Wednesday

the big one zero zero zero


Wow. Apparently some people actually do read my blog. :) Today I managed to catch it at 1,00 0 views. Now, there's no way to be sure, but half of those could possibly be mine...

In honor of 1,000 views, I've launched a colorful clare facebook! (ok, no. I've been working on it for a week or so, it's not in honor of 1,000 views. but we can pretend) So if you glance over there to your right, you'll notice a like box. Please like me, check it out and give me your suggestions! I'd really appreciate it.


It's definitely a work in progress, but someday maybe it'll be something worthwhile. Until then, suggestions suggestions suggestions! please.

Also, I found this olllddd piano video from February 2008 on my computer. Just as a special bonus for all the views. haha. :) peace!

Saturday

TUTORIAL: Elephant Glass Ornament

#5 - I've been making things :)

TUTORIAL:
Glass Elephant Ornament

What you will need:

# 1 - A cheap, clear glass ornament.
# 2 - Permanent Markers.
# 3 - Creativity!!


Step One - After I took some pictures of myself in the ornament for a while, I went on the internet and googled 'cute elephant'. Of course you could use this concept for virtually anything, but the person the ornament was for is an avid elephant fan. So anyway, I found the above image in a google search.




I traced the elephant onto my ornament with a blue sharpie, and filled it in. I had to go over the Sharpie at least two times, and I went over it three times in some areas.

After that I added the finishing details to the piece - a traced border around the elephant, some hearts and polka dots. I made sure all the spots were pretty filled in with marker, and thennn...


I decided it would look nice to fill the ornament with tissue paper :) So I did. I put the top back on and put some glitter glue around it. I wrote 'happy birthday 2011' on the back for the recipient of the ornament, wrapped it in tissue paper & gave it away. Voila!



So cheap, so easy, and so fun! I plan on making more of these for Christmas presents. Tis the season. Which reminds me of this video from my favorite movie...




Sunday

autumn picnic

#4 - I've gone on dates with Trevor.


Trevor & I still like to celebrate the one month anniversaries, but when it came to our November anniversary I was at a loss for what to do. Neither of us had very much money so I thought - ah! A picnic!

I googled fall picnic ideas & found a lot of awesome websites. Here are some for you to visit!
- delish.com
foodandwine.com
howdoesshe.com
the-picnic-site.com

After this, I was inspired. I went to the store and put together a gourmet picnic. I packed napkins, a blanket, and even some candles. It was chilly but not too chilly, the week right before daylight savings kicked in. (meaning the sun was still out when I got off work. Ha!)


 I got the stuff ready so that we could head straight to the park after work. I bought those Soup at Hand drinkable soups and microwaved them so we'd have something warm to drink :)


The lighting was beautiful and the temperature was definitely tolerable.


I'm all for ambience, so I brought a couple tea lights with. :D Heh, call me cheesy but I loved the way they looked.


We had chips, rice cakes with salami & provolone, deviled eggs, those soups and strawberry cheesecake for dessert. We played some music from my iPhone and watched the sunset.


Great memories <3
One tip I'd add - for any picnic in the fall/winter, BRING A BLANKET. We ended up just sitting on it but I think it really prevented us from getting cold. Although when the sun started going down more, the chill set in and we decided to leave. So I definitely recommend sunlight for picnics. :)

Your assignment:
HAVE A LIVING ROOM PICNIC!!
Show me your pictures!


more fall photography

In case you haven't noticed already, a big part of my blogging is to show all the hundreds of thousands of pictures I inevitably take. Which brings me to another big thing I've been doing lately.

#3 - As usual, I've been taking & editing tons of pictures!


I'm working on a project called supermacro, which is exactly what it sounds like - supermacro pictures, closeups of anything and everything i can find to photograph. Here are some I've taken so far -






Things look so much different when you really stop and look at the details :)

Other photo project ideas I have are:
- take a picture of my accessories every day
- take a picture of a bunch of people's face, and then their choice in footwear

a while ago, I started a photo project called Pieces of Me. Again, the general concept is pretty obvious :) I'd like to add more to it, eventually. If only I had more time on my hands... or maybe I should be saying, "If only I used my time more wisely."

