Picture Blog Time! More Paintings!

Here are some more photos of oil paintings I've done using the Bob Ross wet-on-wet technique:

This was the first painting I attempted on my own. I used my lovely new paints and brushes that I got as a birthday gift from my wonderful husband. The picture was inspired by one on the Bob Ross website called "Winter Glow." (Full instructions here.) It's not exactly the same; I couldn't paint that cabin for the life of me. I am satisfied with it though, especially as a first lone attempt.

This painting is from my final class with Melody. I desperately wanted to do this painting because I knew that it would make an excellent gift for my mother who loves lighthouses. It turned out fantastic, except that the reflection of the lighthouse doesn't quite line up with the actual lighthouse. (Shh! Don't tell anyone!) I still think it looks awesome, and I know my mother will be pleased.

This painting started out as a seascape for my sister and her husband. However, I messed up the sky quite early on by adding too much yellow. Instead of scraping off all the paint and re-priming the canvas, I decided to roll with the yellowy sky, and this is what I ended up with - a pretty spiffy desert scene. This is a 100% Ashley original, and I like it. Like Bob Ross said, "There are no mistakes, just happy accidents."

 Here is attempt number two at a seascape painting for my sister. You'll notice the sky is much less yellow, and there's water in this one. However, the picture I wanted to paint had a beautiful crashing wave and sand dunes that I just could not get right for the life of me. So I painted some soft swells and called it good. My aunt fell in love with this one, so she's taking it home with her when she comes to visit on Thanksgiving.

This is the third and final attempt at my sister's seascape painting. After watching this video on YouTube, I was able to get that crashing wave down. Fortunately, I also got the dunes right on this one too. It really is just a matter of practice, I think. Trust me, you don't know how many times I scraped off bad waves before I finally got it just how I wanted. Like Bob Ross said, "Talent is a pursued interest. Anything that you're willing to practice, you can do."

And just for fun, I'm going to share this video with you. If you have time, check out the rest of the PBS remix videos. Catch you later!

Forming Rhok'delar, Longbow of the Ancient Keepers - Part 2

For the beginning of this project, see: Forming Rhok'delar, Longbow of the Ancient Keepers - Part 1

Long has my epic bow sat unfinished, but no more. When I left off in part one, I was waiting for the paper strips to dry. The next step was to cover the bow in CelluClay. The final product was very hard and strong without being too heavy, but even thought the box said it could be sanded, sandable it was not. Either that, or I have the crappiest sandpaper ever made, because when I went to sand the CelluClay, it knocked the sand off my sandpaper. I did have better luck using steel wool to sand the bow, but in the end, what I had to do was cover the entire bow in a layer of spackle, then sand that down to get a smooth finish. I like to use the kind that starts out pink and turns white as it dries, so you know exactly when you can move on to the next step.

After the spackle was smoothed and dusted, it was time to paint. Faux painting is always a trial-and-error process for me, even though I've been doing it for years. I used the 3D model viewer on WoWhead to try to get the colors and textures as close to in-game as possible. After it dried, I coated it in Mod Podge to seal it. Once that was done, all that was left was to wrap the vines I'd made around the bow and glue them on. I didn't take any pictures of the vine-making process, but it was fairly simple. I took some newspaper

 pages and twisted them together into rope in the length that I needed. Then I wrapped up the newspaper rope in some green floral tape. I didn't want it to be all one color, so I dabbed on a contrasting green acrylic paint to add interest. Then, I wrapped around some faux-floral morning glory garland. Morning glories are closest to the type of flower that blooms on Rhok'delar, so that's what I used. Here's the final finished product:

I wasn't overly pleased with how this turned out, to be honest. I felt it looked rather cartoonish. I think my painting skills were taking a holiday. My sister-in-law and her husband both disagreed with me, though. They said it looked fantastic. Perhaps I'm being my own worst critic, but I think I can do better. What do you think?

A Tribute to Northville in Pictures

Now that the sale of our NY home has concluded, I thought it appropriate to pay homage to the little town that taught me to love snow, New England autumns, and Stewart's ice cream. This was the place where my daughter was born, and my beloved German Shepherd died. I realized a little too late how great a place this was, but I'm glad I got to experience Northville even for a little while.

