And So It Continues

Onto my second Color Theory project! And if you don't know what the first project was, where have you been? Nah, I kid. But seriously, I posted it just yesterday so feel free to browse that. Or not. I wouldn't.

Well then, for project two, our assignment was to create three pieces of art using ANY medium our hearts so desired. The only real criteria was that we had color schemes of sorts to stick to. The first piece would be highly saturated colors and their tints. Simply put, you could only use colors in their purest forms, plus the different tints they have when white is added. The second piece was to be done in tones and shades. Here you want to have impure colors, which you get when you mix a hue and its complement. In other words, if I have a bright, pure red and I add its complement - green - I get a red tone. It becomes 'muddier' in a sense. And then to get shades you add black to that tone. The last piece would actually get its colors from an inspirational painting, something from before the 1960's. My painting, here, is Ladies in the Rain. I used the different blues and tans, with the tiny hint of pink that is found if you look closely at the painting.

Now, being that we were given the freedom to choose any medium known to man, I decided why not knit? So I made three different hats, each with hand dyed yarn. I wanted to make them each special, with rather original designs relative to what the color scheme was.

And this is what I came up with!

To the far left is my saturated color scheme, and I decided to go with something very youthful and silly to reflect the bright colors. In the middle is my Ladies in the Rain pattern, where I wanted to keep it sophisticated and romantic, so I made a beret of sorts. And on the right is my tones hat, which I kept a little silly, but slightly more plain than the other two.

In case you are curious as to my methods of madness, I shall fill you in!

So the first thing I did was go out and get myself some 100% cotton yarn. Acrylics won't do because they don't absorb dye, so only the most unnecessarily expensive yarn from a hipster retailer would do. Or any pure cotton yarn. Actually, wool will work as well (that was some exciting alliteration, no?) Anything natural. Just no acrylic or polyester type of things.

Then I got a ton of dye. Just really simple, cheap stuff. RIT dye, to be specific. And if you're worried about the quality of it because it's cheap, don't. I saw them use this stuff on Project Runway, so I figure it's fool proof. And it's great; these little boxes dye up to one pound of fabric which is more than enough for three little hats, considering I bought 16 colors (Joann fabrics had a great sale.)


As you can see, I put each color in its own clear plastic cup, and I proceeded to label each cup with the name of the color inside. This was especially handy in distinguishing between things like orange and yellow, or the lovely denim blue, royal blue, and navy blue. Yes, that was really a thing.






The next step was to follow the instructions which were inconveniently printed on the inside of the box... But I altered them a little, pouring about half of the dye powder into less than a cup full of hot water. This was my first dye project, so work with me.

The next step was to get the yarn into a state where it could be dyed. I simply took my folding step ladder and wrapped the yarn under the top step until I liked the size of it, then folded the ladder and pulled off my yarn. I used some thick sewing thread and tied the yarn in sections so it wouldn't fall apart, and laid my big loops out on the floor, on top of a piece of plastic so as not to dye the linoleum tiles. Note that the loops in the photo below are all one skein of yarn, so they're attached to each other by a strand running between them.

Then I took the whole loops, one at a time, and soaked them in a bowl of room temperature water help them absorb the dye properly. The last thing I did was pick up sections of each loop and, again, one section at a time, dipped it into a cup of dye for a few minutes (not nearly as long as I ought have, but it worked) and then squeezed it out before laying it back down and moving on to the next piece. When a whole yarn loop was sufficiently dyed, I took it to the sink and ran it under the water until it was almost clear - I say almost because I'm an impatient procrastinator who was working on a very short time schedule. The only thing left to do was leave it on a drying rack over night and then knit the heck out of it! As for the patterns, I genuinely googled knit hat patterns and combined a little of everything. Don't ask me how I did any of them because it was a nightmare I don't care to remember.

Oh, I almost forgot! It should be noted that for the beret, I knit it first and then took one of those sponge brush things -you know, the kind with the black pentagonal sponge head on top of a wood dowel- and sort of painted the dye onto the hat.

I hope you enjoyed my lengthy tutorial! Let me know what you come up with.

Year Round School

Well I seem to have been off my game lately, haven't I?