Let me ponder that for a while...

In the meantime, please give me some other photo project suggestions! Or even supermacro ideas. 

Please +1 if you liked this post!




Wednesday

freelance

when i was 14, in the golden age of the internet, and instant messenging, i started making little graphics like avatars & icons for instant messenger, desktop wallpapers. it progressed until i got an opportunity to create the cover for a book my mom was putting out, and a logo for my dad's new business. from there i went crazy on graphics, learning especially how to edit photos and make whatever kind of graphic was necessary for the situation (and a few websites in the process). ANYWAY the point is, from the time i was 14 or 15 i knew i wanted to be a graphic designer. which brings me to the point.

#2 - I've been doing some freelance graphic stuff.


This is a program for the pageant that I was asked to do. It was rushed, because the chairman of the pageant, Yvonne, found me very last minute. I spent about four days staying up until the wee hours to finish this 40 some page program, which mostly consisted of ads. In the end, it came down to my mom helping me scan the ads in, my sisters double checking to make sure i included them all, and trevor helping me to enter all the ads in the first place. teamwork! love it. that was on sunday afternoon / evening, the program needed to be done by monday!
 

these are posters i did for Holy Family Radio, 1140 AM in Grand Rapids. My dad is really involved with the station and they were in need of some graphic work, so i volunteered :) I made them a bumper sticker, and about four posters overall. The bumper sticker is the white cross in the poster above. (that one's my favorite poster too)


I've also been doing a lot of photo editing, but I think that's a category on its own, which I should save for another blog post. So, ta ta for now.!

Monday

because in order to blog, you need to do something worth blogging about.

so it's an understatement to say i haven't posted much lately. what have i been doing, you ask?
well, in these next few posts i will show you. :D

#1 - I've been working on my music.



(to be continued.)

kodak moments


So this weekend my friend Dulcie & I tried to take some fall photos, and though we didn't get nearly as many good ones as we would have liked to, there were still some worth showing you here. :) 


dance like it's the last night of your life
ok truthfully, this one isn't from fall, but i just edited it yesterday and looks awesome so i had to post it. heh.

autumn | death has never been so beautiful
took a photo of a tree which wasn't so exciting; i thought it might look better in technicolor

i had just gotten to my grammy's house, when i got out of my car the sun was so perfect i had to snap a shot.

the bumpiest road you ever did drive on
lincoln township beach


tweaked the colors a bit. purple trees & peach sky <3

















country in abundance near my house. this is after they harvested the corn, beautiful sunrise on my way to work.

check out dulcie's pictures here :)



thanks for looking. please +1 if you enjoyed this post!

Thursday

advertising

Hello, everyone. It's been a while. I've been caught up in the world of freelance graphic design lately, quite busy with a few side projects. So since that is where my brain is at the moment, I thought it would be quite perfect for a blog post.

Often when I am in the car with Trevor, I comment on billboards we pass. He usually gives me 'the look' - you know, the one where he has no idea what I'm talking about but is pretending like he cares. (note: this is a different look than the 'when are we going to leaaaave' look) Earlier today we had a conversation about how I always notice these things, advertisement and marketing and such. Subconsciously I guess I'm always getting ideas, always critiquing and thinking about the impact of things like that.


source
I have recently seen the billboards to the left around Saint Joseph. If you're unfamiliar with the symbol it's called a QR code (I've seen these before but I must admit Trevor just told me what they were called the other day). If you have a smart phone you can download an app on your phone which will scan the code and then direct you to a website. A lot of people are putting these codes on magazines, ads, and business cards.

