What Could Be More Hilary?

Seriously? What could be more Hilary? There's glitter! There's Christmas! There's baseball! It's made of cheap, biodegradable materials! It's just the best craft ever. And if you play your cards right (aka, you ask me for one), I'll make one for you. And, because I'm the always benevolent crafter, I'll even make an ornament for a team you support, assuming it's made of colors I own and isn't brain surgery difficult to render (Good example: the Ole Miss Rebel, he's too detailed for me to make a glitter ornament of, but the big Ole Miss "M" I can handle. And cringe-worthy second example, I can't do the patriotic hat on a baseball bat Yanks logo, but if you begged me and I was feeling particularly nice, I could make you that evil NY symbol).

But to get away as soon as possible from all things New York Yankees, let's focus on my little lovely pair of, what Sox ownership calls "dangling Sox." I'm so proud! I reinterpreted a Martha Stewart craft suggestion (she had me making birds before I thought of something I'd like better) and came up with my own template to cut the Red Sox logo out of the cinnamon/apple sauce/white glue dough, I baked it, let it dry out completely and then decorated it with the glitter. Let me tell you, that's a thin line of white glitter there my friends...

All things considered, I'm in love with my little Sox logo Christmas ornament. Wistfully, I sign off on my first Christmas post of the year... it seems like just yesterday I was working on Christmas 2008 (probably because I drag these things out; I recall writing about Christmas at least through February). Below check out the red lights on my very first ever living tree.

Take Me Out To The Ballgame

I couldn't pick a more timely day to post this one. I mean, the Sox just clenched the Wild Card through losing five games straight! How's that for go-get-em spirit? And while I am kinda celebrating this event, I'm kinda nervous. I mean, we're not going to win the World Series by losing five straight. You can't back yourself into a World Series ring. But if your name is Hilary and you make jewelry, you can back yourself into this baseball necklace. I made it out of vintage style baseball cards. I love wearing it because it involves some of my favorites -- baseball, crafts, vintage items... I mean, it's kinda like me rolled up in a necklace. And sorry folks, it's a keeper. Not for sale.

Go Sox! Beat LA!

Excuses, excuses

See above, my dad's speckledy salt and pepper hair, a Red Sox hat and the backdrop of a ballpark. That's my first excuse for why I've been a ridiculously awful blogger this summer. And well, it's not the only excuse I've got.

My poor little computer died, well, that's me being dramatic, but it had to have its little hard drive reformatted and all kinds of extensive computer surgery, which I am neither qualified to nor interested in discussing with my readers. And now that baseball season is winding down (on a somewhat positive note for my beloved Boston Beaneaters), I'm prepared to deal with the inevitable -- life in the off season.

Of somewhat thrilling note is my upcoming presence as a craft vendor at a local market. It's pretty fun. I did the calligraphy for my first ever wedding. Well, not MY wedding, but you know what I mean, the first wedding that I ever did the calligraphy for. It was really enjoyable and I'm anxious to take on another penmanship assignment. And, finally friends, I'm dabbling as a video editor -- I recently went to Arkansas to learn from a true master of culinary arts, provided that culinary artists always start with crisco and then add butter, to learn from my precious Granny the secret to the Granny Roll. When I finish editing that video, I'll post it on this site for those who want to learn how to make a very authentic from-scratch roll. We're talking lots of time, talent, elbow grease, and love. You gotta love your potential roll eaters A LOT to put in the time to make these things. Especially when the Pillsbury dough boy sells a decent version of the dinner roll that requires eight minutes and no talent.

Sacred House of Blues?

With a West Coast baseball trip for my beloved if not beleaguered boys of summer and a bit of a bout of insomnia (must stop with the drinking of the diet dr pepper so late at night!), I find myself glued to the MLB HDTV (my favorite kind of acronym soup, honestly) with nothing to do but watch the Sox fail miserably and, well, present some new crafts to my loyal readers.
Here is a new painting. It's the first time I've ever left the majority of the canvas (a 12x12 square of glass) even partially unpainted. In fact, I had every intention of making a giant picture with all kinds of zigzag layers, but when I got to this point, I knew that I needed to stop and relish the simplicity. And I feel like the result looks like a cross between Mexican-inspired renditions of Catholic symbolism like the Sacred Heart of Jesus or the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the somewhat corporate, irreverent House of Blues logo. Anyways, I'm pleased with punch by it and I like how I've arranged trinkets around it, especially the fact that I can actually place things behind it and still see them, like the antique Maine postcard. When I started the drawing for this painting, I had intended to channel Indian patterns (as in subcontinental Asia, not Native American ones, though they are quite nice, too). The paisleys were supposed to set that spicy, exotic tone. It would have been fine and Indian looking had I not decided to paint with a bright, Latin pallet. As soon as the pink was layered atop the yellow, I knew that it was headed in a different direction than my original intention, not that I mind.

