Mar 30, 2013

Easter Eggs (from an artist's basket)

I was trying to figure out what to do with my easter eggs, besides the standard PAAS coloring kit. And I didn't really want to go out and buy a bunch of supplies, I didn't want coloring eggs to turn into an expensive project. Even dying eggs naturally with yellow onion skins, imagine the amount of onions you would have to buy to get enough skins! (Next year I should plan ahead and start saving onion skins in advance) Or what about dying naturally with blueberries? I'm sorry but I LOVE blueberries, I can't imagine boiling them to use for dye. Blueberries are expensive too and just to delicious to waste like that.

Luckily, I had hollowed out my eggs as I used them a couple weeks in advance. So I could decorate them with glue, glitter, etc and not have to worry about making them safe to eat. So, looking at whatever art supplise I had on hand at the moment. I decided to make speckled eggs. The base color was your standard food dye, specifically Wilton's concentrated frosting food coloring in Teal. I added a little bit to boiling water with a spoonful of distilled vinegar. Then for the speckling, I used brown india ink art pens, and water soluble colored pencils in various shades of brown and a small paintbrush. VoilĂ , the result - beautiful robin's blue eggs.




Jan 28, 2013

About Me

Hi, I'm Carol. I am an illustrator, a gluten-free activist, a mom, a bird lover, and a craft-a-holic. I appreciate the beauty of lovely things – the trim of lace, the powdered sugar on a dusted cake. I love creating and designing. I have never met a DIY project that I wouldn't take on.

I have been gluten free for 5 years now. It is a difficult lifestyle to become adjusted too after you have grown up eating wheat your entire life. But luckily these days, being gluten free is easy with many restaurants offering more menu options and companies producing gluten-free alternatives. I am both gluten-free and dairy-free (casein-free) which has eliminated my most prevalent symptom of joint pain, especially in the fingers and wrist. I am not sure what had originally caused my gluten-intolerance. If you ever meet me in real life and have a few hours to leisuirely discuss over a cup of coffee, I can tell you the whole story. Overall, if you are curious about a gluten-free diet and if you are not sure if gluten affects you, my advice to you is to trust your intuition. You know your body better than any doctor or lab test does. It doesn't hurt to try a GF diet, and you can always go back to your bagels and pizza if you don't feel a positive change in your life. I hope to share with you all my wonderful stories and recipes along the way to perfect health!

I am actually a medical illustrator full-time. I spend the majority of my day drawing surgical procedures and anatomy. My color palettes are full of blood reds and venous blues, and my tool presets include brushes nicknamed "bone texture", "surgical highlight", and "muscle fiber multiply." I suppose at the end of the day, I want to surround myself with pastels and soft watercolor. It is the yang to my yin. I love doodle-brainstorming, and I will doodle a hundred drawings until I get it just right. An artist's sketchbook is about freely drawing with no inhibition, no fear of being judged, or no embarassment of a bad idea or a bad drawing. That is when the creativity really starts flowing...

And lastly, I am a mother of a wonderful, rambunctious son. He is my inspiration and my love of life. I hope my artistic genes are passed down to him. So far that seems to be the case as he turns his nose at the crayola crayons and prefers to play with mommy's expensive inktense pencils. Even as a two-year old, he knows the good stuff. I hope that blank piece of white paper means to him what it does to me.

So that is me. This blog will be a whole lot of what I love. Obviously, I am passionate enough to write about it, or draw about it. So expect some gluten-free reviews and recipes, recent drawings, other artists that inspire me, DIY activities (sometimes toddler friendly), rants and raves, and maybe even some comic strips thrown in the mix. So when you are not too busy reading my blog, or spending hours on Pinterest, go forth and create beautiful things.

With love, Carol.

Bird on a Diet #1

Bird on a diet comic #1 - "I just found out I have food allergies"


Jan 8, 2013