A week or so before Christmas my boyfriend alerted me he was purchasing me a present (we usually don't exchange holiday gifts). So the day before christmas eve I took it upon myself to paint these for him. He'd requested falcor shoes several months ago... and I never quite got around to it.  You can't see in the pics, but they are also extremely glittery, this was not intentional, but that's why I didn't paint stars on anywhere except the back, which has our favorite constellation, Draco, on it.

We do secret santa between my friends every year. I tried my best to find orange panda accessories for mine, but with no luck set about making one. I based it off this pattern and another one I found online: http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=56636.0 It took a bit longer than anticipated, since my machine was out of commission and I chose to make the lining more professional by hiding the seams. the pom-poms were probably my favorite part to make.

  These cakes were baked by my best friends boyfriend for her brothers wedding. He's a professional baker, but doesn't have decorating experience, so he recruited me and a couple of friends to help with the decorating.
  This is the groomsman cake, a Metroid energy tank. It's a red velvet cake. The baker bought  an airbrush just for this and the bridal shower cake (which I didn't get a pic of), it was fun to play with airbrushing on a different surface.

  The bride wanted a combination of handpainted and real hydrangea's on the wedding cake. My friends cut out all of the flowers (25 total, 100 petals) and constructed them, I did the painting. It's a spice cake.

I won an ipad 2 at work a couple weeks ago. I'm not very tech savvy and more of a traditionalist when it comes to most things, so I didn't really know what to do with it. (still not sure , right now it works best to hold all my reference pics, it's a crisper image to look at than my printer makes). Anyway I downloaded a couple apps and finally got around to trying this one, ArtRage. This self portrait is done mostly with the oil brush options and the palette knife. I was going for more of a painterly look than a blendy look. I think with practice it could produce some pretty cool images. Next I think I'll try out the watercolor options...

Just moved to a new place and the boyfriend and I have been longing for some giant bookshelfs, but I also needed a space for my drafting table. The shelves are made from cabinet grade plywood and I just reconstructed my drafting table a bit to foldout.

My sister and best friend share a birthday and luckily have similar tastes in sweets and video games, so I baked them this Raspberry cake with cheesecake filling and a white chocolate ganache. It looks a little sloppy, but came out delicious.


Here's the recipe for the cake, it's pretty much a pink lady cake/snowball cake mutant.
4 1/2 cups cake flour
2 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup vegetarian raspberry jello mix(1 pkge) or some powdered dehydrated raspberry.
5 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 sticks (12 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups pureed raspberries
8 egg whites
2/3 cup milk

Cheesecake filling:
2 pkg.  (8 oz.) Cream Cheese,
2 egg
4Tbsp.  granulated sugar

White chocolate cream:
7 oz white chocolate
2 cups heavy cream
food coloring (optional)

White chocolate ganache
3/4 heavy cream
1 T butter
12 oz white chocolate


Make the cake
1. Preheat the oven to 350»F. line 2 oven proof bowls with foil then butter and flour them.

2. Put the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large mixer bowl. With the electric mixer on low speed, blend for 30 seconds. Add the butter and raspberry puree and mix to blend the ingredients. Raise the speed to medium and beat until light and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes.

3. In another large bowl, whisk together the egg whites, milk to blend. Add the whites to the batter in two or three additions, scraping down the sides of the bowl well and mixing only to incorporate after each addition. Divide mix among the 2 bowls. In a small bowl combine the cheesecake ingredients and spoon into the middle of each bowl. My oven's temperature fluctuates a lot, so I'm not sure how long the baking time is for a normal oven, but it was over an hour.

4. After cake cools heat 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream in double boiler then pour over white chocolate, let sit 5 minutes then stir until chocolate melts. In another bowl beat the remaining cream with a few drops of food coloring until stiff peaks form then slowly fold into ganache mix.  Coat the cake, smooth, and refrigerate.

5. For ganache,  heat the heavy cream in a double boiler with butter, and food coloring if using, until boiling  then pour over white chocolate in metal bowl, let sit 5 minutes then stir. Cool to room temperature then slowly pour over cake and refrigerate for several hours. The cake came out a lovely shade of dark purple that contrasted nicely with its stark white interior and pink shell.

On the way home from the restaurant kirby began to melt... we got a good giggle from his new expression.

I haven't worked with colored pencils much, so I did this drawing of my boyfriend a couple of days ago to practice. I'm pretty happy with the way it came out, he has a fun profile.

My boyfriend requested this obamaesque painting of Dr. Doom for his room. It's done in Acrylic

This was the initial sketch i did.

For my Hybrid Forms Studio class we were required to make an  art project constructed out of dollar store materials.  So, with the help of my boyfriend, we built this shopping cart loom. For the project I've been weaving in the leftovers from my daily life, starting with the leftovers from building the loom, straws, plastic knifes, twine, dr. pepper label, etc. are woven in so far.



The finished product falls from the bottom of the loom

We had to make an accordian style book about a font in my computer's in art class.   I picked the stencil font and added mini pages with examples in them.  I also wanted it to function like a real book, so I made slots in the cover to hold it all together. I'm a pretty messy artist and usually have trouble making book covers look clean. I'm pretty happy with the way this one came out as far as cleanliness goes.