More Arts by Me!!!

So I had these little square canvases that I bought at Wal Mart like 2 years ago and never used. I'm a big fan of squares. Don't know why...

Anyway, they're like 10x10, 8x8 and 6x6 I think? I had 2 of each, except for the biggest one, and I was trying to figure out something to paint for my living room. My living room is a pretty boring cream colour, except for the lower half of the walls under the ledge, which is a vibrant light green. I love bright colours! So going with my love of bright colours, I picked out the brightest ones I had to paint backgrounds on the little canvases. Green, orange, pink, yellow and purple. Then i painted swirly things with white and matching colours, to give the backgrounds some depth. At this point I still had NO idea what i would be painting.

I decided to go with some nature stuff. I like outdoorsy things, I have tree branches hung on the walls in my room, just 'cause I really like trees, so I decided the biggest square would be a tree. Then I go tthe idea, what about silhouettes of stuff? so i thought up some stuff and got to painting. You wouldn't think these would have taken much time, but they actually did, especially the tree, that took me about 2 or 3 hours to complete. The others didn't take too long. I finished them all in about 6 hours.

Here they are, closer up:

Creepy tree...

Crows (I love crows, yeah I'm weird like that...)

Dandelion parachutes! (When I was a little kid, I used to pretend dandelion seeds were my pets. Dandelions are one of my favorite flowers. What'd I tell you? I'm weird.)
More Trees! (this reminds me of the title sequence of "North of 60" haha...)
Cattails (mew!)

I painted them intending on putting them in my living room, but I was trying to figure out a way to arrange them and they ended up in my bedroom. And I sorta like them where they are. They make my room seem more complete... Oh well, guess I'll have to paint something else for my living room.

Art for my room!

So last year when I painted my room I wanted to make art and stuff to put on the walls, but I never really got around to it. I managed to hang some tree branches on my wall decorated with beads, and a felted picture that Caleb made for me, (His school has a program called "Learning through the Arts" which is totally awesome, he gets to learn all kinds of craftwork) but I never did get around to making my art.

So last week when I was cleaning up I came across a bunch of old canvases that I had started painting, then gave up on. they were just backgrounds, painted blue and purple and stuff. I didn't want to shut them up in a cupboard, so I decided to paint them!

I wanted to have some art that was cool, with bright colours and not just boring girly stuff, cause I'm not into that. I wanted something kinda edgy, that fit with my style of art (I love bright colours and thick black lines) so i decided tattoo flash would be great! I Googled tattoo flash of things that I thought would be cool and found some great images. I drew them on the canvases in pencil, traced over them with Sharpie, colored them in with acrylic paint, then went over them once more with Sharpie. So here they are:

Skull and Roses 12x24 from this url: http://www.flickr.com/photos/joe_13/498563273/ Check out this guy's other line drawings, they're awesome.

tattoo heart 5x7

Cherry Blossoms 12x24

Koi fish 18x24 This one didn't match my room (Which is a light purpl-y pink colour) or the other paintings, so i gave it to my brother, who really likes it. He said it was "Primo"...

Anyway, i'm really happy with how they turned out, and now my room matches me. :D

Merry Christmas Emo kid!: The Sister's Christmas Present.

I wanted to make my sister a scarf and she asked for a slouchy sorta hat. The book "Pretty in Punk" has this super cool scarf called "The ska scarf" and it is pretty much the easiest scarf you could ever make. Just garter stitch, but knit horizontally instead of vertically. Jenna's favorite colours are purple and black, but she asked for a black hat. I couldn't give you an exact pattern of how I made the hat, I just knit a few rows of 2x2 rib at the beginning, then started increasing each row until I was satisfied, then started decreasing each row until I was done. Found a nice big ol' black button in my button tin to finish it off. It's probably the best beret-ish type hat I've made. Both items are made out of Bernat Softee Chunky.

I wanted to make Jenna a necklace too, and I had this great idea in my head. I saw something similar on Craftster one time, only made with shrinky-dinks. I made my little polymer clay cloud, spray painted him white, added a coat of sparkly varnish, and painted on his little happy face. The beads are hanging on wire and are a mix of random glass and plastic beads I had. The necklace is seed beads on fishing line and it has a bead and loop closure, because my sister has a pretty bad nickle allergy. There are a few small pieces of metal in the little cloud pendant, but I made sure they were well coated in super glue and varnish to make them hypo-allergenic.

I had these little wooden boxes that I found at Dollarama. I'm a sucker for boxes, I collect them cause, hey, you always need a box for something! Anyway, they're perfect little gift boxes for jewelery, and they were $1 for three. I spray painted this one back, added a coat of sparkles to the lid (iridescent sparkles make everything better!) and glued this little emo-kid drawing that I drew and coloured to the lid.

So, I thought I was done Jenna's Xmas gift, but she recently fell in love with the "Twilight" books (what teen girl hasn't?) and even more, I have recently fallen in love with the "Bella Mittens" pattern that has popped up on Craftster and Ravelry! They're SOOOO nice, and I'd realy like to try making them, (I'm becoming one of those "Ooooh! I need to make that!" people. And any excuse to buy more yarn...) so I'm thinking of making her a pair. I guess I'll see if time constraints allow.

Only 3 weeks to Christmas! aaagh!

OH! I joined Ravelry this week! I LOVE IT! my username is Kris-13. :D