School really kept me busy this past quarter. There were a few days there where I wasn't entirely sure I'd make it through. But here I am! Ever prevailing. And, alas, I am home relaxing - enjoying a short but sweet Spring Break.

Now that I have some free time on my hands, I thought I'd go ahead and update this here blog, which would otherwise be collecting virtual dust. And where better to start than with an actual project I was assigned for my Color Theory class? (As long this isn't meant to be some kind of top secret, paying student information...)

So, this was the first project assigned to the class and let me tell you, it was no small feat.

What we had to do was choose a photo that met the standards of our hard to please aesthetic standards - to which I immediately chose Disney, what else? The image had to be printed to at least 6" x 8". Also, this couldn't be just some plain animated image because it had to have some level of challenge to it. This being said, I had my work cut out for me, finding a relatively large scale picture of a non-animated Disney subject. And after several painful hours of googling, I came upon this beautiful image of some Disney characters in costume from the theme park in front of what seems to be Cinderella's Castle.



The next step in this painful journey was to choose four sections of the image to be dissected. These sections were to be either 1" x 6" or 1.5" x 4", and I chose the latter for all of my sections. The idea for each section was to recreate the values in different color schemes using a construction paper of sorts - if I've lost you already, don't worry. We'll find each other again in a moment.




The first section was to be done in black and white, or achromatic in the art world. Basically, I had about 20 available shades of grey, and I had to match up the shades to their equivalent colors in the image, then meticulously cut them out with an exacto knife and glue them down ever so carefully.


After the achromatic section came the monochromatic section. In other words, you choose one color and find all of its shades and tints (which is what you get
when you add black and white respectively.) This becomes your new grey scale.










The third section from there is the complementary color scheme. Here you choose a color plus it's shades and tints again, and do the same for the color opposite it on the color wheel. I chose blue and orange for mine, taking note that of the two, blue is a cool color and orange is a warm color. Now, the warm color should be applied to the area physically closest to the viewer and the cool color on the further back area.

 



Last is the actual color section. This is just how it sounds. The goal was to match the colors in the image as closely as possible to the colored paper.

And thus...the final product!

May I Slytherin..? ;)

Happy holidays everyone!

I don't know about all of you, but I'm celebrating a very old tradition today. Chinese food and movies! Well...not entirely true. It's going to be Japanese food, but I'm still in the oriental family, right?

But seeing as not all of my friends are lucky enough to be Jewish, like me, I obviously have a list of Christmas presents to hand out to my favorite people in the entire world. Well, one girl in particular, essentially my other half - the evil twin in most ways. We're pretty much one person split into two, basically long lost sisters. And seeing as how we have everything in common besides parents, there's a common love of Harry Potter between us. We're both Slytherins, as luck would have it. So for the wonderful holidays, HP was the direction I took for her present.

Actually...this is how I came upon my idea. Well, as seen in my last post, another friend of mine asked for Toms painted with Mickey and Minnie mouse which I made for her birthday. Not knowing where to get Toms, since I, myself, never wear the things, I asked Kaitlin -my other half. Then, as I surfed Pinterest (always Pinterest!) I came across some really lovely Ravenclaw Toms. I sent a picture of them to my Kaitlin, saying that they would be *totally awesome* in Slytherin style. (Heh, did you get my Very Potter Musical reference there? Heh heh) Well my twin here replied by asking, all excited, if I was making her Slytherin Toms, which would explain why I asked her where to buy them?! Alas...that was not my logic at all...so I told her politely that, no, I wasn't planning on making them, sadly. And I really wasn't. I just thought the shoes looked cool. But now I had the perfect present to give her for Christmas, and this way she would still be pleasantly surprised to see the shoes. :)

And that's when I began the quest for the perfect design. So I opened Pinterest back up, as always, and searched for Slytherin Toms. I came across these bad boys which came from haleykayarts Deviantart account. I really like the idea of having the house crest there, but I didn't want to do exactly the same shoe not only out of respect for the original artist but also so that, heaven forbid the shoes were too small for Kaitlin, I could always sell them on Etsy or something later.
Luckily I did have the right size shoes, and all was well! xD






So then I set out to find a standard house crest to work from and this here is what I came up with.









