I've been meaning to post this for a while now. Today as I was ready to start my post, my internet goes out. Of course that would happen. Won't be fixed 'til Sunday. I'm temporarily mooching off a friend's wireless service.

Back in October I saw The Raveonettes at Webster Hall. As always, they put on a great show, and I love them more and more as the days pass.

Here are some shots from the show I took. Didn't take many, and most of these are blurry, but it doesn't bother me one bit. Great show and great memories.

Here's their recent video for Curse The Night. Such an eerie video.

I put together a new playlist on 8tracks that I'm loving. Whenever winter rolls around, I always find myself listening to shoegaze all day e'erday. I gathered my top shoegaze songs.

Gaze 'Til Dawn from marimars on 8tracks Radio.

Sometimes when I listen to my playlist, it plays on shuffle (I don't know if there's an option to fix that), but here's the original order of songs in the playlist:
. Black Tambourine - We Can't Be Friends
. My Bloody Valentine - Soon
. Catherine Wheel - Balloon
. Adorable - Glorious
. Thee Heavenly Music Association - Angelic Disorder
. The Verve - Star Sail
. Swervedriver - You Find It Everywhere
. Slowdive - When The Sun Hits
. Ride - Kaleidoscope
. The Raveonettes - She Owns The Streets
. Young Prisms - I Don't Get Much
. Medicine - Something Goes Wrong
. Pale Saints - Language Of Flowers
. Lilys - The Hermit Crab
. Chapterhouse - Pearl
. Shop Assistants - You Trip Me Up
. Sparklehorse - Piano Fire
. Gliss - Morning Light
. Tamaryn - Love Fade

Enjoy! I surely will, over and over again.

Can't believe how fast Thanksgiving came and gone.

There's so much that I'm thankful for that the list would go on and on and on. I'm not very good at expressing emotions sometimes, especially to my loved ones, but family and friends will always be at the top of my list. Without their encouragement and support, I don't know who and where I'd be right now. And for that, I will always be grateful.

With that being said, I spent the day of Thanksgiving with both family and friends.
I made cinnamon pie, which is a perfect Autumn kind of pie (I posted the delicious recipe HERE around this time last year). The fam can't get enough of it.

The afternoon was strictly family, and the night time brought my friends together. We relaxed at one house, which was a perfect ending to a wonderful day. My friend lent me her Perks Of Being A Wallflower book since I've never read it.

Black Friday brought a friendly dessert gathering at Friendly's. I ate the waffle sundae with all things delicious.

Black Friday also involved some online shopping. Forget cyber Monday, Black Friday had great internet deals. Bought this pair of Jeffrey Campbell sneakers from Solestruck and this sweater from Modcloth.

It's officially time for Christmas planning!

It's crazy how far into the semester we are. Only a few more weeks!
Kind of a scary thought with the end of the world and all coming. Hardy har har.

This assignment was another project that was due during Hurricane Sandy week, but we obviously got an extension. He had a class critique today and I got positive feedback.
We were supposed to make a book cover in Illustrator for a book of our choice. Only rule was that we had to trace the font for the title and author. The placement of the title had to be in the same place too. I chose Carrie by Stephen King - I was lucky to find an old cover to work off of where the title was a larger than his name.

My book cover is all about prom, religious icons, and psychic powers.
(I hope the religious reference doesn't offend anyone.)

This project got me all hyped up on the Carrie remake coming out next year. No one can be better than Sissy Spacek, but I guess we'll see!

I guess you can say I'm never fully satisfied with my end results, for anything. I'm a perfectionist, big time.
When it comes to clothes, I like my end results for a total of five minutes, and I'm ready to move on. I have the tendency to take finished shirts and take them apart to make something else. I can't tell you how many times I've done that since opening my store.
As annoying it is to think about how much time and materials I wasted the first time around, I appreciate how much my closet empties when I do this.
I think it's pretty apparent that I own too much.

I made this shirt a few years ago out of an old shirt my dad had. I made it a tank top with an attached faux button down. I've worn it a few times, but for the most part it was just sitting in my closet.

