Through the Storm...

Electric Guitar Drawing

I LOOOVE doing projects for other people...and this was definitely a fun one! My friend Lyndsay wanted to get her boyfriend an awesome drawing of his guitar...and I was so honored that she let me be the one to draw it!

I couldn't even tell you how long this one took. Lets just say...forever! But it was worth it! Colored pencils are my absolute favorite and this is by far, one of my favorite drawings! :))


Don't forget to comment or use the "Contact Me" tab and let me know what you think!

Eye Drawing

One day I didn't feel like doing my homework quite yet...so I decided to experiment with making a video. I did a simple picture of an eye and recorded myself drawing it. In "real time" the drawing took about an half hour...but I didn't think many people would want to sit and watch a half hour video! So I sped it up to last about 4 minutes!

I'd love to do more of these but I need some ideas! Pleeeease leave a comment with what my next one should be...or go to my "Contact Me" tab and send me your thoughts!!

BARGAIN magazine

For one of my classes, we had to demonstrate a couple different techniques that we had learned. For my assignment I decided to design a magazine cover.

What could be better than a magazine showing you how to be thrifty?!?! Not much...not much...

The beautiful model on the cover is my friend Brittney, and the dress is actually a DIY project we did. We took an old skirt from Goodwill and turned it into a dress!

Will You Be My Bridesmaid?

My roommate Kristen is getting married this summer! How exciting!!! 

As you can imagine, I was pretty stoked when she asked me to help her out with this part in her planning ;) She wanted a creative way to ask her friends/family members to be in her wedding. (So I was all over that!)

We spent a few minutes taking some pictures (don't let her cool and collected look fool you...IT WAS FREEZING!) I love the progression of the smiles...

I don't think I need to talk about how gorgeous she is...it's pretty evident in these pictures!

Later, we took these pictures and put them on this cute fold-out card. Check out the DIY tab to see how we did that!

Family Pictures

Photoshop Editing (coffee mugs)

I recently got Photoshop but I haven't really had much time to play around and see what I could do with it. So spent some time messing around with some functions, and this is what I came up with...

Before.

After.

Repurpose an old Shelf

So, why buy all new wall decorations when you're redecorating a room? There's no reason to! Kaylee (my little sister) and I looked around Goodwill until we found some items that would work for us.

We found a shelf and an old rack (to use for nail polishes), 

but in this post I'm just going to focus on the shelf.

This is an old shelf that I purchased from Goodwill for $3. I wanted to make it match the new decor; I saw one easy way to do this...Spray paint! :)

After unscrewing the 2 pieces, I set up a work station in the garage to begin painting.

The colors of our bathroom focus on black and gray, so I decided making the shelf black and metallic silver. (All the spray paints I used are just regular paints that can be found at any local Walmart, JoAnn's, etc...)

Ta-Da!!! I love the finished product! I wish I would've gotten a picture of the finished product on the wall...but I guess I'll have to do that later. Hope this inspired you to take a trip out to Goodwill to redo some of your own wall decorations! :)

Open Your Eyes.

Done with Artist Pens and a regular light blue pen.

Shine.

Done with Artist pens. Effects using Instagram.

Jon & Cassi

It has been so wonderful getting to know Jon and Cassi and I was so honored to get to take their engagement pictures. 

I'm just beginning so it was nice that Cassi had plenty of ideas to get us rolling. I had so much fun taking their pictures and I wish them the best of luck in their new life together :)

Rachel

Rachel was a little camera shy at first (I don't blame her...I would be too!!). But once she got over that we ran around having so much fun! After spending some time at Ritter Park in Napoleon, we went over to Kidz Kingdom. We were so lucky because God provided to beautiful, sunny day! Couldn't have asked for a better photo shoot with Miss Rachel :)

Personalized iPhone Cases

Sure there are a lot of websites where you can make your own phone cover, but nothing beats making your own for $1!!!

All I did was buy $1 phone cover from the Dollar Tree, and then decorated it with Sharpies. I didn't seal it with anything (since if it's scratched or cracked I can make another one for dirt cheap), but I'm sure if you wanted to seal it you could.

So easy, and so personal :) Enjoy!

Turn an Old Skirt into a New Dress!

My lovely friend Brittney and I were shopping around Goodwill one day (what else do poor college students do..?), and I decided to try an idea that I saw on Pinterest! Contrary to what some people might think, I get A LOT of my creative ideas from Pinterest :)

We found an oversized skirt and made sure it fit over her head/shoulders with some extra room. Then...

I simply cut up both sides of the skirt, cut off some of the extra fabric to make it smaller, and sewed up the sides! The waist of the old skirt became the collar of the new dress. We put a belt around it to make it more figure-friendly and...VIOLA! A beautiful (cheap) dress!

