Happy New Year Everyone!
Over the years, I’ve accumulated a bag of old makeup that have lovely pigments, but I just did not have the chance to use up. I couldn’t bear to throw them out. Some were close to full tubes of liquid eyeshadow and lip gloss, so I thought…why not use them to make art? I started out with a brown vertical line and then it evolved into this:
I like how it turned out overall. The silhouettes do look a little eerie, but I think it goes well with the scenery.
I see why people are raving about Instagram. The effects are so fun to apply and the app is so easy to use. Here are a couple of favorites I took 
Meet Mario. He’s a parrot cichlid in our freshwater fish tank. He always has a smile on his face.
This picture was taken, you guessed it, with the iPhone 4 and is untouched!
With the My Sketch app, you can turn this image into a black and white sketch:
Impressive app and it’s free! There are a ton of other sketch styles available as well.
I was so excited to be given the opportunity to make a logo to celebrate MIT Center for International Studies’ 60th year of existence! I love working with logo designs. I don’t get to do it very often and find designing a logo to be a fun challenge! I have a lot of respect for logo designers and understand that it’s very difficult to create something simplistic, yet meaningful and communicates the message clearly.
Here’s what I came up with!
CIS sponsors many events with distinguished speakers throughout the year and highlights the latest international studies news at MIT and around the world. Check ‘em out!
It’s amazing how scary mother nature is at times and then how beautiful it also can be.
My thoughts are with the people in Japan.
Taken with the iPhone 4 and is untouched.
Would you believe me if I told you I took this photo on the iPhone 4? The image quality amazes me! I love my sony alpha 700 and my sony dsc-tx7…but I must admit I use them much less, because of the photo quality on the iPhone and it’s what I always have with me. I’ve recently surpassed 1,000 photos! Most of them are of Coco, my rabbit
I can’t believe how fast time flies. My bunny, Coco is almost 1 year old! In celebration of her cuteness, I made an illustration of her when she’s happy:
She is actually rarely like this. She’s a rather moody bunny haha. She often stomps and digs her litter box seemingly out of frustration in search of gold, but I still love her for who she is!
Lately I’ve been drawn to the color scheme: fuschia, purple and blue. It’s really rich, eye-catching and complementary.
My Tuesday night experiment with watercolor brushes and my fav color combo:
I recently visited the beautiful Muir Woods 11 mi north of the Golden Gate Bridge during a trip to California. I took a ton of photos and chose two shots to tweak that I thought a vintage effect would work well for. I found a great tutorial (thank you veerle’s blog!) on how to achieve the effect. I think the level of pinkish tone can be altered to your personal preference. I like a little bit more of it
I’ve been asked this question a couple of times…so I thought I’d explain it in a post…here goes the story!
I first heard about etsy from a co-worker two years ago. She raved about how it’s a great site for buying handmade goodies. I had to check it out! I started shopping on etsy and found a lot of great necklaces and earrings made by local artists. During days when I’m in much need of retail therapy, I spend hours browsing on etsy. I found a ton of earrings I liked, but some items were sold by international sellers with high shipping costs. The shipping plus the price of the item itself was out of my budget. I continued to browse, searching on etsy for other items with a similar theme and then saw other sellers with similar designs using identical findings. I started to wonder if I can find the supplier on etsy so that I can try making them on my own. After some hours of searching, I found some suppliers, ordered a ton of supplies and took frequent trips to Michael’s to get started.
I made my first pair of earrings earlier this year in Jan and it took an hour! I didn’t have the right tools and slowly began to realize making jewelry is a lot harder than I thought. I sat down with the supplies and was eager to get started, but realized I didn’t have all the materials and tools. I sat there with a flat plier…thinking I could bend wire simply with that…and I didn’t realize I would need a round nose plier! Eventually, after some experimentation and lots of poking around at Michael’s, I bought the right tools and the right supplies to put together a pair of earrings and the final product felt so fulfilling. It was another channel of creativity and productivity I needed and really enjoyed. I started making more thereafter. Afterwards, I got the hang of it and started exploring various techniques like wire wrapping. Not as easy as it may look!
After moving to a new home in May, I have been pretty pre-ocupied with it, but I am really hoping to get back to making more jewelry! It’s a great hobby and it also gives me a chance to do more photography. =)
So far, this is my favorite pair I’ve created…it took an hour, but was worth it!
It’s important that everyone has a hobby…and I think this one is a keeper!
