Silhouettes

The secret of the Rubik's Cube!

My brother always gets all annoyed with his Rubik's cube because he can "do" one side. That's fine, it's exactly how you start. But here's the thing.  This is NOT necessarily correct:

 THIS is how you know it's correct:

This photo is borrowed from Ajae - see how the green is all done but there's orange, red, and yellow all next to each other? That can't be correct. 

So that is my (very well-known) secret for you. Start with one side - but make sure ALL the colors line up. The rest is CAKE!

More Smashing

So, I'm trying to make myself "journal" in my Smash Book. I played more with the cover...

Here's some of the packaging from Ajae's Christmas gifts:

And some pics from hanging at Kelly's:

Here is the problem with Smash:

See how tight that is? It's too tight. Seriously, how much money could they possibly have saved by doing that?

Make your own planner verdict: bonkers

I spent DAYS working on this stupid freaking thing and check this out:

Yep, I bound the right-hand page upside down. I threw this stupid thing away. What was I thinking? Actually, I was thinking that it's hard to find a planner that I LIKE and they're expensive. I hate paying twenty bucks for a planner that doesn't make me one hundred percent happy. So, I bought this one:

I can't wait for it to get here so I can play with it!

Smash

Let the record show that when I first got my Smash book, Kelly's exact reactions was "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!"  And, to be honest, I haven't really used it. I don't like how tight the binding is. BUT now she has a Smash book and since we're codependent, I dug mine out and started playing with it again. Mostly just the cover. Maybe this is what I need to get me journaling again?

I don't know if I even like it!!

Christmas with the Heggems

Usually Tim works Christmas, this is the first time in YEARS he's been off. For the past three years, Liam and I have just hung out with our friends who moved away two months ago. I pictured me and Liam sitting home alone this year - like we do for most holidays. Even after Kelly asked us to come hang out with her family, I didn't think we'd be able to because Tim ALWAYS works. Well, he DIDN'T! He didn't work and we went to the Heggem House and it was AWESOME. It was the best Christmas I've had in years!!

Here Tim and Kelly are doing weird things in the kitchen - see the open window? It's so warm this year!!

Liam made a gingerbread house with some of the little boys and then they ate it. OK, Liam mostly ate it.

Tim forgot he's not a frat boy anymore and challenged Joey to a chugging contest. He lost!

You'd better watch out...

Santa Claus likes chocolate milk best, did you know that? I didn't. Mini Me told me. My mommy read us The Night Before Christmas and now I'm watching South Park Christmas episodes. What could be better?

CHristmas ATCs :)

I LOVE how these came out. I got the idea from Christy Tomlinson. She did a canvas with all her toys and stuff while mine is just leftover paper scraps, but they make me happy and several of them are in the mail, on their way to surprise friends right now! 

This is what I used for the background. Remember this page? It's from YSM Brain Dead Journaling. I loved the page, but I always want to DO something with my backgrounds. I'm trying to not have that need - to just be able to fling paint around and say it's done, but I can't. A background needs a foreground. So I cut it all up and used it and now it has a purpose!

I also made this little canvas for Kelly:

Dont' worry, I already showed her :) I'm not good at those kinds of secrets!!

TJ worked in my journal!

That's ME!! How cute am I?? I love it :)

Boring cartoon!!

Why would I put that as my title? Won't it keep people from coming to my blog? Don't know. Anyone out there? That's OK, I know who is and that you love me even when I'm boring!

First day of Rapid Riz cartoon

I know I already told you I was nervous about going to a drawing class - my teacher is ALL about getting up and showing things to the class, and I'm SUPER self-conscious so I don't usually like that.

Look at nervous me!! C'mon that's FUNNY!

I took this picture to try and help with the hand position and fingers and stuff.

Why do I always look so dang TIRED???

Wedding Invite

For my friend Tami, who lives in the UK...I don't get to go to the wedding, which makes me sad, but I think the invitation came out pretty! I'm highly amused that she's getting married on Friday the 13th...

I used an old collab kit from Ahhh Scrap, Spring Wedding from June 2009.

Cartoon 12/5

When I got a little behind in my cartooning I was going to skip some days - no one is perfect, right? And honestly, I don't DO all that much during the day. But then I was thinking I could just do ONE thing from some days, right? So here is my Parents' Day cartoon. I hate parents' days, by the way. I don't like people.

Make your own planner: brilliant or bonkers?

It's HARD to find a planner that I like. Really hard. I want it daily. I'm not a doctor or some crazy busy office person - I don't care. I want a page for every day. And I want it to be about 5.5in x 8.5in. It needs to either open completely flat or be ring bound - but the rings can't be too tight so it's hard to turn the pages. When I've tried the "print your own pages" thing, regular printer paper is too thin, but even the thinnest card stock is too thick. I was thinking maybe I'd just figure out how to alter my Smash Book into a planner, but it has the too-tight ring problem and it's a little too big. So I'm working on another idea. Here's what I've got so far.

