Mucha, my new love

Time Remaining: 5 weeks.

Ah Mucha....How happy you make me.

I discovered the works of Alphonse Mucha when I was in Prague, at an art exhibition. I had seen some of his work before, but it had never struck me quite in the way it did at that exhibition. I have become entirely obsessed with his style. Whimsical women, line work, flowing hair, pastel colours... What's not to love? Such a brilliant example of Art Nouveau. I have decided that I want to learn how to recreate those images.

It's really funny, but I already had an example of his artwork in my apartment and had no idea. Last Christmas, my mum got a box of chocolates as a present, the box is in tin, with an illustration on the lid. I saw it and told her I thought it was beautiful. End of story.... until April, when she gave it to me because she remembered I had found it pretty. Fast forward to about three weeks ago, I was talking to a friend about Mucha, and she saw the box on my dresser, and remarked that the image on it was by him.

Coincidence? Yes, most definitely, and a fortunate one at that. :)

The first time I tried my hand at re-create the Mucha style, I used my little tin box as a reference. Of course, it's not an exact copy. I have nowhere near as many details, I've changed things, and I used completely different colours too.

I'm using just four colours of inks in this one. Black, red, blue and yellow. I like to mix my own colours, and I find that inks are more vibrant than watercolour. Above is the image in progress, on my very cluttered table, and below is the finished image, though I still need to un-wrinkle it.

I'm still in the sketching process for my second image, I'm working from a small reference image, that is, a lighter that has the image on it.... It's tiny. I've drawn it a couple of times already, but I'm still not satisfied, so I'll rework the big one until I like it, or start from scratch. I'm planning on doing this one in acrylic, just because I feel like it.

Ahhhh, and here is the finished version of this one. I do rather like it. I won't pretend to have any of the finesse of the artist, or even come close to it, but that's alright with me.

This last one, I don't like at all at this stage, but I'm going to redo it again, until it becomes better. It's very random how I decided to draw that one. The music was playing on my laptop, on shuffle, and the song Mein Herr sung by Ute Lemper came on. Now, that song is from the movie Cabaret, and I happened to have seen it produced this year by the KTS (King's Theatrical Society, it's the sister university of the one that I attend, we share the same campus.) and I loved it! It was fabulously amazing! So I found an image from the movie that I liked, printed it out and used it as a reference. (I also like how my printer started running out of ink, and it looks a bit like the German flag, how fitting.)

Such are my artistic ambitions. I don't claim to be good, I just draw for fun, weil es mir gefaellt.

So Many Posters!

I'm a student, on a student budget. My apartment has beige walls. That's boring! Let's make it better!
I already have an impressive collection of posters, most of which are actually rolled up and stored in my closet, but some have found a place on my walls.

As for any respectable student, my posters are stuck to the walls with that blue sticky paste that lease a grease stain where it makes contact with the poster itself. I grew tired of those stains, and of the posters snaking down the walls, slowing, oh ever so slowly. I was trying to find a way to frame them for cheap, and most of what I found was too much of a hassle. I'm lazy, stinkfaul, actually, which is one of my favourite German words to describe myself. I always say it with a smile. Ich bin stinkfaul, und stolz darauf. ;)

I came up with my own way of framing/backing posters. It looks better, cleaner, and classier (or more classy. The comparative form of classy looks funny to me for some reason). It is super easy to do, and takes no time at all.

Material needed:

- Posters in need of some oomph

- Black cardboard (I got my at the dollarstore)

- Straight ruler (I'm using my drafting square ruler)

- Pencil (and eraser if needed)

- Exacto knife

- Hot glue gone and sticks

- Large working surface (living room floor, for example)

All of this is very easy, I promise. The black cardboard acts both as a backer for the poster, so that it is sturdier, and the excess that shows around the edges acts as the frame. I stone two birds.

I marked the width of the frame at the corners, and put a tiny-little-minuscule dot  where the corners of the poster need to rest. Then I glue them in place. I only burned myself a few times, yay!

Then I cut off the excess black cardboard by using my ruler as a straight edge. I made sure I had a protective layer of newspaper between my knife and the floor.

 Repeat for all posters, and tadammmmm! I used clear thumb tacks to put them back up on the walls. It's really not that bad. And better than that awful blue sticky stuff.

In my kitchen I keep two small posters, they are very important. They remind me where my beverages are.

