What I actually want to do for my whole life

I ended up being the poster person for the student theatre group I'm in at Mac... these are the posters I made for our two festivals. Needless to say, I'm super proud of my artistic skills. I'll be expecting the emails to do graphic design work any day now.

(The last one is my favorite).

Finger Painting

So, over Fall Break I went on a retreat with a group I'm in called Worthy Questions. Basically, we just dig into really difficult/profound/provocative questions we come across, sometimes finding answers, sometimes only finding more questions. The retreat was great!
Anyway, at the start of the retreat we did this fun activity where we all finger painted something on a piece of paper that somehow represented something that had been on our mind lately. We then moved to the paper of the person next to us and added to their painting, and the next one, etc. It was really cool, because what started out as a cartoony self portrait of me ended up being this super cool painting of a lion.
As fun as the activity was, I found myself being frustrated with the lack of control I had with the paints we were using... and the fact that I couldn't do anything super precise painting with my fingers.
But look at this super cool artist, Judith (she has my name!) Braun... Yes, I totally found this because someone posted it on someone else's facebook and it turned up on my newsfeed... but I'm in love:

In these exhibitions, she dipped her fingers into charcoal and then drew directly onto the walls. So beautiful!

And I have no idea what her process was for this one, but it's too beautiful for words:

Look at her website for her other amazing art!

Exciting Etsy Week!

So, this week has been super cool!

This photo got featured in a Scandinavian weather treasury.








I got featured in 2 wonderful blogs: here, and here.

And I sold 2 items! They're no longer with me... but in new homes:

I feel incredibly blessed. I also am adding some new items to my shop this week, but more on that later.

Sushi Manga

So, this semester I'm taking French 305: Advanced Expression... it's a pretty fun class, and I like the professor... it's a good time.
For our homework, we were supposed to find a French article to bring to class for discussion/new vocabulary/conversation practice... I headed over to le monde, and sure, I could have chosen an article about something important and political, but I ended up finding this one about Chihiro Masui's new book, Sushi Manga. It's a cute little book done in a Manga/comic book style all about making sushi. And it's in French. Isn't it the cutest? These are the few images of it I could find online:

                                 

 

Sorry some of them are so baby tiny, but doesn't this look like the best thing? You can buy it for me whenever you want, really.

Leaf Me Alone!

Okay, don't. Even though you'll probably want to after that bad pun...

So, this week I've been using leaves from the great outdoors to help with some craft projects!

First, I picked some leaves from a bunch of different trees/plants/bushes/weeds in our garden:

Then, I traced around them onto some paper and added some veins:


Then, using my light box, I traced them onto a 100% cotton blouse with a washable marker. A couple days later I painted over those lines with some soy wax, and today I dyed it! Here's the result:

Just put it in my shop!

What do you all think? I wish that I had maybe used a darker green, because then there would be more contrast with the white and the leaves would show up better, but I'm pretty pleased.

I could have just left the stencils to use later, but I decided to color them in... basically just because there was a box of crayons sitting on the kitchen table:

Not sure what I'll do with those yet... but I think they'd make a cool print or poster or something!

The last thing I have for you is this... I was outside with my nephew, Geordie, and he found a cool leaf with a hole in it that he immediately put up to his face and peeked through. I took the leaf, traced around it, colored it in, and turned it into a mask! He wore it for most of the day and seemed to like it a lot. I'm sure a similar thing could be done with felt and fabric paint, which would be more durable.