I'm finding this semester I'm having difficulty keeping myself organized. Art supplies, fabric, projects, EVERYTHING is just sprawled out all over my room.
I'm taking baby steps to get myself more organized. I'm starting with small things working my way to the bigger picture. I singled out my bookbinding class.
I've been buying a lot of supplies for that class, but they're all small tools. So I made a pouch for my bookbinding supplies to keep them altogether.

I cut out a stencil for the labeling. I went to my recycling bin and found scrap cardboard box.

I then gathered scrap fabric. Found good sized denim, and sewed scraps of fabric to decorate, and found a purple zipper to match the scraps.

After sewing everything, I laid the stencil down, and used fabric paint to paint the letters.

It didn't feel finished, so I outlined the letters with gold fabric paint. And bam. A bookbinding supply pouch.

If you make a bookbinding pouch, listen to this Phil Collins song at the same time. It's fantastic. This has officially become my favorite Phil Collins song.

Even though I'm pretty overwhelmed with schoolwork, I'm trying to load myself with as much as I can - within reason of course. I'm determined to be really productive this year and get as much done as possible.
I have quite a number of paper mache canvases that need some work done to them.

If I've never spoken of it before, Lost In Translation is my favorite movie ever. I started making this painting for a while now. Well, I actually haven't touched it in over a year. It's my favorite scene and I really wanted to have this finished to hang on my wall.

I don't know why I haven't gotten around to finishing it yet (my goal is to finish it this year!), but I wanted to make a smaller version on one of my little canvases. I painted the canvas gold, and made the zebra pattern out of olive colored fabric. The bottom portion is black fabric.

I drew up Bill & Scarlett's characters, colored them in, pasted fabric on the clothing area and the hair, and glued them down.

I have the canvas up for sale in my Storenvy shop. Hopefully I'll get around to finishing the bigger version soon. It's been sitting in my room for way too long unfinished.
Check out the Kevin Shields song that was featured in the movie. I love the mood of this song and video so much.

Is it bad that it doesn't even phase me that it's Valentine's Day? I'm neither for nor against it. It's just another day for me that will be treated as a normal day. And so therefore I will do a Flashback Friday post!

Over the summer, I became interested in two toned t-shirts. Or multi toned in this case? I love solid colored shirts with the front consisting of a multi colored pattern. I played around with the idea when I found these Hawaiian like shorts in a drawer of mine. I took it apart and matched it with this dragon shirt I used to wear all the time in middle school. (I'm secretly obsessed with dragons and tribal art. And now it's not a secret anymore.)

When I took the shorts apart, I realized that there wasn't a big enough piece to make up the front of the shirt. So I kind of pieced together strips of the fabric until it made up the front of the shirt. I've never treated fabric like a puzzle before, but that action opened a new world for me where literally no piece of fabric will ever be wasted. (After this shirt, I made a few more using the 'puzzle' method to piece together fabric. I'll save those for another post. )

I sewed the constructed floral patter to the solid green backing and sleeves, and sewed a collar to cover the hemming. It was actually super easy to make after sewing up the patterned pieces.
And yes, I did keep a dragon graphic for the back of the shirt.

After putting this little wish list together, I found common links between them. Day Of The Dead art, desserts, and books. Hmm.

01. Sergio Mora Graphic Tee - I came across a book Sergio illustrated called My Tattooed Dad, which looks absolutely adorable. The book is on my list as well, but after finding this shirt, I immediately got that "I want" feeling. I want them both!
02. Make Your Own Luck by Kate Moross - I discovered Kate a few months ago - I seriously love her geometrical style in her illustrations and graphics. A few days ago I saw she has a book that will be released in a month or two. I actually preordered it on Amazon but saw it was the French Edition? Oops. Had to either cancel the order or take up French. I canceled, but I'm keeping my eye open for when I come across the English version, preferably on Amazon.
03. Sugar Skull Cookie Cutter - Not that I have too much time on my hands these days to bake, but I'm interested in mastering cookie recipes involving cookie cutters. I tend to find recipes that don't involve intensely decorated cookies. I love Mexican folk art and cookies, so I feel like this is a thing I need to pick up on.
04. Sugar Skull Earrings by Pretty In Ink Jewelry - While we're on the Mexican folk art boat, I love love love these earrings! They're perfect sized and perfectly decorated!
05. The Circus Book: 1870-1950 - This past year I've been collecting books and building up somewhat of an art "library"/collection, and this is another must have! I love vintage circus poster designs and images.
06. Madeleine Cookie Pan - I've made these cookies before, but they don't seem to be as successful without the molds, at least in my house. I don't own the pan, so when I made them, my family thought they were mini muffins and therefore didn't care for them. I would make these so much more often if I owned the molds.

Music and I go in waves. Sometimes I'm on a roll listening to new music, buying cds and working on adding more to my music collection. But then other times I hide under a rock and listen to my classic rock radio station. Right now I'm in limbo, but here's one band that has peaked my interest and is getting me back into discovery mode. IO Echo is made up of everything I like about music including visual candy - this video is great visually. I want to own everything they release.

An update has been long overdue. So here we go.
What ended up happening because of the extreme and unpredictable nature of this winter season, what was supposed to be a one week vacation became a three week one. A long vacation isn't a bad thing, but I am a creature of habit; I was eager to get back to my everyday routine. But I digress.
Portland has officially become my favorite city, and I had such a fantastic time. It gives off such a home-y feeling in which it didn't take long for me to adjust. And I didn't get tired of it at all.

We were lucky the weather was much better than we expected. It didn't rain once and we saw three days of sunshine. It of course was overcast the majority of the time, but better overcast than rain, I suppose.

Being that the weather was accommodating, we were able to walk around and explore a lot. Everyday we visited a different neighborhood, but always found ourselves downtown by the end of the night. After a couple of days, it wasn't too hard to conclude that Portland is an afternoon city. Shops open late and close early. It's strange to be coming from a city that never sleeps to a city that doesn't have much of a nightlife. Not that it bothers me; I'm not much of a night owl.
I did love all of the shops and the locally made and grown way of life. I was only there a week, but that local small business feature really impacted me.

We took a trip to Seattle for a day. It was a nice day trip, but staying in Portland really spoiled us. We didn't come across so many local businesses as Portland. They're similar cities, but so different. It was nice to see how the other coast lives. Thinking about it now, I'm sure everyone in Seattle has intense calf muscles. Those hills were a little brutal to walk up and down.

The last few days we just continued winging everything and just explored, shopped, and ate. Oh boy, did we eat and eat.

The day before our flight we met up with family friends and they took us to the coast, two hours outside of Portland. It was amazing to see more of Oregon, which is beautiful. People don't give Oregon enough credit. There's so much to see and so much to do. We visited Astoria, where The Goonies was filmed. And then went to a couple of beach locations near Cannon Beach. It was a treat to see so much variety.

(Photo taken by Natalie.)

On our way back home, there was another snow storm that hit New York. We had a transfer flight in Phoenix, so we got stuck there for two days until our rescheduled flight home. Phoenix was great; downtown looked like loads of fun. Arizona is now on my list of places to visit. It was hard to appreciate it when we were stressing on where to stay, how to fill our down time, and when the next flight out was. But it was mostly brutal being in 80 degree weather and flying to 8 degree weather in the same day.

I could go on and on about the trip, but I'll end it with these videos. My friend shot some videos and made two compilations of our trip. Enjoy!