Art on the Walls

I haven't done any more painting on my living room, but I did finally put some art on the walls.

Above the couch, I hung two prints that I bought from artists on Etsy. I'd like to own originals at some point, but prints are so much more affordable, and I think they still look nice.

The print on the left was purchased from Beautiful Messy By Emma.

The print on the right was purchased from Jessica Illustration, which has a lot of prints that I liked.  The actual print that I received was much darker than this picture, which you can kind of tell above, but I still liked it.

You really can't see any of the art in this picture, but I couldn't do much better than this. The picture on the right is the chalk drawing of the woman that I did.  The one in the middle is just something I bought at Meijer, but I can't find a picture of it online.

This is the print that is on the left. The original was encaustic, and the print was purchased from Sue Simpson.

More fun with art supplies

I decided to play with my art supplies again this weekend. I also organized all my art supplies, which included dumping out all of my PrismaColor pencils and organizing them by product number.  I'm pretty sure that was a valuable use of my time.

The first picture is encaustics (painting with wax) again, but I didn't do it this weekend. I made my friend Sarah paint with me when I went to visit her. I didn't take a picture of hers, otherwise I would post it here, with or without permission.

This one I actually kind of like, besides the fact that it was fun. I mean, you shouldn't look to closely or you might notice her oven mitt hands or the fact that her body doesn't exactly follow the law of physics. But if you squint, I think it's OK. =) I actually started it in high school, but only got to the face and part of the arm. It's done with really nice chalk pastels that just feel nice to use -- they are so smooth.

And this is just done with acrylic paint. The paints weren't too terrible, although they had separated some. But I used gesso to prime the canvas and oooooweeee, that was some chemically, stinky stuff. It probably always smelled a little of chemicals, but leave it there for 10 years, and it really has time to fester. I almost fell off my chair.

Dining Room/Living Room (In Progress)

I am continuing to work on my living room/dining room.  I know this yellow won't be everyone's cup of tea, but I enjoy it.  I really need to get some art for the walls though, that is for sure.

Chicken Tacos with Mango-Avocado Salsa

This recipe from Cooking Light was AMAZING. Brandon and I loved it.

Instead of typing the recipe out, I just hyper-linked the recipe to the picture of the tacos.

The only change I made was to use flour tortillas instead of corn. (I also only used 2 chicken breast because it was just the two of us).



I also made guacamole with my leftover ingredients.
I used the same recipe I posted on the blog in Feb 2010 (hyperlinked to the picture too). I didn't use the exact proportions because I just used what I had leftover. I think what I like best in this recipe is the addition of tomatoes and cilantro.

Because pictures make food more fun to read about, I posted a picture of me making the tacos as well. I look great... probably because these tacos were from the cooking light website. Forgive my weird expression... I wasn't expecting Brandon to take the picture right then. :)

Dining Room/Living Room (In Progress)

I am working on painting my living room & dining room.  It will probably take me forever to paint the whole thing, so I figured I would post in progress pictures.  Since I already started, I'm going to use the same paint on the whole thing, but in the future, I will invest better paint.  It has taken a gajillion coats, and I'm just covering cream paint!  Anyway, here is the dining room area.

Nails

I was impressed with myself for this french manicure I did myself.  It's fun pretending to be a girl sometimes.

Window Mirror

As discussed previously, I inherited a tendency to pick up "treasures" that other people might refer to as "trash."  Several years ago, a few windows were picked up, by me or my mom or somebody -- I don't remember.  Anyway, I've had them, and I've had various half-formed ideas about what to do with them.

I decided it was finally time to do something, and I discovered this paint spray that creates a mirror-like surface.  (And in case you haven't noticed, I'm really into spray paint right now.)

I forgot to take pictures of my progress, but you spray the paint on the opposite side of the glass that is going to be the "mirror," and once the several coats have dried, it looks like an old mirror.  I sanded the surface and painted it.  I decided not to tape -- I scraped instead.  I find razoring off the paint to be oddly enjoyable. You probably can't tell, but the window mechanism at the top is spray painted silver, like my kitchen hardware.