Then I got off my lazy butt and went in search of supplies. After many tedious hours of gathering the energy to get out of the house, I went to several stores and got these gray Toms. I also bought some more of those craft paints I used in my last post for those Mickey and Minnie shoes. This time I got gold, silver, green, and yellow. Plus I used the black and white paints. I also had my black sharpie paint pen, which is really handy for more or less sketching out designs. And I like how shiny the sharpie paint looks when it dries, too.



Last is the brushes which I stocked up on at my local grocery store. I also talked about these in that last post, but basically it's a bag of 25 brushes for $5 and they're really surprisingly good quality. The only real problem I had was that there weren't any brushes small enough to get really fine details. What I found myself doing was painting things thicker than I needed them, and then painting over the edges with another color to create the really fine lines. But that's still a rather risky way to go about it...

Now, I didn't document the whole process but I started out with the green shield in the middle, got the snake on, then put in the scroll that says Slytherin on the bottom. From there I did the knight's helmet and worked the scrollwork down the sides. And even though I started this about two weeks before Christmas, I still found myself scrambling at the last minute to finish them. So the details on either side of the shield don't entirely match up to the house crest itself, but it really isn't that big of a deal, and I still like it. Then I painted around it in green -mostly to cover my many mistakes and partly to cover more of the shoe. And I went with a snitch on the second shoe which I really don't care for honestly, but I had no time to do anything better. And this time crunch also prevented me from getting stripes or anything else onto the shoes. This is the final result that I was left with in the end and, aside from the less impressive snitch, I am really happy with the shoes in general. And I do love how the crest came out with.

 



So that's the story! Let me know if there's anything I can make for you, and I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season! Happy New Year everyone!

For the love of Disney. And shoes.

About two months ago, a very lovely friend of mine hinted -ever so lightly- that she would like me to paint her a pair of shoes with Mickey and Minnie Mouse on them... by texting me that she wanted me to make these for her.

I'm not entirely sure where she came across them, but for the first time thus far, my project was not pinterest inspired! So...I hopped right on to pinterest. I wanted see what other people had come up with because, for one, I didn't exactly want to copy what another person had made and, for another, I was not very big on the idea of having the characters be on the sides of the shoes.

Then I came across this photo and I'm pretty sure my heart skipped a beat...

Once I regained functional thought, I continued to surf around for other interpretations of the above shoes. I found several pairs but nothing that really struck my fancy, so I moved on to finding a good picture of Mickey and Minnie themselves that I thought would be good to use for my own work of art.

Finally I came across this adorable photo which in turn became the inspiration for my final product. I used those poses, with the colors from the original picture my friend had sent me. And this is what I came up with! (SPOILER ALERT)

Now here's how I magicked these beauties into being:

Let's begin with the supplies, shall we?

 

I used five different colors for the whole project: red, yellow, white, black, and fleshtone. I went to the local craft store and just picked up some folkArt paints - the cheapest craft paint you find will work just fine. That's what I went with here. Although, I really only bought these paints because I happen to have left ALL of my art supplies back at school.

Well I gathered all of my necessities and just today I went and sat down to start this little production. Yes, two months after my friend actually sent me the picture of what she wanted. And as I begin to paint with my bottle of red, I realize there's a little something funny going on. Only to discover, of course, that I carelessly bought Enamel acrylic paints, which are specifically meant to be used on glass and ceramics...and since I decided, as always, to wait until the last minute to start anything, I had no choice but to go ahead and use it.

In a nutshell, that was my way of saying BE CAREFUL and pay attention to what you're buying. Make sure you're getting a regular acrylic craft paint or whatever you choose to work with. And you might notice that the fleshtone is a different brand of paint. That is merely because I couldn't find anything remotely fleshy in the folkArt collection (although I doubt it helped that I was looking in the enamels...) so I just moved over one section and bought from whichever brand I could find with a color I liked.

And then I got one of the Sharpie Paint Pens just to help out with the details of things. It's just plain black with a fine tip. They're super handy!

As for the brushes, I am extremely fond of this super pack that I found some time ago at Publix, which is my local grocery store if you're not familiar. It's just this handy little mixture of all types of brushes including ones meant for acrylic, oils, watercolor, whatever. And it also comes with those weird spongy things that I have no idea how to address. I believe it's twenty-five brushes total, and it only costs around five dollars. No, they aren't the kind of brushes you should be planning to execute your next masterpiece with, but they are really quite impressive quality for the price.

