2015 Resolutions

Hello! Happy 2015 everyone! I'm going to write a short post about what my 2015 resolutions are going to be. Hopefully, I can stick to these or actually accomplish them by the end of this year!

1. Exercise consistently - I have a terrible habit of exercising for about 2-3 weeks and then quit for months. After feeling bad about myself, I pick it back up and then quit again. You know the endless cycle. This year, I want to exercise at least 3 times a week and just keep it up! I've actually be working out for 12 days straight since December 23 (only took a break on Christmas Day) so I can look good for my cosplays for PAX South on January 23-25th!

2. Finish projects/cosplays I start - Yes, I am a procrastinator. I admit it. I love to start projects, but I never finish them. This year, I REALLY want to try hard and get the top priority projects and cosplays done!

3. Blog more often - This blog has had ups and downs of activity and inactivity. I need to keep it going and keep it interesting while trying to build up my audience.

4. Draw more - Art is the one thing that got me started in the creative world. I haven't drawn consistently since 2006 so it's about time I pick it back up.

Well, that's all my 2015 resolutions! They're bound to change or I may come up with even more along the way. What's y'alls resolutions for the new year? Feel free to share in the comments below! Thanks for reading! :)

JWo Designs Holiday Sale!

We have survived the nuttiness that is Black Friday and now Cyber Monday is upon us! I'm actually have an ALL MONTH sale in my Etsy shop!

Use the code HOLIDAYS for 10% OFF your entire order! This includes U.S. AND international orders! Hooray!!!

In case you forgot or don't know where to type in the code, here's a refresher:

In your cart, click on "Apply shop coupon code" on the far right column of your item.

A text box will appear and that is where you type in the code and then click "Apply"! Simple as that!

The code expires on Janurary 1, 2015 so you guys have all month to shop for gifts! :) Thanks for stopping by!

JWo Designs BLACK FRIDAY SALE

Hey guys! This is my first actual Black Friday sale for my Etsy shop! I'm super excited! I love giving handmade gifts to friends and family because it's tailored just for them. Plus, it's supporting small businesses and artisans who put so much love into their work. Just click the image below to go to my shop!

If you use the code FREESHIP in your cart before you checkout, your entire order will be shipped for free! This is ONLY for DOMESTIC ORDERS in the UNITED STATES.

If you're new to Etsy, here's a step-by-step photo tutorial on where to type in the coupon code.

In your cart, you'll see "Apply shop coupon code" in the right panel of your item.

When you click on it, it'll open up a text box where you can type in FREESHIP and then click "Apply" and it will deduct the shipping cost from your order.

It's simple as that! Thanks to everyone for stopping by and hope that everyone has a safe and wonderful Thanksgiving!

I'm published! - CraftFail Book

Good news, everyone! I forgot to mention this, but I have been published!

Well, actually, one of my craft fails has been published in this new book: CraftFail: When Homemade Goes Horribly Wrong by Heather Mann (creator of Dollar Store Crafts). So, if anyone ever wants to write an essay or research paper on craft fails, I technically can be cited as a source! So exciting! 

I was contacted by Heather in early July of this year and told me she was interested in putting my DIY Translucent Faux Pumpkin [Part 1] post in her upcoming CraftFail book. 

Of course, I agreed and here it is in all its glory!

My original post did end up as a craft fail, but it was salvaged in DIY Translucent Faux Pumpkin [Part 2]! 

The rest of the book is filled with other craft fails from craftsters around the internet. It is HILARIOUS. Seriously. I laughed till I cried!

If you're interested in purchasing this book for your own enjoyment, here's the link: 

CraftFail: When Homemade Goes Horribly Wrong

Disclaimer: I have not been paid or sponsored to write this post. I also do NOT receive any profit from the sale or promotion of this book. All opinions are my own.

Hunger Games Mockingjay T-Shirt [Free Stencil Design Download]

My husband and I went with our friends to see the Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 1 movie last night! It was SO AWESOME. I got to fangirl it all out and wear my custom painted Mockingjay shirt!

Long long ago (2 1/2 years ago), I began making a Hunger Games fan t-shirt. I drew up a design and made it into a stencil to be painted on the back of the shirt.

Well, I DID manage to finish painting the back design, but due to life and circumstances, I completely forgot about this shirt until I found it in my "never-to-be-finished-crafts" pile a week ago. Realizing that the next-to-last Hunger Games movie was about to come out, I figured it was about damn time I finished this shirt. So, I pulled up Photoshop and made a design for the front of the shirt. I had this design (minus Smaug the dragon) kicking around in a sketchbook for a year or so.

I printed out the design on 8x11.5 printer paper and traced it onto some freezer paper and then cut out the design with an X-acto knife. I kept the middle parts of the "O" and "D's" and "R's".

