"Sundae" Surprise! ... on Sunday!

Good evening Lured Ones!

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend!
As you can see, I am implementing a new feature to this blog called Sunday Surprise! This means that every Sunday I will post on something of my choice. Sometimes it will be about a finished piece or project that I am currently working on and sometimes it will be something not related to my works at all. Since it is supposed to be a surprise, I won't elaborate too much on what Sunday Surprises will feature; you will just have to wait and see!

This Sunday, there are two surprises to kick off the start of this series. The first Sunday Surprise is a sundae! This piece on the left is called "Her Sundae Best" by artist Jacqui Faye. Although she paints contemporary portraits she is best known for her figurative works called the Red Shoe Dailies. In these "red shoe stories," anonymous subjects are portrayed from the shoulders, waist, or knees down and always with red shoes to "paint a story often interpreted by viewers who relate to the artwork through anonymity." To learn more about Jacqui Faye, please visit her site at http://jacquifaye.blogspot.com/

But wait! There's more! Moar!!!!! The second surprise this Sunday is that there are more surprises. In addition to Sunday Surprise, there will also be other days scheduled for posts so that the blog gets a consistent flow of content. Are you ready? Drum roll please.... There will be Tutorial Tuesdays, and also Factual Fridays.

For Tutorial Tuesdays I will take pictures or record a video of myself performing a technique or tutorial from a book, magazine or website for you all to see! So that way we are both learning something new together every week. I'm actually really excited about this because not only is it a forcing mechanism for consistent flow of content, but also it's challenging me to learn something new each week. Yay!

Since we have a day dedicated to techniques I thought a day set aside for learning about art would be appropriate. For Factual Fridays (hehe F to the third), it will be less about techniques and more about art facts. Although the day is called Factual Fridays, I will not post solely short random art facts but rather information regarding art in various categories such facts, art history, current events, notable artists, museums and other research.

I am super excited about Tutorial Tuesdays, Factual Fridays and Sunday Surprises! I hope you are too. I can't wait for Tuesday's post. What tutorial shall I do, I wonder? You'll have to check back and see! Until next time,

<3 Kara

DIY Lace Trimmed Shorts

Good evening y'all!

While visiting Seattle last month, my best friend Elyse and I worked on a sewing project and I wanted to show you what we did!

Many people were pinning and re-pinning these cute lace trimmed shorts and I wanted one so bad! The only problem: I didn't have a sewing machine. But I knew that there was one at Elyse's house, and she was more than happy to help me with this project. We had a blast hanging out, talking and doing crafty things. She helped me with the shorts and also she crocheted these super cute headbands that I will blog about it another post! She is so talented, she could probably make good money selling her stuff. Furthermore, she is so generous for letting me use some of her lace from her stash, the sewing machine and also helping me sew it. I was quite incompetent at the sewing machine (something I plan on fixing) so she had to step in :)

So we started by going to Goodwill to find a pair of jeans to cut up. That day I left Goodwill with an awesome pair of boot cut Banana Republic jeans that fit me perfectly all around. They were even hemmed up to the perfect length for me. After going through Elyse's lace collection together, and choosing potential lace pieces, we agreed to meet another day to sew.

The next meeting, I really didn't have the heart to cut up such a perfect pair of denim. The funny thing was that Elyse mentioned on the first trip to Goodwill, "What if you liked these so much you didn't want to cut them up?" So we made a second trip to Goodwill and felt pretty hopeless when I saw a pair of destroyed Hollister jeans hanging on the discard rack. Those also fit me perfectly and I didn't hesitate cutting off the legs because the knees were too destroyed to my liking.What a lucky day!

Step 1: The lace I decided to use is pictured in the top right. Notice the cute piggies embroidered on it? I was so excited when I noticed it way late. Think about it: who puts piggies on lace trim? So cute! Anyway, the bottom right image shows the Hollister denim that I decided to use. We started by marking the line where we wanted to cut on the leg. I chose it to be just above mid-thigh because I am not a big fan of short-shorts.

Step 2: We turned the shorts inside out and sewed up the hem about half an inch. Elyse started the hem and I tried to finish. The key word here is "try" because I failed miserably. I couldn't keep the hemline straight, so Elyse took over. Isn't she so kind? She actually ended up sewing the rest of it. She doubled sewed the hem to ensure that it was sturdy since this is denim.

Step 3: The finishing step was to sew on the lace along the inside of the denim. We made sure the lace would overlap on the inner thigh so that the lace would be uninterrupted around the rest of the leg.

The finishing of finishing step is to try on the shorts and see how it looks.  And I think it looks pretty cute, don't you? They are so cute I  wore these shorts the rest of that day :)

We went to her backyard to take some pictures for this blog. She also let me use her Buddy scooter for the pictures and they turned out great! Thanks Elyse for helping every step of the way. I had such an amazing time with you ^_^

I hope you enjoyed this post about the process of making these shorts. If you have questions about this process or would like to make a pair for yourself, please let me know! I I would love to see what you came up with. Until next time!

<3 Kara

Self Portrait on a Lily Pad, 2007

Good day Lured Ones!

Today I want to give some insight into a portrait I did for my high school IB art class in 2007. I showed an image in a previous post about my visit to my old high school, but I did not explain. So here goes!

Around this time I was learning the process of canvas making, and decided to make my own canvas for the self portrait. The dimension requirement was pretty large, so I decided to make it about life-sized. As you can see the small top left image, Ms. Drum was helping me make the canvas, and bottom left you can see how big the canvas is relative to me (I am 5 foot, 1 inch tall). 

 

On the right is my finished painting done in acrylics. The whole concept was that I am sleeping, dreaming on a lily pad on the water. Initially I intended for the water on the lower part of the canvas to have unclear dark images that suggested a nightmare. I had trouble sleeping and often had scary dreams that bore no clear meaning. The fog is suppose to be dense to give a hazy and dream-like mood. 

After I finished, I spent some time observing the painting and I decided that I could have done better around the stomach area. The fabric of the shirt on the stomach is too straight and unreal. Also on the hand, the ring finger is longer than the middle finger, which is highly inaccurate >_< I've always had trouble with hands. Also, it was pretty unfortunate that someone took a pen on my painting on the face area. I had stored it in the supply room, so there was no way to figure out who. That's not too important because if I wanted to spend some time fixing it up, I could cover it.

If I were to fix up this painting, what do you think I should change or do differently? Ideas are very much welcome and appreciated :)

Until next time, I hope your weekend is going fantabulously!

<3

Visiting my old high school's IB Art class

Good afternoon everyone!

September was a busy month and I wasn't able to post as often as I'd like. However, I was doing things that I could blog about all the while - just didn't have time to sit down and gather photos and edit video clips for uploading. Now that I am back and have some time to myself, I can slowly but surely update you on what I've been up to.

Two weeks ago, I visited my high school teacher and she invited me to return the following day during her IB art class and meet the new kids and see what they were working on. This was such a trip down memory lane because they were working on their self portraits and I was at this point in the class years ago. I was able to speak to some students and learn about some ideas and messages behind their pieces. It was very insightful and I felt so honored that one student shared a particularly personal story behind her piece.

The students were great and so was their work. Here are some works done by students in Ms. Drum's IB art class. I will also share the self portrait I painted at the end. So make sure to scroll all the way down, and enjoy!

 

Now here's what I did 5 years ago when I was at this point in the class:

I intended for this post to be about my visit to the class, so I shall give further insight to to this painting in my next post :)

Until next time!

<3 Kara