Grape Juice Please!

My neighbors at the barn have a wonderful home with an apple tree, cherry tree, plum tree, and grapes. The grapes are delicious, so me and my friend Brian decided to make juice out of them. I looked online and found the instructions and it turns out it is quite easy, and fun, but also time consuming. 

First you must take the grapes off of the vine and wash them so that they look like the picture above.

Then you mash the grapes very well so they look like the picture above.

Once you have mashed the grapes you will need to let them simmer on medium heat, mashing and stirring them every once in a while until the inside part of the grapes have turned into juice. 

When the grapes are done put cheese cloth over a pot or bowl and secure it with a rubber band or something similar, then put the grape guts on the cheese cloth and let the juice drip through.

When you take the cheese cloth off you will see the beautiful pure juice that has dripped through. Then you need to chill the goodness so you do not burn your tongue. 

If you taste the juice and it is sour or tart than you may add sugar. If you add Sugar you need to make sure that you bring the juice to a boil so that the sugar dissolves. Also grape juice tastes wonderful with sprite, and ice.

Then you give a toast or two and drink it up!

Happy Independence Day!

 

In celebration of The United States Independence Day, also known as my favorite holiday ever, I made this embroidery. I am proud to be an American, I have been very blessed to live in this great country and to have been raised by an amazing family. I am very grateful for my freedom of religion and for all of those who fight for this country. Happy 4th of July!

 

This is basically a blog with pictures of embroidery, also . . . I am going on a mission!

 

Well of course I needed a Summer embroidery to put up in my tiny house, so I chose this one out of all of the many choices. I like it alright, but I feel like I could have chosen a better design. Oh well, it is done and there to stay.

 

 

I received my LDS mission call to the Milwaukee Wisconsin Mission! This is my depiction of what my life will be like for the next two winters. Notice in the window of the store it says "beer" and "cheese". The only thing I forgot in this picture was a red barn, how could I leave that out?

 

 

 

Dreamcatcher

Okay this was SOOooo fun to make. I found a stick outside that was pretty bendable, and then I soaked it in water for about 2 days to make it more bendable. Then I wrapped embroidery floss around it to keep the two ends together and to keep the flimsy stick all together. Then I did the inside part with embroidery floss. And then I added thin strings on to the bottom and attached beads and glitter feathers that I found at michaels. And last but not least I sprayed it down with a coat of silver glitter and hung it on my door. 

My great great great grandma, who I am named after, was Native American. So that means that I am one thirty second Native American. So I can totally make and have dream catchers right? I should probably find out the authentic way to make a dreamcatcher. "The Authentic Dreamcatcher" post may or may not be on its way.

Mother's Day

My little sister Brittana and I made this for my mom for Mothers day. Yes we copied it from Pinterest in case you were wondering. 

But really my mom is the best, she is definitely all of these things and more. Although I do suppose she could be a bit more graceful. But all of the other things she has well over an A+ on. She has raised 8 amazing children and she lived through it all to tell the horror stories about it. I love my mom very much, she has taught me everything that I know, with the exception of calculus. 

Willow Park Zoo

This was at the Logan Willow Park today on the sidewalk, just chillin. It is so huge and so legit. The piece of paper in the bottom left corner is the size of an 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper, just to help everyone understand the size. I wasn't able to tell if it was chalk or spray paint. It looked like chalk, but I touched it and it did not smear. So I'm not sure, but either way, it is amazing and beautiful. 

Spring

This wreath is made of coffee filters and a wreath form, both of which were one dollar at Dollar Tree. Isn't 2 dollars awesome for a wreath and a fun spring craft? I just hot glued 150 coffee filters onto the wreath form and then added a bow. Don't let it fool you though, it took a while.

Here is a spring embroidery that I have also done.

2D Design Projects

These are all of the major projects for my 2D design class.

This project focussed on line, this is done with charcoal.

This project focussed on shape, this was done with spray paint and acrylic. The words, background, sun, and clouds are all spray paint, and the house and balloons are acrylic. This project was due right after I sprained my wrist snowboarding and so I had to use the spray paint with my left hand which is a lot harder than you would think.

