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!

I won't take credit for this recipe. I found this on Sally's Baking Addiction while searching for cinnamon bun recipes without yeast. I'm not a big fan of using yeast in recipes, so I was happy to find this simple one.

Ingredients
1-8oz tube of crescent roll dough (I used Pillsbury)
1/4 cup butter, melted
1/4 cup cake mix (I also used Pillsbury yellow cake mix)
1/4 cup sprinkles
2 tablespoon brown sugar
2 tablespoon cinnamon

Directions
01. Preheat the oven to what crescent rolls package instructs. Pillsbury was 375F. Grease the pan/cookie sheet.
02. Take the dough out of the package. Roll out the dough, make sure it's completely seamless.
03. Sprinkle the dough with the sprinkle and roll out the dough to really set in those sprinkles.
04. Afterwards, brush the melted butter onto the rolled dough. Sprinkle on the cake mix, brown sugar, and cinnamon.
05. Roll the dough into a log and cut into as many buns as possible. I was able to cut 8.
06. Bake for 12 minutes.
07. When finished, spread frosting onto them. I used store bought frosting.

Extra notes
When first taking out the dough, I worked with half the dough at a time.
I also didn't stick to exact measurements; I used more or less according to what looked right.

Anywho, I for real leave for Portland tomorrow. I'll be gone for a week, arriving back home on the 21st. I am so excited!

I love coming across random items or objects that turn on a creative lightbulb.
There were so many times I passed this little bunny container in my basement, and this one day it hit me. I thought about painting it over and redoing it to remake it to something fun and different.

The box was originally a light blue in which I painted black with chalkboard paint. That was easy. The interesting part was finding a known bunny character as the subject. I thought it'd be interesting to do Frank from Donnie Darko.
I sketched him out and finished up the details with pen and ink. I shaded with gray marker and fully colored him in with colored pencil.

I finished him up and glue him on top of the old bunny.
After, I contemplated for a while what to do with the rest of it. I didn't want to make it cheesy or overdo it.
I looked up the known quote "28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, 12 seconds, that is when the world will end." I cut out the letters from magazines to make it look ransom-like and laid them down to see how they look.

I just went for it and glued on the letters. I felt the front was empty too so I cut out geometric shapes to fill the space.

To be honest, this has been sitting in my room for months and I finally got around to finishing it.
I posted Frank in my Storenvy shop.

While we're still on the Donnie Darko topic, here's my favorite song from the movie.

My flight was canceled yesterday due to "freezing temperatures" which was named the "Polar Vortex". I spent my entire afternoon/night on the phone with the airline and company that I bought the tickets from to try and reschedule. The next flight out is Friday, which I almost booked before my call got disconnected after being on hold for over 2.5 hours.
I ended up canceling the flight completely and rebooked for Tuesday the 14th. My trip is pushed another week, which is frustrating, but everyone is trying to reassure me that maybe it's a blessing in disguise. Only time will tell with that one.

But for now, I'm trying to figure out what to do with my time. I picked up work shifts later in the week, so I took it easy today. I played with paper mache!

I've been experimenting with different forms of working surfaces for personal art projects. I've been using these paper mache circles as canvases.
Any chance you happen to remember how I once had my crafty store on Storenvy before Etsy? I never deleted the account, so I figured I'd use that store for art related things and keep the products different from my Etsy.

Back to the canvas talk, I officially finished a piece on a canvas I've had for a while. Finally got around to using them, and the spontaneity was fun. Keeps my imagination flowing. I plan on treating more this way. The one finished is up in my Storenvy shop. It's a reference to The Smiths song.

I have quite a number of empty canvases to use, and I'm excited to use them. And that's what's currently up. Aside from that, I did some Googling to find some more things to do in Portland when I actually end up going. One thing I want to do for sure is go to a show. I want to see some bands and check out the music scene. I found some shows coming up that seem worthy and came across this video about a small part of the Portland music scene. Love the vibe of the video, it's making me really excited for the bands I plan on checking out.

I'm leaving for Portland today!
I booked my flight with a friend over a month ago and I can believe how fast the time flew.
We're leaving today, and coming back on the 14th. A good week of experiencing a great city on the other coast.

I've had it in my head for a couple of years that I will move to the west coast after graduating. Crazy thing is, now I have one more semester to go before graduating and I got to get my act together. I'm really hoping a lot of good things will come from this trip. Networking, meeting, connecting, SHOPPING. So excited.

Last time I was there was about a year and a half while visiting Seattle. This time we plan on staying in Portland, but visit Seattle for a day. No concrete itinerary, but lots of ideas of what we would like to do.
I plan on being out and about, which means I won't be bringing my laptop. My online stores are temporarily closed, and so, I bid adieu for now. Hope y'all have a great week and I'll be back with fun stories and great photos!