Do any of you save ticket stubs - movie, concert tickets, etc.? I've been saving them for as long as I can remember. I don't have it in me to toss them. I love having the reminder of what/who I saw and when. But if you don't have a way to organize them, the mess can get out of hand. I used to stuff them in a drawer and call it a day.
Not anymore!

One day while browsing through my hand-made books, I thought 'why don't I glue in my movie ticket stubs'? I picked a book at random and glued them in chronological order.

My brother liked what I did with my ticket stubs, so he gave me all of his and I glued them into another book for him. He had WAY too many stubs that I added a bunch more pages for him to fill in. I never realized how many movies he's been to over the years. Beats my number! That's for sure.

For Christmas, which was after I took action by gluing in my stubs, a friend bought me this ticket stub book. She gave it to me at a good time because I was so close to gluing in my concert stubs into another book. There would be no turning back from there! I filled it with my stubs from concerts and plays and such. It's such a nice little book, much neater than my movie stub books!

I love that these are all organized now, and looks nice stored on a bookshelf. No mess no more!
That's Organization 101 with Maria. Empty books and glue does the trick. Go organize your stubs now!

Oh, enjoy the new Silversun Pickups song! Two more months 'til their new album comes out!

I haven't posted much this week, I apologize. I honestly don't even know where the week went. It went by so fast!
It hasn't even hit me yet that it's Sunday.

But anyway, it IS Sunday. Here's my photo summary.

01. It has been a wonderfully warm week. I indulged in ice cream. I had no idea Ben & Jerry's made a red velvet ice cream, I HAD to buy it. It tasted delicious.
02. Then I poured cinnamon oat cluster cereal into it, and oh my, it tasted like heaven! I recommend oat clusters in ice cream. It's amazing.
03. I found time to do my nails this week! I haven't given myself a manicure in about three months. It was nice to find the time and just pamper myself.
04. My friend from Boston visited this weekend. Haven't seen him in about three years. We had so much to catch up on, but it felt like I saw him yesterday - our attitude and mindset reverted and it's as if we picked up right where we left off. We ended up staying over another friend's house after a long night. The next morning I took this snapshot. I loved how her rubber ducky was sitting in her window. Funny funny.

I'm excited for coming plans and events this week. And then next week is Spring break! Finally! I had such great plans for Spring break, but turns out I'll to put them on hold until the end of the semester. I'm kinda bummed but at the same time I'm really looking forward to sitting back and relaxing. I need it.

Here's my song choice of the moment. I was singing and dancing to Duran Duran with my mom today. She hates to admit it, but she loves non-Greek music. She's too full of Greek pride to admit it though.

Book number two! I named this one 002. Ursa Major Space Station after the Catherine Wheel song.

I'm a fan of how this book came out. The mix between leopard print and plaid was a good choice. It's funkayy.
This book has accordion styled pages.

I've always been decent at having a steady hand for drawing things out with my fabric paint, but I guess I've been getting rusty. I plan on going over it to make it neater.

This book will consist more of model figure drawings I did in school from old semesters. I put in drawings that were pretty decent and then fixed them up at home.
Here is page 01 and 02. The first page is a model we drew in my general illustration class second semester. The second page was a scrap page for tester paint strips, but I thought it looked nice. So I added it to my book.

Here's that Catherine Wheel song I named my book after.

Check out my new computer!

Took about a month for my friend to build, but it was so worth the wait.
The case is much larger than my last tower, but it still fits fine on my desk. He got me a tower with a window, which is pretty cool with the LED lights inside. The way he also organized everything inside is oh so wonderful - it looks so spacious!
My computer is running so fast and all problems I had before are fixed.
Life is wonderful.

And to celebrate, here's a new band I discovered the other day that I'm really diggin'.

I've had a pretty exciting week, which is nice for a change.
It was full of delicious foods and desserts. I need stop posting food pictures! Hah.

