Photos on Canvas

My apartment is pretty well-known (in my circles) for being colorful. I’ve never done well with white walls, so immediately upon moving in I picked the paint chips out for an aqua bedroom, teal living room, purple second bedroom and bath, and green kitchen. (That’s partially a lie, I had originally painted the kitchen a mango color that ended up doing nothing for me.)

And, while the walls aren’t white anymore, I still like piling on the color with my vast collection of wall art. Most of the pieces are my own (mainly paintings and photos), and others are from local shops and, of course, Etsy.

I love taking nature walks around my neighborhood when the flowers are in full bloom, snapping away with my camera, and some of the images are just downright dreamy. Somehow 4×6″ doesn’t do them justice. Then, voila. One of the coolest things I discovered was the ability to have your photos printed on giant canvases. I’m not sure who mentioned the idea originally, likely my sister, but I definitely took the idea and ran with it. (I’ve got at least 10 such prints of my photos hanging on my walls, and have given them as gifts as well!) This, and the introduction to the macro lens on my little point and shoot, have been sort of life changing. Make sure to change your camera settings so you capture the largest image size possible if you plan on enlarging a picture. (I use my camera’s M1 setting – 3264 x 2448 pixels. There’s a larger setting of 4000 x 3000, but I haven’t had any problem in scaling my pictures at the slightly smaller size, and the other’ll eat through your memory card much quicker.) These websites will warn you if your pictures don’t have enough resolution to enlarge without losing quality.

There are plenty of websites make these prints, and I’ve used a couple of different ones like Shutterfly and Snapfish, but I know CVS does them, and I recently bought a Groupon for a company called Image Canvas, so I’ll be testing them out. You certainly don’t have to use a different company every time, but I generally wait to print anything on this scale until I get an offer for a good sale price, and they can come from a variety of sites. (I recommend waiting on sales for 40% off or upwards, these can run expensive!) The reason I branched out to different sites was because Shutterfly and Snapfish each offer different sized canvases. I ended up getting my larger prints from Shutterfly and my smallest three from Snapfish. The one disappointment I had with Snapfish was that their photos arrived and the canvas was matted, not glossy. To remedy, I just applied my own clear coat of varnish (something I’d use on top of an acrylic painting) to make it shinier, and it didn’t affect the image in anyway.

This first image is one of my favorites. You might find it surprising, but bees are some of my favorite subjects, and the most photogenic. (I even gave my mom a couple prints from my “bee butt” series.) The flowers are kind of interesting too This print is 24 x 36″ on canvas, and below is the original photograph. (The colors in the print are pretty true to the original, they’re just not translating in my picture of a picture.)

These three prints are each 8 x 10″, and their progressing shades of orange against the teal wall (looks more blue here) make me smile.

Hopefully this inspires you to create some of your own wall art. It’s not just for the pros anymore!

Studio City Arts and Crafts Show

Hello Angelinos!

If you’re in the Studio City area, and are looking for something to do with Mama this weekend, be sure to check out the Rotary Arts and Crafts Show over at Laurel Canyon and Moorpark. You can count on being inspired and interacting with tons of great vendors – I met many of them a few weeks ago at the Woodland Hills Crafts Show – and it’s also a fundraising event!

The event runs both Saturday the 12th and Sunday the 13th from 10am-5pm. On Sunday, you can even stroll on up to the Studio City Farmer’s Market afterwards to stock up on some fresh produce to match your new artwork.

Parking is a pain, I won’t lie to you, but if you get there earlier on you’ll find spots closer by. Weather and all, this promises to be a great weekend for being and about in LA. I’m looking forward to going on Sunday myself, and regardless of whether you can make it or not, I hope you and yours have a lovely Mother’s Day!

Glitter Nail Polish – How To

So here’s a little how-to follow up to my last post about glitter nail polish. I happened to find those fabulous colors in a retail store, however I haven’t always been able to find just the right shade.

There is a nail salon nearby that I used to frequent and, if memory serves, it [probably still] has the greatest selection of colors I’ve ever seen. Since I can’t always splurge on a mani-pedi just to get the color I want – and I also actually enjoy painting my own nails – I inquired about purchasing my favorite polishes for home. Unfortunately, they didn’t sell all the colors they stocked in the shop. However, one of the girls who worked there suggested I might make my own.

Surprisingly, it was something I’d never considered. When she recommended using extra fine body glitter, which can be found at a beauty supply store if not in a drug store, it was truly a, “like, duh!” moment. I bought 2 shades of glitter - Hollywood Lights from Cinema Secrets, to be precise – and 2 cheapo bottles of clear polish. In hindsight, as with most polish, the somewhat pricier ones are usually worth a bit more. Just a bit!

Use a rolled piece of paper, or something similar, to help funnel the glitter into the bottle of clear polish. There’s no exact proportion for this, I made sure to use quite a bit because I wanted good coverage. (I hate sparse glitter polish that requires 2 coats just to notice it!) Keep in mind, as with all glitter projects, that this has the potential to get super messy, so put some paper down in case of spills.

That’s it. Just pour glitter into your polish and stir. This could depend on the polish, but I know the glitter in mine tends to settle at the bottom, so you’ll have to make sure to mix it well before using. I wonder if a thicker polish helps suspend the glitter better. I imagine it does, since my store-bought ones don’t have this problem.

So let this be a lesson to you as it was to me- whether with nail polish, or almost anything else, if you can’t buy what you’re looking for, try to make it yourself!

Glittery Nails Make Everything Better

Fact.

