Goodbye 2014.... What?

2014 is drawing to a close, and I feel a little sad. All in all it was a crazy fun year. I made a list of some of the cool things I did this year. Because reasons. And I love lists :)

Things I did this year:

-Went to Norway (first time, gosh it was fun! Even in January)

-Went to Maker Faire (loved it!)

- Got bit by a dog 

- Had friends over (another first, Sarah, Quinne and Chantel came for a visit in April)

- Made a princess Anna costume 

- Bought a DSLR ( a Nikon D5100 *sigh of happiness*)

- Went home! 

- Went to my sister's graduation 

- Went Camping ( I love going to stumpy, by the end I was rather epic with a sword ;)

- Made cinnamon buns in a pie iron over the fire ( yummmmmmmm) 

- Got the biggest bruise in the history of my life (it covered a good portion of my thigh, and looked like the galaxy, purple, pink and blue all swirled together. )

- Had a great conversation about injuries 

- Got baptised :)

- Went to Artlife 

- Participated in a flash mob 

- Made a movie! (Er short film thing, adapted from a scene from a book. Link)

- Went to Saskatchewan (saw the tunnels of Moosejaw :)) one post another post

- Went to Drama Camp

- Threw an early birthday party (the first one since I turned 13) 

- Had a photo shoot in the library with my best friend (only one stranger stared, but I think she felt left out ) 

- Made an Elsa costume: lame pictures, cool pictures

- Turned 16 ---interview---

- Made an international music video with Quinne

- Met Johanna in Germany ---video---

- Climbed 280 stairs in a TINY church tower (THAT was fun)

- Made a Robin Young Justice costume 

- Started volunteering with the preschool class at an English school

- Visited the Mall of Istanbul and made a vlog 

I can't wait to see what 2015 brings :) 

Fog & Spider's webs

It was foggy yesterday morning when I got up. Completely contrary to my nature I went out and took some pictures before breakfast, and I’m glad I did!

I really like the idea of photo stories, so I thought I’d try it myself. It was all spur of the moment, and I didn’t know how long the fog would last; so I didn’t have time to come up with a very interesting story line. I thought I’d post the images here, though if you want to see a better one, click here.

I'm calling this The Adventurer.

I was on my way back to the house when I saw this spider’s web. Now I am not at all fond of spiders or their icky-spooky webs, but this bejewelled web is the exception.

#goodoneGod

Istanbul and Fish (but mostly fish)

We went to Istanbul for the weekend so we could finish our Christmas shopping and be out-of-dodge for a while. 

We went to the Mall of Istanbul for the first time. It's HUGE and has lots of English and American stores, plus an indoor amusement park. 

We also went through the Grand Bazaar and the pet market, which is near the New Mosque.  

The pet market was small and crowded. They had pretty much every pet there, fish, mice, rabbits, parrots, puppies, little birds, and even a few heritage chickens. 

I got some good pictures of the fish tanks:

I wrote a song!

Yup yep I think I did. Give it a listen :)

Batman and Robin Comics

Batman's parenting style II
(I was too lazy to import it into Photoshop and make it pretty. I may yet but not yet x) )
 It is no secret that I am fond in love with a fan of obsessed with Batman and Robin.
Hey they're my thing.
You know what else is my thing? Comics! (I have a lot of things)
And lately those two things have been colliding/meshing/coming together something has been happening in my brain and these are the results:

(They have DeviantArt watermarks because I downloaded them from my account)

Batman's parenting style I

Batman's parenting style II
(I was too lazy to import it into Photoshop and make it pretty. I may yet but not yet x) )

 

 

And finally a Christmas themed one, Mistletoe. The idea came to me while I was listening to this song, goodness my brain is  crazy absurd random.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Week in Germany - Video!

I love   really enjoy filming and editing videos of my/our adventures, here is the video I made of our trip to Germany in November.
Enjoy :)

Oh by the way the song is Where No One Goes, by Jonsi. It's one of my favourites :)

Monthly Report Cards: December 2014 GOALS

December is heeeeere and it’s time for holiday cheeeeeeeer!



Don’t spend the month feeling homesick and wishing I was in Alberta.
I miss snow I miss cold I miss English I miss carpet I miss pets I miss friends I miss Christmas lights I miss family I miss our oven I’m done.

 Read at least two Bible books
I am currently reading Luke, maybe I’ll read Mark next?

Have a photo shoot
A good old fashioned one where I do my hair and post 3 similar pictures to Flickr to try to make up for the 68451 days of my 365 project I’ve missed.

Make something
Out of fabric, out of foam, out of paper, out of clay, I don’t know. Something.

Write that stupid English paper
Uhhhhhh…… yeah.

Johanna's goals are here

Monthly Report Cards: November 2014 REPORT

Yay! The thrilling month of December, we have two big birthdays to look forward to this month. One for my big sista, and one of course for Jesus. :)

Document my trip to Germany
I think I did a pretty good job on this. I have tons of pictures, (shall I post some of them?) and I took some video, which I am in the process of attempting to upload (youtube is NOT cooperating.)

Film another music video
Hahhahahahaha funny. We are so lazy, I thought about it several times, but there always seems to be other things to do.

Take a break from writing
Yup yep completely *high fives all around* I might actually feel like writing again.
Maybe.

Draw
Yes! I even coloured a comic in photoshop! It's so much stinking work but digital drawings look so snazzy.
Johanna's report card is here

Robin!

I finished my latest project: a Robin cosplay.

It was fun all in all, I discovered I really like making things with foam. Do I see foam armor in my future? I don't know, we shall see I suppose.

