BRB

… gone surfing.

Yeah, I’m leaving in about an hour to go to a surf camp in LA hosted by Fellowship of Christian Athletes. I’ve gone two years before, but they were in Santa Barbara. We’ll have to see what the waves in Ventura this year. No internet access or laptop, so bummer on the uploads and posts. Schoolwork as well, since they won’t let me bring my laptop to turn in my Algebra homework. :/ (There went my Math grade and my college GPA. ) I’ll take lots of photos, though.

Ugh, I have to go pack now. Why do they have to make us leave so freaking early?? We don’t even get to surf today- they just go through orientation and all that jazz. We don’t hit the waves until tomorrow, and thats when the fun starts. Ah, well. And Kyo, if you read this, I’m only taking your DC sweater instead of the coloring book one as well, because that poor sweater is dirty enough as it is. Don’t worry, I won’t wash this one. I’ve learned my lesson.

Apple MagSafe Power Adapters…

… are effing expensive. I hope you’re happy, Sushi.

Making Handmade Paper

I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time, and the perfect opportunity finally came up to test it. We went through our annual tornado-cleaning week at our house and my mother was like, ‘what am I going to do with all these old checks?! (these were left over from years past, where banks used to return your check after you cashed it) I don’t want to sit here and shred them all by hand, and I don’t want to go out and buy a shredder!’ Giddily, I diverted all that paper from going into the trash and instead into the blender. Then, I proceeded to pulverize the snot out of them, spending a good three hours discovering the nuances and pains of making paper by hand.

I’ll likely go into the details of the process in another post, but here’s a picture of the highly sophisticated paper machinery that I used- my screen (scrap wood and the living room window screen), deckle (more scrap wood), plastic storage tub, and my trusty bathtub.

I didn’t really have a good idea of how to make the paper dry flat, so I just plastered the wet sheets against my closet mirror doors. Hey, it worked! Don’t judge me!

Meanwhile, Sushi played DJ by sprawling across my laptop and repeatedly changing the song every-time she moved or stretched. Cat’s don’t make very good DJs.

Aloha e aloha e~!

‘Ano ‘ai ke aloha e~!

Been working on and off on the Stitch painting, and am really proud of it. This is quite possibly my favorite thing I have ever done. I downloaded some new photoshop brushes and tried grooving with those for a while, but it will take me a long time before I get used to painting with texture. (As opposed to layering texture on after the painting process, which is what I do now.) I just stuck with the regular Photoshop provided brushes instead- can’t go wrong. I think I’m getting to a finishing point on this one. But now I wanna go surfing. Bah.

Lilo & Stitch © Disney, artwork © Stephanie Sperling

Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride © Mark Keali’i Ho’omalu & Disney

Just passing through…

Don’t have a lot of time or energy to post, so here’s just a WIP of Stitch that I’ve been playing around with for the last couple of weeks…

Lilo & Stitch © Disney, artwork © Stephanie Sperling