Rose tags, And you'll see this verse a lot

Some lovely ladies at my church asked me to do a calligraphy project for them, so I scripted 36 copies of the same verse (1 John 1:7) on white tags using super-thick charcoaly India ink. What's fun about writing the same sentence 36 times is that I played around with the treatment. As the project went on, the "J" of Jesus got more and more exaggerated because I found that no matter how big I made it, it looked good. Some are in print and others are in cursive. I like to think that as these tags are given away to women who participate in the church retreat weekend, that the Spirit guides the right font to the right person.

No One But Us And The Indians

I did the Charlotte Collins Thanksgiving Classic invites this year. And above you see the results. Oh and my mom is the RSVP contact. Hi Mom! That was actually lots of fun, writing that up for everyone in the you-wouldn't-believe-it extended family. I think I'm the only spawn of my generation to know who everybody on that list is and how they are related. And as much fun as I had with the invite its self, I was really having a blast with the envelopes. And then I had lots of fun making jpegs of all the envelopes, as you can see. This is a bit ridiculous, I realize, but I liked some of them and wanted to show them off.

Not wanting to reveal these peoples' names and addresses, I tried not to show full envelopes. Well, all except Mary, but she already moved out of that place and now lives in Spain. So if you were trying to track her down or if she is secretly not a part of the family but has indeed been a part of the FBI witness protection program since five or six days after her birth (which is about the time when I first met her), well, you are too late in finding her on Nueces in Austin. So about the above, I'm a big fan of the new "A" and below is the old "A" but it is paired with the new "M."

I don't know why I liked this one so much, but I thought it turned out pleasantly so here it is for you to admire.

The new "A" and "M" on my nana's name.

First Carved From Stone, Then Painted On

So my friends, this is a t-shirt with an Easter Island head painted on it in glittery silver paint. So that doesn't need an explanation, right? Pretty simple?

Well, it goes something like this. My coworker was in quite a tizzy. It seems schools these days won't just let their kiddos dress in costumes for Halloween. (Yes, this is the first of several extremely belated Halloween posts. Sorry about that folks, I got a little teensy weensy bit behind.) Her middle school daughter had to dress in a costume that reflected her geography research project, which happened to be the mystery of the Easter Island heads. And as my coworker had neither the budget (hey, she blew the costume money assembling a kick-booty Hermoine Grainger outfit for Halloween night) nor the time to find a true Easter Island head costume, she decided to go for a different tack -- she decided to play up the fact one silly explanation for the statues is that aliens from outer space came down in their shiny silver UFOs and built the statues and lined them up facing the East. So she made a lovely foil headpiece and got up extra early to paint her daughter's face silver. All she needed was a t-shirt to tie the alien bit to the Easter Island thing.

And that's where I come in. She was lamenting this ridiculous story to me and asked if I had any iron-on transfers so she could print something off the Internet. I volunteered to undertake the project because its just the kind of ridiculousness that makes me love public schools in America. Off to target went my coworker for a cheap t-shirt -- got this one off the clearance rack -- and I brainstormed to make the Easter Island thing as alien-y as possible. Silver paint and some extraterrestrial stars do the trick as far as I'm concerned.

I sketched the guy on paper until he looked just right, put the paper beneath the t, used a sharpie to outline the design on the shirt and then filled in the rest with a home-mixed paint that used silver craft paint with some high-end pigment dust from Azel Art Supply. I used real silver flakes to up the luster and voila!

Little Miss Julia looked awesome, so I'm told, and she was really excited about her shirt. Too bad the silver flakes can't weather the washing machine. It's kind of a one time use only project. It was fun. Let me know next time you need something this ridiculous.