The Bee's Knees

Bees and I have a love-hate relationship. I love them and I hate them and they have (so far) been indifferent to me. 

Bees absolutely terrify me. I'm talking, probably my number two fear behind being kidnapped. 

But I've never been stung. That's kind of why I'm so scared. 

But also because they are way too loud for how small they are.

So that's the hate. 

But I love bees in art and in prints and on fabric. I can also appreciate their intelligence and their contribution to our planet. 

I have made a few other bug related pieces that can be seen here, one of them a bee print. 

Here I go with that crazy string again.

You're The Bee's Knees!

xoxo

Don't Be A Prick

If anyone knows me they know that I love plants. 

I used to have quite a brown thumb when it came to growing things, but since then I have practiced and tried new things and that brown thumb has turned into an almost-green one. 

Because I am still not an expert with plants, cacti and succulents remain my favorites because of their resiliency. 

So what is better than cacti and embroidery at this point in my life?

Nothing. 

Hence the inspiration for my next piece. 

I used a chain stitch for the outline of the cactus. 

And I used french knots for the baby pads. 

The spines or needles were done with tiny tiny little x's. 

The flowers were done with the lazy daisy stitch. 

At this point my grandparents both told me that my cactus was beautiful. 

Then I had to go and slap pink ribbons labeled "Don't Be A Prick" on the front. 

They still think it's beautiful, but they just wrinkle their noses a little now. 

xoxo

Happy Late Mothers' Day!

My mother and grandmother are both incredibly difficult to shop for because neither of them ever ask for anything. 

That alone, to me, makes them both admirable. 

Because it's hard to buy them anything, I usually make them something. 

Because I have recently fallen in love with embroidery, I decided that I would embroider a piece for my mom 

(a miracle happened this mothers' day and my grandmother was in dire need of a new nook, as she uses it every day and her current one was hardly functional, and we lucked out with her). 

I decided to go with a traditional tattoo style for the embroidery. 

The graduated teal thread that I used for the ribbon is the same thread that I used for the circle to frame my dala horse. It's my absolute favorite. 

I looked up a few references online and then combined different elements from the ones I liked. 

The design was completely free-handed and drawn directly onto the fabric before I embroidered on top of it. 

This piece was done on a 5" or 6" embroidery hoop and I left it in the hoop as a frame. 

And there you have it! Perfect Mothers' Day present for mom! 

xoxo

More Embroidery~

After I made a portrait of Cordie I had to make one for Tex too. 

Please ignore my foot's cameo

These were so much fun and I have them both hanging on a wall in my room!

After Tex's portrait I struggled for more ideas before I decided on a small dala horse. 

The dala horse and both of the pup portraits were done on 4" embroidery hoops 

and I left them all in the hoops as frames. 

I found some patterns on a website called Urban Threads, including this little scissor cameo. 

The gold thread that I used was so difficult to use that I almost gave up altogether, but I'm glad I finished it! 

This piece was done on a 6" embroidery hoop. 

I'm making separate posts for some of my embroidery projects because I've been behind on posting and I don't want one post to drag on and on and on 

and on.

xoxo

Embroidery For Beginners?

I recently decided to teach myself how to embroider. 

I just love the idea of stitching art into fabric (and being able to monogram initials into everything- every future gift that is in need of giving is now covered). 

I struggled a little when it came to coming up with an idea so, of course, I turned to some of the things that make me the happiest. My dogs. 

I had seen this pin and absolutely loved the idea of creating portraits of my own dogs. 

Mind you, this was my very first embroidery project ever. And for a while I thought I was in over my head. But I pulled through and I'm pretty dang proud of it. 

Here are a few photos of my progress!

I am still debating about putting flowers around the edge as a border. My piece is significantly smaller than the pin that I saw and I'm afraid it might be too crowded. 

But for now this is it!! I have already started some other pieces that will hopefully be finished soon!

xoxo

My Space

I have been going decor crazy lately. 

I can't stop adding and redoing the decorations in my room. 

My latest additions are some new plants to go into some planters I bought at World Market. 

I bought the pot above to plant this echeveria in, and I loved it. I had to get another one.

So I bought the one below! And now it is the new home to some aloe! 

I have always wanted to grow aloe, and I thought this bright pot would be the perfect place to start.

 And I couldn't resist this soft blue mason-like jar. 

And last but not least, this amazing faceted candle holder terrarium!

I'm thinking that it might not be long before I have to replace the succulents because they took quite a beating while I tried to get them into that tiny space. Next time I'll probably just do one plant by itself. 

I also found the perfect little glass octopus in an antique store. 

He was thrown into a big plastic jar of antique toys and I thought he would be the perfect companion for my plants. 

Maybe he'll help them recover from the trauma (ha). 

xoxo

Design Class

I took a design class this past semester and although it was super stressful, it forced me to create things and that made it worth it. 

Here are the projects I completed on my own throughout the semester.

Our first individual project was about values. We had to paint 11 sheets of paper according to a grey scale and then use an x-acto knife to cut out pieces to recreate a portrait of our choice. 

I chose Dita Von Teese because there are a ton of beautiful photos of her and I think she's wonderful.

   

media: acrylic on card stock- cut and assembled on foam core

Our second project was about positive and negative space. 

For this assignment we had to choose four animals to combine into two creatures and make white and black silhouettes of each. 

For the first creature I combine a moose and a flamingo because of their identifiable profiles. 

media: acrylic on bristol

And for the second creature I combined a seahorse and a butterfly for a more subtle silhouette. 

media: acrylic on bristol

This next assignment was about repetition. 

As a class we decided that our subject matter would be ice-cream cones, but the our media options were endless. The media used by my classmates included graphite, charcoal, digital media, collage, and photography. 

I decided to make a woodblock print because the whole idea behind printmaking is being able to create multiples of one piece. I had also been dying to do a woodcut all semester. 

I used four prints and tiled and mounted them on poster board to create one piece. I made a total of four different pieces, each in a different color, but was only completely satisfied with two of the final pieces. 

medium: woodblock print on bristol

I also printed these in hot pink and purple, but the quality of the prints was not as good as the blue and black pieces. 

I also made sure to cut the block so that when the image was tiled, the ice cream cones would line up and one print would flow to the next. You can see this especially well where the top prints meet the bottom prints at the horizontal midsection. 

medium: woodblock print on bristol

Our final project was based on size and scale. 

I was really lost at first about what to do for this assignment, but I decided on a beetle for my subject matter. I have done bugs before (you can see some examples on this post) and I thought that making a very large beetle would be a good idea. 

I have been really interested in paper crafting for a few years, but the first assignment we did in this class made me love it even more. Because of this, I decided on a similar approach when creating my beetle. I used a reference image and separated the colors and tones into sections. I drew and cute those sections out of different shades of smooth and textured card stock to create my beetle. 

The background is actually a very colorful and vibrant piece of patterned card stock that I layered under a piece of clear vellum. I did this to mute the tones of the background so that it did not overshadow the beetle. 

media: cardstock collage 

Overall, this was probably the piece that I was most satisfied with (the second being the Dita portrait). 

I now have is hanging up in my room, while the rest of my pieces are stored away. 

This class was fun and made me work on my creativity as well as my time management, but it was also very very stressful. For this reason I decided not to take an art class next semester in order to focus on my teaching degree. 

Til next

xoxo