Old Stuff

I feel like I'm always organizing my studio, but I decided to do a massive purge this week and started tonight. I took a painting from 2006 and took it off the stretcher bars to roll up and store away and snapped a few pictures first and thought I would share.

Happy Holidays!

I hope everyone has a great holiday! I'll be staying in Chicago and enjoying some much needed relaxation after working two weeks with no days off. I might even get the studio organized!

Photo below is outside the Comfort Station in Logan Square

Kate or Die

I dearly love Kate's comics and this one seems especially appropriate right now. While I have been somewhat of a hermit this week, starting tomorrow I have 10 straight days of plans/things to do/maybe a date (in there somewhere). So I'm trying to get out there and do my thing, and I think Kate says it best.


Click here for the original posting of the comic on her site

Here and There

Hello! It's been awhile since I blogged again...whoops. It's been a weird few months to say the least. Let's start with the good; I went to Vegas for Thanksgiving to visit my Dad and his girlfriend and like always I had a really good time, I even won some money! 

Here's some photo highlights from my trip










So the not so fun stuff...I've been having a hard time lately with my depression. I don't think I've talked about it on here before, but I've been struggling. It's very hard to get motivation for anything, hence why I haven't been in my studio at all. I just want to sleep and sometimes I go to bed around 10pm or earlier, which is ridiculous for me. It's so bad right now that my usual go to's for making myself feel better aren't helping (taking a bath, reading, seeing friends, recognizing the positives in my day to day life). I just want to stay under the covers and be a hermit for a little while. I'm having a really, really hard time breaking out of this funk right now and I'm hoping soon I can post something more positive and I can share how I got out of this rut. 


Sunday Night


Sunday night catching up with my DVR and dusted off the sketchbook to work on some ideas. 

What projects did you work on this weekend? 

Knit Knit

The lovely Jessica Fenlon gave me my first knitting lesson a few weeks ago and I'm slowly plucking away at my first scarf. I was making a beginners mistake of adding a stitch every row and finally last night I looked up some youtube videos to help me fix this. So this scarf will be a little wonky on one end and fine the rest of the way, oh well! I figure the ends will be tucked in my coat so no one will see anyways. I only have a little bit of time to knit at night, so hopefully this is done before winter is over! I only know one stitch right now but when I get enough practice in with it I'm going to bug Jessica for another lesson.



Boo.

I saw this guy on the walk to work yesterday morning on Chicago Ave in West Town. The same route and seeing the same stuff 5 times a week can get boring, this definitely brightened up my morning a lil' bit.


Pardon the Absence



Started training at my new job last night! I got this as a seasonal holiday retail gig so now I'm working 40 hours at the day job, doing about 17 hours of training at Lush, then will be working there on weekends. This is going the complete opposite direction of my ideal goal to work part time somewhere and focus on my art, but oh well. Ya do what ya gotta do when you have bills to pay...

Spontaneous Sale!


So I start training this week at my second job at Lush Cosmetics and I couldn't be more excited! It will be seasonal work/weekend shifts and with a 40 hour a week M-F day job, I'm guessing I'm going to be a bit worn down and have a little less time for art and whatnot. So, since I won't be updating my shop as much in the next few months I wanted to do a little somethin' somethin' now for fun, so I'm having a sale in my Etsy shop! Get 25% off everything through this Friday with the code BUSYBEE. Treat yo' self or start some holiday shopping super early!

Out in the Wild


I've started a section of my facebook fan page for images of my work in their homes with their owners so I can say thanks to my customers! If you have a photo, please email me at heartless (dot) arts (at) gmail (dot) com

Sick! No!

Well, I ended a fun weekend with a not so fun cold. It had been rainy most the weekend and I think that combined with a few longs days = sick. The wedding was a ton of fun though! We danced our asses off and ended the night with a big group singalong to The Arrivals "Simple Pleasures in America". Congrats Sam and Ryan!


Me and the boyfriend...Look at these dorks. 
 
Hopefully I'll kick this cold soon and can get back to posting about art n' craft stuff! 


 

Hankie


My Grandma passed away a little over a month ago. It was very tough for all of us but she was in pain and not very happy, so of course now we are glad she's not. She was 92 years old, such a long life! 6 kids, 17 grandchildren, and 8 great-grandchildren, whew! She came here from Sweden when she was a teenager and met my Grandpa on the boat (she was coming from Sweden and he came from Ireland). The granddaughters all got one of her hankies and we also got to choose some jewelry from her collection. While it was a sad day, it meant a lot to me to get these items.

A few months before I moved to Chicago, so glad I got to live closer to her for the last 6 years.


My Grandma was not happy about wearing this shit, but I think it's awesome! 

Bows!





I made this cute bow for a wedding gift using a tutorial on Offbeat Bride. I had an old atlas on my bookshelf and used pages from that, which proves I have issues throwing anything away; I am the queen of "you never know, I might need that one day". I used the page for Illinois to make the bow and decorate a painting I had wrapped in brown kraft paper. Super easy and quick to make, I want to put bows on everything now!

Wedding Season

Got these cute heels at Broken Cherry in Wicker Park


This weekend I'm attending the 3rd wedding this year and I'm a bridesmaid! Above are the shoes I'm wearing with my peacock teal dress, they're pretty rad. It's rare I wear heels since I'm already 5'11" and don't like drawing attention to myself, but I'm looking forward to getting all gussied up on Saturday and celebrating with Sam & Ryan.

I've kind of been in decompression mode since the opening at the Koehnline Museum of Art and dropping off my work for 3 shows at the Anysquared Art Walk. I'll probably be working on new pieces next week once I've recovered from my wedding hangover. Till then I'm going to schedule some probably boring blog posts (sorry), but I hope everyone has a great weekend! Are you working on any fun projects? Let me know in the comments!


Craftistas

I signed up to receive a test kit from Craftisas and wanted to share what I made, a black faux leather clutch with studs and chevron fabric lining. It's a subscription service where you receive a kit for a new project every month. It's a photo heavy post because I wanted to share the step by step process. 


Cute packaging  


The step by step instructions were really clear and concise. 

Some of the supplies  

Drawing out the template on the faux leather   

It helped to use a brayer to smooth out the E6000 while adhering the fabric lining to the faux leather  




I needed a quick reminder of how to do a blanket stitch so I referenced by Sublime Stitching book  

All done!  

Minimal mess on my work table for once! Took under an hour from start to finish.

All in all I would definitely recommend Craftistas. It was nice to take a break from my other projects and work on a new project with something I normally wouldn't make! The kit came with everything I needed and I only needed a few basic supplies of my own (ruler, scissors, clips).

Weekend!


My friend Sam is getting married in less than two weeks! I'm so happy to be a part of the bridal party and I had fun planning the bachelorette party this past Saturday. We had dinner at Old Oak Tap in Ukrainian Village then popped over to Bar Deville for a few cocktails then spent the rest of the night at one of our favorite bars, Gold Star. Whew!

Sunday morning a few of us from the party had brunch at Longman & Eagle and now I know why everyone raves about it! I had the market scramble with a croissant and side of mixed greens in a light pesto sauce and it was amazing. We then went to the farmer's market to wander around and I picked up a small bouquet of flowers for my living room, I really want to keep fresh flowers in the apartment more often! I had a wee bit of a hangover and was tired so I spent the rest of the day catching up on TV and movies (watched Battle Royale) with the boyfriend who was home sick from work. It was the perfect weekend!