01. Carvel have new ice cream bonnet flavors! I usually get their cherry bonnets which are delicious, but my brother bought new flavors for me the other day - cake batter and cotton candy. I'm holding the cotton candy bonnet in this photo. SO good.
02. Went to Korea Town with friends, and we bought this box of mochi ice cream. I've never tried it before and they swore I would love it. I did! I love adding mochi to my frozen yogurt wherever I go - but this is all mochi with ice cream in the middle. I need more.
03. Another scrambled egg and leftovers combo here. I mixed leftover mac and cheese and french fries with my eggs. And to top it off, I mixed in ranch dressing. I was nervous it would taste a little funky with the mac and cheese, but it wasn't overwhelming. It worked. And it was delicious.
04. Here's my only non-food related photo. MY NEW COMPUTER. I got it back yesterday and it's amazing! I'll post about it tomorrow with more photos. It's running so smoothly, and it looks awesome. I'm in love with it.

Here's a band that I discovered recently - She's So Rad. They're from New Zealand. Seriously, New Zealand has the greatest music scene. I love all bands that come from there - I've never heard a band from New Zealand that I didn't like. Whatever they're all doing, it's working.

I'm so happy it's Friday. I've been waiting for this day to come - this week felt like it really dragged on. I think having family visiting can drag everything out. My dad's cousin from Greece has been visiting, but he will be leaving tomorrow. He stayed with us for two weeks; he was getting a feel for what it's like living in New York. He's looking into getting some kind of visa and moving in with us. So far the immigration process is keeping him from moving any time soon, but everyone's doing everything they can to get him to move to the U.S., legally that is!
It was nice having him around, but I really can't wait 'till things go back to normal. Makes me wonder what life would be like if he permanently moved in with us. I think I may go nuts. It'd be so cramped here - no privacy!

Anyway, I guess I'll share a little flashback.
A bunch of years ago, don't remember how long ago it was, my dad's birthday was rolling around and I didn't know what to get him/make him. Around that time, my friends and I weekly went to our usual paint-your-own-pottery place, and while I was there, I came up with a nice little idea for him. I've always painted their pottery, but I've never anything mosaic there. They had different shaped picture frames, so I decided to make him a cute little mosaic frame. I went with a circular one and picked out random colors. I ended up doing a sun frame.
After I finished it and it was in my possession, the question was what photo to put in the frame. I went through my photo album and found this cute photo of brothers and me when we were super young. I think I may have been around 3-4 in this photo.
He loved it. It currently sits in my parent's room.

I found out that Young Prisms will be releasing a new album soon. (I've been a bit out of the loop.) I'm pretty excited. Their new stuff really is sounding like My Bloody Valentine. No complaints there!

I know it's Thursday, and I should be posting up a page from my art journal. But unfortunately my second art journal doesn't have any finished pages; they're all half finished. So I plan on working on completing some pages to continue this starting next week. I'm so excited to move onto another journal of mine!
I also quickly have to say that I love that I started this specific weekly post. It forces me to stop and draw something in my free time, no matter how little and silly it may be. It helps me move from book to book giving me the chance to build a little collection, do art for myself in my spare time, use up books that I've made that are just sitting around, and grow as an artist!

Anyway, in the meantime I'll post about a new shirt I fixed up. It is actually a GAP shirt my mother gave me that she rarely wore. I really like how simplistic it is (I don't own any plain shirts) but being that I'm me, I needed to do something to it. I tried to hold myself back from going too crazy with sewing something on it, so I sewed on strips of this thin floral fabric. Forest green and floral is such a nice combination. I love it.

I have a movie to recommend to everyone. THE FALL. As everyone else explains it, it truly is a visually stunning film with a touching storyline. For some time, this movie has been on my list of films to watch, but I always brushed passed it. After watching all of Pushing Daisies, I saw Lee Pace was in this movie, so I decided to finally give it a watch. Lee Pace is a fantastic actor, and he does well in colorful fantasy-like films. I really enjoyed this movie, and I plan on buying it on DVD as soon as I can find it. Definitely a new favorite.

I know I said I would post my final Clue caricatures weeks ago, but I JUST found time today to edit and post 'em!

I did these on watercolor paper, line work done in ink. The red circles are a decoupaged collage of red magazine clippings. Some line work was added with black sewing thread, which you could really see in Mrs. White's net and Mrs. Peacock's feathers.
These were scanned, so you can really see some of the texture (and slight imperfections in the editing, sorry!).