Our happy home

Great Lake Sacandaga

Fall beauty in town

White Christmases

Snow dogs

Backyard fall fun

Halloween as a Troll

At long last, you get to see how our Halloween costumes turned out. This is my daughter and me just before heading down the street for trick or treating.  I'm pretty pleased with how it all turned out. We both got several compliments on our outfits, and a few people even asked to have their photos taken with us. (Not sure what happened during the uploading process that gave this picture a sepia hue, but I assure you it didn't look like this on my camera when we took it.) We forgot to put my little one's crane feet on in this pic, but I'll show one with the feet a little later. I will say that my daughter's costume was probably the simplest, yet most fancy-looking costume I've ever made. The hardest part of putting together her outfit, aside from multiple hot glue burns :(, was sorting through all the feathers I bought to weed out all the ones that were damaged, too small, or not the right shape. After that, it was simply a matter of cutting out the wings, mask, and feet, then attaching feathers, and adding some Velcro to make it wearable. The green leotard was purchased from welovecolors.com/, and the leggings she already had. Going to the bathroom was a little bit of a challenge for her in this costume, but with some careful planning, we were able to avoid any potty-related fiascoes.

 Here's a closeup of the little one's mask. I got the basic idea for the mask from some pictures I found on Photoblog. The beautiful orange biot feathers as well as the dark green feather pads in the photo below were purchased from Kimonos Feathers on Etsy. I highly recommend Kim's shop; the products I got were of great quality, reasonably priced, and they arrived quickly. The wings were inspired by the DIY bird wings on Handmade Charlotte, the only difference was that I used actual feathers on my wings instead of fabric

scallops. For the tail, I basically just cut a teardrop shape out of craft foam and glued on feathers. It's important to note that if you're going to attempt a project like this yourself, you should layer on the feathers starting from the outside and working inward, just slightly overlapping each row of feathers. That way it mimics how a bird's feathers are naturally. Part of the reason I chose to finish off the wings and tail with feather pads was because I felt it made things look even more natural, with the pads acting at the bird's shoulders and rump.

In the picture directly below, you can see a picture of not only my impatient trick-or-treater's sad face at being told to wait, but you can also see the bird feet that I made from craft foam. They had a little strap underneath that slipped through her Velcro shoes to keep the the feet from spinning around on her ankles.

Pretty ingenious, if I do say so myself!

Now, onto my costume. I'll go ahead and apologize for what's probably the worst archery stance in the history of the world. But hey, you can see I finished Rhok'delar! Stay tuned for part two of the tutorial on that, my friends. First of all, you're probably saying, "Hey! That isn't the Amani Mail set you said you were going to make!" You'd be right, it isn't. What it is, is the Brackwater Mail recolor set (although I forgot to wear the bracers and feet, much to my chagrin). I'm still wearing the Pauldrons of the Furious Elements, though, so there! These changes in the costume were made mainly because of the lack of time. If you've been keeping up with my blog, you'll know that I've been busy packing, selling my house, and visiting family all before a big cross-country move. Now, I honestly can't really blame all that, because I started working on this costume in January. The real issue was that all this cropped up after I decided to procrastinate. In the future, I'll be making a post about the lessons I learned while trying to finish this costume last minute. This was my first attempt at a costume project of this magnitude, and while it did turn out nice, it could have been so much better if I'd been working at it all along like I should have been doing. At any rate, hindsight is 20/20, and speaking of vision, let me give you a better look at the individual parts of my costume.

The first picture is one of my bracers (which I'm still kicking myself for forgetting to put on). The details you see here like the metal studs and rings were on each piece of my "armor." At a distance, it looks like studded leather over scale mail. The second picture is of my wig. I'm showing the side view of it, because all the pictures taken of me on Halloween were from the front, and the great styling of this wig went unnoticed because of it. You really couldn't see the braids or the overall shape of the mohawk, which is kind of a shame, 

since Leah's hair is one of my favorite things about her. By the way, if you're wondering how I got the hair to stick up like that, I used Got2B glued spiking gel. It does what it claims to do, and it's not too expensive, so I really can't complain. Word to the wise, it's uber-gross feeling to work with, and I don't think I'd ever put it in my actual hair.



These are my pauldrons, and I am very proud of them. I feel they look just awesome. I can't give a step-by-step tutorial for these since I didn't take pictures throughout the creation process, but I will put up a basic how-to for anyone who's interested in attempting your own cosplay armor. There are some things I'd do differently if I had to do them all over again, but I'll talk about that in a future post.

So there you have it, folks! My transformation into Leah for Halloween was successful. My sis-in-law said we were the talk of the neighborhood, so I guess there's something to be said for that! TTFN! Ta-ta for now!

I Haven't Died

I'm still here! I know you guys are dying to know how my family's Halloween costumes turned out this year, but I'm telling you, I haven't stopped moving long enough to get the photos out into the blogosphere. Since I have a few minutes, let me tell you about what's going on in my life.