Yet again, I went out and bought myself a pack of these because, as I said, I left every kind of art supply I own back in my dorm.

 

Finally, and probably most important, I got the shoes for this here charade. They're just regular old Toms in red. I'm not a huge fan of these myself, but my friend happened to be extremely fond of them. But the really great thing about these shoes, and converse for that matter, is that they are made from canvas. I'm sure there's several other canvas shoes, too, and they're all great for these kinds of projects. It makes it really easy to simply paint right onto the shoe without having to prime or worry about anything. Although, if you wish to prime in some way, by all means! I also didn't seal the paint, but I would really have liked to use that waterproofing shoe spray I've heard so many great things about. But, yet again, having waited till the last minute, I didn't get the chance to make sure I had all of the right supplies for this job.

 

So the first thing I did was try to find a way in which I could sketch out my design before I went full out and made sure these shoes could never be returned. Alas, I was unable to draw in pencil and have any substantial results and, like the rest of my worldly possessions, my graphite and charcoal are tucked away under my desk at school. So I actually took a piece of paper that was about the size of my shoe surface and sketched out the figures loosely. I somewhat marked a guideline on the shoes of where the head should start an end to begin the process. Then I took my handy dandy paint pen and came up with this.

 



Starting with Mickey's head, I worked my way down until I had a full body and did the same thing on the second shoe with Minnie Mouse. These were pretty rough and I definitely was not happy with the overall look of them, but it was certainly a start.

From there, I started blocking the easy things in like the black spaces on Mickey (his ears, most of his face, torso, legs). Then I got some white spots, and actually painted red on his shorts. This was where I ran into trouble with the enamel paints. The color was too translucent so it needed a few coats in the areas where I had to cover up the problems I had with the paint pen while sketching. And then I started on his face, covering all of the details I had put into it and using this opportunity to elongate certain areas and get a better shape that I was looking for. This, too, took a few coats, but the paint was regular acrylic and wasn't too much trouble. From there it was just a matter of getting in the rest of the details and cleaning up my lines and such.

 



 

After that I moved on to shoe number two and started working with Minnie Mouse. Knowing what I was doing from shoe one certainly was a big help, so I started this time with the flesh to make sure I had the right shape for the face before moving on to the rest of it. Then I just went through the rest of the process, from the color blocking, to outlining the while polka dots with black lines.

 

And thus I came to the final result!

 

 



Now, here's the spark notes guide for anyone who wants to skip my psychobabble:

 

Supplies:

• Red, white, black, yellow, and fleshtone craft paint
• Black Sharpie paint pen, fine tip
• Cheap, but decent paint brushes as small or large as you feel is needed
• Le shoes - of course
• A GREAT CAN-DO ATTITUDE

Okay you don't really need the last one but...can't hurt right?

Then you can simply sketch out your design however you like, maybe go straight to the paint pen if you feel confident.

Paint in all of the colors and details and voila! You have a pair of custom hand painted shoes.

Also, as I mentioned earlier, I didn't seal these in any way. In the future, I might change that, but if you want to now, I've been told there are sprays you can buy at maybe a craft store or something which seals the shoes so they will be waterproof I believe. Obviously I haven't looked much into it, but I know such sprays exist. Otherwise, I have seen a nice waterproofing tutorial on pinterest which seems like a really great way to go about it if you have the few minutes to spare. It really wouldn't take long.
The pin itself and the actual website.

Let me know what you guys come up with!

Holiday Blankets

It's that time of year again! No one's on a diet, and everyone is unusually cheery. Chanukah really is my favorite holiday - after Halloween, that is. Don't get me wrong, even though I don't celebrate Christmas, I do love this season. Down here in south Florida, there isn't a whole lot of holiday cheer, but maybe one year I'll make it to somewhere like New York so I can see the Christmas spirit in all of its glory!

Until then, I'm working on my -as always- mile long list of gifts I'd like to make for friends and family. And I'm trying to get through my Chanukah presents first, seeing as that holiday starts in about eight days, versus the 25 days until Christmas when I need to get presents to the rest of my friends.

