The sights and sounds

One of the reasons I was keen on moving to a city is all of the interesting things one can do here. Brian and I always found ourselves driving down here to hang out, which is a real drag. So we've been here almost two weeks, and we're mostly doing the same things we used to do only now we can walk from our apartment or it's a 15 minute drive (we're still not very bus savvy and the arctic blasts have been deterring more thorough investigations into bus travel).

So part of what my blog may become is a chronicling of some of our adventures around the city to encourage others to take advantage of all the things Baltimore has to offer and perhaps even persuade people to take up city living. And here's the kick-off:

This past Thursday Brian and I went on our first date since moving to Baltimore. We had planned to go to Elfegne Cafe, an Ethiopian restaurant in Pigtown, but my meeting ran late, and we didn't think we would have time, so we settled on One World Cafe, a place we've been to before but closer to the main event of the evening. I got the Tortolini, and Brian got the Mexican Lasagna. It was delicious.

After that we headed over to 2640 where the Bread & Puppet theater troupe performed The Dirt Cheap Opera, which is an adaptation of The Three Penny Opera. It was wonderful, as expected. They were selling cheap art seen in the photo, but we still have other cheap art of theirs we haven't framed yet, so we settled on a few cheap post cards.


It was a great evening.

I forgot to mention that Brian got me flowers from the World Famous Lexington Market, which is just blocks from us.

We've experimented with doing our grocery shopping there. The produce is good, but we may require other grocery items best found at the Superfresh. Anyway, it's still great for lots of other things, like buying flowers for your date, interesting new fruits, or Berger cookies.

Brian and I have been getting out a lot to try to take advantage of living in Baltimore. We've checked out movies at the Enoch Pratt library - we're lucky to be close to the Central Branch. We've been frequenting local coffee shops and book stores. We found our local spot for Charm City Trivia at Mad River in Federal Hill. And there's so much more.

The Raven's game is about to start, so I better get moving, but thanks for reading!!

In with the new (and some old)

Truth be told, after falling behind in my blogging, I wanted to delete this blog and start a new one, but I'm trying not to be a part of the throw-away culture, so I'm trying to update the old one. Now, before I start new blogging, there are a couple of things I meant to blog about but got too lazy. Here is a super quick recap of the more interesting things I've done since the last time I posted:

October: On Halloween Brian and I got free burritos at Chipotle for dressing up like menu items.


November: I'm a crocheting fool.


December: Brian and I made holiday postcards and sent them to friends and family.


And we moved to Mobtown! We're both much closer to work and school - I can see my campus library from my bedroom window. Our roommate gave us a sweet deal on rent, so we have an awesome apartment totally out of our current price-range. So I've been trying to create a nest in the apartment, explore the neighborhood, and make some local friends (all while trying not to flunk out of graduate school). Tomorrow Brian and I are going on our first date since moving to Baltimore, so maybe I'll blog about that.

It's kinda sad that I can recap three months so quickly, but I've also been busy with school and internships and work, which is my excuse for falling off the bloggin' bandwagon. Anyway, more to come.

Happy New Year!!

Winter: an altered book

I finally finished my first altered book. I made it as a tribute to a very beautiful Tori Amos song Winter, which you should listen to while you read this post. I started with a children's board book. These are very easy for beginner altered artists. I picked some of my favorite song lyrics and created a page for each line. I tried to pick lyrics that gave a flavor of the song.


Winter: a tribute to Tori Amos
The snowflakes, flowers, and "winter" text are all embossed stamps. The spine is covered with a metal screen ribbon.


"i get a little warm in my heart"
This is a simple tear collage. I collaged on light card stock.


"when i think of winter"
The background picture of the bird is a picture I took and altered in Photoshop. The blue leaves are from a magazine, which is where most of my collage images come from.


"boys get discovered as winter melts"
Image of boys behind the peeling image and an embossed stamp to try to cover the Cliniqe logo.


"flowers competing for the sun"
The background image is again one I took and then manipulated in Photoshop. I printed it on grey cardstock. The "film" is just cut from a magazine, not actual film.


"skating around the truth of who i am"
The background image is a picture I took of Brian and altered in Photoshop. I printed that on grey cardstock and added the image. This was my first page. I got the inspiration for it while driving home from work, listening to Winter, which I did a lot of while making this project.


