Thursday, October 31, 2013

Happy Halloween!!!

Drawing Entry is CLOSED

Please hold onto your hats, will announce the winners tomorrow!

 

 Happy Halloween!!! I hope you guys are having a great day and awesomely spooky night.
Today I decided we could celebrate by hosting a giveaway!!

I was very lucky and  participated on a Disney Blog Meet-Up earlier this month, during the meet-up we were gifted several Disney villain posters, which are pretty nifty. Andrei and I got a set each, so I decided to spread the wealth and give away the extra ones we received.

There are 4 in total, Scar, Hook, The Evil Queen and Ursula.

How can you get your mitts on one of these you ask?

Well, all you have to do is tell me what your favorite Halloween candy is, which villain you love to hate most and why, and I'll pick a winner at random from each villain category!

I'll wait for everybody to answer on the comments section until Saturday at 7:00 a.m. ET and then announce the winner, since some of you might be out and about all of today and tomorrow I'll be working and out myself.

And yes I'll ship them anywhere since I know we have international readers and it sucks when you can't participate, so no worries!


Friday, October 18, 2013

Keeping busy

Hope my ghost story didn't freak you out too much and put you in the Halloween spirit... all pun intended LOL

I have been busy, but always make time to doodle during the week while I have breakfast, I also have been crafting a bunch of stuff. We attended Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party one last time and Andrei went as Dipper from Gravity Falls... if you haven't seen this show, it is pretty much the only thing I watch on the Disney Channel apart from Phineas and Ferb, that is, I watch it because I love it, not because of work lol.


It has a lot of cool humor, the animation is much better than some of the shows out there now, the story is a lot of fun and has a ton of suspense in it. It is on its very first season, so it is still a bit obscure even with Disney Cast Members, the kids and teens in the park recognized us inmediately, everybody else had no idea what we were LOL, same happened the first year we went in as Agent P, nobody knew what we were, and then the next year, everybody was a platypus or Phineas and Ferb.

I like to stay avant garde with my costumes, so it pleases me. I went as Mabel, I haven't downloaded my photos yet and I generally hate to be in them, but I'll try to be brave and add them later.

Here is the book prop I made for Andrei, I made it the same day of the party using a blank sketchbook, acrylics and mod podge. I will probably make two more and a tutorial.

Cover Sketch
Finished... along with puppy nose!
I drew one of the spreads really fast for more authenticity inside.
I was in a really, really long meeting one day, I doodled a bunch so I counted that as creative time along with work time:


And now, some doodles I do while trying to wake up every morning. My set up looks like this most of the time:
 

 Yup, coffee, breakfast and blank pages... somedays I can actually draw something, others I just space out due to lack of sleep...

 

And now, randomness that I have been up to. I work close to the Magic Kingdom, every day I am the lucky girl that goes under the toll plaza at Magic Kingdom on her way home. I love it, and I don't think I'll ever get tired of it. I always have to fight myself from going straight into the park, truly I would always be in there if it were up to me alone, but I still have to come home, have dinner, walk my cute doggy and take care of my freelance before going to bed... still, I do go in there at least once a week.

Right now they inflate these super cute pumpkins whenever they have a party scheduled:
 
I also finished my Nightmare before Christmas wreath, it is inspired by the ones in Disneyland and made with a pre-bought black wreath I found at Target this year, Christmas sprigs of holly and berries from JoAnns, Model Magic, acrylics and mod podge for the skull and finally the ribbon is all made with duck tape.
  
And finally a random doodle I made yesterday night because the decor at Tokyo Disney Resort is amazing and I wish we had it here, this is pretty much a drawing of a sculpted Daisy they have in the park, she is perfect!
 

Friday, October 11, 2013

It is October, so this should be fun to share.

Don't worry, I am drawing and crafting and running around having fun, but today I remembered something that happened while in college and thought it was the perfect type of story to share during this time of year:

The professors warned me about the fine arts building once… it was a vague warning that didn’t go past a: “You don’t want to be here alone at night”, said in slightly hurried and furtive tone.

I dismissed it, I was just on my second year of college, working two jobs and with a full load of classes, I didn’t have the time nor patience for silly ghost stories, overall with finals looming and about 5 large and extremely complex art pieces left to finish.