What's that I hear, did Don Orsillo say "ballgame over?" Long yawn and I think I'm ready to hit the hay. Amazing how awake I am when there's a live game, even if it was a bit of slaughterfest in the yuck direction for this little fan.

Found Sketch

Hey there. I was rooting around for something or other the other day and I came across an old sketchbook that I used to lug around when I lived in Maine. I was always finding something that needed to be rendered in charcoal. And I thought I was particularly clever because in addition to toting my sketchbook and charcoals, I brought these little colored pencils so I could add just the tiniest bit of color.

And much to my surprise and amid a zillion landscapes (seascapes to be more precise) and some particularly random character sketches, I drew a generic picture of a baseball player. I can very vividly recall the occasion that inspired me to draw this little guy. A bunch of the guys I worked with at the paper in Maine played ball and I went to one of their games, armed with a beach towel, jug of lemonade and my sketching supplies. This is a pitcher, on the mound, at about the time when he's reading the catcher's signs, before he enters the wind (or the stretch, depending on the circumstances). Well, and Spring Training is just around the corner, so I thought I'd post this tribute to Spring and, well, the greatest game on Earth.



And, hey now, I wanted to show off my sketching skills, too. I never considered myself to be that good at drawing.

Wipey Board Wonders

I'm still having difficulty getting too much crafting done. Or perhaps I should say that I have recently crafted and then forgotten to take pictures of the completed craft... Doh! For my church retreat last weekend, I did a calligraphy project. I scribed the same Bible verse on 36 cards, which were then tied to red roses for our retreatants. They looked simply marvelous darling and naturally I forgot to take a picture of the completed project. Rats! The women really loved the calligraphy project and many of them told me last night that they planned to keep their cards for a long time. Yay! My craft projects have gone to live in other people's lives and that's what really matters. So today I'm showing you some recent drawings from the wipey boards at work, all done by me of course. Above you'll see my Pooh and Piglet. Monday was in fact the birthday of Winnie the Pooh or as they say in Russia "Vinni Puh." If you've got a wee bit of time on your hands, you should watch that link's video. Russian Winnie the Pooh is awesome (thanks to the Russian coworker, I know of his greatness). Normally I don't blog about Soviet cartoons, but just this once... In my drawing, you'll see a particularly trim Pooh (I couldn't quite get the rotundity) with a honey pot and his buddy Piglet giving him a birthday balloon. We like to mark the important anniversaries around this office. Clearly.

And here's my front door. The quote about the hurricane was contributed by one of my coworkers... I'm not that bitter about baseball. I just wanted yall to see what the office mates get to see when approaching my door.

And of course to gloat about defeating the LA Angels of Anaheim or whatever ridiculous string of words and locations they are going by today, I added a dead rally monkey to my door. Enjoy. I promise I'll be crafting soon and then I'll post some cool actual crafts instead of just useless stuff.

Three Months Late

Here are the doodles from the month of July. I haven't posted my monthly doodle sets in a while, so I'll try to do that, now that I've got three months worth stockpiled as pdf's on my computer. I realize that posting my doodles verges on narcissistic, but I just feel like my little inked up calendar is such an expression of me. Anyone who knows me or has ever sat through a meeting with me has certainly seen me have at a piece of paper with relentless, wrapped attention to detail. I won't stop doodling until the whole page is covered, even at the expense of the necessary information on the piece of paper... like phone numbers or deadlines...

I'm particularly proud of this "doodle." I'm also forever indebted to my coworker who handles the office supplies catalog who ordered me the most awesome marker set ever. And I'm proud to say that I've actually managed to incorporate the markers into my work on at least a half dozen occasions. Judging by the doodle, you can tell that I was really looking forward to the leg surgery. I was, for what its worth. I was most anxious to have the surgery in the rear-view window instead of always looming on the horizon. And it was as pleasant as could be expected, considering the crux of the operation was to remove a 17-inch nail from my thigh. Delightful, folks. I decided to follow up my two days of intense health care with a tribute to America.

You'll note that throughout the doodles, you can see the Red Sox scores noted on each game day. A particular highlight of my stay in the hospital (besides the fact that a billion loving people came to bring my flowers and tasty food ... always a huge plus) was that the hospital carried a station that aired the Red Sox. So I got to watch my beloved baseball boys whilst doped up on Aunt Beth's brownies and morphine! Talk about a sweet summer...

Finally, I just really liked the way this turned out. And, no, I didn't win the dessert bake off. I'm not even going to claim that I was robbed (though my cupcakes kicked major booty). It was a high calorie day of office fun.

