Indigo League Gym Badge charms

So maybe my interests have been hovering around Pokemon lately. Yesterday, I made a set of gym badges from the first Pokemon series' of games:

While I'll be the first to admit that some of the badges need a little bit of improving upon, I think the work I did was awesome for a first attempt. Especially the Rainbow Badge, which instantly turned into my favourite. <3

I also made some Pokeballs the other day and used one as a little end piece to my bracelet:

I'm having so much fun with this clay. Once I get my perler bead shipment in, I'll be back on a perler kick!

Earlier today before work, I also organized all of my craft stuff. I want to buy a little Tupperware shelving unit to keep it all together nice and neatly. That will have to come eventually. 

Finally, my friend @marcieness was so kind to buy me a 3 month premium membership to Deviant Art after I pouted about being jealous of her membership and being too broke to buy my own. She's so sweet... so I'm gunna make her something. <3

Geekery

I've been making a lot of geek jewelry lately.

To make my life easier, I added the two words together and chalked it up as "geekery." Pretty sure someone coined it before me, but I would be tickled if I thought that one up all by myself. =P

Anyway.

So I made some geekery in the past few days. Some with perlers, some with clay. Yeah, clay is also my new obsession. Fricken... shoot me now. But first, the perlers:

Pokeball (from the Pokemon series)

Triforce (from the Zelda series)

They're super cute. I was wearing the Pokemon one around yesterday and our waitress at the restaurant we went to complimented me on it. She probably had no idea what it was, but she was sweet. =)

Yesterday, I bought some clay and decided to have fun. I had no idea what I would make, but I got home early from work last night and played around. This is what came about:

Pikachu charms (Pokemon)

Dratini earrings (Pokemon)

When I made the first pair (Pikachu), I fricken nearly died of a cuteness overload. They are soo tiny...! I'm pretty sure I could spend my life doing geeky jewelry.

Some other stuff I made that I plan to turn into magnets:

1up mushroom (from Mario)

Fire flower (also from Mario)

Invincibility star (again, from Mario)

Terra Branford (Final Fantasy 6) in Esper form

And I made these cute earrings too:

That's all for now! I guess you can tell I've been busy, hey?

Perler Bead Pokemon

I think I have a new obsession... 

Lately I've been seeing a lot of pictures of various cartoons done with Perler beads. To be honest, I forgot all about these things until I saw the pictures! As I kept looking around, the gears in my head started to turn... I realized I wanted to make beautiful creations using these beads. So... one day on my day off, after I ran all of my errands, I went price shopping for these beads.

Turns out that in Canada, Toys-R-Us is one of the cheapest places to buy these beads. Sadly, they don't sell the square boards. So I paid an arm and a leg for the boards at Michaels. I had to go there anyway for some jewelry stuff anyway, as I'm getting impatient with my latest online order... oops. =P

 Because the beads are all assorted in buckets, John and I started the tedious task of sorting them out... by shade... in baggies. I'm really quick about it now, but damn, was it a pain in the butt at first!

I was thinking about sorting them into individual colours later, but realized upon making my first creation that sorting them by shades is actually quite useful. :3

John asked me, amid our romantic night sorting beads, "What shall you make first?" I had no clue. I had a lot of ideas, sure. He suggested that maybe I start by making one of my favourite Pokemon. So I searched the internet for my favourite Pokemon teams over the many, many years...

>.>;

...and decided on Articuno!

The problem with some of the Pokemon sprites (like Articuno) is that they are huge. Like... 80 some-odd pixel huge. My pegboards are only about 29x29 (I think that's what John counted), and I have 4 of them. After some little adjustments (shrinking and putting the image onto a grid), I got to work.

In the first night, I accomplished this:

It only took about 2 hours! That's okay, right...? But after that initial 2 hours, I was hooked. I worked on it in bits and pieces before having to leave before work and working out.

Finally, last night, I finished him! (...Or "it," because Articuno is sexless, technically...)

Ironing this badboy was the tricky part. We only had the tiny pieces of parchment provided, so next time, I think we're definitely going to buy bigger pieces. It was certainly a learning experience, but I'm happy with what I created! I think this was an ambitious first creation.

...and needless to say, I'm going to have to get more blue beads. ^^;

Any requests for other Perler bead creations? Please let me know... I could do this all day! ...if I had all day.

The Phoenix

It's been a long time since the last time I drew something. To be honest, I can't even remember when that time was...

A few months back, I received an e-mail from a woman on a very old art account I used to have when I was much younger. Humouring myself, I clicked on the link. Much to my surprise, this woman had gotten a tattoo of one of my drawings on her arm. It was this one, something I had drawn for my mum back on August 4th, 2003:

I drew it on a whim and showed mum. She loved it so much, so I dedicated it to her. Since then, I've always associated the phoenix with my mother. Little did I know how much of a coincidence this piece of art would hold for my future.

My mother got very sick around this time: August, 2009. I remember visiting her one day in the hospital and seeing a card from one of her sisters, my aunty, there. It was a card with a phoenix on it. My mum struggled a lot throughout her life and in the hospital for 3 months before finally passing away in November of the same year.

My sisters and my step father all talked about getting tattoos to commemorate mum and remember her by. I knew I wanted to get a phoenix over my heart. I just needed the idea.

Finally, today, the idea came. Like most of my ideas, it came out of left field, out of nowhere. The moment it came into my head, I needed to get it out. So I did. An hour after the seed was planted, this is what transpired (one day shy of the 8 year anniversary of my first phoenix drawing to my mother):

My boyfriend and I watched Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets the other day. In the movie, Dumbledore explains to Harry that phoenix tears have healing capabilities. It all made so much sense. The pool of phoenix tears will sit right over my heart, which is in a constant state of healing. And mum will be perched upon my heart, the phoenix trying to heal my perpetually aching heart.