I always need to be reminded how important coffee is when I set my mind on doing something stupid. And of course, I need to be reminded to keep calm, the wine is right there, along with my mum's canned spaghetti sauce. :)

In my living room, I have the most posters. On one wall I have a print of a painting by Egon Schiele, and another from Alphonse Mucha (yes, I'm absolutely obsessed with his work.)

On another wall, it's mostly a random assortment of things I like. Game of Thrones, Doctor Who, French Cats, more Mucha.. I'm thinking about adding my telephone booth poster between the door and the dalek, when I bring myself to tear it down from the wall in my room, and removing that pesky blue stuff that's stuck to it.

                               

I seem to have a thing for southparking myself whenever I can. I think I would be an interesting character to appear on that show :p. But then, anyone would make for an interesting character.

There! I like the way my wall looks like right now! (I know, Einstein hasn't been framed, but that's because even perched on my highest chair, I can't reach the top of it to take it down...) I really like how the colours work they're way from blue and black, to beige, to red from left to right. It was unplanned, and I like it.

Framing posters: Done! (for now. I'll be adding more posters for sure later, maybe after the next poster sale at the uni.)

My lovely dead hair :)

For anyone who has known me for more than three minutes, one of the first things that they notice is that I have very unnatural tendencies when it comes to my hair colour. For the past year, I've dyed it so many times, I can't even count back. I've had it black and pink, blond and pink, bright coral, deep pink, dark purple, light green, steel blue, and finally lilac.

Last night I was bored, and decided to get rid of the yellowish-orangish tone that was left from the last time I bleached my roots in May. I used toner, man, that did not work at all. I used manic panic toner, because that's what I had in my drawer of wonders, and I was really disappointed. I know that another way to tone is to use purple shampoo, purple toner, purple stuff in short. So I brought out the purple dye from that same drawer of wonder, mixed a small amount with a healthy dose of cheap conditioner, and put that all over my head.

Now, it's mostly light purple, with some parts toned, some parts slightly pinkish... I don't really care, that's a good thing I think. I do get some weird looks, and some intense stares, but then I have for the last six years of my life because I like to dress all in black and wear heavy eyeliner. People really puzzle me sometimes (all the time).

Yea for lilac! I'm really curious to see how it fades, I really have no clue what it will do. Last time I bleached purple my hair turned green, and I went with it. I'm sure it won't fade green, but then, what do I know of hair chemistry, I just like to mess with it. :p

I wanted silver gray or white too, since I'm supposed to cosplay a character from League of Legends for Hal-Con, but time is running out if I have to build an armour and weapons. I might not get around to trying out those colours yet. I really like the green too, and I still have a lot of green dye left, I might just switch up between green and purple for a while.

We'll see how I feel next time I change my hair. I usually do it on a whim.

Lilac hair: DONE.

Trench Coat Time

 Say hi to Sara and Molly today. (Sara is the redhead, she's Molly's little sister. Molly looks creepy, yes I know. I love watching people's reactions to her, especially my profs..) They keep me company when I'm sewing, they don't talk much, but they listen very well.

I can say that I just finished, as in completed, as in it is done, one project today. CHEERS! I fixed my boyfriend's trenchcoat, and I thought I should fix mine too, while I was at it. Two trenches instead of one, what a good deal.

This is his trench, it's beige and purple, he chose the fabrics himself. Beige and purple.. That rings a bell.. Oh yea! The Lord of the Rings scarf. He chose the colours for that one too. He's soooooooo unpredictable when it comes to choosing colours...

The second picture is the sketch I made of what it should look like once finished. During the construction, I decided to abandon the belt, it would have looked too much like a robe in my opinion. I made the trench coat over two days in December (I think it was December), and it's been on a hanger ever since, waiting to be shortened. It was three inches too long. So I finally took my seam ripper to it. Here it is, all opened up in the bottom.

And here it is again, with nifty mitered corners. (The picture only shows one, but they are all that nifty. It's true, it's true.) Beyond shortening it, I still needed to put buttonholes in the sleeves, and buttons, and that took no time at all. I was procrastinating on the bottom because I thought it would be harder/take longer. Oh well, now it's done.

 

That is my own trench coat. In a moment of carelessness, last year, during the summer, I left it on the back of a chair, dangerously close to the cage of my pet rats. A few hours later, I found it pulled through the bars of the cage, with one sleeve nibbled, ripped, eaten and destroyed. Bad ratties! Nah, cure ratties, they're so cute when they nibble stuff... Off topic. Just the one sleeve was damaged, so I decided to make a new one. Once again, armed with my seam ripper, I took out the sleeve, separated the pieces and the lining, and traced it on paper.