Back in April, my husband applied for a new job. It's clear across the country from where we live, but it's better pay, better work, and near our target area for our eventual secluded hobby-farm dream home. Well, months rolled by, and we just assumed that since we hadn't heard anything that he wasn't getting hired. Fast forward to August, and we got a call for him to come interview. In September, he was offered the job. At the beginning of October, my husband headed on out to start his new job and try to find a place for us to live. Meanwhile, I was still back at our old home packing up our stuff to put into storage. The plan was I would store all our stuff and then go stay with our relatives while waiting for my husband to find us a home out there.

Shortly after we got the call for the interview, we also got a call from our real estate agent in NY. The house that we'd been trying to sell for three years finally had an offer. There were negotiations and paperwork aplenty.

Since my daughter and I have been staying with family, we've been constantly running errands and visiting family. It feels like I haven't really had time to catch my breath. At any rate, we're scheduled to move into our new home with my husband in early December. Perhaps then I can rest. Who am I kidding? Christmas is approaching!

Anyway, that's what's been going on with my life. If you don't see me around, I'm probably running around all over creation like a chicken with my head chopped off. However, I promise as soon as I get a minute or two to organize my photos and my thoughts, I will post about Halloween, my paintings, and my craft projects. Until then, tootaloo!

Why I Make my Child's Halloween Costumes

A couple of years ago, I started making my daughter's Halloween costumes. When she was one, I made a hat with antennae to go with her off-the-rack  ladybug costume. It got more compliments than the whole outfit. When she was two, I made her a flower costume. Last year, she went as her favorite feline, our cat Pixie. This year, I will be making a green crane costume for her. Making the little one's costumes has become something I look forward to, because it provides the unique challenge of bringing her wishes to life.

Three years ago when I started down this road, I imagined I would save money by doing it all myself. I quickly discovered this was not the case. Often, the cost of materials adds up quickly, especially if fake fur, feathers, or fabric is involved. Then there's the time-suck of making the costume. I tend to spend several hours drafting a plan for the costume, and even more time in the execution. In the end, it would often be simpler if I had just gone down to my local big box store and purchased a ready-made costume.

So why do I do it?

I love my child. Let me clarify: every mom has something she's good at, a unique way to express love to her

children. Some moms bake, some tell great stories, some leave notes in their children's lunch boxes. I happen to be decently creative in a way that allows me to make special costumes for my girl. When I say I hand make Halloween costumes because I love my child, I'm not taking an "I'm a better mom than you because I take the time to do this," stance. If anything, me doing this only glosses over the fact that in other areas, I'm actually a pretty crappy mom. I hope one day it balances out. Perhaps my daughter will look back through our scrapbooks and say, "Look at the time and effort Mom spent making sure that I got to be exactly what I wanted to be each year. You know, Mom might not have been perfect, but at least she cared." For now, pouring my heart into this is one of the best ways I have to show her I love her.

Her costumes are unique. When my girl comes to your door on Halloween night, she won't look like any other child you've seen. Even if she wanted to be a Disney princess or Batman or some other iconic character, her outfit will stand out because I customize it to her. However, it's unlikely that she'll want to be Cinderella or Wonder Woman, because she's wired a bit differently. If all her friends were dressing as Harry Potter characters, she'd want to be a snitch, or the painting of the Fat Lady, or maybe a blast-ended skrewt. Besides, my little one is oddly specific about how she wants her costumes to be. For example, I thought it would be nice if I took a little artistic leeway and gave her a yellow beak for this year's costume, but she matter-of-factly informed me that the crane's beak was grey, and that's exactly how she wants it to be. Last year, when she wanted to be our cat, that included having little pink pads on her hands and feet. When I make her costumes, she can be as detail-oriented and seek as much perfection as she wants, and that's okay, because she does get it honest, after all.

It's extremely satisfying for both my child AND me. I get an enormous sense of accomplishment when I finish a costume. It also makes me happy to see just how excited my little one gets during each stage of the creation. For her it's satisfying because she gets a say-so in the whole process, from concept to completion. As a four year-old, she has a lot of decisions made for her every day. This is something that's all her own, and it makes her very proud.

So that's it then. I encourage you to give it a try sometime. Even if you don't feel like you're the crafty type, there are plenty of fool-proof plans on the internet that can likely inspire you. (Check out my Halloween board on Pinterest for starters!) Watch out though; you might just get hooked!

Darkspear Tabard

Not much to report this week, but I do have a picture to show you. This is my tabard that will go with my Halloween costume. It's modeled off of the Darkspear Tabard. Not 100% the same, but I feel it's a reasonable facsimile nonetheless. It's probably the most in-depth sewing project I've undertaken to date. I'm feeling proud, and I think it'll look great on Halloween night.

My little one's Wandering Greenback costume is nearing completion, and I'll have some pictures of that up soon.

Tomorrow is another painting class, and this month, we're doing a lighthouse. What a great present that will make for my mother this Christmas!

Well, that's all for now. Until next time, see ya!