Lilandya

Flying Gurnards are one of the coolest fish ever....look at him go!

My Muse

This week's challenge at Conceptart.org's CHOW (Character of the Week) forum was to visualise and create your muse. This is totally open ended and it was interesting reading what inspires others and how they formed these inspirations and elements in to their own new character.

I'm very pleased to announce that I actually got my entry finished!! Hooray! I take most of my inspiration from animals and plants - markings, colour schemes, even my costume designs, are generally based on the creatures and plants of the natural world, especially birds and fish. Also if I stare at fire long enough I begin to see all sort of magical images that I want to create.

So, in a very broad attempt at smashing my inspirations all together, here she is - my muse.

For Alicia...

A friend of mine asked if she could commission me to do some artwork for the bedrooms of her three little girls. I said yes, before she even told me what she'd like - princesses, fairies and dinosaurs. Needless to say I was thrilled!! What wonderful themes! I'm going to keep them all fairly simple, nice and bold with bright colours and lots of textures. I'm doing 5 for each room, so 15 in total, so it'll be a while before they're all complete.

But for now....here's the two I have done.

Chocolate mermaids and things to be done

I recently decided to enter a recipe in to the lovely blog - They Draw and Cook. It hasn't been published online yet, I'll be sure to link it to here when I do, as it will make me feel famous! My recipe was Choc Mint Mermaid Brownies, and below is the lovely lady who advertised them.



I've also been asked by my friend of many years, Alicia, to do some artworks for her three little daughters' bedrooms! The themes? Dinosaurs, princesses, fairies, horses, butterflies and flowers! YAY!!! I'm very excited to get these underway. I'm thinking I'll do them in the same style as my animal girls....simple colour schemes with lots of nice textures - your thoughts?

I'm also visiting my lovely niece Elara's kindergarten and drawing up a bit of a poster mural for them to paint...it's going to be farmyard themed so that will be great! And finally I'm possibly painting a mural for the mother's room at church. So far it looks like it will be underwater themed, but I'm going to see if I can push for a woodland....deer, rabbits, flowers, lanterns and beautiful birds! Now doesn't that seem soothing?

This is Halloween, this is halloween....

I never thought I'd be a fan of Halloween.....I don't like anything remotely scary, I hate the idea of walking up to strangers' houses and asking them for stuff...however, I really really REALLY like costumes. Which is what has won me over for the last few years. I've been a Corpse Bride, a Cabaret Vampire and Mrs Lovett, but I think this year was my favourite.

This is Halloween! Everyone hail to the Pumpkin Queen!



The idea behind this costume came from two objects. One was the wig - I saw it on eBay ages ago and thought it was oh so pretty! It was even listed as 'Pumpkin Orange'! Second was this little bottle.



Pumpkin Juice brought back from Harry Potter World in the USA from my best friend. The bottle was way too awesome to not be used for something!

From then I started to piece together how I wanted to look. This was my first and only sketch of the costume - as you can see it has a few similiarities, but is definitely not identical.



All I knew about this costume was that I wanted my skirt to stick out at strange angles and just look generally awesome. Thus began the most time consuming element of any costume I think I've ever made. Each individual 'leaf' was cut from fabric and a piece of interfacing. The interfacing was then ironed on to one of the pieces, with a length of wire stuck in between, This was sealed by heat and then everything was sewn together for extra support. I then burnt the edges of each individual leaf (even got some melted fabric stuck to my finger at one point D:) and once it was cool, I'd paint detail with gold metallic paint. A select few lucky leaves got to have creepy faces painted on to them for good measure. The leaves were the main feature of the costume, making up the overskirt and the sleeve.




The rest was mainly bought. Trusty black corset, black tutu and orange tights - all from eBay. The headdress was made by cutting off the top of a pumpkin (yes that's real....it was still slightly juicy and VERY heavy) threading wire through it and securing it to a headband, that was in turn secured with a million bobby pins to stop it slipping off. Makeup was fun, orange eyeshadow brings me great joy!Last but not least was my awesome creepy clawed hand, that was sewn quickly last minute because on a whim I suddenly wanted one!

Super Pie

Once upon a time, I stumbled upon this wondrous blog post when scouring the whole of Allie's delightful blog.

I laughed. Muchly. I agreed. I disagreed. I wanted a frosting rose. And then I finished reading. And my brain could only think of one thing......Super Pie.

I had to create it. It sounded so good. I too wanted to have rainbows and stars burst out of me when I ate this creation. But how to do it? The pie filling couldn't be too sweet, or the frosting would lose it's power. But it needed to taste delicious enough to be deemed Super. I wanted cake to feature also, as I do really love cake. And then one night, while eating ice cream, with the help of my friend Jackie, I knew how I could create it.

FIRST LAYER: Pastry shell - mmm delicious homemade pastry
SECOND LAYER: Homemade vanilla custard. My first attempt at custard, though I followed the recipe perfectly, was not great, so I made it up the second time and it came out awesome. Hooray for adding condensed milk to things!
THIRD LAYER: Passionfruit Curd - I used this recipe
FOURTH LAYER: Cinnamon vanilla cake
FIFTH LAYER: The most important part.....PINK ICING

Sometimes i'm humble about baked goods....this was not one of those times. It was SOOOO GOOOOOOOD. I'm going to make it again very soon, yum yum yum.



Thank you Allie, for putting this idea in my head. If I could send you Super Pie from Australia without it getting gross, I totally would.

Pemberley and Princesses

Yay costume time again! Two of my lovely friends and I went to Abbey Museum's Picnic at Pemberley a few weeks ago, and it was just wonderful! We dressed up like English ladies...



Sampled delicious delicacies...



Danced a jig around the maypole...



And played a round of croquet...



The weekend after that I had the pleasure of attending a Disney themed 21st party. The birthday girl Teneka had been having trouble finding a costume, so in the week leading up to her big night, I made her a Cinderella inspired dress. As there was a time constraint, it's not the best costume I've ever created, but she looked beautiful and was absolutely thrilled with it!



I had one morning to make my costume, so I decided on something very simple, but pretty! I often go as villains, so it was really nice being able to go as a princess for once, even if it was in her 'peasant' outfit (I like this one more anyway!) So, with my red hair covered by a gorgeous blonde wig, black corset laced over a white blouse and totally quick grey skirt sewn, I became Briar Rose (as Sleeping Beauty/Aurora is known before she discovers she's a princess!)Pictured here with Jess, who looked AMAZING as Ursula!