Then, I ironed the stencil onto the shirt and painted numerous layers of metallic gold acrylic paint. Of course, the paint leaked under the stencil because I am impatient and can't wait for layers to dry, but thanks to a black fabric pen, it covered up the mistakes nicely.

And there you have it, folks. The finished product:

Front of shirt

Back of shirt

I didn't get any photos of me wearing it because the lighting in my house was atrocious. I did get to finally wear my mockingjay pin with the shirt though. Now, I just need to iron it to set the paint and actually wash it.

If you would like to make your own version of this shirt, you can download the FRONT design here:

[FREE STENCIL DOWNLOAD]

Just remember to "Print Actual Size" so that the text is true to size. What about the back design? Sorry, I don't have that stencil any longer. :(

Thanks for stopping by! Hope you enjoyed this post. :)

Kitty Cat Tattoo Designs

Hello everyone! Today, I bring you more tattoo designs! I was commissioned by a friend of mine to design a black cat tattoo on her ankle for her. She wanted a design with a sleek, feminine look. Since I like options (I mean, who doesn't?), I ended up drawing SEVEN designs for her.

ALL the designs on one piece of paper and my 'wonderful' manicures.

I don't really draw felines much so I had to look up a bunch of references for this commission. I really liked the idea of a curvy design that wrapped around the ankle so I drew a lot of the kitties with a long flowy tail. 

All 7 of these designs were drawn onto one large piece of Bristol board and there was no way it was going to fit onto my scanner. So, I had to bring the drawing outside in the full sun and take photos of each design and then edit them in Photoshop. On to the designs!

Here's design number one. I was going for a silhouette look with some negative space highlighting the contours.

Design number two is another silhouette design with negative space accentuating the ear and eye. This is one of the designs that would wrap around the ankle.

Design number three is more of a sketch than a tattoo, but then again anything can be a tattoo, right? ;) This sketch is finished with ballpoint pen crosshatch shading.

Design four is actually inspired by design three's pose but in a more stylized look. This one would look cool wrapped around the ankle.

Design five is a variation on the pose of designs 3 and 4. I'm a big fan of Japanese ink brush artwork so I decided to incorporate that in the cat's tail.

Design six is another sketch design with a wrap tail done with ballpoint pen.

And finally, design seven! The pose for this one was definitely inspired by design 6. My friend sent me the cutest photo of her cat wearing a red bow so I decided to add a bow. The bow is colored using Prismacolor markers.

And here's all the designs grouped together!

Well, that's it for today's post! I hope ya'll enjoyed it and there will be more posts to come soon! Thanks for reading!

Rocket City Nerdcon 2014

I'm so excited to be posting this! Today's post is about the Rocket City Nerdcon! It's a brand new convention that will be hosted in Huntsville, Alabama at the Huntsville-Madison County Public Library-Main Branch on October 24th and 25th! It's a celebration of all things nerdy! (i.e. videogames, science fiction and fantasy movies/TV shows/books, etc.) Notable events is a cosplay panel and cosplay contest. There's even a panel about the science behind the movie "Pacific Rim!" I will post a link to the details for the convention below and where you can buy tickets:

[Rocket City Nerdcon Info, Tickets, and More!]

The cool thing is that my sister is head of the committee that's running it and she commissioned me to create a logo for the convention. Now, logos aren't really "my thing" per say. I can draw in Photoshop, but I've never actually done logo besides the lazy one I've made for my blog. So, this was an adventure! 

The specifications were that I create a logo for a poster/program/brochure AND a logo that could be used in a more general sense such as letterheads, memos, etc. I was encouraged to use the color scheme from the Huntsville-Madison County Public Library logo so the color choices you'll see in the following photos are from that.

First off, this is the poster/program logo:

You can click on it to enlarge so you can see all the juicy details! I was inspired by the LEGO Movie 3D logo and tried it out with this logo. I was actually extremely excited to find out that my version of Photoshop had a 3D rendering option and found a tutorial video to guide me through the process of creating this logo. The only things not rendered in 3D are the purple "jet stream" and the rocket ship. The rocket ship was hand drawn and the "jet stream" was just made with the Pen Tool. I was surprised at the smoothness of Photoshop's 3D rendering and the many options and "smart" tools it utilized. 

Next, here is the general logo:

I had actually made 3 options total for the Nerdcon committee to vote on and they ended up choosing this one. Actually, this one is my favorite too! My inspiration came from the fact that Huntsville's nickname is "Rocket City" since NASA is based there. When I think about cities, I usually think about intricate, unique skylines. Huntsville, AL doesn't really have much of a skyline like many southern cities since there isn't much need for tall buildings due to the immense amount of land to build. I googled some images and found one that looked the most skyline-like and traced it with the Pen Tool in Photoshop to make the silhouette. The rocket was actually taken from the library logo so that it would connect the two organizations. the "Nerdcon" font is the same font I used in the 3D logo above.

