bank (like a piggie bank, but the shape is an elephant). I decided to make a bunch of squares on the piece in yellow, red and blue, some overlapping, some not. The painting takes much longer than you would think, mostly because of how many coats you need. I put on 3 coats of each color - the more coats the darker, more rich the color is.

Here are some pictures of the night and the unfired elephant:







Jesica working on her turtle tile


Chris working on his beer stein. He painted the "Piggly Wiggly" pig on it - quite impressive!

Thursday Tip

Want to re-decorate? Need a gift for someone special? Looking for some original art work? You are in luck because I am selling some of my art work (in an attempt to de-clutter my life aka my room). Email me at me.meeshell @ gmail dot com and here is the link to the paintings available.

TGIF

I'm sooo excited for the weekend. Here's a picture from my walk home yesterday to brigthen your day.

Weekend Recap

This weekend went by in a blur. I really needed one more day to fully recover from it. Friday night, I just stayed in with the boyfriend. Saturday started off early, with a drive with my sister out to Reston to visit a family friend. The three of us went on an Art Studio Tour, which was really neat. You drove around to different artist's studios - some were in their homes, some were in an area off a home, and others were displaying their work in a community area (library, church, etc). Just getting to see the house's alone was great - they were tucked away in the woods of Great Falls and were quite grand. The tour featured painters (oil and acrylic), weavers, photographers, quilters, and sculptors. Not only was it fun, but it was also very inspiring - hopefully there will be more original art pieces to blog about soon!

After the studio tour, my friend Erin and I got facials (my 1st one ever) and then had lunch. Later, I met up with my friend Jenna who was in town to watch the OSU vs. Wisconsin game, which OSU lost, and then off to my friend's birthday celebration, which was a white party and an all around fun time.

Sunday morning I had a soccer game, and then I went to up with Jenna to watch the Browns vs. Steelers game, which the Browns (surprise, surprise) lost. I guess I'm not good luck for my teams. Then over to the boyfriends to relax and off to bed early.

Chicago Recap

I'm baaaack! Chicago was so much fun - 2 of my sisters and one of their boyfriend's all ran the Chicago Marathon and I couldn't be more proud of them. Spectating was fun but tiring, a lot of standing around watching runner after runner go by. I also felt really bad for the runners because it got HOT out there and there was no shade.

I also sampled some Chicago favorites - a Chicago style hot dog and Chicago deep dish pizza.


My sister commissioned a painting from me months agao, and I was finally able to deliver it to her over the weekend. I originally painted the background a sky blue, but she thought a darker more grey blue would work better with her decor, so I set up a make-shift studio on our hotel room floor and re-did the background for her. See below for the before and after (sorry for the bad quality photos).




If you like my art work and are interested in purchasing some, make me and offer and I will ship it to you. Here is the link to the items available for purchase: http://picasaweb.google.com/langmt/ArtCollectionForSale?feat=directlink

Tuesday Tip

In need some new artwork for your place? You are in luck because I am selling mine! All are handmade originals be ME and are being sold cheap (give me your best offer + shipping). Check them out here, all the information is the caption and although my photography is not the best, the pictures are all beautiful (if I do say so myself). Email me at me.meeshell@gmail.com if interested. Below are samples from the collection.