"but i know dad the ice is getting thin"
The background image is of long icecicles, which I found on the internet and altered in Photoshop. That was printed on grey cardstock, and then I stapled parchment paper on top to give it a frosty look. It didn't photograph well.


"hair is grey and the fires are burning"
This point of the song gets a little intense, so I wanted the imagery to relfect that. Both of these images came from old National Geographics, which are wonderful for collaging (by the way).


"so many dreams on the shelf"
I painted the page black with acrylic paint and then glued this image onto it. I really feel like I ripped off this neat image. It was and ad for some kind of alcohol, but the image is so pretty. If I were trying to sell this book, it might be a problem.


"he says, when you gonna make up your mind"
Nothing special here. Just paper glued together.


"when you gonna love you as much as i do"
Again, very simple. Paper and glue.


"'cause things are gonna change so fast"
I made this when I was drunk as a skunk. The line connecting the butterfly stages are star sequins, which are constantly falling out. I sort of like the change metaphor (I'm not very good with metaphors).


"all the white horses have gone ahead"
Not my height of creativity, but at some point I just wanted to finish the dang thing. The glue wrinkling was unfortunate. I'm not sure what was going on here, but the glue stick worked much better than the white glue. Ah well.


"i tell you that i'll always want you near"
These two pages are shamelessly stolen from diamond jewelry ads. I used silver sharpy to trace over the white lines (which is hard to tell from the pictures). Then obviously I covered the jewelry with the earth picture. These pages were also tragically wrinkled.


"you say that things change"
So sad.


"my dear"
The last words of the song are "my dear," so it seemed appropriate to stamp that on the back, which is hard to see from the picture. The snowflake stamp is embossed. The paper is just crinkled and glued on.

So this was pretty fun. I don't feel like I've found my craft niche, but I have more projects up my sleeve. :)

Thanks for reading!!

See my big girl shoes

As a general rule, I hate to presume that my personal life would be interesting to other people. I do not have great wisdom to impart. I wish. However, I enjoy reading about other people’s experiences in this crazy, mixed up world, so maybe you do too. So with insecurities on the table, I’ll get on with my blog already.

Have you ever been downtown in a major city in the morning while everyone is going to work? And you see all the young professionals, probably just graduated, walking to work, looking all cute? When I see these guys, I always think, “That’s what I want.” They could be going to jobs that they hate and be coming from crappy apartments that they share with people they don’t like because they can’t afford to live alone, but none of that matters because I can only see the glory of it all. I only see them waking up and making breakfast in the morning with a significant other, maybe reading the news; walking to a respectable little job, not a career, but a good starting point; doing something all day that sounds much more interesting when explained to friends than it really is to do all day; and then walking back home and making dinner and talking about our days or maybe catching a happy hour with friends.

And maybe this type of life is novel and exciting to me only because I haven’t done it yet. I have been a student since I was 5 years old (the last 21 years of my life for those of you wondering). This has been continuous except for summer breaks. And I am so grateful for my education, which I have single-handedly taken my time getting through. My boyfriend jokes sometimes that plenty of people take 9 years to graduate – they’re called doctors. Haha.

But here I am, in my final year of my master’s program, the end in sight. Part of me is thrilled to be finished with lectures and papers and ridiculous schedules, and part of me is terrified to face the real world without having my “student excuse.” It’s a good reason to have accomplished so little by age 26.

Luckily for me, I have a nice little transition year. I am taking classes, but I also have a field placement (internship) 3 days a week. I also work (for money) 2 days a week. But this field placement is the perfect thing to get me sort of ready for the real world with the security of still being in school.

And yesterday was my very first day. I had to drive instead of walk, which took away from that romantic image I have, but my parking garage is about 10 blocks away, so I could still pretend I was walking there. I was wearing a new outfit and feeling pretty good until I hit some serious traffic.

So by the time I parked, I had to practically run to get there on time, which would have been fine except that I was wearing new shoes (real cute ones). They were hurting my heels pretty bad, but I anticipated this and packed 2 bandaids. Then I noticed that the bottom of my pant leg felt wet, and when I looked to see what I stepped in, I saw that my heels were a bloody mess. No time now! I hobbled into the old, stately building and tried to find my way through the sea of identical cubicles.

