Girl in Shadows

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Wow, I’m so glad I decided to keep going with this piece! And I am so excited to start playing with shadow and depth going forward.

The paper I used for the shadows – the gold horses on black – is one I got a while ago and have been waiting for the right moment to use. I wasn’t sure how it would work with the other golds in the piece, and you can see I ended up changing her hair color because the old hair blended in too well. But yeah, I’m super pleased with the result! I also think just the shadow part on it’s own is cool.

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Body vs. Clothes

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Both of the original photos for these women had them in dark, drab colors, and I started thinking about the things we can change about ourselves, and the things we can’t. You can change your clothes and hair, but you can’t really change much about your skin, and it’s certainly a process if you want to change your aura.

For this girl, I decided to change all her clothes to be bright and colorful, but her skin I wanted to be duller and more pensive – filled with small sepia type like someone who is totally in her own head. I also used the stripes for her hair because even though I wanted it to be colorful, I still wanted it to be limp and stringy.

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20140302-131010.jpgAlso can I just say that I made 4 pairs of shoes for this girl before I found ones I liked? High maintenance and indecisive, just like I created her to be, haha. Also, if anyone knows of shoes like the bee ones in real life, please let me know!!

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For this girl, I decided to keep the dark clothes, contrasted with her light hair and skin. But I felt a sense of calm and peace that I wanted to capture with her skin, and I also think it captures the tattoos. This is definitely more of a literal translation than I generally go for, but I kind of like it.

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The Lakes Project

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My best friend from childhood asked me to help make the table markers for her Minnesota wedding, and she said that she wanted each table to be a different Minnesota lake.  I decided to pick all our favorite lakes from growing up, and then a few others with either fun names or fun shapes or both!  I used a different blue scrapbooking paper for each lake, and made a border for them all with the same sandy orange (the wedding colors were blue and orange, so it worked out!) I made the lakes 2-sided so that they could stand up, which means that from one side you’re looking at the lake from underneath, which I think is fine.  I made corresponding name cards for each of the lakes using the orange as the center, and the blue for the border, which was cool because then people could find their lakes just based on the pattern, and because the backs of some of the blue papers were really awesome and this way people got to see them!

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Secret Valentine’s Day

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I organized a Secret Valentine exchange for my work and we were only allowed to spend $5, and homemade gifts are always appreciated, so I decided to make the card (I also got my valentine a small plant). I made a heart out of like 20 different papers and then collaged them together on the front of a blank card. Happy almost Valentine’s Day!

Models

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Also while I was bored at home recovering, I made some portraits of models from magazine ads. 

The gold hair girl is my favorite – crazy hair is always the most fun to make. 

20140126-154714.jpgThe one of the green girl I donated to my friend’s Marathon fundraiser and apparently it became a new New Yorker’s first piece of art for her new apartment!

20140126-154722.jpg(Gold Hair and Blue Mom are available if you’re interested)

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Girl with a Gun

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A friend told me he liked my art, but that he thought it would really only appeal to chicks (which wasn’t the first time I’d heard that).  He said if I wanted to make something for dudes it would have to be a girl holding a gun or something.  Done.

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Thank You Cards

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With all my time staying home recovering from surgery and unable to do much, I decided to make thank you cards for all my amazing friends who took care of me and kept me company.  These are all cutouts from scrapbooking paper.

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These ones were cutouts of images from the different papers

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These were all doodles of mine that I traced and cut out

20131230-220738.jpgThis one was taken from magazine picture, I think it was a nail polish ad or something

Dear Surgeon

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I tore my ACL playing soccer and was a little terrified about surgery.  I decided to make a card for my surgeon with a guilt-trippy message about “thank you in advance for making me able to run again” and “I’m so grateful to be in the hands of such a respected surgeon” or whatever, and I put an image of a girl running on the front.  The hardest part of this was making so small an image, but it worked out. And he did a good job!

Self Portrait 2

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A boyfriend at the time took a picture of me that he really liked, but I did not at all. So to get rid of it I made it into this portrait, which I do like.

Cellist for Grandma

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My grandmother was a wonderful cellist, and she loved everything music related, so for her 80th birthday I made her a cellist portrait. I used glossy paper to make up the instrument itself in order to make it pop a little bit.

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