I ♥ Hearts!

My new obsession, with Valentines Day coming up I came up with a little mini pattern for crocheted heart appliqués. There were a few online, but none of them worked exactly how I wanted. They are so fun to make and so cute!

I will be offering them as an add on for my hats in my shop, but thought I'd show you how they look now. A couple of these are too big for hats, but would look SO cute in a frame to decorate a little girl's room, or sewn on a tote bag, or put on a card for V-day. So many cute ideas, what would you do with them?

UPDATE 10/7 - I wrote down the pattern and it is available in my artfire shop for free with any pattern purchase. Just use coupon code freeheart!

Drawing Tutorial - Hair - Stages 4-9

Sorry, don't know what happened to the images on these posts...I will try and fix them soon...

Continued!

STAGE 4: STILL laying down strokes in the direction of hairs. I continue to go back to the beginning and darken things up while making the lines longer and longer to shape the style.

STAGE 5: Keep molding the style...continuing to keep to the darkest areas. Avoid highlights, but make the strokes into the highlights very random and jagged. Also: Turn the paper as needed to make the direction of the hairs easier to draw.

STAGE 6: Finish up the style. Continuously going back and darkening things up in layers.

STAGE 7: Here I take my tortillon, dirty or clean, doesn't matter. And go over the entire style in the direction of the hairs. Avoid crossing the strokes as much as possible to avoid a smudged look. Smooth everything out.

STAGE 8:Pick out highlights. I use my beloved "Hold-tu" putty and shape it into a sharp wedge. Then "draw" (drag) lines, uneven to each other, into the highlights so they blend into the pencil strokes and brighten the areas a bit. You could also do this with a sharp white eraser I'm sure, but the hold-tu works best for me.

STAGE 9: Time to push the darks! Go back over all dark areas with 3B again, or use something darker if you like. Add stray hairs around edges of curls and outside of the "border" of the head and also around the face. I avoided the face ones a bit since I haven't put the skins tones down yet. Give the illusion of individual hairs all over the head by drawing them at various pressures into highlighted areas. Continue to go back and push the darks until the very end of the drawing. You will add a lot more stray hairs at the end, when everything is done with skin, background etc...as a last step.

Stay tuned for more of this portrait's stages. This concludes the hair tutorial. Thanks for the visit!

Drawing Tutorial - Hair - Stages 1 to 3

This is a family requested self portrait that I turned into a hair tutorial for an art forum that I'm a moderator on. It's from a few years ago, but I thought I'd share it in stages during a few blog posts. As with all art, this is not a set in stone way to do things, but just the way I do it (in an accelerated tutorial type fashion, normally I'd spend days working on hair while this was done in an evening) and if used should be tweeked to fit your style. Enjoy.

STAGE 1: The outline. This is what it looks like when I've completed the sketch and then cleaned up all the yucky stray sketch lines and eraser lines. It looks dark here because I sketch very dark, going over and over my lines. But I then lighten it up by rolling blu-tack over

the entire sketch, which you'll see in stage 2.You'll see that with the hair I block in some of the highlighted areas, but I don't stay a slave to the picture...sometimes you can make it look much better!

STAGE 2: I am using a 3B 0.5 mechanical pencil through this entire tutorial, to keep it simple. I start laying down

strokes in the dark areas, following the direction of the hairs. I know usually these tutorials say, "Don't draw individual hairs, just block in color." Well...I draw hairs....it works for me!

STAGE 3: Continuing to lay down strokes in dark areas. It's important to be careful with the direction of the pencil strokes. If you go too fast and they go all over

the place, you end up with straw, instead of hair.

I'll stop there for this post. Three more stages in a few days. Thanks for stopping by!

More kitty pics

Because who can resist right.

Some new additions to the Thompson Clan

Friday night we surprised our two kids by taking them to a lady's home who fosters kitties for the Humane Society. This is her blog about her foster kitties.

She had five amazing little babies to choose from and it was so difficult to make our decision. In the end we chose the ones that sucked up the most and that my son took a shine to right away.

They are two orange tabby brothers, that are not only hilariously playful, but very good little snuggle bugs too. They have incorporated themselves into our household like they were meant to be here all along. Meet Max:

And Sam:

Some quick pics of our camping trip and what I've been up to.

Oh my goodness, its been too long since I posted. I apologize to my followers. I have had a big surge of custom orders and I'm getting ready for the Fort Lewis Holiday Bazaar coming up the beginning of November. Plus family just always takes priority for me. This weekend we went camping on the amazing Olympic Peninsula. We camped at Lake Quinault and hiked all around the rain forest there. Saw some lovely waterfalls and walked through what felt like landscape of the dinosaur age. I couldn't get enough of taking pictures and was wishing I had my DSLR that I'm supposed to be getting for Christmas. Christmas!!! That's so far away haha. We also swung through Forks and Port Angeles, which was fun and interesting being a fan of the Twilight books. Here's a couple of pictures of our trip.

Easy Peezy Strawberry Cake

I was craving a cake with fresh strawberries so we picked up a bushel (box, container whatever!)over the weekend. I couldn't find a recipe that was what I wanted so I winged it. I am not a domestic goddess by any means, so this is the simplest and most direct way I could get what I was craving.

I used:

One box of yellow cake.

One box of strawberries, chopped and sliced.

Two packages of dream whip.

I followed the directions on the cake box for two 8 inch round cakes and baked them. I cooled them in the refrigerator while I chopped the strawberries. I chopped about 3/4ths of the strawberries and cut the rest into thin slices. I made sure there was no mushy bits, I hate those.

Then I whipped up the first package of dream whip and mixed in the chopped strawberries. Pulled the bottom layer of cake out of the fridge and put it on the cake stand. Spread the strawberry/dream whip mix on top. There was a bit left over that I saved for the kids to eat as a snack the next day. Whipped up the second package of dream whip and stuck it in the freezer for a little bit because it was melting too fast to spread (it was 86 in my kitchen last night). Then I put the top layer of cake on top of the strawberry/dream whip layer. Spread the plain dream whip over entire cake. Top with sliced strawberries. And voila! Easy Strawberry Cake that was DELICIOUS and so perfect for summer. Store in the fridge or the dream whip will melt. And considering my skills in the kitchen, me saying it was easy is a big deal!

If you try this by my recommendation, I'd love to hear how you like it. My family couldn't get enough.

Note: I learned today from a friend that a bushel is 9 gallons HAHA, no I didn't buy 9 gallons, just a little box like you get at the produce store.

More crochet fun - Soldier Boy

I had so much fun making this little guy. My soldier boy is about 3 1/2 inches high. He is a first prototype, so I see many more variations in my future.

PS, for those that are not familiar with the Army uniform, that's a beret on his head, not a huge toupee. ;)