I'll spare you the details of the sewing process. I liked the ribbon that I put on the ripped sleeve to conceal it last Fall, so I attached more ribbon, in a completely random way. And BAM! new sleeve, with green lining on the inside, not that the picture shows it.

And here, result of the new sleeve sewn in. :)

I like sewing a lot, that's probably why I'm a seamstress. At least that's my guess. That's my new favourite treasure in the whole entire world. My boyfriend bought me this sewing machine as a welcome back present from the summer class I took in Europe. Even Molly loves it, she's chilling next to it. It's her favourite too.

Haha. TRENCH COAT: DONE!!
Time left until September: 6 weeks.

Lord of the Rings scarf

Oh yea! This one is cool. I've actually started this scarf last October, and was planning on being done by Christmas. Ha! Was I ever wrong. Now it's July, and I really, really want to finish it before September rolls around, so that I can wear it when it gets chilly outside. This picture here shows the pattern for it. It's six pages long. I'm almost done the second page, go me! It says one ring to rule them all in elvish, it's great.

 Now, you can see what it actually looks like in yarn. Purple and light beige, so pretty together. This thing is huge. I'm using acrylic yarns that I bought at walmart, it was fairly cheap, and not as thin as the recommended size. Results: it is over a foot wide, and will be at least ten feet in length once I'm done. Cozy and badass, yes please!

 Oh! It's also double-sided. One side is purple with beige inscription, the other is beige with purple inscription. I did a bit of math, and estimated that when I'm done, I will have spent about 88 hours working on this monster. Yes, that many. It takes 10 minutes to fully knit a row, and there are 539 rows. So far, I've spent about 28 hours on it. I'm almost a third done, that's a comfort. If I want to finish it in seven weeks though, I have to knit for at least an hour every single day. It's not hard while I'm watching a movie or a TV series. It feels like I'm multitasking too.

I'm very proud of this thing, and I will only be prouder once I'm done, but I still have a LOT of work to put into it.

This is where I got the pattern, for all knitters and Lord of the Rings enthusiasts:
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/one-ring-scarf

I've done quite a bit of work on the scarf since I first posted. I'm a little further than halfway done, I'm very pleased with the way it looks. I'm really excited to get it finished. Truly, it's going to be the first time that I finish a scarf, I usually give up and never finished a single one before. :p Go me!

August 13

Oh yeah! Oh yeah! *kitsch dance moves*

I'm done, and two weeks earlier than I planned!!!!!! This glorious monster clocks in at a grand total of 2m80. It is soooooo fluffy, I'm gonna die.

PICTURES! :

Why did I finish it two weeks early? Oh, just because I started another gianormous one.........

I'm incorrigible.. :P

LotR Scarf: DONE!

An extensive list of projects

I'm feeling inspired today. I'll take some of Leibniz's enthusiasm (yes, I knew that extra summer course would come in handy for references that only I get) for creating this list of projects that I would like to start, and hopefully finish by the end of August, before September puts an end to all of my extra-curricular activities to swallow me whole in the ocean of the university workload. So then, let's begin this list. I will include projects that I've already started, as well as new ones that I'm contemplating. The order doesn't mean anything, I write down as I remember them.

Contemplating:
- Create the cosplay costume for Ashe for Hal-Con (that one's in November)
- Make that coat I saw in a fair and drew down instead of snapping a picture
- Get some of my honours thesis done

In Progress:
- Finish my Neuschwanstein Schloss 3D puzzle
- Redecorate the living room
- Learn how to do Mucha-style drawings (66% done, I want to attempt it a third time)

Completed:
- My boyfriend's trenchcoat (and mine)
- Frame my posters
- Dye my hair white, gray or lilac
- Finish my Lord of the Rings Scarf
- Make a corset

Time left until September: 7 weeks.

Uhm, between my job and sleeping, that will keep me busy for sure. When I post about the projects, I think I'll put a time scale on them, since some have been in progress for months, and I haven't been able to work on them consistently. For example, my Lord of the Rings scarf, and the trenchcoat. I started around christmas time, I'm still looking at them, hoping that the force will be with me, and that they will complete themselves before my eyes. After months, I realize that it's not working, so I've got to take a more hands-on approach.

Go.

Notice these few awesome things about this picture. First, it's me, with green hair (though I dyed it a light blue a few days ago and don't have a picture of it yet). No but really, There's Einstein on a giant poster in the right, a Dalek that fights for the UK and at the very right, a canvas covered in Quality Street chocolate wrappers.