I eventually found the right one, and everything was OK after that. I ducked into the bathroom and cleaned up my feet and legs. Of course, by the end of the day, I had to actually tape the bandaids to my heels and my feet were still messed up pretty bad.

But I learned about all the very important-sounding things I would be doing this year with the UMB Office of Community and Government Affairs – see how official that sounds? And I will have my own desk and email and everything!

I can barely believe that in a year from now, I will have my own little job, and maybe I can get up and eat breakfast, and walk to work, and then come home and have dinner, just like a real girl. I can’t wait!

And just a note to anyone who noticed that I haven’t blogged for about 2 months (thank you for noticing). Despite my best efforts to have a nice relaxing summer, I got so crazy busy with this job I took with the Fund for the Public Interest. And during the height of the craziness, I moved to a new apartment, which is pretty cool. You should come visit sometime. So I still need to finish 4 pages in my altered book, which I hope to do before school gets crazy busy, so I can post pictures of that on here too.

And then I don’t know what’s after that. Maybe I’ll lay off the crafts and just write blogs, which take less time. Anyway, thanks for reading!

Stamp Embossing

So I recently learned about embossing stamps. I've never been real into stamps because they seem too... unoriginal, but I've learned that stamps can be used in really creative ways, particularly in card-making and decorative crafts.

To experiment with embossing stamps, I created this picture.


I started with three cards I got in the mail. The Red Cross sent me three identical cards reminding me that it was time for me to give blood, one from each of the donor centers I have visited. All this waste needed to be reconciled somehow, so I decided to use it as art. I painted the cards black with acrylic paint and then stamped them with some stamps I liked.

To emboss the stamps you need pigment ink, embossing powder, and heat. You basically dump the embossing powder on the wet stamp so that it sticks. Pigment ink dries slower, which means more powder sticks. Then when you add heat, the powder sort of melts, leaving a nice embossed image. I read that a hair dryer would generate enough heat, but this was not the case for me. You can buy special tools designed for stamp embossing, but that isn't really my style. I was able to get the same effect by holding the powdered image over the stove. Just be careful with the paper.

And that's it! I bought a frame already matted for three images because I was feeling lazy and found one for a really good price at Joann's.

Now I'm working on my first altered book, which pays homage to one of my all-time favorite Tori Amos songs. This will be a longer-term project, so a post may not materialize for several days... maybe weeks. It's pretty fun, though.

Quicky Love Picture

It's true, I'm in love



So for a quicky craft, I made this little visual ode. My boyfriend won this shadow box for me at bingo. There's actually a little clip glued on the inside of the glass under the terrible glare from my flash. That's what's holding the little picture in place.

I started with a picture of me and my boyfriend from a while ago. This was after coming home from a bingo night, which seemed appropriate. I messed around with it in photoshop to give it a more artistic touch, but you can't really tell from the photo.

I printed this image on card stock. Then I added the blue heart image, which I just cut out of a magazine. I framed our heads with microglitter (which is extra sparkly) and glue.

The little metal love thinger is something I had hanging out in my craft clutter. I added that last to go over the glitter frame.

Flowery Shadowbox

This was a fun craft I did on a lazy weekend afternoon.

First, I found a cardboard box that would work as a shadowbox and then spray painted it.

Then I cut out flowers and leaves from origami paper I had. The flowers are very simple, four-petal flowers with a dot of glitter glue for the centers.

Then I found a background I liked. I used a page from a biology text book with tree leaves, but anything would have worked. You can actually see that it says Unit Four, which I thought added a little character. I used a regular spray adhesive to affix the background into the box.

Then I gathered some sticks. I just picked some off of a forsythia bush on a walk around my neighborhood. I got a general idea for a layout and then I hot-glued the sticks into the box. Then I just hot-glued the flowers and leaves where they fit best.

The biggest problem I have with the finished product is that I don't have a way to hang it, but it would be simple enough to add something to the back so that it could be hung on a small nail. The good thing is that because it's so three-dimensional, it actually just stands on its own, as you can see in the photo (which is not a great picture).

I hope you all are staying cool and enjoying your summer! I know I am!