Melty Art

So I've been seeing this all over the Internet lately but I didn't know how to do it until now. I looked it up and found it is very easy. So here we go: my adventure in making art with old crayons.
1. Cover your workspace with newspaper. This is very important as melted wax is messy etc.

2. Gather supplies... You need lots of crayons. I used old ones.

5. Arrange them in any order

3. If you want to, you may unwrap them. I did this, as I don't like the look of the Labels and my crayons are of various brands.

4. Hot glue your crayons one by one along the top edge of the canvas. I snapped mine in half as my canvas was smaller but you may leave them whole, it is really up to you.

5. I added a drawing to mine. This was inspired my many I saw with umbrellas and people so credit where credit is due. Draw them in pencil first. If you have umbrellas, cut out cardboard as shown and attach with tape loops to keep the wax off. You may need to press down on these to hold them in place when you are melting nearby.

6. This is the fun part. Lean your canvas against something, and take a blow dryer to the crayons :) melt as much as you like. I recommend keeping the blow dryer pointing straight down, otherwise the wax may "splatter" to the sides and mix the colors.

7. Remove the cardboard and paint your silhouettes or fill with sharpie. I had to cut out one figure because the wax got under the cardboard, so just make sure to thoroughly cover the area you want clean.

Enjoy! :)

Reader's Playlist- Looking for Alaska

So I'm a book nerd.

Although I'm pretty sure that's rather obvious already.

I have an odd habit of making playlists to go with books I enjoy, and I thought maybe I'd share them here. I like to look around for fitting songs or bits of songs, and just put something together that feels right. So here it is.
I tried to capture everything in here: the fast pace, the intensity, the feeling of before and after.

Looking for Alaska 

That Girl- Plain White T's

Everybody Talks- Neon Trees

I'm Yours- Jason Mraz

Natural Disaster- Plain White T's

It's Time- Imagine Dragons

Ho Hey- The Lumineers

We Are Young- Fun.

I Won't Give Up- Jason Mraz

Skyway Avenue- We the Kings

Serious Mistake- Plain White T's

How to Save a Life- The Fray

Chasing Cars- Snow Patrol

Boston- Augustana

You and Me- Lifehouse

Breakeven- The Script

On Twilight

--I would just like to say that I'm not trying to be high and mighty or talk down to anyone. I am simply voicing my personal opinion. Whether you agree is up to you.--

So today I saw breaking dawn, part two.
I have seen all the other movies as well, but me being a DIE-HARD Harry Potter fan, I was never able to admit that I enjoyed them before.

But, while watching Taylor Lautner turn into a large computer generated wolf today, while watching Kristen Stewart fly off cliffs into forests, I thought about it for a moment.
There is really no reason, in my eyes, to pit Harry Potter and Twilight against each other. They're nothing alike and were never meant to compete. Both are HUGE franchises. And both have die hard fans. When I was watching the Cullens and the werewolves battle the voltori, the cheers that came from around me were as enthusiastic as any that I heard when Mrs. Weasley spoke her infamous line as I sat in the midnight showing of the deathly hallows part 2 a year ago.
And really. Really, honestly, the movie pulled me in. I'm not ashamed to admit it anymore, it was intense. And in the end it's a story like any other.
If we call ourselves readers we should, in my opinion, be able to respect all kinds of stories.
While I don't think I'll ever love twilight as much as I love my beloved Hogwarts friends, I have nothing against it anymore either.
It's a story like any other and it has work put into it, I'm sure.
Maybe I'll even read all the books now.
:)

Sonoran Panorama

I have always loved the Sonoran Desert for as long as I can remember.
This is a rather old panorama and the first one I ever took.
You can see the "stitch" lines in places, in the sky and mountains where my imperfect skills in photoshop are shown...
It took quite a lot of time if I remember correctly and I just realized that it has been sitting on my desktop for some time now so I thought I would post it.

:)

-Sam

click to see full size 

Harry Potter Cake

For a 9th Birthday party.

I'm pretty happy with it :)

(I have been trying to post this for over a week but it seems blogger has been messed up.)

Fleece Quilt

I have now effectively spent my entire day making a quilt out of fleece scraps.
Althought not the colors I would have chosen if it were up to me, this was what we had lying around and I don't think it came out too bad, comparatively.
I used a flannel sheet on the back, which, although it does not match, will probably make it extra warm.

Fleece Quilt

Making progress.
Determined to finish today...