I had and recovered from a stomach bug on Wednesday and now I'm rocking and rolling again!  But the problem is that I'm rocking and rolling too much.  There are too many ideas rattling around in this big dumb brain of mine, too many things half-started, and my room is too messy and I'm not quite at the energy level to clean it yet.

So there are no pictures today, but there will be eventually!  Don't lose faith in me!

Yesterday I made some art for the house!

I used a die cut to make something called an elastic square out of posterboard.  Basically... it folds to look like a top of a box.  You can do the same thing by hand by scoring the lines you want to fold.

Then I attached some of that really cheap brown paper towel that you find at schools.  This way the crayon would have something to latch onto, instead of slick posterboard.  That's right, folks, crayon!

For the sunflower pictures, what I did was draw it first with crayon, then shave wax off of the crayons with a scissor blade. Then I pressed the wax where I wanted it to go with another paper towel.  Without that compression, it would just fly away when I used the heat gun.   While I melted it with the heat gun, I used a pencil to move the wax where I wanted it to go, and make sharper lines.

As for the portrait of Van Gogh... as you can tell, I'm no V.G.!  For starters, I have both of my ears, yet!  I tried the wax thing for him, but melting it distorted the shapes too much, so I moved to tempera paint, applied with a pencil, to get that really nice texturing that you see in Van Gogh's work.

It actually does look pretty great, but the pictures  blur the details.  This picture does it slightly more justice. You can sort of see the texturing and all of the different shades in the portrait!

Happy arting!

Garage Sale Saturday was a huge success!

First we stopped by a home improvement store and found a glorious shade of oopsie paint and glass tiles that match!  The best part of the glass tiles is that they were in the fifty cent clearance section.

My only problem is that I need to figure out a way to cut the glass tiles so I can actually use them in the attic floor.  I have my feelers out to see if I have a friend of a friend that can hook me up.

As for the garage sales proper, I got a tiny zen garden that might go on the roof as a giant zen garden, but mostly it's for me.  Then I got these:

A teeny bucket and something that would work lovely as a rug.

Happy arting!

How to spruce up quarter machine fish!

Paint it with a coat of white acrylic, then go to town on them with watercolors.  Darker colors will seep into the crevices and create a really awesome, textured, depth-y effect.

Happy arting!

Today, I painted the outside of the dollhouse.  I've been itching to do something big, instead of so many little projects... but I'm struggling with the walling, and I have to do walling before I do flooring.  The one thing I can do is paint the outside.

These are the before pictures.  It's more gray than blue.  I used regular acrylic, and it just soaked right in.

This is the after picture.  I used a really cheap oopsie home improvement store paint, and, miraculously, I found a gorgeous blue shade instead of baby poop color.

It's really just tinted primer!  It covers really well.  I might do another coat just to be sure, but I love it.  It went on nearly white, but it dried this hybrid between sky blue and robin's egg and I love it!

I need to figure out a color for the trim, but, woohoo!

As you can see, the party is spirited and a huge success.  Some might even say... to die for.

As you can also see, I actually have a really amazing photographer taking pictures for me.  Thank you Thomas, you're the best!

Toad is going as Batman (posterboard mask, an extra cape).  The Doctor is going as Doctor House (a paper cane, twisted with glue to keep its shape).

  Van Gogh is going as that redheaded doctor in Grey's Anatomy.  Look at the resemblance, it's eerie.

Oscar Wilde is what only Oscar Wilde can be: a bird with ridiculous plumage.  This is all out of paper and gloss, attached with plain clear tape, turned inside out and hidden.  And I made Poe a pair of Groucho glasses with pipecleaners, wire, and paper.  Poor Poe.

You can get a better shot of his tail in this one.

The candied and caramel apples are made of paper and aluminum foil on toothpicks, painted thickly with watercolors for the deep color and shine.

The lollipops are foil and tissue paper on wire; the other candy is foil and tissue paper.

The Halloween baskets are part of this ridiculous drinking straw that they sell at the dollar store.  I scored cut lines with a scissor, and because the plastic is hard I didn't want to risk cutting through and ruining a scissor.  I used a wirecutter for that, and it worked fine, half of the time.  The other half, I ruined the pumpkin.  Thankfully, each straw has four, and it comes in a package of several.  Then I covered it with orange tissue paper to give it a nicer texture and a less plasticky shine, and added a wire handle.

The triceratops is a horse for Halloween, with a little rider made of foil and tissue paper.  The rider is actually a tiny Van Gogh, with orange yarn hair and beard.

The 'organic zombie' growing out of a flowerpot!  Okay, I've seen this somewhere before, but I don't remember where.  Basically, I used one of my mess-up hands from the dolls I'm trying to make, painted over the skin tone with green watercolor, blotted when needed to create that gross, mottled look, and made a 'seed packet' out of posterboard and part of a skewer.

Look at how pretty that lamp looks under decent lighting and a good camera!

Annnd here's my Halloween costume.  Bowties are cool.  Trust me, I'm the Doctor.

If I've been quiet, it's because I've been finishing my Halloween costume!

I won't tell you who it's of, but I'll tell you it's a member of the house. (There will be pictures.)

Fingers crossed that I can whip up a Dollar Dollhouse Halloween party at the last minute.  Wish me luck, honeybees.

There will be candy, there will be mayhem, there will be terrible puns.