Here are the other two logos that didn't make the cut:

I actually think these two would be more appropriately for t-shirts, but the first choice for logo is most befitting. :) Well, that's it for today's post! I hope you enjoyed reading my thought process behind creating these logos and don't forget to check out the link to Rocket City Nerdcon and spread the word to those that may be interested in celebrating their nerdy interests with others! 

Have an awesome day!

Tattoo Commission for Howling At The Muse

Hello there!

Long time no see! Where have I been? My gosh, I don't know where to start! I'm terrible at keeping blogs updated, but I won't bore you guys with the randomness of my life.

My good friend, Howling At The Muse, commissioned me for a tattoo recently and I was extremely happy to take up this endeavor! I haven't drawn much in the past few years due to work and life so I was excited to get my motivation back.

She loves wolves and requested something geometric and galaxy influenced. I was doing some researching on constellations and was amazed to find that there was an actual "Lupus" constellation! I looked up its path and was EVEN more excited to see that it looked like a wolf running! My friend had requested a wolf running similar to a tattoo I had designed for fun for her years back.

The old tattoo design

Anywho, I am actually quite proud of what I came up with! Here are the results!

Original line work

Black line work with galaxy coloring done in Photoshop

Black line work with the mains stars of the constellation highlighted

Transparent/white lineart

 Well, that's it for now! More posts to come soon. I've been crafting up a storm! :)

THE RETURN FROM THE DEAD

Hello!

I swear! I'm alive, not a zombie! For those that actually read my blog, I apologize for disappearing off the face of the earthy and not posting Christmas and Thanksgiving crafts and recipes. 

The truth is, my husband and I kind of made a last minute decision to move to Texas in December. I accepted a job opening at Baylor in Fort Worth and moved in with my brother and started working at the end of November. By mid December, my husband had closed our lease on our rental house in Mississippi and we had (finally!) found a rental home in Texas! 

And here we are now! Yay! :D

It's probably been the most stressful 3 months of my life. In my short lifetime, I've only lived in Mississippi. My biggest move was moving from my hometown to college 2 hours away. For my husband, an out-of-state move wasn't much of a big deal since he moved a lot as a child. This was stress-out-ulimate-biotch-mode for me! Moving to Texas 3 weeks before my husband was stressful since it was the longest we had been apart since I studied abroad in London. I got stressed out over the smallest details during the move and not being able to find a house that would accept us as trustworthy renters didn't help either. Since I hadn't been employed for over 6 months prior to moving and my husband is a professional video gamer, realtors did not take our money seriously. 

No fear! We happened to find a realtor whose husband was a former member of a rock band and had a similar income situation as my husband. She's now our go-to realtor as we go through our slow and tedious process of buying a house. She's been so patient with us and is now helping us build up our credit scores so we can get qualified for a loan. Oh, the woes of not having credit cards in college...... we had no idea that would come back to bite us in the butt!

Anywhos, we've lived here for 2 1/2 months now and so far it's been pretty good! My job has its days, but I do love my patients and their appreciation of what I do. My coworkers are great and so fun to work with! We don't live in the super hustle and bustle of downtown Fort Worth, but we have just enough bustle to remind us we're now in the big city. There's ALOT of food choices here and TONS of places to shop. JoAnn's, Hobby Lobby, AND Michael's are now just a few miles from our house! It's so awesome! 

Today was a major milestone for us. WE BOTH GOT OUR TEXAS DRIVERS LICENSES! Phew! The process is much more complicated than getting a license in Mississippi, lemme tell you! We both now have fancy new Texas tags and our drivers licenses will be coming in the mail soon! :)

As for social lives, we don't have much of one. We may have family here, but they have their own lives and we haven't met new friends yet. I really miss my friends in Mississippi. Fiberluxe, Way To Blue, Creature and Creation, and here to eat catfish, I REALLY MISS YOU GUYS. LIKE SERIOUSLY. :( 

I hope to keep this updated more often. With a full time job, crafting has slowed down significantly, but I hope to pick it back up soon. Also, my husband and I are going to Boston in March for PAX East! I'm going as Ada Wong in her Resident Evil 6 and RE3 costumes! I'm still working on those but updates to come soon. Sorry for being so long winded! I've missed you guys! :)

Hope, Change, & A HOLIDAY SALE!

I'm back! Phew! It's been such a busy week! It feels like it's been a month with all the things I've been doing. My husband and I drove out to Texas last Wednesday to visit my brother and his family. Actually, our main goal was to look at prospective houses, go to job interviews (for me), and my husband had to go to the MLG Dallas gaming convention. 

We arrived on Halloween night which meant trick or treating with my nieces! I managed to finish my Kiki (from Kiki's Delivery Service) costume and tagged along. 

My other niece is not pictured. 

 The dress is actually my grandmother's dress that I resized to fit me.