Changing my Style

My sister has always been the fashionable one between the two of us.

During high school She used to wake up at five every morning to put herself together for a church class that started at six.

Except that even with all that time she still wouldn't be perfect, which meant that the first thirty minutes of that class were spent in the bathroom.

She would curl and straiten her hair, apply two different kinds of mascara, and douse herself in so much hairspray that I could smell it on me for the rest of the day.

I actually resented her for it, mostly because I felt that it was a glaring misunderstanding of the word 'priorities'*, and partially because I knew that she was much prettier without all that crap in the first place.

She was the fashionable one,  but the truth is that for the first part of my life I tried to be the unfashionable one on purpose.

She was being stupid,  with all that makeup and that shaving,  so I would be the exact opposite of that and end up the truer person.  I wore  ugly, holey shirts to school**,  refused to do anything fancy with my hair,  only shaved my armpits,  didn't pierce my ears, and never ever wore makeup.

I wasn't pretty, but I wasn't putting on airs. So I was certain, in that little prideful knot of my heart,  that I was the better person.

And I never had to wake up a second sooner than was necessary.

In middle school Jordyn dealt with my demeanor by hanging out with me as little as possible. There were other reasons I'm sure, but this was definitely one of them.  Now that I look back on it I'm sure that she found me equally stupid as I found her.

Who doesn't shave their legs?  Even when their Mom gave them permission a whole two years earlier than the established age***?

By the time I got to high school my sister had wised up a little bit. She knew that I hated clothes shopping more than anything,  and she hated the way I chose to dress.  So ever slowly her clothes began to filter into mine.

I was suddenly wearing low-cut preppy tops, camisoles, and things that cinched at the waist.   I secretly felt pretty and fashionable, and she felt like she could be seen around me.

Even after she she moved out she would stop by once in a while with garbage bags full of various tops.

She gave me copious amounts of things that she had accidentally bought a couple sizes too small, or had grown tired of and had shrunk in the wash.  So it was by the time that I graduated high school I hadn't gone anything but pants shopping in over three years.

I'm not saying that this is bad, in fact, it was quite awesome.

I hate clothes shopping.

Recently, however, something of a change has begun working in my heart.  I look at my sister and realize that in my attempt to be pretty I have taken her style as gospel.

I just wore her clothes because they were there, and because she looked good in them.  But I never really liked them for myself.  Now, after all these years, I dont even know what I do like.

Makeup isn't evil, neither is doing your hair****.  Just because we want to look good doesn't make either of us shallow.

Well I still think she was shallow back then,  but she probably isn't now.

The point is that I'm going to start buying my own clothes.  Things that make me feel pretty for who I am.

And things that don't let anyone taller than me see down my shirt, which evidently is something of a problem I have.

I donated half of my shirts to the DI here in provo, and I got three shirts of my own to wear.  From now on I'm going to set aside ten dollars every month to replace my wardrobe.

There are simply too many shiny things in the world to spend anymore than that on clothes.

ed: Let me be a bit clearer. I love my sister, she is simply awesome and she has dealt with a lot in her life. The events and feelings I discuss here are simply one facet of my feelings towards her at several small points in my life.  I loved getting clothes from her, they were an important bridge in our relationship and in the woman I have become. 

I'm simply ready to become my own person.


Besides, this post was suppose to me make me look at least as bad as it made her,  I hope that came across.

Okay, back to the originally scheduled program!

I really like this one because of the way it hangs on my body.  It's loose and comfortable but shows off my curves really well.   I also happen to love the way that touch of pink pops perfectly. I've gotten compliments every time I've worn it.

Everyone loves unedited photos! Right?

I actually bought this one because my friends told me that it looked awesome on me, now that I've worn it a couple times I tend to agree with him.   It's pretty, artsy, and just the right amount of girly. I can't help but smile every time I put it on.

... Guys?

This shirt is unfortunately a little see-through so I have to dawn an undershirt every time I put it on.  This dims my waistline a little but I adore the simplicity of the design.  No bright colors here, no tricks,  just something pretty to look at.

*we had thirty minutes in-between seminary and high school,  so why did she have to miss the first part of class, hmm?


**in grade school I used to chew my sleeves, the same shirts still fit me in middle school so...


*** I'm one of the hairiest girls I know


**** I shave now okay, have for a while. 

A Mobile

I've been hankering to make something cute and girly for a while now.  I see granny-esque cross-stitch patterns and tutorials on how to make lace and suddenly my sense of decorating style suddenly goes out the window.

I ran across a tutorial online on how to do this cutesy baby mobile from one of my favorite blogs.

I have a friend who is having a baby.

Coincidence?  I think yes!

Instead of just copying the lovely Jen I decided to flex my girly muscles and try something of my own design.*

So this is what I came up with.