This year I've taken on the daunting task of making four different blankets for my family members. It all started with some wonderfully soft yarn that found me in a Joann Fabrics store. I like to call it the Narnia yarn because it's fluffy and white, like how I picture snow, and you can only find it when you're not looking for it.

Of course, this was the first blanket I ever made, so I really had no idea how much yarn would go into it. I found the Sensations Rainbow Classic white yarn and knew I had to do something with it. Which brought me to Pinterest (it always comes back to Pinterest.) I had repinned this living room afghan pattern which just seemed like a perfect solution to my problem. So I went to the blog itself where I got started on this great piece. It's a surprise for my mommy -shhh! don't tell her! ;) This is as far as I got before I ran out of the miracle yarn which, when I went to look for it, seemed to have disappeared. Like I said, if you look for it, you won't find it! Heh.

Well I went online and was lucky enough to be able to track down the yarn...at Joann.com. So I ordered three more rolls, which just got here a few days ago.



In the mean time, I decided I would start making more of these bad boys. I stocked up on some of the plain Caron One Pound bundles. I got a nice light beige color for my sister, a dark blue for my uncle, and a light blue for my baby cousin. Today I actually finished my sister's blanket. (I guess I'll be introducing my family to this blog after the holiday so as not to ruin the surprise hehe.) I'm truly in love with it.

 

As for the actual process, I followed the directions in that blog I mentioned earlier up until the part where it says to hdc across the top and then scallop around the edges. Well, I tried the scallop, but I'm afraid there's no instruction on how to make it and I couldn't seem to create anything I liked. So I decided to continue the hdc edge all the way around and I really like how it came out. And as for the amount of yarn and hook size, which isn't mentioned in the blog either, it took two of the Caron One Pound rolls to make my sister's which came out to about 58" by 47". 58" is how long I chose to make it, versus the 47" side which is the one that you make with the 122 chain. I also used a K10.5/6.50mm hook which seems to be really good for the rainbow classic yarn but possibly a little small for the caron one pound, so feel free to play around and decide what suits you best!



Mmmm Food!

I know, this is a craft blog. So what am I doing posting food? This is certainly not instagram! (why does anyone use that?) Well I suppose this is really just my way of documenting everything I've repinned on Pinterest that I have actually taken the time to make and here is where it starts! And this is the "strawberry-brie crostini" that I managed to create myself:

 

 

Now, I'm certainly no chef but when I saw this recipe on Pinterest, my heart nearly stopped. In fact, the picture itself had me drooling. Of course, when I found it, I was still in my dorm room with no oven or toaster to be heard of. But now that I'm home, I decided I would give it a try and see what my family thinks of it. And I must say, it was really a home run here. Plus it was actually rather simple. All it took was a french baguette, brie, honey, strawberries, and basil.

 

This is the amazing pin in all of its glory. Although if you'd like to skip the proverbial middle man, you can jump straight to the blog that explains everything beautifully. Of course, mine look slightly different from those of Dara's. I believe I cut my baguette slices way too thick, and the only brie I had available to me at the grocery store were "brie bites" which came with five individually wrapped circles of cheese. They didn't melt very successfully but no one really seemed to mind. ;)

 

Well I didn't quite no what to expect when I made this. Like I said, I'm no chef by any stretch of the imagination. But these little crostinis basically disappeared at dinner. I was even asked to make a second batch! So after having made one dozen already, I learned that I needed to put more brie on thinner slices of bread. And despite how perfectly the basil went with the whole dish, my mom and I were the only fans. Which is why, on round two (as seen below) only about half have basil on top.

 



 Again, these really were wonderful and I fully intend to make them again in the near future. I hope everyone else can enjoy them too! :)

The Madness Begins!

Hey all! My name is Ronit. I've just recently started attending the Savannah College of Art and Design where I'm studying Fashion Design with a minor in Themed Entertainment. I also happened to have joined my school's drumline and was given the task of running its facebook page and blog. This sort of inspired me to dust off my own blog and put it back into action. (It's been dormant for a few years now).

So I've decided to equip this blog as a way to kind of keep track of anything crafty I do. A lot of the projects I undertake actually come from things I find on Pinterest. Eventually I'll be able to finish making all of the great things I repin, some of which are in-progress at the moment. And this is where all of my progress shall be documented!
< insert evil laugh here >