W is for Wonder Woman

Because she's awesome. Not the first female super hero, but definitely the most iconic.

V is for Victorian

I have a love for all things Victorian.  It evokes thoughts of roses, lace, and beautiful dresses. What I love most of all though, are the houses.  Someday I shall win the lottery, and when I do, one of these houses will be mine.  All mine! Muahahahahaha!!!!

U is for Urban Exploration

From Wikipedia:

Urban exploration (often shortened as urbex or UE) is the examination of the normally unseen or off-limits parts of urban areas or industrial facilities.^[1] Urban exploration is also commonly referred to as infiltration, although some people consider infiltration to be more closely associated with the exploration of active or inhabited sites. It may also be referred to as "draining" (when exploring drains) "urban spelunking", "urban caving", or "building hacking".

The nature of this activity presents various risks, including both physical danger and the possibility of arrest and punishment. Many, but not all, of the activities associated with urban exploration could be considered trespassing or other violations of local or regional laws, including—but not limited to—invasion of privacy and certain broadly-interpreted anti-terrorism laws.

If you have never seen photos from an urban explorer, then you have no clue what you've been missing out on.  Most of these people live by the motto "Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints."  They venture into places long lost to society, worn down by years of neglect and often the elements as well.

Yet there's a haunting beauty to these places.  Some are mere shells of their former selves, and some are time capsules looking as if the people who once roamed their floors simply left for lunch and never came back.  It's almost become an art form to find the perfect abandoned place and capture it on film...or its digital equivalent.

More from this artist

More from this artist

More from this artist

More from this artist

All artwork is copyright to their respective owners

T is for Tea Time

An old sketch of mine I came across...

S is for Spoonflower

Spoonflower is a fabric lovers dream website.  I ran across it a few years ago when it was just starting out and fell in love with it.  It sells custom, printed on demand fabric created by you.  Not feeling up to the task of creating your own fabric?  That's okay, you can browse through other member's gallery until you find that design that screams buy me.

I know what your thinking.  If any bum on the internet can create a fabric design, then obviously the standards aren't that great.  But no.  The standards are pretty high actually.  And the designs are often amazing.  The lovely thing that keeps the creative designing fresh and new are the weekly fabric contests.  All members are given the opportunity to submit one design each week into a contest revolving around a specific theme.  You can see past winners and themes here.  Just be prepared for a cute and awesome overload : )

R is for Reminiscing

I've been staring at this picture frame for a few days now.  I got it as a graduation present a few years back and hung it on the wall with every intention of printing out the photos to place in it.  Well...you know what they say about the best intentions.  The frame is still hanging there with its fake graduates smiling at down at everyone, looking far to cheerful to be even remotely normal.

I decided to finally sit down, dig up those old photos, go get them printed, and do that frame some justice.  The thing I love about printed pictures is that I immediately file them away, in chronological order, to await that long list of scrap books that I'll never finish.  They're easy to locate because I know if I don't find them in box 1, I'll find them in box 2...and if not, they aren't printed.

Digital pictures on the other hand, though I love them to death, don't get the care and attention my print ones do.  They sit, half forgotten, on that memory stick until one day it's full.  Then they get downloaded to the computer and shuffled into newly created folders with vague names like "dad" and "summer '10".  There is sadly no rhyme or reason to their final destination other than what made perfect sense at the time. 

After nearly an entire day of going folder by folder, I had yet to run across my graduation pics.  Sad, but I was undaunted!  I could do this!  I decided perhaps I had shuffled them into some odd folder, so I got the bright idea to use the search function on my computer.  I did a search for all .jpg files, since all my pictures are .jpg.   Do you have any idea how many .jpg files a computer has?  I had over 32,000.  I'm not sure if that was all of them or my poor computer gave up.  And in case you're wondering how I could fit that many on my computer, I have an external hard drive I had hooked up to search as well.

I decided there had to be a better way...so I did a search for DSC in the file names, since that's what my camera labels every picture with.  This turned up 16,006 files.  Slightly more manageable.  After a half hour of looking through those, I still had not found them.  I'm a bit bummed to be honest. 

But with the sad there's a small bit of happy.  I spent a day looking though 7 years of family photos.  I saw 7 years of different haircuts and colors, fashion do 's and don't 's, and 7 years of my 8-years-old  nephew growing up.

Q is for Quotes

Who doesn't love quotes?  Here are some of my favorites in wallpaper format found around the internet.

P is for Project

My nephew had to do a report on an animal.  It was an interesting project.  The directions were to create a vest, out of paper bags or material, and on the vest place a minimum of 5 facts and 3 pictures about the animal they chose.  It was one of his monthly family projects, so we got to help...yay!

