Owl

As you saw on Sunday's post I've been using Sculpey again and this time...

...I made an owl!

I love his eyes the best.

I used a needle to put all the feather markings on the model.

Then I painted him up with acrylic paint.

Now he joins the other animal photo holders.

I'm gearing up for the Christmas craft fair season so I've been busy making to build up my inventory.

I hope these photo holders sell well!

This Week I...

This week I went to see a live screening of Swan Lake from the Royal Opera House at my local cinema.

The arts centre got given tickets for the event as it's the first of a series.

Free tickets? I'll take that.

It was my first time seeing a ballet and I enjoyed it. 

Streaming it live to a cinema worked really well and we probably got to see more than the audience at the Royal Opera House.

I finally finished reading the last of 3 books that I've been in the middle of for ages.

One of them I've had a bookmark in for over a year. I just don't read that often.

But I've been making more of an effort to take some time out to read, and now I've started reading Brad Paisley's book which I bought in New York at a Barnes and Noble on sale for $5.95.

Brad is worth more, but that's a good bargain.

I've also had the Sculpey out again, the results of which you'll see next week.

How was your week?

It's beginning to look a lot like...

...Christmas!

A miniature Christmas anyway.

And the things that have helped this?

A Halloween broom and a packet of pot pourri. Both from Poundland. 

I've started decorating the miniature fireplaces.

There's a lot of festive candle arrangements going on.

The candles are made out of Sculpey. I painted the bristles of the broom green and those little 'pine cones' are from the pot pourri.

In my box of random little things I found this toggle thing that goes on the end of cord on a coat. Know what I mean?

Well it makes a fantastic flower pot.

This is my favourite thing so far.

A miniature woven basket for fire wood.

It's made out of card and I was so happy to see it turn out awesome.

Get glueing

When I was in America I bought some cool stuff. Including Brad Paisley's Diary of a Player, an NYPD t-shirt, a guitar shaped fly swat, red party cups, and this stuff...

The blogosphere raves about E6000 glue so when I saw it in a little bead shop on my last morning in New York I didn't hesitate to grab it.

Actually there was some hesitation, over whether to get the big or the small tube.

I went for the big tube. It's not like I'll be going back to the US to re-stock any time soon.

I've used the glue to make these.

And these!

I bought these from Hobbycraft ages ago and they've been sat in a drawer waiting for this moment.

I wiggled the bits of metal off the back and glued them to some similarly coloured ring blanks.

I haven't decided what to put in the middle yet. Decorative paper? Just a whole lot of glitter?

I've still got a lot of Paua shells so I stuck one of them on a ring blank.

And then I stuck anything else I could find on to rings blanks.

And then I told myself to stop.

Cos I could easily get carried away.

This Week I...

 On Thursday evening I modelled in a 1970s themed photoshoot for the Arts Centre.

In November we're having a weekend festival celebrating the 70s and 80s, so leading up to that we're doing a lot of smaller projects around that theme.

It was a lot of fun.

We had girls from the local college come and do our hair and make-up.
(I've very quickly learned to not bother to try and hide my braces in photos.)

And we dressed up in 70s clothing.

I wore one of my Mum's old dresses.

You can see more about it here.

I roped two of my friends into modelling too and this is what they were wearing.

So much fabric!

I can't wait to see the professional photos.

Also this week I...

*Did a lot of photocopying and stapling at work. Standard intern behaviour.

*Had a girls night with chocolate and The Lucky One.

*Went to the cinema with my sister to see Ruby Sparks.

*Baked some 'thank-you' cookies for my friends for helping out with the photoshoot. Chocolate chip of course!

What did you guys get up to?

Miniature fireplaces

This is my miniature fireplace army.

Each fireplace started off like this.

Two pieces of MDF glued together with two support blocks.

Then I used card to make the actual fireplace.

Elastic bands are handy for keeping everything in place while it dries.

More card to add more details.

A made a couple of them brick fireplaces using my usual method of a hand-carved rubber stamp.

Now they're ready for stage 2: Christmasifying.

Watch out local craft fairs. The miniature fireplace army is coming.

The Memory Book

This is my last holiday post. I promise.

This was our travel journal.

Or as I like to call it; the memory book.

My Mum gets an academic planner from Paperchase every year and there's always blank pages left over so I put them all together to make this journal. There was lined paper, squared paper and I added some sketchbook paper too.

The mix of papers just makes things more interesting.

I'd collect things throughout the day - leaflets, receipts - and once we got back to our apartment or hotel room in the evening I'd get everything out and armed with my trusty Pritt stick I'd put together a couple of pages about the day.