I didn't take very many pictures when I went out. I'm blaming it on the fact that my camera remote died on me. Sigh, I thought it would last longer, I wonder if it's under warrenty..... *shrugs*

Very Fairy Ordinary (A Photoshoot)

You know me, spontaneous, no forethought just "hey I think I'll do this!"

That pretty much sums up all my craft projects & photo shoots.

Aaaannny ways, I was looking through my Flickr photostream (link in the side bar somewhere) when I came across some night pictures I took a while back. And it got me thinking, how cool would it be to take some fantasy/ fairy inspired photos with the same technique. And thus started an hour and a half of making fair wings.

Thanks to my trusty assistant (Sam) I got a boat load of pictures. But as usual only three really turned out.

I think this one is my favourite.

I feel like the wings would have worked better if they were

A. Not made of cardboard and duct tape
B. if I had allowed the glue to dry before the shoot.

 

The Gift of Light

Monthly Report Cards: November 2014 Goals

What? It's November? These past two months have flown by, goodness gracious!
On to my goals for this month.

Document my trip to Germany 
I read an article about documenting your train journey with photographs. They had some really neat ideas that I'm excited to try out.

Film another music video
Quinne and I already have another song in mind. We just have to get it done :)


Take a break from writing
I'm running out of ideas, time to take a break and recharge.

Draw 
 I haven't been doing this much. Plus I just of a Deviant art account. Yay for extra motivation!


You can read Johanna's here (well if she does one that is. hint hint ;) )

International Music Video!

Hey hey hey!

Quinne and I made an international music video! It was fun, but not quite as fun as making one whike we're together. There are two versions of this video, Quinne's edit and mine. I'll add a link to hers as soon as she uploads it.

My edit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pv2KF1YgT-I&feature=youtu.be

Quinne's edit https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ipZIKlL57sI&feature=youtu.be

Reasons to Love Frozen

Frozen is such a fun movie, here are ten reasons I like it:

1. The Duke of Weasel Town
I didn't know how a chicken with the face of a monkey danced until he showed me.
(Also his hair)


2. This man
Look at his sweater! And his face! And his hat! Adorable!


3. Anna and her face


4. Anna and her social skills



5. Anna and her rad punching skills


6. Little Anna


7.  Anna in general


8. Kristoff' - always willing to support you


9. Sven


10. Olaf


Like the talking snowman would know




Links to my other 'Reasons to Love" series
Reasons to love Rise of the Guardians

Reasons that I love & hate HTTYD 2

Reasons to love Flynn Rider

Monthly Report Cards October 2014 - oops

Haha okay well I decided in September that I'd let this slide. But someone mentioned that they missed it, so I'll start back up again. And anyways, it's sort of fun (:
See you in November!

Viva La Vida

Goodness I like that song! I've been playing it for a year now, and finally managed to record a not terrible version. It's on sound cloud if you want to give it a listen. :)

https://soundcloud.com/nicolem-4/viva-la-vida

The Forging of a Ring of Power

I don't know where these ideas come from. But I got it in my head that I should make the One Ring, I had all the components lying around, so why not?

The materials I had on hand were probably less than ideal. My clay was natural (ie dirt) and 60% dry. I fixed this by putting a few chunks of clay and some water in a plastic bag over night. The result? Paste.

I had several ideas about how I would go about making the ring.

1. Make it in a ring shaped mold
this failed horribly, but I think it's because of the clay I was using. It also may have had something to do with the fact that my mold was made of a bottle cap and candle wax. (You cannot fault my creativity)

2. Pipe the clay from the bag into a circle shape
The clay was too soft and did not hold its shape at all

3. Put tape on my finger and put clay on it
 I couldn’t get the ring off without it crumbling

Unabashed by these failures I decided to utilize what I learned and try again. I put more clay and water (less water this time) together, and this time it turned out better.

Forming the ring on my finger was close to the right technique so I found a lid about the same diameter as my finger, wrapped it in tape, and formed the ring on the lid.

This worked WAY better than anything else I'd tried. However, one the clay dried, it cracked. I filled in the hole with new clay and waited again for it to dry. The patch didn't bond well to the ends of the ring, so I glued it in.

Then came the painting; the first thing I did was prim the ring.

Then came the REALLY tricky part: painting it the right colour. 

It took me several attempts before it occurred to me that the One Ring has a metallic shine to it (maybe because it's metal).
So I went on Youtube to try and figure out how to make matte paint metallic. I found this wonderful lady who told me to use cheap, shiny eye shadow and Modepodge. Well that would be perfect if I had gold eye shadow and Modepodge. So instead I mixed white glue, yellow & brown paint (not pictured), and light pink eye shadow.

 

This is what it looked like once my concoction was painted on:

 

A quick Google search brought up the inscription on the ring. I copied it (poorly) in brown fine-tip marker.

Aaaand it's finished. My preciousssss!

Speed Painting anyone?

So I randomly filmed myself painting, and then turned it into a speed painting.

link to video on youtube

I was inspired by this:

http://pinterest.com/pin/522136150522583919/

What I've been doing and pictures!

Goodness, I didn't realize it had been so long since I'd posted anything. But anyways, here I am, still breathing, so that's good.

I'm happy to say that I have several reasons for my absence.
 Naturally school is the first,

then probably drawing,

writing useless bits of fan fiction and photography.

Speaking of photography, I've been using my DSLR pretty regularly.

I took these today. (Since I don't have photoshop elements I've had to find another program to edit pictures. Fotor.com is fabulous if you want to change the colours/add filters/change the curve of the photo. But that's basically all the side does. I'm still looking for a program that will let me add Brad Pitt to the photo. There was talk about adding him to a certain group picture in front of a certain Trojan Horse, but I digress.

These next ones are older, the first one is from last night.