putting my creative brain cells to work

best wishes for a friend...

2012-01-27T20:59:00.004-05:00

for a friend who deserves a nice, pretty lady friend this year :)

so white, so COLD

2012-01-27T20:53:00.000-05:00

I went to Vermont a few weeks ago. Albeit cold (-30 degrees to be exact), the snow was beauuuutiful and refreshing

Joaquín Sorolla and the Glory of Spanish Dress

2012-01-27T20:38:00.002-05:00

A few weeks ago I visited the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute on the upper east side to see the Joaquín Sorolla and the Glory of Spanish Dress exhibit. I loved it. I thought the venue, the music and lighting went so well together. I walked around imagining that I was wearing all the dresses and thought about my month in Spain and how much I want to go back there.. soon..

The exhibit runs until 3/10 so go see it before it's gone!

DavisAttract

2012-01-04T01:05:00.001-05:00

I was looking through some stuff from college and came across this project that we worked on for the college museum. It's a little bit embarrassing to look at it now but I can't believe we were able to get to the prototype with such little time! I wish I had more time to play around with the MS Surface...

this is a great looking printer

2012-01-02T22:31:00.003-05:00

HP Envy Wireless All-In-One Printer

Saw this at Best Buy today and was convinced I need a printer at home..

gem found

2012-01-02T04:55:00.001-05:00

Look what I found!

I went to L&T today to return something and came back with this instead.

It's huge! Don't know when/where I am going to wear it. Oh and I don't know why, but I thought that blue was appropriate for the new year :)

New Years Cards

2012-01-02T04:51:00.000-05:00

I was really bad about card making this year. I don't know why!! I was so looking forward to it. Anyway, I don't know where all my creativity went because this was all I was able to come up with. It's the year of the dragon (yay! my year) and I was sad about missing the fireworks so....

happy 2012!

2012-01-02T04:39:00.003-05:00

It's finally the new year! I've been especially waiting for the new year this time around because I had so many loose ends that I wanted to tie and get rid of in 2011.

In Korea, you're supposed to eat 떡국 (rice cake soup?) on the first day of the year to wish longevity, health, and all the other good stuff for the new year. I've never made it myself before but decided to try this year because I was bedridden from snowboarding and needed something to do at home. The outcome was surprisingly delicious. I'm so proud of myself! Perhaps I should add a cooking goal to my list of new year resolutions...

christmas fail.

2011-12-19T02:36:00.000-05:00

It's been settled. I will not finish my cards in time for Christmas so I'll be turning them into "Happy New Year" cards instead :) I have not been very diligent this year -- from taking a week to finish my tree and not even starting on my cards until now! And to make things worse, I do not have any new creations to post here. So instead, here's a post from one of my favorite blogs, 6th Street Design School.

I can't wait until I have a place (=house) of my own to decorate! I'm going to need a big attic/garage to store all my seasonal decorations :) Aren't these just beautiful?

ta-da!

2011-12-17T01:27:00.001-05:00

finally finished the tree and the "Merry Christmas" last night:

Cutting those letters out of my shoe box was a nightmare. A lot of wrist and finger power went into this creation and definitely clogged my vacuum cleaner with lots of glitter in the process but it was all worth it!

powering through

2011-12-14T01:34:00.004-05:00

I've been so bad about finishing some of the projects I started (weeks ago):

1. Decorating my Christmas tree

2. Holiday Wall Decos

3. Christmas cards (ah!!)

I started them a few weeks ago and have not made much progress so my work area (aka my living room) has been a complete mess for the last few weeks. Not sure why I haven't been able to finish as fast as I usually do but I have a feeling Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol had something to do with it (I recently downloaded it on my kindle and it's so good! I love Dan Brown's books). But since I'm travelling starting this Saturday and having some guests over on Friday, I'm going to (well, I have to) finish everything off by Thursday!

Sneak peek at what I've been working on

Started with lots of shoeboxes:

Then the boxes started turning into:

Yes, I am working with lots and lots of glitter. I made so much mess on my floor.. don't even want to think about cleaning that up..

Some lights on the tree:

So this tree turned out much taller and uglier than I thought it would be. Sad :( But I'm still going to give it lots of love. Oh and I'm going to try to "borrow" my mom's handmade tree skirt quilt when I go home :) I always did the tree for my family anyway but since I don't live with my parents any more = no tree = no need for a tree skirt!

I found this beautiful ornament today at Paper Presentation (my new 2nd home):

The moment I saw this I ran around the store looking for all of them and they had 4 left. But for some reason it made sense to buy 3 but not 4. If they had 5, I would've bought 5. Is that weird?

The next post will have photos of all finished projects!

hello, Wolverine <3

2011-12-12T01:31:00.001-05:00

from the December 2011 issue of Vogue

Knife

2011-12-07T01:53:00.001-05:00

I finally invested in a good knife today! Specifically for doing free-form paper-cutting.. And by invest, I mean I spent 10 bucks.

As a side note, did you know that when you say exacto knife, you are referring to a specific brand of knives, called X-ACTO Knife? It kind of drives me crazy when people say "Do you have an exacto knife?" when they are actually referring to any knife appropriate for cutting paper. It's like the same with Band-Aid. But enough of this.

I ended up purchasing the Fiskars Fingertip Swivel Detail Knife (see below for photo) because it looked the most nimble. Oh and as another side, if you're in NYC and into paper arts & crafts, Paper Presentation (18th St b/w 5th and 6th Ave) will be the death of you. I need to go back to that area again b/c they have some other paper stores as well as printing shops. But I digress again. Fiskars also sells all sorts of other cutting tools ranging from kitchen knives to saws...

This turned out to be a pretty good purchase, although I'm not too sure about that fingertip design. Maybe my fingers are too stubby (someone once referred to my fingers as sausage fingers..) but it felt really uncomfortable. Maybe I need to get used to it. Anyway, I did some playing around and was so easily able to cut this out:

The blade is really sharp and it rotates around so you won't need any crazy wrist action for your cutting. The blade is also really small so it's really easy to cut tiny shapes using this. So far so good.

I haven't decided yet on my holiday card designs but I think my new toy will definitely help :)

Fall Colors

2011-12-06T00:37:00.001-05:00

It's technically winter now but I was craving fall colors...

Ended up going with the 2nd one ("Changing of the Garnet" by OPI). You can't really tell here but it's a sparkly brownish red

BTW - that's "Kick-Ass" playing in the background. I did not expect the movie to be so violent!! It was still good though. I love good kid actors.

New trend?

2011-11-30T00:46:00.001-05:00

Is this a new trend? I noticed that catalogues are getting smaller and smaller. I like it. Takes up less space in my tiny mailbox. Oh and saves trees too.

Best thing about the Muppets

2011-11-29T02:01:00.001-05:00

"Rainbow Connection" from the OPI Muppets Collection

happy birthday!

2011-11-26T23:01:00.001-05:00