I made sure to write about a day on that same day because I'm sure I'd forget things if I waited.

For example, I definitely wanted to remember what we heard a girl say on the bus back from the Grand Ole Opry:

(In a southern accent) "Miss! Can you go easy on the bumps? I need to go to the bathroom!"

Hilarious.

I liked finding interesting things to write on, like this comment sheet from Mood, the fabric store.

When I got home I altered some plastic wallets so they'd fit in the book so that I could slot in leaflets from the different places we'd been.

Do you like my colouring-in? In the Country Music Hall of Fame they had a table where you could design your own outfit for a country star. Joss and I did one each while we were there, but I also took a colouring sheet with me to do later.

I coloured it in whilst watching Country Music's Night to Rock which was on tv on the Monday night. So good!

And speaking of country music;

You've heard me rap, now hear about how I want to be a country singer. 

This Week I...

I had my first full week as a glasses wearing, braces having girl.

I got glasses and braces in two days! That's just not fair.

Here's the x-ray of my teeth.

I keep it on my phone so I can show everyone, cos that's how I roll.

I have an impacted canine that needs to be brought down into place, and all my other teeth are going to be straightened out at the same time.

I have to have the braces for at least a year, which means I'll be 23 when they come off!

Does anyone have any tips for living with braces?

Or does anyone have/has had adult braces that can share my pain?

Also this week I started a miniature project (that's a project making miniatures, not a tiny-sized project) which started off with sawing wood. Which made my arm ache.

And I was on the front page of one my local newspapers for arts centre!

I'm not actually directly involved with this project, they just wanted more people for the photo.

How was your week?

Open Exhibition

I mentioned on Sunday that I'd been helping to put up the open exhibition at the arts centre, but I didn't tell you that I have two pieces in it.

I put in my recent self portrait with the pink jacket.

I had a bit of an issue over how to hang it. I didn't want to get it framed because for one that's expensive as the board didn't fit a standard frame from a shop, but also I think the messy, unframed look suits the urban feel of the painting.

The woman in the framing shop suggested I use some sticky patches that are usually used for hanging decorative plates. The patches have a metal ring on the them and I was able to attach hanging wire to the rings of two patches. It worked a treat!

Everyone at the arts centre has been saying, 'Lisa, there's a painting that looks like you.'

To which I reply, 'It is me! I did it!'

I also put 'McCreerys' in the exhibition, a piece I made at university.

It was highly commended for the prize they were giving out!

To make the piece exhibition worthy I attached an MDF base and back to strengthen and straighten it out.

I think I might go through all my old pieces and do that same as it makes them look much better.

New York!

So here's what I got up to in New York

After flying from Nashville to New York, in a tiny little plane, Joss and I were reunited with our other sister Lucy who wasn't too bothered about Nashville so she just joined us for the NY part of the trip.

For lunch one day we went to Ellen's Stardust Diner.

All the waitstaff are singers and take it in turns to perform around the diner.

This is our waiter Rufus singing Folsom Prison Blues (Of course! Can't escape country) complete with tambourine.

Also that day we went to the Broadway flea market which benefits the Broadway Cares charity.

It was pretty much the reason why Lucy decided we should go to New York at the that time.

On another day we explored the lower half of Central Park which included eating a delicious lunch from Whole Foods on some bleachers. Yes I did pretend I was in Grease.

And speaking of lunch I had some of the best sandwiches in New York, actually in America generally.

My favourite was a honey maple turkey and bacon from The Bread Factory. So good!

And speaking of bacon my sister got interviewed in Times Square about the bacon shortage that might happen! Check out the footage here. Oh, and did I mention the interviewer was a Muppet? So good!

We walked the High Line, which is a public park built on an old elevated rail road.

You know I love miniatures so it was cool to come across this little guy.

We went on some bus and boat tours including a night tour where I got photos like this one.

We also went on a bus tour round Brooklyn and as we went over the Manhattan bridge the tour guide got out his phone, put it to the microphone and started playing 'Empire State of Mind'. It was awesome. 

Of course we couldn't go to New York without hitting the shops.

Though my favourites were the toy stores (also the chocolate stores for the free samples). We went to FAO Schwartz looking for the walk-on piano like in the movie Big, but we ended up finding the place you can get your very own Muppet made! My sister was willing to hand over the $99 to do so and that's her Muppet on the left.

So that was my holiday.

Have any of you been to New York? What's your favourite thing about it?