While finding reference photos at the beginning of the project, I found this gif from Tumblr that I really love. Saved it onto my computer, so unfortunately I can't give credit where it's due!

In between classes today, some classmates and I had intentions of buying concert tickets - the trip downtown turned into a pleasant adventure.
For weeks now, we've been talking about seeing The Joy Formidable at the end of March at Terminal 5, and planned on buying tickets asap. Weeks passed, no tickets. The one day we actually made an attempt to buy tickets at the venue's box office, we found out that you can't buy tickets there. Ridonkulous. So we pushed it off some more.
FINALLY we bought them today.

Our first stop was at Mercury Lounge's box office. Bought the tickets, then wandered around and found a nice little Greek restaurant to eat at. As soon as I took a bite out of the delicious souvlaki pita wrap, I realized how much I missed Greece and all my family there. There are days that I miss it, and today was one of them.
Afterwards, we walked to Chinatown for ice cream. We got our ice cream and chilled at this park and watched all people getting seriously hardcore into whatever gambling-like games they were playing. It was a nice little park. Wouldn't know how to get there again if you asked me though.
It was a short break, but a nice one. The weather was perfect, and it made this little trip enjoyable. I don't get to travel downtown very often, so this was a treat.

Here's a video by The Joy Formidable, to end the post. I honestly am so psyched to see them live. They are such a powerful band and I'm sure they'll put on a kickass show. Plus, the show is the day before my birthday, so it'll surely be a wonderful birthday treat!

Daylight savings time can be brutal sometimes, can't it?

01. I love mixing egg sandwiches with leftovers. This one came out absolutely delicious. Toasted potato bread + scrambled egg with potato and tomato sauce + cheese. SO good.
02. Had a sticker fight with friends on Friday night while doing some crafty things. I've been enjoying my shape punchers that I bought from Michaels. Used my swirl puncher to punch through stickers and put them on my nails, and stuck star stickers everywhere. It was fun letting my inner child come out and play for a few minutes. But then we all became our adult-selves again and cleaned up our mess, hah.
03. My friend threw a surprise roast for her father yesterday. She made banners, buttons, and other goodies all with his face on them. She did a simple tracing of an image of him. Being that I was on a caricature kick, I played around with the tracing to smooth it out. The pins are so funny.
04. While walking around my basement, I found these cute little hanging cat cutouts. I took them and tacked them on my wall. It completes that section of my wall so well.

I was browsing through YouTube and found this wonderful acoustic version of No Doubt's "Ex-Girlfriend". I've been a fan of the band ever since that album came out - I think I was 9 or 10? Gwen has been my idol for such a long time. I would be such a different person if I never bought that album. They honestly really shaped my life in a positive and creative way. I will always be a fan.

Today's weather was wonderful! As soon as I walked outside, I was hit with Spring fever. I SO wanted to skip class and enjoy the fabulous sunny day, but of course that would make me a bad student. So I dragged myself to class.
I honestly can't wait 'till Spring comes around. I just want to retire my winter coat.
But until then, I'll just focus on the here and now. This weekend is jam-packed with events that I plan on attending. Luckily I really don't have any assignments I need to work on for next week. Finally a relaxing weekend full of friends!

Anyway, it's a few hours away from officially being Friday, so while it's still Thursday, here's a page from my art journal. This is actually my last page from this book! Page 05 from 001. Under The Milky Way.
Mental note for next Thursday: start posting pages in numerical order and fight the urge to skip. I went so out of order when I posted pages from this book.

I got an e-mail today from the Silversun Pickups newsletter. They officially announced a release date for their new album. I am BEYOND excited and I can't wait till they start posting up new songs! From what they're saying, it sounds strange and dreamy - right up my ally!. Here's the article I read from Spin.com.
Here's another Silversun Pickups video. I can't get enough of this song, and this band.

No really, it is madness. The topic of my project, that is.
For my concept illustration class, we had to choose one of four states of mind, which were love, joy, fear, and madness. After choosing, we were given the freedom of illustrating anything we want that represents whichever state we chose. More than half the class chose madness. Seriously, how do you illustrate joy or love? Well, I'm sure it isn't that hard, but it's easier to illustrate something for crazy states of mind. That being said, I chose madness as well.

