Vacation Time!

Finally I've got some time off work and I'm going to Cuba with my mom and my sister tomorrow! I won't be back home 'til next Thursday so I probably won't have any new posts before then but I have some exciting information!

My dreads have finally been cut off! I went one day out of the blue and cut my hair off, I thought I'd be too hot in Cuba and that's what started it all. I took a before and after picture, here they are!

before

after

I didn't necessarily like how they styled my hair, but I think the hair cut is really cute and it looks pretty nice now! :)

I'll be back soon with pictures of my Cuba trip most likely so stay posted for that! Yay for vacation time :D

-Heather

Vanity Desk REVAMPED

This is a project from long ago but I recently discovered the pictures I took before I revamped the furniture and got inspired to write a blog post about it!

I was in the midst of redoing my room when I created this vanity for myself. The table was one we had for years, it used to be a sewing table, then it was a craft table for my sister and I when we were little. When we stopped using it for crafts it just sat in the laundry room all paint-covered and I rediscovered it!
My ex boyfriend sanded it for me and I washed it down and then painted it a nice white. Here's the before and after of the table.

before

after

I found the stool for my vanity at a flea market in Brantford, ON for 5 dollars! Awesome deal :D It was kinda retro cool but the texture of the fabric was soo irritating it definitely needed to be changed. I found some excess blue velvet fabric in my house (only enough to cover the stool!) and I used that to recover it. I love the fabric so much I wish I had more. Here's the before and after of the stool.

before

after

Unfortunately I didn't take a before picture of my mirror but it cost me 5 to 10 dollars ( I can't remember! ) at the other flea market in Brantford.. What's with all the awesome deals?! :P The mirror was black and gold and I painted it with the same white as the rest of the furniture. And here's my last picture.. a full out picture of all the pieces together!

I had a ton of fun working on this project! I'd love to hear what you think of it. :)

-Heather

New Projects

Hello again everybody!

So I've been working on a whole bunch of projects.. maybe not actually WORKING on them as I've recently gone from working as a barista 3 days a week to 5-7 days a week. EEK ! So basically I've just been collecting things to work on and then thinking about them a lot. :P Haha fail.

This weekend I'm going to get started on them and really get some stuff done! I decided I'd show off my before projects see what people think of them and then show my recons and revamps later on! Are you excited?! I am.

Lately I guess I've been drawn to the colour orange, don't ask me why.. not like it's one of my favourite colours or anything. Just happened lol.

This is the first project I'm working on. I needed a dress to wear to my cousin's wedding, coming up September 10th so I better get workin! It's an orange silk fabric, floor length with some billowy transparent fabric on top. I can't think of what the word would be for the actual fabric. Here's a picture of the dress ! It's really pretty but floor length is not really my style and it is too low in the front so I'm going to fix it up. I got this at Value Village for around 25 dollars. Totally worth it.

My plans for this dress is to make it above my knee and poofy! Im thinking with a slit in each side or something with a cream coloured fabric underneath. THEN under that I would use some crinoline. Also I would add a tie up bow under the bust. Here's my drawing of what I want it to look like :)

And last but not least.. I am working on an outdoor wrought-iron stool. I found this at a flea market for 22 dollars.. kind of pricey for my budget but I kept thinking about it after I left the store and I had to go back to get it! Here's the pic of the before

Some past owner decided it would be a good idea to upholster this cute chair in this hideous fake orange fur (mom thinks it's cute LOL). The wrought-iron is all rusty and paint chipped so I'm going to repaint and reupholster and REVAMP! It should look really cool. Updates will be coming in soon. 

I'm also going to be looking for some accessories for this wedding. Hair accessories especially. If anyone knows some cool jewellery I could look at (online or otherwise) let me know please!

-Heather

Anniversary Present

Hellooo there!

This is what's been going on in my life. It was my anniversary with my boyfriend Daniel the other day (6 months) and we were exchanging gifts so I decided to make him some of his presents. 

