Pastel of a Bird

Cameron and I both love birds and the old naturalist drawings. Cameron wishes often he was born in that era and could have been out among the naturalists. We decided that it'd be fun to have our room be done in that naturalist style, focusing on birds. Slowly we're getting ideas of what we want to do, but it's coming slowly slowly slowly. Today I decided to add one thing to our bird room. I've had this photo pinned on my Bird Bedroom Pinterest Board for a while now:

http://www.etsy.com/listing/111843756/robin-limited-edition-giclee-print-from

I love it, but $140 is a little more than I want to pay for a picture at this point in our lives. So when something is too expensive what do you do? Make it yourself. I had a box of soft pastels that I hadn't yet learned how to use very well, so I decided to pull those out (since the original was done in pastels) and see if I could get something similar. 

My bird isn't as spectacular, but I'm pleased with how it turned out, especially for my first time with these pastels. I used an orange and a black colored pencil to help with some details after the initial drawing was done, but most of it is done with pastels. 

I see many things that I would try different this time, but I still like it. My pastels are big and chunky, so it was hard to get in and do fine details. Maybe I should have made it bigger (it's a 4x6) to help with that. I broke some of the pastels in half to get a sharper edge and that helped some, but not a lot. 

Young Women Value Superheroes

I work with the Young Women (the girls 12-18) at church. The worldwide theme this year is "Stand ye in Holy Places and Be Not Moved" but we decided that we wanted to have a ward theme as well. We wanted a theme that we could use at Girls Camp, in our Mutual activities, and that we could tie back to the worldwide theme. We finally hit on the idea of Super Heroes, with the "tagline" as "Find the Power Within". We'll use the superhero theme to talk about each girls strengths, talents, and faith and how finding those powers within them will help them to Stand in Holy Places and Be Not Moved. 

This past Wednesday was our New Beginnings (where we introduce the program and theme to the girls and their families). We wanted the superhero theme to be a surprise, and it took a little work to get everything to come together (the girls wanted to do a skit about the Young Women program and wanted to do a Disney princess theme...it took some finagling to get the superhero theme in there instead without blowing the secret, but they did it and did a wonderful job). 

For the skit the girls were worried that no one would know which super value was who, so they asked if I'd make some signs for them. Luckily I already had most of the symbols designed (hee hee). Here are the symbols (again, with the value color, and the letter(s) of the values)....and the green Knowledge symbol...that's the top half of the Young Women torch symbol...I know it looks like the Girl Scout head, but it's not supposed to be. 

We wanted the girls to have something superhero-ish to take home. I got playing with ideas and finally decided it would be fun to have a picture of the values as superheroes. I used a a picture of SuperGirl and the league of superheroes as my inspiration and made a picture of the 8 value superheroes. I combined that with the themes and the symbols into a bookmark for each girl. Here's how that turned out:

 

The Beginning of my Yo-Yo Curtains

In our orange and blue room we have some long white curtains hanging over the windows.

  I love them, but they are just kinda plain. I had the idea to turn them into a yo-yo curtain. So for about 2 months I have very slowly been making orange and blue yo-yo's. I finally had what I thought would be enough for a row or two on the curtain and figured I'd go ahead and just attach them at the bottom and as I made more, I'd add rows. Well...I found I only had enough for one row, with three yo-yo's left over. 

But I have a start, and that one row already adds a fun splash of color. 

I think before I add another row on bottom, I'll add one yo-yo to each hanging tab up on the top to help visually balance it out. I'm slowly learning how to decorate, and getting things done piece by piece. I have no idea what I want to do as far as wall hangings yet, so that one picture gets to be the lone ranger for a while.