It was actually remarkably easy to make** and only took Josh and I an hour or so to knock out.

As far a supplies go I picked up one of those foam wreath things, a bunch of flowers, a lock of those white bobbly things in the pic,  a white ribbon, some red/pink beads, birds from the wedding section, stretchy cord, and some crimp beads.

I went with a wide white satin ribbon and pink flowers because those things are elegant?

Obviously.

We cut the flowers and the bobbles into short chunks and started gluing them around the foam ring.

Figuring out how to  secure the birds with the stretchy cord was a bit a conundrum until I remembered that I know how to do a total of two knots. One of those is a lark's head, which is how you secure the kite strings to the kite itself,  it also happens to look like a miniature harness.

Even with this stroke of genius the birds hung lopsided, but that was easy to fix with a small dab of hot glue on the middle of their backs.

We used also used  crimp beads just to be safe, and then cut the excess string off with my singular pair of crappy scissors.

After that we decided how far we wanted the bird to hang down from the mobile and strung beads along the length.  We didn't bother using hot glue or crimp beads here, because the weight of the birds provided enough friction to keep them in place.

We tied (crimp beads again) the birds the the foam ring and then I held the mobile while Josh wrapped the satin ribbon carefully around our flowery creation.

After that it was only a matter of tying on something to hang to mobile by and voila!

Il est fini!

This will also available at my etsy store here,  I'll post it there as soon as I get better pics. Although the original has obviously already gone to my friend.  At that point I'll also update the pictures here  so you that you can actually get an idea of the thing.

*This decision only had very little to do with the fact that my Jo-Ann's didn't have any of the necessary supplies.


**It was honestly harder to photograph this thing, and I never did get a really good, non-blurry picture. ***

*** which I'm sure comes as an absolute shock to you.  

Have a terrible picture of my friend, :-)

Good News Everyone!

First, I'll share a little story with you,  because otherwise this would just be a glorified facebook post with ads.

My first job interview was something of a disaster.  I had been going to BYU for about a year, and I had been trying to find jobs off and on for that entire time* so it was something of a relief when I finally got a call back.

It was only for the food court up on campus but but my palms started sweating the second I hung up the phone.  What I do in these new, intimidating  moments in my life is run through the scenario as many times as possible in my head.

It's almost as good as practice.

I would go in, smile a lot, talk about how much I wanted to work at the cougar eat, and be careful to talk myself up as well.

I could do things.

I could do lots of things!

Except that when I got there it was a group interview,  which is something that apparently exists.  All the countless simulations did me no good.  I was out on the shores of Normandy, and I had no pants on.

Every one else there had more experience than I did too.

I panicked and the clever part of my brain abandoned ship and didn't come back until several days later.

It was all one painful blurry process but this little gem still stands out in my mind.

       Interviewer; What do you think you would contribute to our workplace?

       Yours Truly; well, I'm very um, undramatic- I mean mellow, so 
I uh, wouldn't adhere to any... drama well. so I would be easy to
work with?

It wasn't funny at the time,  believe me.

The good news is that my second interview went much better.

In fact I just got a call today,  I got the job.  I'm going to work at this amazing little diner near the Provo library.

I can't help but smile every time I think of it.

*mostly off

Something of an Announcement

Finals for BYU took place last week.  Which means that I'm finding myself at the beginning of a monumental four month break from school.

This spontaneous free time leads me to an announcement  I've been wanting to make for a while now.

Drum roll please.
 
I bought business cards!

This is the front.

 

 

 

And this is the other side.

I bought 250 of them from Vista Print and I honestly couldn't be happier. I love the color, the elegance, and the importance I associate with carrying them around. Now if only I could learn how to hand them out casually.

This is important because I'm going to give my blog one year of professional effort to see where it can take me.  For you  this means that (starting now) I'm going to start posting at least four times a week rather than two.  For me it's going to mean a little bit more.

And if I get one of the jobs I'm after they won't all be about the various types of things that a person can make out of cardboard.

I hope that this will be an awesome adventure, and that you'll smile while you read about it.

My Weekend Plans

I didn't go to church this past Sunday.

I know it was Easter and everything,  but hear me out.

I was helping put this together instead.

Now admittedly I didn't really have much to do with it other than putting the flowers on the wall* and giggling manically but I'd thought I'd share one of my favorite moments with you.

A couple days before the prank itself I was hanging out at the guys apartment while they were letting the rabbits run around.

One of the rabbits got it into his head that underneath the couch was an excellent place to hang out so Adam and David focused on trying to get him out while I sat and watched Pysch with Josh.

A couple of moments passed when suddenly David half shouted  "he bumped his nose against mine"

Everyone stopped what they were doing to awe.

I think I will never stop smiling.


*those pallets of sod are about half my weight each.