Day Off Correspondence

To add to the recent collection of calligraphy posts, here's what I did this morning for some letters I needed to send. I tell you what, I've gotten pretty good at the standard, "Dallas, Texas 752.." because I use it so frequently! And I decided to really roll out the personalized pink stationery that I bought from vistaprint.com (which is cheap yet high quality... I can't say enough good stuff about using them though I'd advise going for the "linen" paper option so that the paper feels really high quality).

Thanks to several practice sessions, I've really gotten comfortable using the colored ink. At first I had a really hard time switching from black to blue or red or gold (the three colors I own besides black) because I felt like you could see differences in color as the amount of ink left in the quill started to dwindle. And that's true -- you can see the color difference, but I've gotten better at knowing when to refill the quill, which is, like, constantly. If I were to write a sentence with my quill with colored ink, it would look like this,

"Geez, d(refill)o you thin(refill)k that t(refill)he So(refill)x have (refill) what it(refill) takes t(refill) to make (refill) it to the (refill) Series (refill) this ye(refill)ar?"

Clearly, it's not an efficient way to write a lengthy amount, but it's all right for addresses... if you are in a patient mood. Luckily for my lady friends to whom the envelopes are addressed, I was in a patient mood this morning.

But now I'm not, I only have so many hours to shop on my day off! Goodness gracious folks, I hope this post will sustain you through the weekend and my trip to NYC.

Calligraphy doodling

I had a couple of minutes of free time on Tuesday to do some calligraphy practice. I tell you what, September for a rabid baseball fan can be so busy. Especially when you insist on going a full weekend of games. More on that later if I can get my act together...

I'm trying to get a little better with this new nib I purchased. I need to spend some time working on my form instead of just free styling all the time. I know that Miss Susan likes to see my every calligraphy creation so I hope this keeps my DJ Jazzy happy for a few minutes.

This weekend finds me flying to New York to catch the 7th to last game ever at Yankee Stadium on Monday between the Yanks and the Chicago White Sox (wrong colored Sox for this fan's taste, but you can't get everything you want). It's overwhelming enough to know I'll be attending the wake of the cathedral of baseball, especially in a down year for the Bronx Bombers. But alas, I've wandered away from the strict confines of my craft blog to boast about my good baseball fortune. The reason I bring this up is that it seems that I won't be getting a chance to do too much crafting over the weekend. I'll see if I can get something done...

Toodles!

New Nib

Pool Envy, a new painting style.

Above is the new painting style I'm trying out. Like Daisuke's Gyro-Ball* or Zoolander's Magnum, I feel like I've been promoting the "I've got a new paint style coming up!" for quite some time and I'm happy to finally be revealing a finished product. What do you think?
The picture doesn't do it too much justice, to be honest. I'm really a fan of this style and those that have seen it in person seem to like it a lot too. Well, everyone but my mom. She doesn't like it much at all. Oh well. You can't please everyone.
I'm tentatively calling the new style "pool envy" because it reflects a few facets of my life. One, I recently had surgery and wasn't supposed to go swimming so as I painted each little blue circle, in my mind I was splashing around in some perfectly situated pool, with tin bucket of girly tropical drinks right next to the stack of plush, soft beach towels. Two, I live in an apartment building that doesn't come complete with a pool. So I suffer from a bit of pool envy, even when I'm given doc's clearance to splish splash to my heart's content. Thankfully casa de mom y dad offers me a lovely place to swim and reconnect with their gaggle of pets (conveniently located just across the Park Cities from my apartment). And three, there's a point in the Texas summer when even the pool water gets too hot to really cool you down. At that point, your mental vision of a refreshing dip in the cool waters is, in reality, a chance to wade around in tepid water. As Dallas has experienced quite a few days in the 100s, I expect that this "pool too hot" syndrome will set in very soon, if it hasn't already. At the very least, I can look at this painting and dream about the refreshment that a chilly dip would bring about. And that's the inspiration behind these pools of blue.

I wanted to include a few pictures of the process by which this piece was created. Above is the picture of the painting with all the blue bubbles filled in but without the shimmering silver background color applied. Obviously, the piece of glass is resting on a work towel, which looks pretty dirty. Hope you can get past that. Below is the original sketch for the painting. I planned to make a few "colonies" of circles and then add in a few "families" in the white space. I really like the shapes that can be created from the little circles, especially the biggest "colony" of circles. I thought that one turned out particularly well.

* I've been kinda aching for a few days to throw in some Red Sox references when I post stuff. I mean, it's a pivotal point in the AL East and then there's all the Manny drama. But alas, I am not writing a baseball blog. But I don't see why I can't occasionally add a Sox reference. Right?