Art Class at the Emerson

Every Wednesday I go to art class with my wonderful friend Cam. Sometimes we just do a little project for fun and sometimes we learn lots of things in one lesson. I love my teacher, Loretta Domasewski, and I definitely recommend her as a teacher. I have had lots of weeks of classes by now, and I thought I'd show you the art I have done so far.

This one is a winter-y one. We drew wreath things in oil pastel.

A bowl of fruit, done in charcoal.

Loretta taught us to draw spheres....

We did frog collages, we painted the background then drew the frog. Mine is slightly ironic because my frog is a tree frog and it's on the ground. :)

I have to say, this is one of my favorites so far. It's actually my latest one and I had fun doing it. :)

This one is also one of my favorites, done in watercolor pencils, which are one of my favorite mediums.

For those of you who have been to the Museum of the Rockies, you might recognize that this is Big Mike, the giant T-Rex statue outside of the museum. We went there to draw him and learn how to do figures.

This one we did for Mother's Day. Everyone's painting was different.

This one is a fun collage that we did in watercolor and oil pastels for Thanksgiving.

Once again, we went to the Museum of the Rockies when they had a frog exhibit there. We all spread out and drew frogs. The one I chose to draw was a tomato frog.

I drew both of these at one class. The second one was more of a practice to get used to the charcoals that we were using, and the top one I went outside to draw. Everyone in the class chose a different tree to draw.

This is from the class when we learned to draw wooden figures, and it turns out, they are one of my favorite things to draw! I love how many cool poses you can draw them in. :)

In this project we drew on plastic with sharpie over a picture, then we freehanded the same picture with white on black paper.

I always have lots of fun at class and I have such a good time doing what I love. :)

Happy December!

Maddy

Believe me when I say I've wanted to do a blog post since the first day of September. For some reason, I just don't know what to say sometimes :) Oh well, now I'm doing a post, so who cares? Besides, I'm really good at procrastinating :) Let's see... what has happened in my blogging absence? Well, I visited my wonderful family in Nebraska, baked LOTS of cookies, re-read the whole Harry Potter series, hung out with my amazing friend, sewed a pear shaped purse (it is as adorable as it sounds!), witnessed the year's first snow (which made me quite happy), and did lots of other everyday things.

I had the best time in Nebraska, where I got to be with my (wonderful) aunt Patti and uncle Brian, and my fun cousins :) I did lots of crafting and cookie decorating with my aunt Patti, and pretty much just had a great time.

Ready to decorate cookies :)

This isn't even NEARLY all the cookies we decorated! I had lots of fun.

Now onto a recent project! My mom found an old cabinet door that she painted light blue and sanded slightly, then my dad glued cork into it, and this is how it turned out!

I lost no time in pinning lots of memories and pictures onto it :) I really love how it turned out! (Thanks, mom!)

The pear shaped purse that I made actually came in a kit that I won from a blog called Craft Passion. I love how it turned out, and one of the fabrics it is made of is the blogger's own design! It is adorable, and I plan on making more someday.

The only problem is, I don't know what to carry in it :)

Sadly, the year's first snow is melting, but I have NO doubts it will come back soon :) Luckily, Kyra got some really awesome snowy pictures! They are just too good to not share :)

So there you have it! A few of the things from my everyday life; crafts, winter, and family.... though, admittedly, going to Nebraska isn't part of my everyday life :)

Happy November!

Maddy

A new day, a new project...

I love to embroider. It is one of my favorite things to do, and it is so versatile. As you saw in my last post, I like to embroider the pincushions I make. I also happen to like embroidering bookmarks, they turn out very cute :) But I really do like embroidering adorable designs! They make it more fun, and it's more exciting to see how your project will turn out.... Anyway, today I'm starting a new embroidery project, and I just wanted to share it with you :) Here it is:

Isn't that a cute pattern? Sadly, I didn't come up with that pattern myself. But I still love it :) Anyway, that is the pattern I'm going to embroider! Here are the rest of my supplies:

I've already got my pattern copied onto the fabric, and we just got the lovely colors needed for the pattern :) Here are the embroidery floss colors if you want to get them:

They are DMC colors 3862, 928, 166, 349, and 352.

I'll keep you posted on the project as it goes along! I'm excited to see how it turns out...

Until then,

Happy stitching and crafting!

Maddy

Pincushions... How Cute Thou Art...