It’s been pretty dreary here in LA for the past few days, and the chill and drizzle are quite an odd converse to the 90ºF we hit on Friday. But as gloomy as it may be outside, I’ve been livening things up with my new nail polish!

I’ve considered myself an experienced nail painter since at least the 7th grade. In fact, I remember challenging myself at one point and painting my nails a different color and/or pattern every day for 2 months straight. These days I just hope that my polish makes it through more than a day without chipping so I don’t have to redo them. Don’t get me wrong, I love painting my nails, but all my free time lately is just before bed, and fresh polish + sheets + I swim in my sleep = disaster.

Anyways, this green is not being properly represented in these pictures, and I don’t have the wherewithal to color correct them now that Picnik no longer exists, but they are a brilliant shade of emerald. Think Wizard of Oz, or a box of Thin Mints. The color in the pictures is pretty, but not nearly as vibrant as it looks in person. Boo to that.

So I picked these new colors at Forever 21 over the weekend. (It was weird for me too, those bins by the checkout stands are so dangerous.) When I was a polish novice, I used to think that a couple of coats of glitter shellac were enough to convey a color on their own. Then at some point, when I was older and wiser, I realized that by pairing a glitter polish top coat with a base coat of a solid in a similar hue, the sparkle and color impact would be tenfold. Take my toes for example, in real life they look like the finish on a bowling ball. Epic. (I purchased those colors at Forever 21 as well. They have a solid summer palette! You’ll notice that the teal glitter is finer than the green, and I actually prefer that aesthetically – even though my nails are totally kickass!)

According to the Forever 21 website, the base coat on my fingers is Go Go Green, and the glitter is, cleverly enough, called Green Glitter. For my toes, I used a base of Cobalt Blue, and topped it off with Blue Glitter. (In real life, the labels on both the blue bottles say “blue,” and the green say “green.”)

Having never used it before, here is my review of the polish. The one downfall of this particular brand seems to be that is that it’s super matted, including the glitter, so to get a any shine you’ll need to use a clear top coat. Besides that, I did 2 coats of the solid green, and 2 coats of the glitter. The opaque color coated just fine in one, but I wasn’t sure how the glitter would distribute since it’s not fine, so I wanted to make sure everything was covered. You don’t have to do as many, I get carried away. On the major plus side – surprising with what I thought would be a very cheap polish, and despite the fact that there are so many layers – they still haven’t chipped, and it’s been over 3 days! (knock on wood.)

So there you have it. If the gloom has got you down, shake up your regular nail routine and pair your matte colors with a cop coat of matching glitter. Now you too can spend your dreary days like I do – grinning stupidly at my nails every time they catch my eye.

Paisley Cut-Out Flowers

I was really into creating these flowers recently. I used colored pencil to both outline and shade in some paisleys of varying sizes, cut them out, then glued them as floral arrangements onto a card for my mom.

I think the texture the watercolor paper adds underneath the colored pencil, combined with physically layering the cutouts onto another piece of paper gives it an enhanced sense of dimension. Considering this design came together on a whim, I was pretty proud of how this card turned out. (Mom liked it too!)

Happy Easter!

Reblogged from My Baking Empire:

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Happy Easter, everyone

I made some deviled eggs (I use yellow mustard, mayo, pepper, salt, and garlic powder in the yolk), and used teeny sliced carrots for the beak/nose, and some roasted chiles for the eyes. You could also use olives, but I didn’t have any!

To get the eggs to stand upright, use a sharp knife to shave a thin slice off the bottom of the white.

Read more… 51 more words

Felt Cat Toys

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking to do a quickie project with purpose, and decided to make some cat toys for the girls (Walker and Sunny). The reason was twofold – first, I wanted to treat my darling kitties to some new playthings because it’s been awhile. Secondly I needed extra weapons to throw at them for when they would disrupt me while I was working (or eating, or doing anything that didn’t involve paying complete attention to them). I’ve found the best method of keeping them distracted, at least for moments at a time, is to throw toys around the room. (Otherwise, they tend towards destruction when they feel neglected.)

The supply of cat toys I’ve invested in has dwindled, and the remainder are looking worse for wear. But don’t let the picture below of these 4 remaining purchased toys fool you into thinking there aren’t a dozen neon-colored, catnip-filled mice, weird koosh-like balls, and other shapes with bells in them all hiding in the crevices of my apartment. Every now and again something resurfaces that I haven’t seen in awhile, but often another toy is lost in its place to the great unknown. (Think clothes-dryer sock monster kind of deal.)

So, on this particular day, I decided to get some supplies out and make a few. All four took me just over an hour in total to create, not too big a time investment. Also, it was a fairly simple project overall, and a quick way to replenish my arsenal on the cheap.

What you’ll need:

• Felt
• embroidery floss/thread and needle
• scissors
• batting or other stuffing

As you can see below, I just cut out some basic shapes from felt – not too large, maybe 3″ or so – then I stuffed them with some crinkly paper, and sewed them together for a little plush toy.  I used embroidery floss to sew the edges so that the stitching became part of the decoration.

I don’t know that the crinkly paper made any difference, but the cats love these. For your project, you can certainly stuff them with regular batting, and even enhance them with some catnip. Next time, I’ll want to make them heavier so they travel further when I throw them across the room. (Maybe they’ll actually make it across the room.) My concern with that was finding something that added weight, but wouldn’t harm the cats when they bit into the toy. I’ll figure something out, I’m sure. But, as is, these toys will surely delight your favorite felines.

Do you have any other ideas for cat toys? Any suggestions for something to add weight without harming those delicate but pointy teeth?