The Artist's Eyes by Jenn Lee

My good friends Jason and Christy of Webfoo and PetResearch.net have the biggest hearts when it comes to animals of every kind. Their love for animals is shown not only by their support of animal shelters & services but shown in the knowledge every one of their dogs were rescues. When I first met their dogs, I learned the story behind each addition to their family. It brought tears to my eyes to hear the sad stories. One was near death on the roadside, another tortured by mean people, another owned by a breeding farm and mistreated/uncared for. These dogs were very lucky to have been given a second chance at life…the happiest life a dog could wish for, with these two wonderful people.

Recently I did a portrait of one of their dogs that had passed away…Rudy. I didn’t have the pleasure of meeting Rudy, but given the extremely unique personalities in each of their dogs, I can’t imagine Rudy didn’t have an equally fantastic personality of his own. He can be seen on my blog here. When Christy saw Rudy’s finished portrait, she had tears in her eyes. She had felt I had captured him perfectly. The feeling of satisfaction was priceless! After Rudy, they then asked me to paint their other dogs portraits, to which I was honored to fulfill.

Each portrait is painted on canvas’ of 100% recycled paper materials, 11×14 in size (standard frame) and painted with ECO friendly paints. I’d like to introduce you to…Hardy, Lois Lane, Buddy and Blue!

It seems the closer to Christmas we get each year, my childrens Christmas wish list gets longer and longer. All I hear ringing in my ears is, “All I want for Christmas is…” every day. The television commercials blast all the newest and coolest toys and the postmaster delivers mailer after mailer of Christmas deals with tantalizing pictures of colorful tidbits of toy treats. I’m starting to think he’s in on the attack! As we all know, we parents are pounded defenselessly against the brutal attack from the retail barrage coming from every direction. In my nightmares I peek into my wallet seeing cobwebs and lint and credit card statements delivered by men in dark suits looking menacingly like mobsters coming to break my knees in their attempts to collect.

Alright, enough with the dramatics he-he! Honestly though, it does seem to feel more and more difficult to justify the cost of all the wants for Christmas unless your wallet is bursting at its seams.  So with that said, I decided to share with you some ideas for gift giving for the creative youth(s) in your life, that serve dual purpose as educational or creative inspiration wise and are not quite so tasking on the wallet.

1. Every child likes to play with clay. As we adults can remember, we spent hours of fun playing with Play Dough, creating everything under the sun that our young imaginations could come up with. Sculpey is a wonderful clay that not only can they create with, but can be baked in any standard oven or toaster oven to keep as a keepsake. There are tons of how-to instructions on the internet as well as books you can buy from book stores or craft stores for every age group. From jewelry to statues, photo frames to ornaments, the ideas are limitless as are their imaginations.

2. What better way to inspire the young writer in your life than fun tools to grow their skills? Ultimate Writing & Creativity Center is a fun program that lets them create their written dreams and implement them with music, pictures and more. This program teaches them proper spelling, punctuation and the five steps of the writing process. It’s not only entertaining, but chalked full of hours of educational and creative learning.

3. Going along with the same topic, Storybook Weaver is an excellent program that your child can play with, create and even print with ease. Not only can your child add their own pictures or illustrations, but they have a large library of images at their hands in the program. Having the capability to print and hold their own work in their hands will motivate them to develop their writing skills.  What a wonderful way to inspire the young writer in your life?

4. I don’t remember having all the cool electronic games for learning in my life like kids have available to them now…how could a child not want to learn with all these tools..err toys available? Leap Frog and VTech have cornered the market with the almost limitless amounts of products they have designed for 0-8+ age groups. From preschool  learning aids to elementary age, the fun games they create have learning as their focus. Math games, spelling games, even science and history. The games are hours of fun with learning in mind.

5. Do you have a budding photographer? Yes I know, digital cameras can get quite expensive and are fragile. There are several great beginner cameras for kids that can take a beating. The Fisher Price Kid-Tough Digital Camera, VTech KidiZoom Plus Digital Camera, VTech KidiZoom Kids Camera and the LeapFrog Leapster Explorer Camera and Video Recorder are all great cameras that can handle being dropped or knocked around. A few of these are even water resistant.

6. Do you have a Michelangelo in your household? A great idea for your little artist is an artist’s easel. KidKraft makes a great easel you can buy at most local stores like Walmart, Kmart, Target or Toysrus called the KidKraft Artist Easel.  Guidecraft 4 in 1 Flipping Easel is another great childrens easel and available online as well as Sears.