This project was on value. I used India ink on muslin cloth and I did a different big city from each continent except Antarctica. Left to right top; New York, London, Tokyo, bottom; Rio De Janeiro, Johannesburg, Sydney.

This project was on texture and I did it right after I got the splint off of my wrist from when I sprained it, so my wrist was extremely sore from doing this project. I did water color on a paper bag. I got the paper bag from buying dry ice with which we made root beer, therefore I painted root beer on the bag. Also the texture word that I had to represent was frothy. To make the root beer look frothy I used embroidery floss and tied about a billion french knots, normally that is not a problem, but it is a lot harder to get a needle and thread through a strong brown paper bag . . . especially when your wrist is sprained. So I got close to no sleep that night due to all of the embroidering. 

This project was the most fun thing in the world. This was my final project so I had to follow the topic the unknown and I had to use a principle of color and three principles of design. When people say "the unknown" usually the first thing that pops into people's heads is fear and darkness, so I wanted to change that image of the unknown. So I took three things that are very unknown; Big Foot, The Loch Ness Monster, and Aliens, and made them fun and friendly and childlike. I painted them all with acrylic paint on canvas. 

By the way if anybody wants any of these things, especially the alien, nessie, or bigfoot, please please let me know. I have no use for them and would feel bad throwing them away. The unknown project could go in a child's bedroom or playroom. 

P.S. Don't ask for the Adventure is out there paintings because I reused them for the unknown project.

Procrastination

Well these are the lovely drawings that I did in one of the back rooms in the Merrill Cazier Library, instead of writing my English paper. I am a great procrastinator.

Principles of Design Book

This is my Principles of Design book. It is all water color and mostly ballpoint pen. I did not use any external sources for the subject matter in this project. This book was not quite as fun to make as my color book was, but I feel like it is a lot more organized and consistent. 

My Color Book About Buns

This is the color book that I made in my 2D design class. I learned a lot from making this book and really enjoyed the process of making it, even though I had to stay up till about 3 in the morning to finish it. I personally love the book that I have made, but no worries I am well aware of the flaws in this book. If I redid it, I would change a lot of things and make it much more consistent. Enjoy.

This is the cover of my book, we had to have something to keep the book closed, so I used a button.

This is done with India ink. It is a bun in the oven, get it?

Watercolor, sock bun.

Water color, messy bun.

These are the notes to the song "Hot Cross Buns", and this is done with acrylic and the fine lines were done with a 0.1 micron pen.

Fancy hot dog buns, colored pencil.

Cinnamon buns, colored pencil.

My roommate Krista's buns, chalk pastel.

Princess Leia buns, chalk pastel.

Monkey buns, acrylic paint. Sorry this definition makes no sense . . . it was pretty late.

Ballerina bun, acrylic paint.

Pieces In The Art Building

So the Fine Arts building on USU's campus has wonderful random pieces of student art in it at all times. These things are just a very small peak at all of the wonderful pieces of work.

This photo gives this map absolutely no justice, so I apologize for that. But just know in your heart that the water color on this map is amazing and it deserves a prize, or maybe just a blog post about it.

I have no idea how this happened, but I love it. I believe it is made out of saran wrap, yes the stuff that you put over your cookies to keep them fresh. 

These two are my favorite, it is my goal to be able to paint like this. I can't remember the name of the girl who did these, but she had a bunch of really cool paintings with neon paint and fun things like that. 

For one of the projects for my 2D design class we had to answer the question "what is the purpose of art?" on an 8 1/2 x 11 plane. These are what two of my class mates did. The one on the left is pretty much just a smart and lazy remark. The one on the right is a girl throwing up and it says why do I do this again? So I thought both of these were pretty funny. Especially since my teacher gave us the assignment super last minute.

This is a fun huge piece that can be very deceiving. It is basically an extension of the wall. But it is made mostly out of cardboard. I watched them make part of this and put it up and it was pretty amazing. 

There are so many other cool pieces in the art building, but sometimes I feel weird taking pictures of them, so if you want to see all of them I guess you just have to be an art student.