This is Awesome!

Amazing infographic on weightloss/diets.... Basically telling me I'm on the right track!

More Health and Fitness News & Tips at Greatist.

So... I know I JUST posted something...

But I was inspired by Kaelah of little chief honeybee to begin my own 30 day detox!

NOW.... if you know me it may come as a shock to you that I will not be blogging, tweeting or facebooking about anything negative in the next thirty days. Holy crap, right? This is going to be majorly difficult for me. But certain persons have been on my case lately about the amount of whinging coming from my direction. I've been sick though :( I feel I owe it to that individual and myself to take a brighter stance on life for thirty days. Who knows... maybe it will stick?

So when I say negative I basically mean no complaining or anything nasty and cranky. I will give myself some room to be funny but I will try not to laugh at the expense of others as much as I so often do (oops! ;) )

Also, I have been back on weight watchers for a couple of weeks now and doing my points religiously. I actually worked out the other day for forty-five minutes and it felt great. So I should think maybe I will keep that up. Also, a certain party has been pressuring me to start taking iron again and my vitamins. The results with the iron were instant, if my mind isn't deceiving me. I have had 100% more energy everyday since I have been taking them. I've had a reduced appetite and my joints don't feel so achy. I credit my working out with taking iron... it's pretty cool. Now that I'm taking iron I don't have to eat red meat as often too. Red meat has never really sat well with me. It makes me feel hung over or something the day after I eat it and break out. It's just a big mess.

So, I am excited to begin on this journey of exploring positivity. Just in time for summer, too! I will try to keep up with posts and sketches along the way and document the next thirty days. Yay for me!

via www.frenchsampleroom.com

neener neener got this amazing print from French Paper Co. because I ordered some beautiful paper from them! xD

Narwhals

So I've been working on this narwhal project for info graphics... I've given it an old sea tale kind of look. I'm still glad I picked a narwhal after several weeks of working on it. They're actually really interesting. For example, did you know they are the deepest diving mammal on earth? They also have compressable/ expandable lungs. Their tusks are filled with never endings and are used for locating prey and kind of like a sonar. We still don't know that much about them as they're really secretive and feed very deep in the water of the arctic! Lol... anyways I do tend to get carried away about narwhals. Here's some of what I have worked on:

Labels n' Stuff

Haven't been around much now that the BF is in town. He's leaving tomorrow. QQ.

While he was in town we did manage to get out to Iowa and took some pretty fun pictures. We had some great eats in Galena. Also stopped at the stinky cigarette casino in Dubuque. It was pretty icky in there and we didn't win anything.

In between all of our running around I did manage to get some work done in my package design class. the concept was to make the wrap like one of those Mexican fiesta celebration flags. Those are cool right? I couldn't find any place to print on clear vinyl for me for the label wrap. Without spending a lot of money I just kept getting this transparent looking crap that looked ugly when I wrapped it around the bottle. Finally I gave in and used the color of the soda for the die-cut areas. I think it came out OK! Jarritos, feel free to contact me! ;)

Spring is here!

...and yet again I am overwhelmed with school work! I had intended to do my first outfit post but I haven't been feeling camera-ready lately. Perhaps after I get my hair colored and trimmed and my boyfriend arrives on Tuesday he will be kind enough to take a photo or two of me in my duds.

In the meantime I have been getting friendly with my new Canon Rebel XS. I got it for a steal at Target over spring break. It was marked down on clearance and I bought the display model and got the camera as well as all the accessories I needed for under $400. Not bad, not bad at all!

I took the camera outside in natural light for the first time today to see what it was really capable of.  I had only been taking pictures of my cats in my room up until today.

I took over two hundred pictures of all the daffodils in bloom and a few photos of the crocuses coming up. I went to load my photos and it said they had all transferred to my laptop so I selected "delete all pictures on camera", then the program froze, so I force quit. I went to check my new photo set and nothing was there! All but five of my photos were deleted from my camera. ::crying on the inside:: I guess I'll do it all over tomorrow. The flowers will be all dewy in the morning anyways.

However I did manage this one

I also started a small garden with my nephew. We are growing giant Russian sunflowers, watermelon, broccoli, zucchini, catnip :3, and strawberries. The sprouts on some of the sunflowers are up and the broccoli are coming through too. More photos to come. Enjoy these first days of spring.

Update:
Went out this morning around 8a.m. and got these. It is unusually warm all of a sudden today.. storms later possibly tornadoes? Boooo.

Don't mind my precious big boy, Stuart! He loves the camera.

Getting My Hands Dirty

As of late there has been a lot of discussion inside and outside of the classroom about doing your artwork by hand and putting a personal touch to everything that you do in design. I wasn't aware there was another way to design besides creating everything from scratch (except typefaces... but there are exceptions to that as well when it's appropriate.). I don't understand how people can grab a google image and slap it into their artwork claiming it as their own. It troubles me... but most things people do in general trouble me!

Anyways, when I look for inspiration I try to use elements of things that inspire me. As artists and designers I believe it's important to be influenced by other designers/artists. However, if I was to use something completely not my own--- as I have seen several students in my classes do, and pass it off as my own.. well I don't think I would be able to sleep at night. How can you be in graphic design school and rip off other people's work? If you don't like to DESIGN what the hell are you doing at design school? I wish those people would leave and stop taking up valuable instructor time.

This all comes after having several frank discussions this week with some classmates I respect... and a rather nasty run-in with a classmate I don't get along with very well! It was nice to hear that I am not the only person who feels this way in my classes.

Spring break is only two days away and I am really looking forward to it. I'm not going anywhere special or anything like that. I plan to head to Blick or the hardware store and pick up some items to start putting together a little screen printing studio in my basement. Nothing fancy... just something simple to get me started. I've always wanted to try it and be able to make prints with white ink. However, before I actually go out and buy anything I need to read more about the photo-emulsion stuff. I don't quite understand it yet.... and I need to find somewhere that can print transparencies.

I just adore this print! I have it as the background on my desktop at the moment. Courtesy of Alyssa N. of Small Talk Studio. Love her really whimsical but causal illustrations and her use of color is really cheery. I hate raccoons... but I absolutely love this.

I want to post all my new purchases soon.... I think I'll do it Saturday only after finals are completely done.

UPDATE: Amazing and amusing screen print tut from Etsy

Finals Week!

I've done some shopping in the past two weeks but have been too busy to post any outfits/ purchases because of finals. However, I will say I am loving H&M this spring. More to come soon! Here's a little preview of my ice cream-themed Collateral project :)

Fat tuesday approaches...

I have been trying to get this blog together for a while. I had a billion excuses not to do it: I don't have a D-SLR camera, I am constantly busy with other projects at school, I have four cats who always need attention, and a bunch of little side projects always nagging at me to be finished.

The thing that changed my attitude towards creating a blog were all the other blogs I have been seeing that really inspired me... not that I plan to greatly influence the life of others ... I just think it's really thoughtful to share your experience with the rest of the world and it would be cool if someone got something out of it.

Anyways, Fat Tuesday is coming up and I went to Walmart today with my sister and got some pączki to follow the tradition. My Polish Grandma pronounces it, "poonch-ki" so I assume that is correct. (She has been wrong in the past, much to the amusement of everyone else.) For the past few years, I have noticed the packaging Walmart has done on these. It seems really minimal and uber Polish but I suppose that's why I like it.

I already ate one of those delicious jelly-filled hockey pucks, let's hope I don't have too many more.

More to come soon.... maybe some fashion-y stuff and some art-y stuff... definitely cat pictures!