He's became fascinated with the Harry Potter series and had just finished the first book when this project was announced.  He decided to do the snowy owl...wonder where he got that animal from?  He decided that he wanted a vest out of material, and he wanted a huge flying owl on the back of it.  It had to be white with black "spots" and have huge yellow eyes.  So naturally I did my best to comply.  He read through 3 different books to find his 5 facts, and helped pick out the pictures to go along with it.

And here's the finished vest:

 

I couldn't find a free vest pattern for kids that I liked, so I drafted my own using the lining and then cut out the blue polar fleece to match.  I didn't realize how much polar fleece stretched until I went to sew the bottom and had to make these little tucks to get the fabric to match up.

 We had him write out his facts and then scanned them into the computer and "attached" them to the pictures they went with, printed them on photo transfer paper and then used iron on heat bond to attach them to the vest.

 

 For the owl I found a coloring page of Hedwig from Harry Potter online and scaled it to the size of the vest.  I traced the image onto white felt with a lt. gray marker before cutting them out.  I created layers of felt to give it a more 3 dimensional look.  Once the pieces were cut I used the marker to mark where the black "spots" would be and then he used black paint to go over them.  We used fabri-tac to glue the pieces together and then to the vest itself.  The eyes were 20mm yellow google eyes.  we cut slits in the eye "layer" and inserted them a bit to cover the eyes slightly.

The beak and talons are cut from black felt and layered in.

The owl winds up covering most of his back.  He was pretty excited to try it on : )

O is for Once Upon A Time...

Isn't it interesting that almost all fairy tales start out his way? "Once upon a time..." and from there the story starts.  With just those 4 little words you know you're in for an exciting tale, and yet you don't know what tale it will be.  Are you about to hear the story of Snow White?  or Hansel and Gretel?  The Frog Prince?


All this thinking on novels and fairy tales and labyrinths in previous posts have started some creative musings.  Then today I read an article about a Hollywood resurgence in fairy tales and the plethora of movies we'll be seeing in the coming years.  Not your ordinary run of the mill fairy tales, but re-imagined ones.  Granted they're the same old tales, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, and surprisingly The Wizard of Oz.  They've taken the characters and put a new spin on the story.

While many people think this is a very bad idea (who messes with a classic?!) one should bear in mind that it's been done before.  Quite successfully too.  Gregory Maquire re-imagined The Wizard of Oz  to produce Wicked and look at how well that turned out?  He's worked on other tales too, like Cinderella and Snow White.

       

So I'm thinking, wouldn't it be neat to redo a fairy tale?  I would think it a bit easier than writing an entirely original book...you already know the characters and have a basic plot outlined.  It could be a nice little side project to tackle when writer's block is keeping you from other writings.  I for one would love to write a story where elements of all the tales converge, or perhaps have a character that comes in contact with all those characters at some point.  And of course it will have to begin with "Once upon a time..."

Easter Cheesecake

Because what's Easter dinner without dessert?  Easter cheesecake is a simple cheesecake recipe that gets into the holiday spirit by adding lots of color.  Why should the eggs have all the fun?  If you have kids this is a great baking project to include them in.

To begin we'll use this basic cheesecake recipe:

 

1 Oreo pie crust

8oz of cream cheese, softened

14oz of sweetened condensed milk

1 egg

1 tsp. vanilla extract

food coloring

Preheat oven to 350F.  Beat cheese until fluffy.  It will look something like this:

 

(I make a double batch, so don't worry if yours doesn't look like the amount of mine)

Gradually beat in the sweetened condensed milk until smooth (be sure to scrape the sides and bottom well to make sure you get all the cream cheese mixed in).  Add the egg and vanilla.

 Take 4 small bowls and divide the mix into 5 equal parts.

 Place 20 drops of food coloring in the four bowls, one color per bowl.  Leave the mixing bowl plain.  Take your pie crust and remove the plastic protector shield thing.  Set this piece aside for later.  After the cheesecake has cooked and cooled, you can flip it over to make a lid, re-crimping the metal pan will secure it in place.

 Spoon in enough of each color to fill the bottom, then start layering the colors in swirls.

(This is a double batch, if you're making a single batch there's only one pie crust)

 Here they are half filled.  My nephew loves to help with this part : )

 And there they are finished.  I place my pans on a cookie sheet as it makes it a bit easier for me to get them in and out of the oven.  Cook at 350F for 35 minutes, or until an inserted knife comes out clean.  Let them cool and place the lids on the pans, making sure to crimp them into place.  (Yay for the lids, now the cheesecake is stack-able!) Refrigerate until chilled, and enjoy!