It's been a while since I've busted out the paints. I love painting! Painting was my life before I had kids.
When talking to friends about my love for painting the conversation usually steers towards watercolor, "the most difficult paint medium"
. They're not as difficult as you may think. If you've got the right tools, you'll be surprised how forgiving the medium is.
Periodically, I'd like to chime in here and there with a few tips on painting with watercolor. Let's start with the basic tools and how to get
saturated tones.
You can buy yourself tubes or cakes of watercolor. Here I have
Talens transparent watercolor set. They come in a nice travel-sized set. I use these most because they're so compact, pack up quickly and the pigments are great. I never know how much time I'm going to get to paint, so I have to be able to clean up at a moment's notice. I have a tube set with a giant palette, but I never use those. The palette takes up too much space (I typically paint in chaos, when there's not much clean desk space around).
I like to have a variety of brushes as well. To start, you'll want a
4 round,
8 round (make sure they have sharp points) and a
broad flat. The big ones get expensive really fast, but they're worth every penny. They'll last forever (mine are 10 years old and still going strong). I prefer synthetic brushes, but not everyone feels the same way.
You'll want the best paper you can find. I prefer
Arches rough watercolor paper, 140lbs or greater. Get the 300lb paper if you can afford it. It's SO much more forgiving and it feels so nice. You
could also go for cold or hot press, I prefer the texture of rough watercolor paper.
You must get a
giant jar of water. The above jar does alright, but I change it out every 30 minutes or so. If you can spare an ice cream bucket, get the bucket. And fill it with hot water.
Don't forget the hot water.
For saturated tones, add a few generous drops of warm/hot water to each cake. Wait a minute or two before starting. You'll be surprised at the difference it makes. Your colors will dry brighter and your expensive brush will last longer.
See the above? The first was just done with a wet brush and dry pigment. The colors are muted. Granted, that works with the ceramic subject matter. But sometimes a subject needs more drama than
Scandal, so I soak my pigments. And I love my drama. Stay tuned for more of these painting tips/tutorials.
These things I learned during high school while taking private lessons from local artist, Harold Petersen. No one ever mentioned this stuff in college. Watercolor seemed to be the bastard medium in the paint department.
Perhaps it's because I'm behind on everything, I didn't realize my friend Alison has a new
watercolor series on her blog as well! Wow. Where have I been? I really try not to copy-cat what's out there. Of course, it's not like this blog is the only place you can get information and tutorials like this and it's not like everyone uses the same techniques or materials.
I'm pinning my favorite watercolor tutorials and DIY inspiration over here. Check it out. There are some great resources out there if you're interested in learning.
To remedy this, I just need to make myself non-boring accessories. It'll at least help. I want to be cool like my friend Mim, so I made a zippered purse/pouch just like hers.
Not boring, but certainly not as creative since I copied her design. But I made it, so that's something. And I matched the leather and fabric together. Oh, the leather. . . Mmmmm. It's so soft. I wish you could feel it. Like butter.
It's a small bag, perfect for girls' nights and nights out with my man. I'm thinking this will be perfect for my upcoming Sewing Summit conference in September. I can't wait for Sewing Summit.
I'm excited about the leather details and the colorful print. It won't match everything in my wardrobe, but it will certainly add a pop of interesting to it.
I used legit top-stitch thread (and needle) for the first time. It looks so much more professional with that small detail.
I can't describe the joy that overcame Chris and me when we drove over the Bay Bridge on our way into the city Monday morning. We both had a serious moment. I started to get all choked up.
Last time we drove that stretch (west-bound), we were just coming up on our one-year anniversary. No kids, no cares. We were all starry-eyed at the prospect of living in an urban area and starting a new chapter with so many prospects.
Then the economic crisis hit (it's still in full force, is it not?) and we left with our heads hung low. We vowed to come back. While we only came back for a short visit, it still felt like home.
The lovely folks at 
This is a quick snap I took on the way to dropping Chris off at the starting point for his 30 mile run with friends. The countryside in La Honda is not to be missed. Chris and friends only made it 19 miles. Only.
We did our fair share of eating tasty treats (creme brulee cart on Market and Sansome was one of my favorites). Unfortunately we didn't make the stop to Sprinkles Cupcakes or Tartine. Serious bummer, if you ask me.
But we did plenty of goofing and walking around the city. I found myself saying, "Don't touch that!" "Stay by me!" "Get out of there!" Way too much. Penelope isn't our little city companion like when she was an immobile baby. We still had so much fun.
Now it's back to real life again! I'm always feeling so behind. I wanted to give this a proper post, but the below promotion ends on the 31st. All of 
Seriously? It's amazing. Also, her tutorials (i.e. chapters) for writing a better blog post are pretty awesome. She gives me actionable items that I can actually use to make my writing better. It's not like I follow them all the time, you read this blog, but when I do I feel more confident about my writing.
I formatted, designed and added my two cents on formatting for blog posts. It's a must-not miss. The book is available for digital download in 
Constructing this hoodie was not terribly hard. I didn't use a very easy fabric, and now that I look at it, I would've done so many different things with the fit and finishing details. Live and learn, right?