7. Going along with the art easels or if an easel is not in mind for something you have room for, there are a multitude of art sets you can buy that can store in a bookshelf, toy storage or elsewhere. They come complete with all types of mediums for your little artist. One that I recommend is a wooden arts & crafts set on Amazon, but you can find many other alternatives at your local retail stores for crafts or even in the crafts section of major retailers like Target or Walmart.

8. There are many great drawing books available for young and old as well. Amazon has a great list of books that you can purchase or just use for a resource for ideas of types of drawing books. These are inexpensive and great tools for learning in all aspects of art.

These are just a few ideas that came to mind that focus on feeding creativity and imagination in those individuals that are giving you “All I want for Christmas is…” lists. Fun, educational and inspiring…in this artist’s eyes.

Here we are halfway into November, all the stores have fast forwarded from Halloween decor to Christmas. The retail industry screams, “Black Friday is coming! Mark your calendars!” Commercials on tv are all about deals for Christmas. Everywhere you turn including your mailboxes are reminders of Christmas and getting those presents for your loved ones before they run out. But what about Thanksgiving?

Thanksgiving was a day of thanks that was created generations ago when America was birthed. Thanksgiving is the one day out of 365 in a year that we take a moment out of our busy lives to give thanks for everything in our lives. Of course five minutes of every day we could give thanks for at least one thing in our lives…right? But I admit even I take for granted the things in my life that I appreciate, love, need or have.

Like an epiphany, my mind runs through the things I have taken for granted in my life. Like a blind man given sight…all the colors all my senses are renewed. Sounds cheesy right? I’m sure some of you may think so, but seriously…think about it this morning..tomorrow morning, every morning. When you wake up, get that first sip of coffee to shake away the fuzziness…what am I thankful for?

While sipping my coffee I of course thought…I’m thankful for this coffee! ha-ha! But seriously, I am thankful each morning that I wake up. Thankful for the love of my life sleeping peacefully next to me and all the wonderful ways we show each other how much we appreciate each other as well as, he’s also my best friend. I am thankful for all four of my beautiful children and their good health. I am thankful for my family and the time spent with those that have passed. I am thankful I have a nice home for all of us to live in and all three of our wonderful kitties to share it with.

I am thankful for the wonderful friends that are in my life. Even though life speeds by at times and we get caught up with things that keep us from seeing each other as often if at all…my friends are always in my heart and mind. I am thankful for the smiles and laughter, the hugs and time shared, knowing we all are there for each other in times of need as well as times for fun.

I know this seems sappy in some minds, but seriously, take a moment…look around you…what do you see? What do you see that you take for granted? Finding things to be thankful for surrounding you isn’t difficult, just open your eyes, you will be surprised at what you come up with. It’s enlightening and well worth it….in this artist’s eyes.

My fiance and I decided it was time to upgrade our cell phones. I was upgrading from the LG Vu which was a total touch screen phone and he was upgrading from a Pantech Slate, with qwerty keypad. After a bit of investigating and listening to friends advice, we decided to go with the iPhone 3GS.

The iPhone had won the great debate over which phone was the best phone for us. It may not be the best phone for everyone of course, but that’s why the Cell Phone Companies provide us with so many options. The great debate currently seems to be the iPhone vs the Android. I do have to say I think the Android system is pretty awesome, but currently the amount of applications available is limited vs the iPhone. At some point though…they will definitely compete neck in neck with Apple’s iPhone regarding applications.

With the iPhone 3GS as an artist of photography or drawing, it has so many good applications available for total customization in any interest one wants. My fiance, John Adkins, wrote a great article about  the photography applications he and I like for the iPhone 3Gs. On the arts end, I researched and tested out quite a few applications. I of course started with the free applications (because I am frugal..he-he) and then moved on to the pay applications. Out of my research, I have come up with two art applications that I have to place at the top of my list, Art Studio and Brushes.

With both Art Studio and Brushes, you have complete control over the pencil size, pen size as well as brush size. You have a fully customizable color palette as well as ability to add multiple layers and filters. You wonder how a person draws in detail on such a small canvas? Well you can zoom in to an unbelievable per pixel detail, as well as zoom out so no matter the amount of detail you want in your art, you can zoom into any portion and add the minute details desired. Several other features are smudge, the ability to adjust transparency of colors and line detail as you want. There really are no limits to either of these two applications for your inner artist.