I don't remember much of how the drawing came to be. To be honest, it felt like I had blanked out... almost as though I was in a trance. I do remember crying, and hurting. After it was all said and done, I felt better. I think there was so much more healing than what the drawing was meaning to give me.


I needed that release.

Trying my hand at making some jewelry

It's nothing fancy... yet.

So far, certain thoughts or memories have inspired me to make a couple of pieces of jewelry. Two beads that I bought recently managed to fit inside one another to make a really cool African-inspired pair of earrings.

I saw these two beads and couldn't resist buying them to make them into something. I am thinking about how I can make a matching necklace or bracelet for these.

I made the earrings sometime last week, though because work has been so hectic, I haven't been able to share them until now.

This morning, I decided to try my hand at making a bracelet, and this is what I came up with:

 

Some matching earrings...:

As for inspiration, I'm really not sure. I was playing around with the beads... I knew I wanted to use those flowers (or stars, depending on how you see them). After I grabbed some pink beads, the bracelet started to remind me of Kirby and playing Kirby's Dream Land on my very, very old gameboy.

You know... the one with just 2 colours? Okay, maybe you don't know... haha. Either way, this bracelet makes me happy in that it reminds me of my carefree childhood.

That's about it for an update for now!

(...actually, that's a lie. I baked my first ever cherry pie, but I'm going to ask for a redo on that one. Hopefully take two will yield better photo opportunities. This pie ended up looking like something you'd find at a crime scene... the cherry filling wasn't all that forgiving or helpful).

I'll keep playing and finding inspiration. Until then!

Crocheting away

I re-learned how to crochet less than a week ago. The first few attempts at it was frustrating and slow. The slowness added to the frustration, too, so it ended up being a vicious cycle. After a bit though, I began to get the hang of it.

I decided my first project would be coffee cozies, or reusable coffee sleeves. Once I got the basic chains down it was just a matter of deciding how long and how tall I wanted each cozy. My first one took a painfully long time to make. I also realized I stitched it wrong... it still looks okay, though. Practice makes perfect, as they say, and with every mistake, I'm learning how to fix it and make it better for next time.

My first cozy you've already seen, but I am going to flaunt it again... haha.

I can't even describe how proud and happy I was to have made it. It was a huge sense of accomplishment. It made those feelings of frustration feel worth it.

Since then, I made a couple other cozies-in-the-making.

The top (pink) one I used a different stitch and made it while on the bus to work. I believe it's called a double stitch. The second (camo) one I made at work yesterday, as it was a pretty slow day. The stitch for that one is a single stitch... what the poppy cozy was supposed to be, but what (I think) is the actual correct way to stitch it, haha.

With my first coffee cozy, I realized I stitched the cozy too long... I was trying to think of a way to fix it without wasting all that yarn when I realized I could make a little button out of it. I saw a pattern for how to stitch a tiny flower and decided to give it a go. Again, a slow and painful process where the petals looked wonky, or the petals fused together, or whatever, but I got it done: my first flower!

I thought they were so adorable, so I made a bunch more to practice. I think I finally got the correct way to do it down with my last one, the camo flower.

 

The mistakes make the flowers look pretty unique, I think. Just like in nature, nothing's ever perfect or perfectly symmetrical... right?

Anyway, that's what I've accomplished in my less-than-a-week at crocheting! Some other things I really want to do is a baby blanket for my baby niece and maybe also a nice headband for her. Eventually, I'd love to get to the point of making clothes, but time to get the basics down first...


Take care!

How this all began...

After my trip to Ghana, I came home to realize that I don't feel quite right in Canada anymore, in particular, Calgary. Something about the world was scary to me... Calgary is a city that is very self-centered, cold, and reserved. Most people only care for themselves, and those actions are evident in areas such as driving, line-ups, people telling stories (about themselves), opinions on various things, people walking down the street with earbuds in... Granted, I'm also guilty of blocking out the world via earbuds when I'm traveling around the city on my own, however in my defense, what I need to say will fall on deaf (or already occupied) ears.

As a result, I find myself terribly alone in this country.

Not only that, but I work in a restaurant while I'm not in school. This adds to the loneliness, as I work nights and during weekends, so where it was terribly difficult to connect with people for a person in a similar situation, it is damn near impossible for me to do it now. Something about going to Africa changed me, too... I don't see things the same way anymore. Some people's comments or opinions really bother me and I can't seem to connect with people on this front either. Rather, their comments and opinions hurt my heart and push me away.

Life isn't black and white for me anymore. It's not ethnocentric. We aren't the center of the universe, contrary to popular belief. There are people around us, people who carry equal influence and importance. Maybe the sheer recognition of this fact is why I feel alone...
or set apart...
or something.

In an attempt to calm my heart, keep my sanity, and cope with this loneliness, I decided to (re)learn how to be alone. The other day, I re-learned how to crochet, and made this: my first coffee cozy. 

Feeling inspired, I bought a ton of beads and yarn. I want to outlet my feelings into something constructive instead of sitting around and moping or whining or crying. I want to get back into artwork. I miss having people ask me to do things like design them a tattoo.. there's no greater feeling than knowing what you have to offer is appreciated.

And hey, maybe that's what I crave, ultimately. So ... "Systematic Chaos" is my creativity blog.

It is also one of my favourite albums by one of my favourite bands, Dream Theater. 

<3