Month at a glance:

Daily pages:

 Some tags for homework pages:

 Date stickers I made with my sticker maker:

Some other tags and pockets and stuff:

Believe it or not, I worked on it for about six hours today and I'm nowhere near done! Oh, and the digital scrapbooking kit I'm using is Digi101 from Ahhh Scrap. I really like the colors. I thought about just buying a paper pack from Michael's or Archiver's and making it out of that - I might try that for February. Maybe this will be a year of finding the ideal planner? I want to find already printed daily pages (without holes) that I can incorporate into the thing. We'll see. I'll be sure and post an update if I ever get this thing finished!

Cartooning for SCHOOL!!

How great is this?? AND it's not even for my drawing class, it's for my Flash class! I love ITT Tech. For reals, EVERYONE should go to school at ITT Tech. 

FUDGE!!!

Yes, is IS awesome!!

Christmas Tree :)

I'm surprised how much I love our Christmas tree!! We live in a small place and we're pretty..."poor" doesn't seem like the right way to put it, but I'm not sure what the "correct" term would be. So, small place, one teeny half-filled box of decorations (the tree is the ONLY thing that gets decorated), I was feeling a little sad about it. Especially because of the Thanksgiving incident at Kelly's, and they have such a beautiful house and so does Ajae, and they both get a LOT more festive (at least cosmetically!) for the holidays. But I am in LOVE with this tree! 

Look how pretty it is!!

And here is is all tacky'd up, just how I like it! 

AND, you see that sliding door behind it? When you pull into our apartment complex, we live in the first apartment in the first building, and you can see the tree through the glass door!! It's pretty and I love it. 

Rapid Viz

I have NO idea why, but I LOVE this class! We're drawing RIDICULOUS things!! 

These ones are: thinking outside the box, walking in someone else's shoes, a night in Charlie Sheen's life, and don't judge a book by its cover

 These ones are: a porcupine's pillow, Abe Lincoln in the bathtub, a spider doing a handstand, and the other side of the argument:

This is my phone:

The phone isn't funny, obviously, but the rest of them had me laughing the whole time!!

Time to be Jolly

A new collaboration from Ahhh Scrap!

December Calendar

What? Today's the 11th! 

That's true, but I usually write a few blog posts and post date them for when I don't have time to actually blog every day - so I REALLY made it on the 7th. That's a little better, no? After YSM (on Wednesday), the girls and I all decided to make December calendars to jump start us back into Moleyville. I'll try to post mine when it's all filled up at the end of the month! 

Back to Moley

Since journaling USED to be easy for me and has now become difficult, I'm headed back to my roots - Moleskine large sketchbook. Since this was when I was journaling the most, maybe it's what I need to get back to it. My friends are doing it with me, of course, because I'm co-dependent. So me Kelly, and Ajae are starting in fresh, new Moleys and hoping that it will make us journal more. I don't know if that makes sense, but it seems worth a try to me!

Introducing - TJ!

This is my new friend TJ! We met and hung out at Archiver's in my local mall and it was AWESOME!

She just moved here from Germany, and look - she bought me that Germany tag to put in my journal! 

It was SO fun to hang out. I'm not usually good with people, so it's always a relief to meet someone who seems to like me!! She said NOT to post pictures of her on Facebook, and so far I haven't, but I told her that any pictures I take are fair game for Facebook, blogs, etc, and that it took Kelly about six months to get used to it and now she doesn't care anymore. :) We just chatted and journaled and it was really cool. 

Cartoons 12/4 and 12/7

Fear of the blank page!!!

This is one of my TEXT books!

VIOLATE ITS PURITY!! That's what we do to our PAPER??? How horrible is that?!? I've never been afraid of the blank page before, but this book might change my mind!

Journal Confusion

I've been unhappy with my journals lately and I don't really understand why. What I want in a journal is thick pages, super smooth paper, NOT ring-bound, with pages small enough to not overwhelm my brain but large enough that they can stand individually because I HATE doing spreads. I found one that I was enjoying, I like the sizes, the pages were nice and smooth, it was landscape (a stretch for me) but I really wanted it to be awesome. I was having a good time. Then I did a page that was just sort of doodles. I wanted to paint over it. It was the back side of this face. I painted it green. 

And then I was pissed! I didn't add any water or anything and the stupid paint leaked through anyway!! So I removed the pages and glued them into the journal I made. Why am I struggling with this so much? I used to journal every single freaking day. I'm GOING TO GET BACK TO THAT. I don't know how yet, but I will.

Christmas decorations...

Kelly sent me a picture of five or six HUGE plastic bins of Christmas decorations she had the kids haul up from the basement and this is what I sent her back:

That's every single bit of my Christmas decorations!! Does that make me a terrible person? I LOVE Christmas, but we live in a small apartment with a small child. So it's not like I could put out ceramic houses or anything. Last year was the first time in seven years of marriage that we even had a tree...