Last but not least in this little review, since my other love besides art is photography, I was pretty happy to see the additional features towards photography, implemented in Art Studio. You can add text, adjust all the same properties of your photos that you can with most photo editors from exposure to contrast, hue to saturation, as well as filters like Gaussian Blur, Emboss, Sepia etc.

I hope you enjoyed my little review of two of my favorite iPhone applications! Below you can see a few screenshots I took of the applications open and a couple of youtube videos that I thought gave good examples of these two apps. As far as I can see, these two apps allow the inner artist to go wherever your eye-phone can see…in this artists eyes.

This first video for Art Studio is primitive in nature. The amount of detail in it’s drawing capabilities is equal to Brushes app. My idea with this video was more intended to show you the features and options in the creation of your masterpiece regardless of the level of the art experience you may have.

This second video is using Brushes. You will want to watch closely as this video is sped up significantly, but I chose it because…well…it’s just awesome! You still get  gist of the features in Brushes, just don’t blink or you might miss them! Oh and as far as the subject matter, yes I admit I am a Star Wars fan…

Here we are less than a week away from Halloween. Many of you have already bought your children their costumes and probably did a little complaining about how expensive they were. I can’t believe how pricey they have become over the years. With two grade school age children myself, I always try to find unique ways to create the kids costumes without spending hardly any money.

My youngest is almost ten years old and she is my most difficult child when it comes to costumes. She changes her mind over and over till the last minute. She had finally decided she wanted to be a genie so I started looking at the costumes available. At ten years old I was not too happy with the prices for genie costumes that really lacked much material. This led me to go through my craft fabrics.

When I say craft fabrics I mean my box of interesting clothing that our family has grown out of, stained beyond repair, broken zippers, straps or tears. I also save sheets, curtains and sheers that are no longer being used. You never know when you might find another use for these fabrics and when you are on a budget, it sure comes in handy.

I even make trips to the local Goodwill stores and gather interesting materials for costume projects. Buying a formal gown or dress with a unique pattern costs between $3 to $5…it’s worth the price considering the cost to buy fabric at a fabric store.

So how am I creating a genie costume out of my treasure trove of materials? I will tell you in several quick and easy no sew or very little sewing steps:

• An old bathing suit that belonged to my older daughter when she was around the same size as my youngest (Out of style or not the tastes of my youngest to wear).

• Leftover curtain sheers in burgundy and gold that just don’t go with my decor any more.

• String, yarn, shoe strings, ribbon (whatever you have available).

• Leftover beads from crafting projects with the girls.

• Hot glue gun, needle with thread.

Take your sheer material and measure out the length needed for the leg covering for your genie and cut to length. If you lay the sheer out flat you should be able to cut it in four equal pieces. With these pieces cut, you then take two panels and hot glue them to the front of the bathing suit (for the no sew version), or you can use a simple loop stitch to attach them to the front of the bathing suit. With either method you will be creating a gathered effect where the material attaches to the suit.

Once you attach the front two pieces, you can move onto attaching the back two pieces the same way. After this is complete, move onto the bottom of your genie legs. You can take your string/ribbon, making sure to measure the circumference of your child’s ankle  and attach it to the bottom of the front and back leg pieces in a gathered effect. When completed, you should be able to tie the bottom of the leg to create that ballooned effect.

After the legs are completed, you can move onto the arms. I took another sheer and cut based on the length of my daughters arms and attached them to the straps of the bathing suit in the same way that I did the legs using the no sew or loop stitch method. At the wrists I used ribbon/string to once again create that balloon effect to the arms. Since I had two different colors of sheers that I don’t use, I layered the sheers to create a little more interest.

Now once you have completed the arms and legs of your genie, you can add the bling to your genie, because you know genies always have bling…he-he. If you have beads leftover from some craft projects they can be strung and attached to the costume. If you don’t have beads, your local craft stores always have a great collection of beads you can purchase for low cost.

I know this only covers making a genie costume, which leaves me to make a no sew/loop stitch costume for my son (he wants to be a ninja), but the same basic ideas will work for most costumes…search your fabrics at home  or the local Goodwill, grab that glue gun or needle and thread…and get creative! Homemade costumes are unique and easy projects for everyone…in this artists eyes.