I decided to go down a somewhat straightforward route of some guy going crazy. His unsettling thoughts are spewing out of his head and are trapping him. The thoughts wrapping around him can represent the idea of a straightjacket, a sort of restraint. He's going "crazy out of his mind".

I took pictures as I was working on it. All the line work and bold areas are done in pen and ink. I used a little bit of an ink wash in the patterned areas, and the background is done in watercolor pencils, with a little bit of colored pencils to smooth it out. That's all. Easy shmeasy.
The background in my final isn't as yellow as it appears in the bottom photo.

Here's a My Bloody Valentine song. One of my favorites actually. I love shoegaze; I love the dreamy atmosphere it gives off. Shoegaze, I personally feel, is a perfect soundtrack to Springtime. So with Spring approaching, I can't wait to put these bands on repeat.

So, I've spoken about my love for Twin Peaks already. I guess it's time to talk about my love for Ghost World?

I tend to get nostalgic quite often. When I was finishing up a project that's due this week, I had some time to spare. I browsed through old art I did during my first year in illustration.
For this painting class I took, we were asked to create a movie poster, which is a quite a popular assignment, but no longer a need in the movie business since the rise of technology. It's all about hi-quality photos and Photoshop - it's actually quite rare to see illustrated movie posters nowadays. But nonetheless, professors like assigning illustrated movie posters. For this class, it was our choice. I chose Ghost World.

Whenever I'm feeling down, a crafty project + a favorite movie always cheers me up. I know I'm not the only one that rewatches favorite movies to get rid of those nasty blues. My "rewatch movies" are Lost In Translation, Ghost World, Cherish, and Stranger Than Fiction - probably in that order.
I've seen Ghost World I don't know how many times, but I never get sick of it. I guess it's one of those movies I really connect with. I also did go through an "Enid" stage. Yep, t-shirt, skirts, and boots.
I will never stop loving this movie.

My professor asked us to create a color composition to finalize the layout and color choices. He wanted three scenes, one overall warm colors, one with cool colors, and one in between. He approved of everything I chose, although I didn't quite follow the color guidelines. I guess he let me get away with that, hah.

Here's the "finished". It's not quite finished as I plan on revisiting it oneday to fix it up. There are a few spots that really need more work. It's just the time dilemma. It's not exactly on my priorities list, but it's on my list of "artwork that needs finishing". Also, if it comes out decent in the end, I'd like to paint in the title at the top, and maybe hang it on my wall. But that's if I ever finish it.

I wish I had the time to fix up all my old school assignments. Some of them were quite a horror! Can't believe I did some of those awful works. But that's all in the past. I can only improve from here.

Another Sunday is here.

01. I'm not the most healthy person, but this new year I decided to try and work on that. I've been eating fruits everyday, and a decent amount of vegetables. Been taking in less artificial sugar, and taking in more natural sugar. I have to say, I've been feeling good lately. The other day I was about to dive into some cheesecake for breakfast. After two bites, I decided to put it away and find something better. I love oat cluster cereals, and decided it tastes even better with banana slices. Breakfast win.
02. I was wandering around the upper west side with some friends. I saw this wall and needed to take a photo. Our goal that day was to buy tickets to an upcoming concert we plan on attending, but the venue's box office was closed unfortunately. We still don't have those tickets, but we're working on that.
03. Besides trying to eat healthier, I've been trying to open myself up to foods from different cultures. Got this from a Korean market - grilled tofu with egg. I've had tofu once before, so I didn't oppose to trying it out again. I, for the life of me, couldn't get the taste of egg and soy sauce out of my mouth after finishing the meal. No matter how much gum I chewed or how much candy I ate, it wouldn't go away.
04. My friend gave this very belated Valentine's Day card to me the other day. We share the same love for Psych.

Other than that, I've had Radiohead on repeat lately. Well, mostly this song. I remember playing this on repeat when it first came out. #throwback.

I can't help but look through my brother's or dad's old clothes once in a while (maybe more than once in a whilte). Whatever they don't wear anymore, I take. I mostly prefer their button down shirts and flannels. I take them in to fit me and I decorate them. My closet is filled with strange shirts!