I had just about a yard of fabric, fabric I scored while digging at Michael Levine loft (similar 
We get our fair share of cool summer nights on top of our mountain. We always seem to have a breeze, and the cool canyon air seems to come our direction at night. It's marvelous. A lightweight hoodie like this is perfect for all of the cool nights and days we get here.
Outfit details:
I'm wondering what I should do next. Pants? A legit pair of pants are on my bucket list of things to master. Cobblery is too, but that'd be part of a completely different series.
Welcome! Take a look around! You can subscribe through 
I'll be in San Francisco the third week of July while Chris runs a 30-miler with a bunch of his friends. I'm sad it doesn't coincide with Alt SF, but I'm going to San Fran! My happy place!
I'll be teaching a 2-part workshop focusing on digital and hand-written calligraphy. You can sign up for one workshop or both. Space is limited, so sign up soon! The 2-part workshop is back-to-back. If you'd like to participate in both sessions, there's an hour break for dinner and mingling at 6pm. Dinner is not included in the workshop price, but you can bring your own or order from the take-out menus provided.
Here's a little calligraphy piece I lettered for a friend. She's such a hard-worker and gets so much amazing things done, she needed a reminder of how awesome she is.
I sponsored a little giveaway at a barbecue I attended on Monday. I lettered 6 cards and their envelopes.
I think "Look at you go!" is probably my favorite.
Instead of just packaging the cards with plain envelopes, I put little "please deliver to" details on them. I also put stamps on each one so they're easy to send.
Kindly deliver to on the bottom right is my favorite.
On another note: thanks for being so supportive of my need to scale back. It's looking like I'm scaling back even more to just two posts per week. I would love to post more, it's just so hard to get motivated to photograph and write it all out! I'm still pretty emotional, but I'm feeling much less stress these days.
Turns out, this fabric is evil. It's cursed or something. I bought it from Michael Levine loft, it was in a crumpled mess, all wrinkled and kinked. I thought that was part of the design. Not the case.
This fabric wrinkles easily and does not iron well. Naturally. It's a synthetic. Usually synthetics are slow to wrinkle though.
As I was cutting out this fabric, I was fighting to keep it from shifting around and kinking. While sewing, I was fighting to keep the edges lined up together.
It was 3:30am before I threw in the towel and went to bed. I had everything done except for the ties, the button hole on the side and a little fit detail I needed to fix on the neckline. It was going to take me another 2 hours before I could call it complete.
I finally finished it today, spending about an hour just ironing out all those kinks. GAH, this stuff is annoying!
On the bright side, I love the color and I love the drape. It flows really nicely as I walk around. I just need to remake this dress in a different fabric. A real silk perhaps? It'd be a lot more expensive. I got this fabric for something like $3-4 for 5 yards. I used about 3 1/2 yards.
Drafting up a pattern for this dress was simple. I shortened the high-low on Megan Nielsen's 
If you look really closely, you can see marks from the steam and my iron (it didn't burn or melt the dress, but it did make random marks in some spots).
Outfit Details:
I'm looking forward to wearing it to the pool. I also made it long enough so I can wear it out and about as a dress. I love how it turned out despite the nightmare of working with the material. I'll definitely make another one.
Which combination of fabric should I choose for this raglan tee?
Since then I've put a "No Solicitors" blurb on the bottom of my chalkboard, but that doesn't even seem to help. I needed something a bit closer to eye level.
I sketched up a few different ideas (thanks for 
I could have made it bigger (I just got the new Cameo, it's enormous and even awesomer than my old SD that I loved so much), but I didn't want that message be the first thing that friends and family see when they knock on my door. It measures about 2 inches tall by 6 inches wide.
Side note: this is as festive as I get around here. 3 glitter stars pinned to my 
There was quite a response on Instagram requesting the sticker and a downloadable file. I've put those up for you. I have 9 stickers left for sale, you can purchase those 
You can get their 
I love captain's mirrors. I'm not sure what it is, perhaps the rounded shape or the leather straps?
Turns out they're really hot right now, there are loads of DIYs for them, too (hello 
Here's my version that takes a spot of glue and some embroidery hoops. If you've got a belt that you don't wear anymore, you may already have everything you need on hand. These guys above are about 3 inches in diameter. Tiny art is so fun! I want to fill a whole wall with little art pieces like this.
Supplies:
Separate out your embroidery hoops, we're going to use the insides for this project.
Place hoop on the paper and trace the outline. This will be the size of your artwork.
Cut your leather to 1 inch wide and about 3-6 inches longer than the circumference of your embroidery hoop. Fold the leather in half and make a crease.
Get out your glue and q-tips.
Glue up half of the embroidery hoop. In the middle of the glue, match up the edge of your leather and hoop together.
Then match up edges together. Press.
Glue up half of the second embroidery hoop and place on the leather, matching up the edges together. Press.
Place in your artwork.
Hang! It's crazy simple. You'll have a bunch whipped up in no-time flat.