August Adventures

August was one crazy stressful month. I don't have much to say as an introduction so I am just going to get to the photos.

We found that we have a gopher tortoise living in our backyard. These gopher tortoises are a threatened species here in Florida. We found that he dug his burrow right under our fence line. He was munching on the grass and posed so pretty when I took this picture. Then I got to close and he ran off. Surprisingly these guys are faster than you think.

So the remodeling of our master bedroom and bathroom was started the first week of this month. This is one of the biggest most expensive projects I have done yet. I was so stressed out the whole time. Here are some photos I had shared on my instagram. I still plan on writing a complete blog post on the process. I haven't taken pictures of it finished yet because there are a few small details we are still working on, like new lighting that I can't seem to decide on.

This is the new flooring. It is a porcelain tile that looks like petrified wood. It is so pretty!

Here is a picture of the inside of the shower.

We decided to freshen up the pain on the walls.

I only took a couple of my sky photos this month. We usually get the really pretty skies in the fall.

Here are a couple of sketches I did for my LifeBook lessons. The first one I actually completed the painting and you can find that here.

This is a sketch for the next lesson. I started the painting and need to get back to work on it, so I can finish it soon.

This is a 4 panel piece I am working on for my master bedroom to go over our bed. I started with painting the backgrounds to represent the changing of the seasons. I think I want to tone down the colors a bit and grunge them out more.

Another project I am going to try and keep up with is practicing drawing faces. I really wanted to make this a daily project but I am slow at drawing. I decided to make my goal at completing 2 a week. My goal is to try and complete 100 of them within a year. My first one is a selfie and the second is my version of Morticia Addams. Since it is getting closer to Halloween the next few are going to be themed that way. I hope to accomplish finding some sense of my own style in my drawings and paintings from completing this project. Follow me on my Instagram to see them as I complete them.

Well that time of year is upon us, and it is my favorite!

My sister wants me to paint this skull for her. I have an idea for it but it is going to take some time and planning to get it right.

Here is my very first Halloween purchase of the year! Michaels has some really great home decor this year. I also went to the annual Halloween Preview Party at Yankee Candle but I haven't taken a picture of those purchases yet.

I think that is about it for this month. I am looking forward to more Halloween projects in the coming months.

Tri-fold Mailer Brochure Designs

Last year about this time, the company I work for moved me to design and assist in marketing. This new responsibility requires me to help come up with new marketing materials and design them. We came up with the idea to do these little 5x5 tri-fold brochure mailers. They were a great way to get our name out there and tease a bit about a couple of the programs we provide for elementary classroom use.

STEM Guides Cover and Interior Design

Sometimes when working on projects at my company we don't get to design a whole series of books. We have to split up the series and work on a few books each. This series was interesting to work on because of the subject of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). We had to do a bunch of research to figure out the proper pictures to go with the text. I really enjoy when I get to work on any of the space titles. I love doing the photo research and finding all the beautiful space pictures.

LifeBook 2014 ~ Week 19 ~ Honoring Your Inner World

This lesson was taught by Danielle Daniel, and was about honoring the now. I loved that she ended up with a girl in meditation. The biggest take away that I got from this lesson was to create your own stencils. I cut the cloud shape out of a piece of thicker paper and used that to paint the silhouettes of the clouds. I really enjoyed working on this and like the way it came out. I still have a ways to go on my figure drawing and still need to work on the shape of my mouths. This lesson also taught me I should sit down and meditate more often!

LifeBook 2014 ~ Week 17 ~ Gratitude

This lesson was taught by Tascha Parkinson and the theme was Gratitude. In this lesson we were taught to draw a big headed girl. The boyfriend actually said she looks like a bobble-head. I approached this one a little differently than what was taught. She used acrylics for the background and then on a separate sheet of paper drew her girl and painted with watercolor. She then glued the girl onto her background. I had just purchased some gouache paint and decided to give it a go. I think I tried to use them to much like watercolor, but I don't think it came out to bad for my first time with the medium. The other thing we were supposed to do is write the things we are grateful for in the background. I was going to write them in the spiral on the background. I decided to not write on it right now for a couple of reasons. One I really do not like my handwriting. Two I was having a hard time even thinking about things that I am grateful for. All that kept coming to mind was my Mom and how it was hard to feel grateful, when she is just laying there in a nursing home. So I decide to leave that part out. I noticed that I tend to leave the writing part out of a lot of these journal pages.

I really think this came out super cute. Although I am noticing that I need to work on the mouths of my girls. The look crooked and I'm not sure I like the shape of them.