So, I am a very inconsistent blogger. I apologize for that. It doesn't mean I haven't done any crafting though.... because I have. Quite a lot of crafting, actually. So, in my blogging absence, these are some of the many things I have created......

You might be wondering what these are.... Or maybe not, because I already told you what they are in the title of this post. But, yes, these are PINCUSHIONS!!!!!! I have an awesome book called Doodle Stitching, and it came with a pattern to make a pincushion that looked like a tree stump. I LOVE that pattern. The first one I made I actually gave to my good friend, Cam, because she likes to sew, and if I have a reason to give gifts, I will. (Seriously, though, I already have a list of things I plan to give people for Christmas...)

Anyway, so the tree stump pincushion is made from a pattern. The heart pincushion I made up on my own. I was worried it wouldn't turn out, because hearts are very tricky to work with, but it did! Although it turned out fatter than I expected it to :) And last, but DEFINITELY not least, my favorite (and latest) pincushion!!! The rainbow pincushion!!!!!!!!!!!!! Can you tell that I love it? I made it without a pattern and just went crazy-embroidery-lady....

So here's the tree stump one..... For the one I gave my friend, I made some cute leaf pins to go with her pincushion; made out of a pin, air dry clay, and some paint.... They turned out quite well.

And, of course, this is the heart pincushion :) The stitch on the side is called a threaded running stitch, and I love how it turned out. The stitch on the top is called a scallop stitch, and it was my first time stacking it instead of using it as a border or something....

DON'T YOU LOVE IT?????????? I do! It's my fave. I used the backstitch and the scallop stitch on the top, for the rainbow, and french knots on the side of the pincushion.... I am just so happy with how it turned out :)

So there you have it. Proof that when I do not do a blog post, I am not just sitting and reading all the time. Actually, that would be hard to do, since I am required to do schoolwork in the mornings. But, sometimes I think it is good for you to just sit with a cozy blanket and read a book and drink hot tea.... Or, if you're me, think of Christmas gifts :)

Thank you for being patient!

Happy Crafting and Tea Drinking :)

Maddy

When Life Gives You Friends.....

Make dinner together! At least, that's what my friends and I do. On Friday, Cam, Kenzie and myself all got together. The fun part? We made dinner!!!! It doesn't seem too exciting, but we got to make it as a surprise for Kenzie's family, so we tried really hard to make it quality delicious food. And we succeeded. Big time. When you're with friends, anything is fun. So since this would have been fun even if I hadn't been with my friends, doing this with them made it a fun, special occasion. Here's what happened :)

Here we are all ready to go and make an astoundingly delicious dinner!

But since we didn't have some of our ingredients, we had to go buy some stuff. And since we went to Costco.... Well you can't go to Costco and not get some samples :)

Then we went to Wal-Mart and took turns riding on the front of the shopping cart :)

My turn :)

This is what our cart looked like in the end.... There was a big bin filled with candy. Us being who we are, we went and each chose some.

Then when we got to Kenzie's house, Cam and Kenz started making pasta. A picture apparentally IS worth a thousand words :) But I think some of these are worth at least a million!

While Kenz and Cam were working on pasta, I made the bread. That's why I learned how to make it :) I really love kneading the bread. Although on accident I forgot to preheat the oven, so the bread had to rise for a bit longer than it normally would. Oh well :)

Cam worked on making chocolate bowls for our dessert. They turned out quite well :) Um.... at least, most of them turned out well.

Hahaha I have many great pasta pictures :) These are two of many.

This was too good of a picture opportunity to pass up, so we had to set the camera on a self timer to get this one. It's probably my favorite :)

This is the delicious almost finished pasta!!!! Beautiful, isn't it?

My bread!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

These are home made croutons that we made for caesar salad. They were quite delicious.

The main dish!!!!! Chicken fettuccine alfredo. It was amazing and so delicious that it tasted like it was from a quality restaurant :)

Introducing......... Dessert!!!!!!! A delicious chocolate mousse in a delectable chocolate bowl topped with creamy whipped cream and a lovely cherry chocolate melty sauce. With a fresh raspberry on top, this dessert is almost to die for. We know that it's at LEAST to faint for. It was the best. In the world. The secret ingredient was laughter :)

We also had delicious salad.

Altogether, it was amazing. And tiring. And the wait for the food was 4 hours long. But it was definitely a success. And I know that the pictures make you wish you had been there. Eating delicious food. Or perhaps just the chocolate mousse :) I'm thankful that I have great enough friends to do things like this.

Thanks for waiting patiently!

Maddy