Thursday, July 26, 2012

Behr the Corgi.

I love this guy...
I'm kind of slow, but these are from the 5th of July. He was so tried and cranky from all the action on the 4th.





Thursday, July 19, 2012

Root Cases.


I've been sporting a super cheap phone cover from Monoprice for awhile now... Don't get me wrong, it's a decent cover and you could probably buy one in every color for the price of a normal phone cover, which is awesome. But it was a little bulky... Last week I decided to just go for it and spend some money on a decent phone cover. I went with Root Cases' Wood iPhone Case in Walnut. It's so pretty... And I just wanted to share this awesome company. They also have a bunch of other great things, like iPad cases!





Monday, July 16, 2012

Ombre Painting.

I've been looking, for what seems like years, for a painting or piece of art for the bathroom. I have found nothing... I'm really not even that picky (or maybe I am...). I just wanted something simple. I've been seeing some interesting things over on Pinterst and with some painting under my belt, figure I would give it a go.

This image is from Simply Smitten and I would love to direct you to a direct link, but I can't seem to find it on her blog...
But that image above is one of my inspirations. I've seen a few others, some really bad others pretty awesome, but I didn't save them.... oops.

I already had a canvas, just a cheapo one from Michael's. I actually have two because I bought a 2-pack. I'm 99% sure that most of the canvases there come all ready to paint on. Normally, when you buy canvas and build out your own frame, you need to apply gesso to prepare the surface for paint. I went ahead and did this anyways, simply because I can't remember what the packaging said. I also did it to give the canvas more texture.




All you really need to do is just paint the Gesso on and let it dry. I believe they always said to do two coats in the painting class I took in college, but because I thought it was already paint ready, I just did one.

I waited and let that dry... like a few days (or maybe a week) because I do way too many things at once. If you do two coats, I would try to give it an hour or two in between. Then probably at least the same amount of time or more before you actually start painting.


I didn't use that short jar looking guy because I couldn't get it open... The other white bottle is sort of the same things, Acrylic Flow Release. It essentially 'thins' out the paint. It's purpose it to make it take a little longer to dry, make it smoother, etc. At least that's what I thought, but now reading the description for it linked above.... I do not really use it properly.  It has all sorts of warnings about how you're supposed to dilute it with water and what not. I've never done that.

The paint is just cheap Liquitex acrylic paint. Nothing fancy.  I also really like the Dick Blick brand acrylic paint. I actually ended up using Dick Blick white too.

Everything I used was stuff that I already have. Most of it was purchased while I was in college for a painting class, but some of the paint I have is from before then. Like, probably that purple because we weren't allowed to buy pre-mixed colors.


I started off mixing some paint. I squirted a bunch of purple onto a plate. There is no scientific method behind this, but I tend to start off with the closest color to where I want to end up, in my case a darker purple to match my bathroom towels. Then I added a little bit of black at a time to get the color where I wanted. I would HIGHLY RECOMMEND using a palette knife. Best tool ever for mixing paint. I own one made by Dick Blick (it looks like the style has changed slightly over the years). I also have a really super crappy plastic one somewhere, but I would definitely go for the metal ones. The flexibility in the metal works well in my opinion.

I wasn't exactly sure if I was going to go all the way to the edges of my canvas because the original ombre painting I saw (which I cannot find...) didn't go to the edges and I thought it looked great. So, I started off with that in mind, knowing it was easier to start there and then go to the edges if I didn't like how that was working out.


To get the change in opacity, I started with the darkest and  I simply kept pulling paint out of my brush and adding flow release to the canvas. If you're trying it out for the first time, you may want to try it out on some paper first.


That wasn't really working for me... I decided to go all the way to the edges. Basically starting the process all over again over the top of what I already did, making sure I got the sides as I went.


And then... ta da! 


If I had been smart, I would have just stopped. But there was that one slightly darker spot on the middle top and so I tried to fix it... and just ended up destroying it. I had to go back in with white in order to get it to look normal again. I'm not really sure which version I like better, but I probably should have just stopped when I first thought to.


And here it is all dry and up in the bathroom in it's place. The lighting does change it at times. Sometimes it's more pink, other times it's more purple. Not a super fan of the pink times, but it works and I like it. 



Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Pug Puppies!

One of the ladies I work with has a litter of pug puppies she's been taking care of... Her pug is the daddy. They are so stinkin' cute! And I just wanted to share in the cuteness...

Here are two of them about two weeks ago:



And here they are a couple days ago, plotting their escape!


Monday, July 9, 2012

Strange things.

The sister and I made our monthly trek over to hunt & gather and a few surrounding stores. Here are just a few pictures of some crazy things we saw...

Baskets of antlers.

Plant with an arm.

I have no idea what this is....

Old pocket watches.



Friday, July 6, 2012

Doing something with those wedding things.

I'm generally pretty simple, meaning I wear just plain, solid color shirts and what not. Not usually anything flowery or full of stripes or polka dots. Simple. So, when it came to my wedding dress, it made sense to stick to me. The dress I picked out was very simple. No lace. Straight, crisp lines. No beads. No sequins. In order to jazz up things a bit I made sure I got some accessories that I really liked and would help make the day a little more special.

This was the fascinator for my hair. I also wore a birdcage veil.

Carissa Christine Foetoegrafie
I actually asked the lady that made my hair fascinator to also make a brooch/pin that I could wear on my dress.

Carissa Christine Foetoegrafie

That's my mom and I trying to determine where to pin on the brooch/pin I had made.

So, I had these great things that I really like but nothing to do with them now. I really don't think I will be wearing them again...

Awhile back I picked up two RIBBA frames at Ikea. And then later I picked up two more, hanging two on each side of one of the windows in my bedroom. These frames are nice because they have the "shadow box" type affect where there is about an inch of space between the glass and where the photograph (or whatever) would go.
Ikea Ribba Frame - $9.99
I had an idea of what I wanted to do with them, but wasn't sure how it would work out... I ended up going ahead with it. I wanted to 'frame' my accessories from the wedding.

I bought 12 in x 12 in pieces of nice paper from Michael's in a color I liked for the background. A couple days later, I gathered all of my supplies, which included the frames, pencil, mono adhesive, hot glue gun, new paper, straight cutting thing, and of course the fascinator.


I had already put my frames together, which really just means putting on the clips and wire on the back so you can hang it up. I used the pencil to mark the clips just in case they moved while I took apart the frame. I then cut the paper into 4 equal pieces - 4 6in x 6in squares.


Then I used the mono adhesive to attach to the paper to the "wood" back of frame.


I then placed the matting back down on the backing so that I could sort of line up how I wanted the fascinator lay on it.


Then, I added hot glue to only the clip part of the fascinator. I didn't want to destroy it, just in case I wanted to use it for something else later down the road.


Finally, I just put the frame back together.

I ended up doing my fascinator, pin, veil, and Bill's boutonniere. Those things logically went together and I couldn't think of anything else that would work at the time. The veil frame looked a little sad and empty for awhile and I finally decided to add the letter S for our last name. I'm still not 100% on that one, but it will do for now.


 My bedroom is really hard to take photos in, so hopefully between the two photos below, you get the idea.



It works for me and gives me a daily reminder of that very awesome, expensive ;) day where I married my fantastic husband. I think these pieces of my wedding would just be hidden in a box somewhere if I hadn't put them in the frames.

Thursday, July 5, 2012

My 4th of July

... was so hot.

We hit over 100 degrees in the lovely Minneapolis. It was an overall good day besides the heat. Nothing too crazy happened ...










Another successful 4th of July party!