Here's a good before/after shot.

Painting a Focal Wall

My little sister wanted to redo her room, so of course, I took on that task! She liked black, white, and light blue; and although she wanted the majority of her room to be light blue, we decided to make a focal wall that would really WOW people. We searched on the internet until we found a black and white pattern that we liked, and then, I got to work.

It wasn't hard to paint this pattern (although it looks pretty difficult). Once we found the pattern on the internet that we liked, we printed it on a transparency, then used an overhead projector to shine the pattern onto the wall. ((The rest of the room hadn't been redone at this point, that's why the walls are still brown with pink curtains...so ignore that.))

Once the transparency was shining on the wall (you can see a little bit on it in the bottom left corner of the above picture), I traced the pattern, moved the projection, traced the pattern, moved the projection, traced the pattern......(I think you get the picture). It was a long process! But I did that until I had the pattern traced on the whole wall.

After I had traced the whole wall, I went back through and painted in the pattern using black acrylic paint. Acrylic paint seemed easier to use because it was a little thicker than regular wall paint. We left a strip in the middle because she wanted her name on the wall, so we decided to use the light blue color of her other walls to paint her name in a black stripe.

Ta-Da! The finished focal wall! Her name was painted in the same way as the pattern. We found a font we liked, printed it on a transparency, and traced it on the wall. Altogether, we were pretty satisfied with how everything turned out, and it definitely ended up being a WOW wall, just like we wanted!

Woman- Artist's Pens

I drew this woman while I was practicing one day. The faded edges are from Instagram.

3 min- Oil Pastel Figure Drawing

This was a drawing I did in one of my classes. We had 3 minutes to complete it.

Longboard Painting

One of my friends asked me to paint the bottom of his longboard. That was exciting! Painting a longboard was something I had never done before.

His thoughts were...sunset and cross silhouette. So after looking at some reference images, I ran with it!

Here are some pictures of my process. (Sorry about the poor quality of these pictures, but it was all I had)

First I roughed the board up a tiny bit using some sand paper. This gave the paint something to adhere to. Then I painted my design using craft acrylic paints. Then finally, sealed it with a can of spray polyurethane sealer.

The design was simple...but I loved the finished product!

About Me

Well hey there! My name is Kristin. I am currently going to college to be an art teacher, and through my schooling I am learning so much new information!!! I think it's an understatement to say that I have a passion for anything "artsy". I love to draw, paint, and take pictures, but lately my new obsession has been repurposing thrift store finds. I hope that you find my blog interesting, exciting, and inspiring; and thanks so much for taking the time to visit!

((I am not a writer...nor do I ever want to be one. So, if you wouldn't mind, look past my thousands of grammatical errors and focus on the content! ;) Thanks!))

Painting with Light

I learned a lot of things in my Digital Imagery class this past semester and one of my favorite things was how to "paint with light". It's actually a lot easier than it looks! In the manual settings on my camera, I changed the exposure length to 10 seconds. Then in a dark room, after pressing the shutter, I took a flashlight and wrote 'love'. There are so many different things you can do with this, and it looks so much more complicated than it actually is!

Nikon D3000--ISO 200--f/3.8--10.0s

Recycled Magazine Wall Decoration

This project is a wall decoration made out of old magazines (ignore the clutter on my table beneath it). I was gonna call this a "wallflower" but I think it looks more like a sun...either way...it's a great way to use up some of those old useless magazines that everyone has lying around their house! Also, like most of the projects I do, it's fairly simple to make! 

Kelly, a friend in my design class made something a lot like this, only hers was much cooler with styrofoam and mirrors as the center! (So credit goes to her for this one)

Supplies Needed:

• Scissors
• Tape
• Old Magazines (that you don't mind cutting up)
• Modge Podge

Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures while making this, so I will do my best at describing it (and just to warn you...I'm really bad at describing things!)

To make the rays:

Tear a page out of your magazine and cut it in half down the middle of the page. Depending on how long you want the rays, you can cut it lengthwise or widthwise. Then roll the sections into tubes, taping them to keep them from unrolling.

To make the center:

Tear pages out of your magazine and fold them so you have long rectangles around 1 to 1 1/2 inches wide. Coil these up into a circle. Then when one you get to the end of a magazine, tape another one on and keep rolling!

Once you have your circle as thick as you want to make it, hot glue the end, and cover the whole thing with modge podge to seal it.

To attach the rays to the circles I just used a little hot glue.

And there you have it! I know, I know, the explanation was a little confusing, but it's really not that hard to make, so experiment and have fun with this one, chances are you've got plenty of magazines to spare! ;)