4th of July Pinwheels

Since the 4th of July is just around the corner (and so is my sister Ellie's birthday) I wanted to do a fun but simple craft that could benefit both. My sister's birthday is on the 5th and is having a party. My mom then told me about this idea, so I tried it and loved how they turned out!!

Here are the steps to make a pinwheel.
1. Gather your supplies. You will need paper (preferably 12"x12"), a cutter, scissors, several 1"x1" paper squares, and glue. I used SuperGlue becasue it dries fast and binds strong.

2. Cut the paper into 12"x1 3/4" strips. Note: If you have striped paper and wish the pinwheel to have concentric circles like the blue and red one above, cut the paper the way the stripes are going, vertically (don't cut through the stripes).

3. Accordion fold a strip of paper. For step-by-step instructions on how to accordion fold, click here.

4. After the entire strip of paper is folded, adhere the ends together with SuperGlue to form a circle.

5. With the back side of the paper up, gently push down on the center of the circle. One side of the circle should fan out while the other side is pushed together.

6. Put glue on one of the small paper squares and put in the center of the back of the pinwheel and hold until dry. This will keep the pinwheel secure and help it not to pop loose.

Finished! The completed pinwheel is about 3 1/2" and now can be used to decorate a table, put on skewers in a vase, or made into a banner to drape across a doorway or wall. I might do a combination of these idea for the party!!

Oreo Cupcakes-Yummy!

After I had seen this recipe on Pinterest, I decided I must try it. And since it was Fathers Day yesterday and my dad loves Oreos, I thought it the perfect time to try them!! If you want to see the recipe I used, click here to go to the website. You can also click here to go to my Baking/Cake Decorating board on Pinterest.
The ingredients:

Cupcake batter ingredients

Frosting ingredients

First I mixed up the dry ingredients which consisted of flour, cocoa powder, salt, baking powder and baking soda. I set this aside for later use.

Then mixed up the wet, consisting of butter, vanilla, brown sugar, and eggs. The buttermilk is left aside.

Then, alternating between the dry ingredients and the buttermilk, the batter is mixed all together!

Then it was time to get the pan ready. After placing baking cups in each hole, I put an Oreo in the bottom and put a scoop of batter on top of it. Now they are ready to go into the oven for 20 minutes.

Now while these were baking, I took out the whipped cream from the fridge. I also took 4 Oreos and put them inside a plastic bag then crushed them with an ice cream scooper to get some nice crumbs. I flipped the whipped cream into a bowl and stirred that up with the Oreo Crumbs. Yummy!

I made some fondant a few days ago, so I got that out of the fridge, thinking it would be nice to make a little happy fathers day message for my daddy :) Now for the rolling and cutting!!

Now that the cupcakes were finished baking and cooling, now for the decorating!! I gathered my frosting, Oreos, and cupcakes. I cut each Oreo in half. I then put a dollop of whipped cream on each cupcake and topped it with a half-Oreo. Voila!!

These cupcakes were so delicious and definitely a repeater. My dad loved them and so did the rest of my family!! We even had some leftover after everyone had seconds (and thirds), so my parents took some to our neighbors and they loved them too!! I hope you can try this for yourselves... It's pretty easy and definitely worth the work and wait!!

Drawings

Here are a few of the drawings I have done in the past couple of months in my drawing class.



Self-Portrait



Confusing+Patterns and Textures



Confusing and Layering Drawing



Still Life



Name Ribbon Drawing


Sphere and Value Chart

Drawings

The school year so far has been busy, but I am enjoying my art classes very much!! I have 2 art classes this semester: Drawing, taught by the very talented and experienced Mr Boston, and Principles of Art, taught by the amazing, fun, and energetic Ms Jurgens. Since this is an art blog, it seemed logical that I share some of the drawings and sketches that I have made for my classes and outside of my classes. So I have sketches due every week in Jurg's class and every other week in Boston's for a grade, so here are a few that I have done:

Boston's Class:

 Titled, "Sunglasses". I actually modeled this after my sunglasses,

 the very same one's I have on in my profile picture. :) 

A Free Draw (I got to decide what I wanted to do that week)

"Bicycles on Side Walk", This drawing was assigned (he told us all to draw this, but it was left up to interpretation). I had the idea for doing different perspectives of this drawing, like maybe an aerial view or like your laying on the ground and seeing them reach up into the sky, but I tried and decided against those ideas.

Jurgen's Class:

 "Flying Frog". This drawing was assigned, and I thought it would 

be fun to draw a purple frog instead of a plain old green one :)

"Monkey on a Bicycle". This was assigned too. I decided to go for more of a life-like approach 

for this, but I saw many others that were more cartoony; that's just not really my style.

Outside of Class:

 This doesn't have a name, it was just a practice drawing for my project I am doing in my drawing class right now, actually. It's confusing negative and positive spaces, using different patterns and textures, and having abstract subjects as well as realistic subjects. I am excited for this project and will upload the finished project after I finish it, get it graded, and it gets handed back to me. The last project I did in this class, I handed it in maybe a week ago and I still haven't gotten it back yet, so hang tight!!

Just a sketch. I really love drawing faces and eyes, especially female. I think eyes are gorgeous and very fun and enjoying to draw. I also am trying to be better at drawing more life-like hair :)

 I hope you enjoyed these, I worked many hours on these and hopefully my hard work shows!! Please follow my blog and leave a comment!

2013 Halloween Invitations

We are having yet another Halloween party at my house, and I decided to make the invites again. I will attach some documents I used if you would like to make some too :) Here's how I did it:

First, I made this document; click on this link. If you want to make your own, make your own document with all of the info.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=gmail&attid=0.1&thid=1418fac01a8c978a&mt=application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document&url=https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui%3D2%26ik%3D916ffc7ea2%26view%3Datt%26th%3D1418fac01a8c978a%26attid%3D0.1%26disp%3Dsafe%26realattid%3Df_hmgs7dr50%26zw&sig=AHIEtbQA_Gh3YBm_IEya1iPnuMJMdlDEgg

Next I got all of these supplies from Michaels:

-Purple cardstock, 8.5"x11"
-Fall trees stamp
-Rhinestone tape
-Monogrammed letter stamp

I also used a bat cutter, slide cutter, scissors, glue, stamp pad, dark paper, and long envelopes.

Then I printed out the greeting, and info on the purple paper. I got two invitations out of 1 sheet of paper. The first picture here is the greeting I used, it's an excerpt from an Edgar Allen Poe Poem.

 I cut the Elle Montgomery poems out.

I then cut and folded the invitations.

Next I got my Fall Trees stamp out and a dark blue stamp pad. I inked the stamp and stamped all the fronts of the invites.

I opened the cards and glued the poem on the inside left.

I cut out some bats with the bat cutter on some dark paper and glued 2 in each card.

Next I cut the rhinestone tape into individual gems and stuck those on the front where I stamped the Fall Trees.

Lastly, I got the envelopes out and stamped the flap with a monogrammed "m". Voila!

I made 26 of these today, and it took me the whole afternoon, but it was definitely worth it. I am very pleased with the outcome, I think these turned out better than the ones I did last year. If you would like to see the ones I did last year, go to my archive and click "Oct 2012". It will be listed. Thanks for reading! Feel free to give comments and pointers and follow me!