At some point during Hurricane Sandy week, I realized I had a plain purple t-shirt I bought from Michael's. I pulled out the button down shirt from my closet and took it apart. I worked in the tiger shirt attaching it to the purple shirt. I changed up the sleeves, and added the white collar from the original shirt. It's basically the same shirt but done differently. I like this one so much more.

I can't decide if I want to keep it for myself or put it up in the store.
Decisions, decisions.

I've officially had this blog for one year!
I'm proud of myself for sticking with it, even though there were gaps where I didn't post much. But I'm sure everything goes through stages when starting their blogs. The important thing is that I stuck with it long enough to post about today.

I browsed through some of my early posts to see what my hopes and dreams were, and even though some have changed (life goals), some things have been accomplished.
• My posts have become less frantic and random - sometimes you don't know where you want to take your blog in the beginning and it's important to just let it flow to find your voice and your purpose.
• I'm satisfied with my layout and presentation of my blog, and I think as time goes on it'll shape into everything I've ever dreamed of.
• I worked up the courage to open my own online shop, which definitely was a goal when I started posting here. I've been spending my time more productively and have created items I'm proud of. The store gives me a purpose to create anything I want, and it really feels good.

Anyway, I don't want to keep this post long. I'm just super excited.
Here's a random photo I took about a year ago, around this time. I think the white is appropriate being that there's still snow on the ground from the Nor'easter that hit us a few days ago. Snowed then, snowed now.

Happy Friday!

Remember when I posted about my Crayola Crayon Maker? I've made quite a bunch of crayons so far, I wanted to do something fun with them. I made mini crayon boxes!

I started by browsing around the 'net for templates to get a basic idea of how they're constructed. I measured out my crayons to get the right measurements for the boxes. I created a mock-up as a test, and they fit perfect!

I looked through my recycling bin and grabbed the first recycled box I saw. (Anything thin like cereal boxes are perfect for this.) I measured everything out and cut it.

To fold the box, I prefer poking holes down the lines using a pin.

Fold it up, and then glue the side folds together as well as the bottom folds.

And voila! A cute little crayon box using recycled goods!

I hopped on board the Threadless train and submitted my first design last week! I participated in their Sony Headphones contest, and even though I didn't win, I'm proud of myself for creating something I like and was confident enough to post.

It was a little nerve-wracking to get it finished in time, let alone put it up to be judged. There were quite a number of great designs I was up against, so it was a fair challenge.

I do plan on participating more, and hopefully win one day! That'd be wonderful.
So, there you have it. My first design. The first of many more to come!

I noticed I never posted any 'Sunday Summaries' in October, so here's a post with some photos I took last month. (Of course they're mostly food photos. Whoops.)

01. Tried tofurkey for the first time. I approve!
02. Cotton candy cupcake from Crumbs. Quite a sugary alliteration.
03. Another first - Korean food. My friend ordered some kind of drink that was an awesome neon green.
04. Needed to fix my froyo craving. Red Mango had a red velvet flavor - I couldn't say no!
05. Chicken-parm sandwich with vodka sauce. Delish.
06. My only non-food related photo: the new No Doubt cd!

This song also has been on heavy rotation the past two weeks.

For one of my classes, we were assigned to create an illustration about Dracula or Jekyll and Hyde. I felt I was more familiar with Dracula, but I didn't want to make a typical 'blood-sucking-vampire' sort of picture. I looked for inspiration (I watched Nosferatu The Vampyre [1979]), explored all options, and decided on creating my own Nosferatu.

I had a certain image in my head of where I want to take this. The only rule was to create a black and white image. I worked with pen and ink and cut paper.

I usually work with mixed media; I'm also big on creating layers by cutting out my images and pasting them on cardboard. This project was no different, expect for the whole illustration being in layers. I wanted to create a sort of shadow box.

It was a tedious and painful (literally painful working with an X-acto knife) process. Fun, right?

This project kept me busy during Hurricane Sandy week. That and apocalyptic zombie movies. All so Halloween appropriate.