If I had to make a nest out of discarded canvases, discarded cloth and sponges, so help me I would and I would sleep an hour or so in it to finish my projects.

Juvenile silly superstitions and stories weren’t going to even bother me a bit.

And so, after my second job I walked back into the building, hours after the sun had set and classes had ended. I had my very own key, (the only student with one at the time), and so I made sure the doors were locked, put on my headphones and started to work on silk screen prints…

One hour into things I decided to take a short break, the prints needed to dry between color passes, and I was starting to get sore feet.

I stopped my MP3 player and heard voices coming from the hallway. I was happy, finally some company! Maybe one or two of my classmates had come by to work.

I waited, the voices came closer to the room I was in, I could hear footsteps… they were by the door, I could hear them clear as day, but then… silence…

Odd… I stood up and walked on over to say hi. I pushed the door open, and found no-one there.

Then I remembered I had locked the doors, maybe it was a professor? I walked around the building, checked the doors, all still locked, nobody was there at all.

I felt so silly, I shrugged and went back to work, before I could start again my phone rang, my husband wanted to come over and keep me company, he would be there shortly with food. So I went ahead and unlocked a back door.

I cheered up and pushed through more work.

Another hour passed, I was messing with water and chemicals, so my player sat turned off on a table.

I heard the main door open… I didn’t give it much thought, I was on a roll with my prints and expecting company after all.

I started to clean my hands as I heard someone coming up the main staircase, I was hungry and looking forward to dinner.

The footsteps got all the way to the door, the doorknob made the sound of it turning, and then… nothing.

Had my husband turned around? Did he forget something in the car?

I went over to check, but again, nothing, and then I remembered the main door was still locked.

Maybe I was too tired and hungry and hearing what I wanted to hear. Still, I went about quietly and sneaking about to make sure nobody was in the building and trying to play a prank on me.

Nothing, and all doors were still locked, save the back one I had unlocked before.

I shook it off and turned around to go back upstairs… but as I opened the door I heard someone running up the stairs, then stop and shuffle in the first landing.

"HAHA! Very funny! I got you now!" I said triumphantly

I bolted up the stairs, but nobody was there and the door to the second floor never flew open to let anyone out.

"OK… that was a bit weird…" I said to myself.

And then, the voices started again. Clear as day, two people were having a conversation down the hallway and walking away casually.

I peeked through the small window in the door, but the hallway was empty. I opened the door, the sound stopped again.

I looked out the windows, walked out onto the connector between buildings outside, not a soul was walking around, I could only hear the wind and a distant car passing by in the middle of the night.

There had to be an explanation, I tried to forget it, but was careful walking back to the print making room, just in case a stranger had weaseled his way into the building.

I turned all the lights on on the hallways as I went and sat down for a second, listening.

Nothing… but then… laughter… someone was laughing somewhere, then a cough, and walking again.

I looked at my phone and wondered where my husband had gone off to and why wasn’t he there yet.
Things were getting rather creepy, I didn’t feel safe.

And suddenly, the sound of the main door slammed open and shut, and a set of footsteps furiously ran up the main stair case, the stair case door flung open violently, the footsteps ran towards my door and I stopped breathing for several seconds.

BAM!! Something slammed against the door, and at the same time, the back door opened.

I gasped, I couldn’t move from my chair, the door knob rattled, then stopped, and suddenly it flew open.
 
"Hi!" said my husband walking in casually.
"Holy freaking cow man! You scared the poop out of me!"
"Huh? What? Why?" he said half laughing at me.
"Was the main door open? Why did you run up the staircase? Did you smack yourself against the door? What the hell man?! It is too late at night for that!" I barked.
"Wow… what?! I came through the back door and just walked in… what are you talking about?" he answered in an annoyed tone.

We argued for a bit, I explained to him what been happening all night, he laughed at me, we went around and checked all the doors again and inspected the place. All the doors had been locked the whole time, nobody was around.

I worked for several more hours, we talked, played music and I tried to stop being freaked out about it, but I never worked there alone at night again.

On time to time classmates would try and stay there alone, but they had the same experience, some would hear screaming and crying, if we had to stay late we would come in as a group and play loud music, because you could still hear voices and footsteps even if you weren’t alone.