My brother had this shirt in a pile of clothes to get rid of. As soon as I saw it, I snatched it when he wasn't looking. It has this nice flower pattern that I knew I could have fun working with. I took it in, took up the sleeves to make them 3/4 sleeves, took off the collar, and added lace on the back to spice it up. I love how it came out and I can't wait to wear it.

This shirt I had for a while now. A few years ago, I went to an estate sale with a friend, and I came across this shirt. It looked like a pajama top, but I bought it anyway even though it wasn't my intention to wear it as a pajama top. I tried to think of some way of fixing it up so it doesn't look too tacky or busy. I thought it'd be cool if I added orange short sleeves and an orange pocket. When I finished it up, I tried it on and it looked awful. It sat in my pile of "alter me" clothes for a while longer. I picked it up oneday and decided to have a second go at it. I took off all the orange and replaced it with black 3/4 sleeves and a black pocket. It looks so much better, and fits better now.

I'm happy those shirts are finally finished. I love having a wide variety of button downs.
In other news, I found out that Depeche Mode will be entering the recording studio soon. I am WAY too excited for words. I adore them. Here's one of my favorite Depeche Mode songs. I've been listening to them all day.

While browsing through old photos I've taken, I came across this piece that I made a few years ago. This is around the time I first started experimenting with collage and decoupage.
I saw a few magazine clippings of strawberries, and instantly thought of that Beatles song. I'm not a big Beatles fan, but when I came up with the idea of putting this collage piece together, my intention was to sell it. If it sold, then I would make a few more collage pieces like this and hopefully make some kind of business out of it.
That, sadly, didn't happen. I didn't know how to market myself, and so when it was posted on Etsy, no one bit. It just sat there.
Around that time was the first time my computer crashed. I hired my friend (the same one who's currently fixing up my computer) to put my computer back together. He's a huge Beatles fan, so when I got my computer back all patched up, I took this piece down from Etsy and gave it to him as a present.
I liked the way it came out. I just wish at the time I tried to figure out a way to get myself out there to create and sell. But it's in good hands now, so that's all that matters. That's my strawberry fields collage story.

Today was such a tiring day. I woke up exhausted and and still feel the same way. I think having two days off from classes didn't do me any good. Thankfully I have the weekend to rest well, and starting Monday things will go back to normal.
Here's a song by Marilies Jagsch, a great Austrian singer. This is such a pretty song.

It's crazy how fast the weeks go by when you stick to a weekly post. Out of all weekly posts I've created, this is the one that I've been really committed to. Whenever a Thursday rolls around, all I can think is "damn that came by fast".

This page is page 7 from my 001: Under The Milky Way art journal.
A couple of years, a few friends and I created a kind of event booking company called All Heart. We organized a couple of local shows including local bands, and raised money for different charities and organizations. We started it I think a year before most of us hit college. So when we all went our separate ways for education purposes, All Heart was put on the back burner. We would try to revisit it here and there, planning events and such, but they always fell through. It was tough trying to focus on it when we all had to focus on school, and was especially tough being that we spread out across the U.S. After discussions and plannings, we revisited it last summer, renamed it Spark Booking. Once again it's on the back burner. I'm sure we'll keep revisiting it, but who knows what the future holds for Spark. For now, it brings back good and stressful memories, hah! The Long Island music scene was so different then.
Besides the All Heart logo I created, I have sketches of my monster box, Gordon Cole from Twin Peaks, and doodles from notebooks glued in.

The cool thing about this week is that three, THREE!, classes were cancelled. My only class I have on Thursdays is one of them. I started a new TV series yesterday, Pushing Daisies. I've been wanting to watch it for a long time. When I heard it was a spin-off of Dead Like Me, I decided to watch that series first before Pushing Daisies. Finally got around to watching a bit yesterday. Half-way into the first episode, I fell head over heels in love with it. Being that there's no class today, I plan on watching it all day while doing homework assignments! I love having days off. I'm so excited to continue this series!

This Stevie Nicks song came on the radio while I was typing up this post. I love this song, so I'll make it my song of the moment.