Let's Do This Again

There was a monumental sale at both Jo-ann's and Micheal's this past weekend so I was able to grab a barrel full of supplies on the cheap.

I've had a ton of ideas for some more melted crayon pieces since last month so on Saturday I borrowed my friend's blow-drier and went to work.

This piece has a grid on the lower portion of the canvas,  and color originating from the upper half.  There's a charcoal barrier between the two but as you can see chaos knows no bounds and has invaded the more orderly area.

This was just a nifty idea I wanted to try out  and I really like the result. I'm just in love with the texture that this medium allows without having to be overly bulky.

This next one was inspired by this lovely piece I found on Etsy.  I really love the interest the spherical forms adds to the standard of the medium and how they almost appear to meld with the color while being a completely separate texture.

I thought it might be fun to mix it up a little bit more.

As you can see I kept the blow drier hot enough that very little texture comes across except for the spherical forms. I also wanted them to be the main color of the piece so they would function as the only point of interest.

I'm itching to try this one again, just to see what variables affect how the Styrofoam takes up color.   I've also decided that using a middle piece of those Styrofoam balls probably isn't as clever as I thought, since that circle is the sloppiest looking of the three.

I've decided to start up my own etsy store featuring my art as well as some of my crocheted crafts.  So if you're interested in having any of the melted crayon pieces I've blabbered about go snap them up before somebody else does!

Oh- and,  if anyone you know is thinking about decorating their home do me a favor and tell them I'm the biggest thing since sliced bread. 

Cranes 5-6

These cranes were something of a test run for a larger project that I have down the road.

For the record; I can in fact make a crane from a one inch square piece of paper. I probably shouldn't do them all while I walk home from the library though.

This crane is sitting on top of a stone pillar across from the tanner building up on campus. It's passed by a ton of students every day so I left a note with my url underneath the crane.

Of course, as soon as I walked away the wind started up so I'm sure it was gone a few minutes later.

This second crane was left on the trashcan at a publishers conference. I had made it during a break and couldn't bear to just throw it away because at the time I was certain that it was the most perfect origami crane in the world.

The conference was quite a lot of fun overall.  The man behind the event, whom Gladys and I met last month, actually remembered me.

Although I'm not sure if he just has a good mind for faces or if I'm just short.

Probably both.

I've launched a new blog just for this art project if you want to check it out (click the link) although I still plan on subjected you to my favorite pieces every month or so.

Stay tuned for my crazy convoluted origami project!

The Wilkinson Student Center

This is a picture of myself in the bathroom mirror of the Wilk here at  BYU.

Senior Thesis

We've started our presentations in my senior thesis class.  This is an opportunity to learn of what all of our peers have been doing and the conclusions they have come up with over the semester.

It was actually really interesting to see what everybody else had done for their thesis.

Shannon  had a huge piece of Velcro that she wasn't planning on using.

Madison happened to have a pair of scissors.

This is what we did with them.

It was actually Kody's idea

I bet I could get all the ladies with that face.

There was actually enough Velcro to make Kody a set of sideburns and some eyebrows, unfortunately my phone ran out of battery before I could get a picture.

This is what mature adults do with their time.  I promise.

My Excellent Adventure: Part 2

This is the continued report of my unexpectedly awesome Friday evening.  If you haven't read the first part yet click here. Or not, I don't actually think you'll be confused.

After Taylor and the chick I haven't mentioned by name went home Josh and I decided that we wanted to watch an episode of Psych.  Gladys wanted to call it a night so we headed over to Josh's place instead.

Just as the credits were rolling his roommates strolled into the main room wearing sweatsuits and Josh's motorcycle helmets. One of them was carrying an iridescent green Frisbee.

They were playing Tron.

And if they were playing Tron they were going to play Tron right.

At first playing Tron right meant using masking tape to create the appropriate lines on their clothes.

The third roommate happened to be out on a date so quite suddenly playing right meant tracking them down, playing Tron while daft punk roared, and running away.

I wasn't sleepy anymore.

We all piled into Nate's truck and drove to the park.  Only getting there in time to spot David's headlights pulling out of the parking lot on the other side of the park.  We sped away in order to follow them and ran into every single red light on the way home.

Every single red light.

We took a short cut and only just pulled into the parking lot right behind David's car.

Nate flipped to Daft Punk on his ipod and I turned the stereo up on Josh's signal.

We both parked and Nate and Adam rushed out of the truck to throw Frisbees at each other and barrel roll over the hood of David's car.  I giggled like a maniac the entire time and Josh filmed.  The couple watched them in dumbfounded amusement and the volleyball game to our left paused.

The song ended and Nate turned off his truck,  we all walked away without a word.

It was absolutely awesome, and I'm going to buy myself a motorcycle helmet next time I see one at D.I. so that I can play too.

Here's Adam and Nate,  but I don't think that the awesomeness quite conveys properly through the image.