Anyway, so after exams were finished I finally cleaned my desk! Even the drawers, how exciting! And obviously I changed my blogskin as well! And in the process I got rid of my cbox, because it was filled with spam! I'm trying to get comments on the blogs, does anyone know how to do this?!
Also, I made new labels/tags for my blogs, including Artsy Fartsy, where all my drawings, paintings and even just simple non-serious artworks are, as well as Cooking Adventures, where all the stuff I have cooked is. Yay!
In my last blog post, I forgot to mention some cool things that happened during my blogging hiatus.
Most recently, I won a competition (again! Maybe next blog I'll tell you how to increase your chances of winning a competition!)to meet Justine Schofield from Masterchef Season One!! It was a private meet and greet before she did her cooking demonstration in North Rocks Westfield.
This is us two together!
She signed my cookbook I brought
As well as giving me one of her aprons that she signed herself!
And she was making crepes so she got me to help with her demonstration!
Here I am failing at flipping the crepe. I can't even flip a normal crepe or pancake in a light pan, let alone this heavy cast-iron non-crepe pan! =[
Another thing is for Diwan's 18th birthday I made him a mosaic!
This took so long!
I started early in January because I knew I was going to spend one month on holiday, and I obviously couldn't do it whilst on holiday!
His birthday was at the end of March so I thought I'd have plenty of time, I got all the easy bits out of the way before I went overseas and thought I could finish it easily in time for his birthday.
I was so wrong!
It was so hard to find the time to do it, because I knew that to do it properly, I had to be:
1) In the mood
2) Able to concentrate
3) Free for a few hours (at least two)
The last week of February I was still tired from returning to Australia, so I didn't do too much, then after that was uni! Even though we didn't have many assessments and all that I felt so mentally drained, this stuff was tiring work!
HERE'S HOW I DID IT (skip if you're not interested, it's kinda long):
I first got a picture of Diwan and used Photoshop to pixellate the different sections of the picture.
Then I got an A3 piece of cardboard and measured it and determined what the sizes of my squares were going to be.
I drew it all up, got myself some double-sided sticky tape and paint sample cards from Bunnings (I know, how cheap of me, but I tried it with coloured paper and I just couldn't get it right because I needed several different tones that were similar to each other!).
THEN THE HARD PART.
At first I did the mosaic section by section, so the large bits like the hair and the background were done first, then the medium-sized squares in the face. That was easy but super tedious: measuring, ruling lines, cutting squares, cutting sticky tape, arranging colours until it looks alright, peeling and sticking.
The ear was a bit trickier because squares were getting a bit smaller and even a millimeter of a difference was WAY TOO BIG.
The right eye (to us it's the left one) was crazy because the squares were so small! I started using tweezers to hold the cardboard so I could cut it, then because the squares were so small I had to put the sticky tape on the cardboard first and use the tweezers to place it down.
That eye and the edge of the face were about the same size but for some reason the edge of the face was SO HARD. I think it's because there were sooo many. I couldn't possibly divide it up by section because the colours were too similar and all over the place, so instead I divided it by colour! I got a lot of paper and drew out the section, numbered each square and grouped numbers according to similar colours. Then I coded the numbers to what colour of the paint samples I needed them to be. Some colours I first separated had to be joined again because of the limited amount of colours I had, even though I had quite a lot of different tones!
The lips were the hardest of that. It is so hard to get lips right! Even when drawing, one slightly darker shade and the guy just looks so stupid. One slightly smaller line and the guy looks too feminine. So when I was doing the lips, I did it once and it took me at least 3 hours. I looked at it from afar (the only good way to judge how something like this is going) and he looked like the biggest derp! The lips were too big and dark! I realised I didn't actually have the colours I needed so I went back to Bunnings and got more reddy-purply-pinky colours. To make sure I didn't have to come back again to get colours I was missing, I just went crazy and got all these colours in different tones, I picked out some pinkier, lighter colours than I thought was needed, and even some darker, more maroon-type colours than I thought was needed.
It turns out I needed some of them, because when you put a colour like bright pink next to a dull pink, it seems really really bright, but when you put it next to a brown or something, it might actually appear a bit duller than you hoped it would! Especially when the squares are so small and can't really make an impact!
So yeh I just ripped off all the stuff I did for the lips (ALL THREE HOURS BLOOD SWEAT AND TEARS GONE!) and I re-did it!
AND FINALLY IT WAS DONE!
I bought a frame for it and he really enjoyed it! He hung it up in his room (or so he says). I'm so glad! It took so long and at the end of each session I had a massive headache and my eyes were straining and my hands were so tired and my brain was gone.
If anyone would ask me to do it again, I wouldn't. But it was definitely worth it!
OKAY THAT'S THE END OF THAT SUPER BORING AND LONG PROCESS!
Coming up in the next few blogs:
-Reviews on lots of stuff including board games, tv, movies and more!
-The blog about weed I mentioned before (I shall start continuing my research soon!)
-Stories, drawings and songs (MAYBE!)
And ah, the beloved links!
It's long but it's worth it!
