Choke People

Crazy crowded everywhere for New Years celebrations. This is in Harajuku, but it was the same at Tsukiji and Ameyoko as well. Me and Landon joined the crowd along with the rest of the tour group, but came right back to the bus after only a little while. Waaaay too nuts. After this we heading to Shinjuku Crossing, busiest intersection in the world.

Am blogging this from the bus BTW. using a pocket Wi-Fi I rented from KDDI on Kaheka. Thank you Phyllis for the scoops! Super, super handy!

Fell Off Da Wagon

Wagyu yakiniku. Sorry having trouble posting from iPad.

Kurisumasu Omedeto

MERRY CHRISTMAS, PEOPLES!!  Hope you have a good one! I gotta go finish cleaning house before my family gets here, but didn't wanna neglect you guys today.

Guess where I'll be tomorrow! 

JAPAN!!  Wendell didn't wanna leave Kona so just me and Landon are going. It'll be a really short trip. We come home on New Year's Day. 

Below is a glimpse of how I prep before a trip. 

Landon wanted to check out Go Go Curry while we're there. I found a picture of their ordering machine. It's all in Japanese so guess what I did. 


So nuts, yah! But was fun making the cheat sheet. Hope I no forget to bring it with us.

One Beeeg Lobstah

Landon caught this on his fishing pole. It scared me to death when I opened the 'fridge and saw it. 

He cut up the tail portion and cooked it with mayonnaise.  Was ono.  He also made miso soup. That was awesome. 

My Kona

Such a sweet dog my Kona boy. 

Checking In

How you guys doing? Pau Christmas stuff? Baking? Shopping? Hope so.  I think I'm mostly pau. I must say that Amazon has made Christmas shopping a whole lot easier for me. So convenient and stressless.  I just love it!!

I forced myself to stay away from crafting/art-ing for a bit (one week?) to tend to HoHoHo stuff. 

It was such a cool feeling to be sitting back down at my craft desk when I returned to it . . . so joyful.

I totally mucked up this face. I picked up the wrong color Copic marker to shade (the pink outline). I couldn't fix it so I decided to do flaming hair to distract from it. LOL.


I painted the background on this page with black gesso and then used matte medium to glue down torn pieces of silk napkins on it. The napkins are leftover from ones that I used to make favors for Sweetie's wedding about 20 years ago! I think they're so pretty! 


I don't really know what this saying means, but I like it. 


Random question: Does creating new online accounts and having to deal with User Names, Passwords and Security Questions and their Answers stress you out? Dunno why but it totally stresses me out. 

New Art Journal

Here's the bolohead girl I told you about. She's shaded using a technique taught in Jane Davenport's book called glazing. You mix matte medium into acrylic paint to make it translucent. The different areas of shading are painted in layers. I  used Ceramcoat paint and Liquitex Matte Medium. 



Here's another page I'm working on. I got the idea from the internet. It's fun. 


This is the journal book I'm using now.  It was on sale at Fisher for 25% off. I think I paid $5 something. Not sure if it's still on sale, but you should go get one. 


I named this journal "embrace imperfection" to remind myself that everything in the journal need not be perfect, and that I should just relax and enjoy creating pages. I made this title page using Stampin' Up stamps.


K den, it's Marathon Sunday and I can hear commotion going on outside. But for me, that means it's cookie baking day. I took the butter out earlier and it's 7:45 am now. I best be getting to it. 

Latest

Nothing really interesting to share so here's a page from my Volume 2 Art Journal. It's actually not my latest. My latest page is a scary-looking bolohead girl. I'll show you guys later.

I painted this with some Winsor and Newton acrylics that I got in a small set from Ross for $5. I really, really like the quality of the paint. This scene evolved from the shapes of the torn-up ephemera that I had glued on and painted over. It wasn't planned . . . it just happened.

I seem to like things floating in air . . . first a kite, then a balloon and now flower petals. The girl is similar to one in my Jane Davenport book.

Perfect Project

I've been volunteering for a few hours a week at Lunalilo Home in Hawaii Kai. I help the adult day-care staff with small-kine stuff. 

Iwa, the day-care coordinator, gave me this Christmas project . . . to paint and write names on ornaments. Howzdat for the perfect project for me, yah!

Faces Faces Faces

I'm into faces right now.  Soooooo hard.