The first thing I got him (not made) was a gift card for an aquarium store as he really likes frogs and whatnot and is always building his aquarium with plants and more fish and all sorts of fun stuff. His favourite pets are his African Dwarf Frogs 

See them here

Hahah, I love them, they're so funny to watch. Anyways, since he likes these frogs so much I made him this artwork (he moved in not too long ago and has no art on his walls) SO I made him this!

The frog was made with fabric we picked out at the Value Village a few days before and then I did the background kind of tie-dye looking with gouache. I mod-podged the whole thing and added a white acrylic paint outline to the froggie and there we go! 

Also Dan was mentioning he needed a new wallet so I went on etsy and searched up some wallets I thought he'd like and I came up with THIS!

 A leather wallet that is screen printed with woodgrain pattern! I love it. Unfortunately I didn't order it from the internet in time and it hasn't come yet.. so I had to improvise. This is what I ended up giving him.

I printed out a picture from the one online and packaging taped into into a wallet shape.. with the help of newspaper lol. He still liked it anyways but I did put an IOU note on it. 

And that's all I got for today, keep looking for new crafts and graphics I'm up to!

-Heather

New Logo!

I've been thinking about starting up my own business redoing furniture and whatnot so I decided I should make my own logo for it.

I'm calling it Fresh Start furniture because I take old furniture from flea markets/garage sales/thrift stores and redo them and give them a FRESH START :P
Here's the logo I came up with. I really like how it turned out.

I have two colour choices as well, not sure if I'm going to go with either of them but I was testing them out. If you have some comments on which one you like better, I'd love to hear them!!

Also, let me know what you think about the logo. I might make a few changes on it still!

-Heather

First Ever Resin PENDANTS!

Hi everyone!
Here's the scoop. Lately I've been trying my luck at making some jewellery. My sister and I bought some resin recently (neither of us had used it before but wanted to try it out!).
My boyfriend and I collected seashells and cool stones and that from the beach and wanted to make some jewellery with those found objects.
Here's the ones we came up with. Again.. a bad quality picture but as I just moved recently I can't find a camera or anything better to take pictures with.

This is all the resin pendants we made, for now!

Unfortunately my boyfriend worked on this one while I was out of the room and he used the wrong colour background :P Looks good anyways I think though. It's still a bit tacky at the front.

This one was a cool rock we found at the beach. Hard to see the details in the picture but it is quite cool. I like this background a lot as well. We found all the backgrounds in pieces of artwork out of the art magazine Juxtapoz.

This one was my favourite at the beginning but unfortunately got an airbubble in it that we couldn't pop. :P It still looks alright to me, looks like the seashell is floating on top of water or something.

This one is my very favourite out of all of them. It was the one my boyfriend created so I can't take credit for it unfortunately but lucky for me I still get to keep it as jewellery. Hahaha :)

Let me know what you think!

There will probably be more jewellery coming up on my blog in the future as I am making a piece of jewellery out of a bone we found at the beach. I was thinking it was a fish bone, but now I'm not sure. If anyone can tell me what kind of animal this bone comes from I would love to know. 

Here's the bone all lacquered up!

Thats all for today, I've been really busy with working at 5 30 am everyday and I need some sleep! 

- Heather

Hermit Crab

SO! I read an article online (posted by one of my twitter friends!:) ) that gave some tips on how one should go about making a Promotional Postcard as an Illustrator. Reading about all these tips made me want to make a new promo postcard, as I didn't much like my last one, never mind use it.
Anyways, I like hermit crabs, I felt like drawing/painting one so that was the first piece of art to be created for my promo postcard. I drew it with pencil, filled in with watercolour paints and pencils, added shading with pencil crayons and inked the edges. I like how it turned out, here's the picture of what I have so far. (You really don't get the full effect with the cell phone pictures, but I promise I'll scan it in later on!)

Let me know what you think of it :)

-Heather