So that brings us to the question - why the hell is this on a billboard? Texting while driving is illegal and extremely dangerous, so how is this any better? I don't disagree with the concept of QR codes but seriously, billboards are definitely NOT the best application here. But I will say one thing about the billboard, it's ambiguity is great for peaking interest.

It definitely peaked mine (although as previously stated, billboards tend intrigue me often), and so tonight I set out to google the billboard, as I am not stupid enough to scan it while driving. Lo and behold, this billboard is for Bridgman Family Dental Care. Yes, dental care. A quote from the WNDU article on the billboard -

"many residents say they don’t know how to use to codes or don’t have the equipment needed to read them. “I don't have an iPhone or a phone where I can scan it so I will never really know what it is,” said resident Catherine Cleary-Sanford."

Clearly, Berrien County is not yet the place for such a billboard. All in all I would say this is  not the best marketing strategy; although it is a great idea it's simply an idea used in the wrong place in the wrong way. At least that's my opinion.


Now for some truly bizarre advertisements.

Uhh...what?

If the best thing they can think of to advertise is the fact that they don't sell bodies, I think something is seriously wrong here.

 Smoking ads...crazy stuff.

Please read the caption. Double you tee eff.

Time for bed everyone. Bon nuit :)



Saturday

inspirations

i want to have a house so i can try to make it as beautiful a place to live in as these:

plants <3

beach, also <3
contrast! loveeee the colors
a hanging chair? are you serious?

spacious, airy kitchen





Jamin's Crazy Chalk Drawing #2 - Where The Wild Things Are

liiiikeeee

Friday

new sounds

Fidelity by xclare

Adam's song by xclare

If you're going to listen to one over the other, listen to the first one. It's my personal favorite :)


fidelity - regina spektor
adam's song - blink 182

Tuesday

happy anniversary

Last Tuesday was mine & Trevor's one year anniversary. :) So I thought I'd take some time to look back on our relationship and tell your our love story. Hee hee.


Trevor & I met when I was in college at LMC. I was in two classes with his best friend, Craig. (He's on the left) So Craig & I became friends, and one day Craig was like, "Hey, want to hang out with my friend Trevor?" And I was like, "Sure!" And the rest was history. Although we were dating other people at the time, there was something about Trevor that always stood out to me; we had some sort of connection that I can't explain. Sooner or later we became best friends. We talked every day and hung out almost every day. I came to him with all my problems and he always made me feel better. We could talk about ANYTHING, he knew more about me than my best friend and my boyfriend both. Because he never judged me, and telling him my problems actually made me feel better instead of worse, which was the case with a lot of my friends. I had this huge crush on him that I lied to myself and everyone else about, because he was dating somebody else and so was I. I was content to just be his best friend. (But I did admit that he was reaaaaally cute) We promised we'd never stop talking, even though I had plans to move away.


We were still at the point where we were just best friends. We'd hardly hung out alone before, but now we started to. We did cute things that we tried to pass off as just 'friend' things, like going on picnics and to the movies and park together. One night we went to the beach at dark, and swam in the lake. I caught myself on more than one occassion staring at Trevor and thinking about how my life could be if he were a bigger part of it. But I thought - "Pfft, Clare, get a hold of yourself. Trevor doesn't like you like that, you're just friends. Don't fall in too deep." But there was a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I loved Trevor more than just a best friend kind of love. But since I didn't think he liked me back, I couldn't give in to that feeling; I'd been through enough heartache in the past few months to last me a while.

One day last year, August 2nd, Trevor invited me to hang out with him at his grandparents' house. They had a pool and they would be gone all day working, so we could hang out there for a while and swim. Of course I agreed. It was a great day in the sun, his grandparents have a beautiful backyard and we spent a lot of time in the pool or hanging out on the deck, or walking around by the flowers. I did a lot of thinking. All the sudden something came to me, like I got smacked right in the middle of the forehead. "I'm in love with Trevor." I realized. "And he's in love with me!" It was like everything changed from this point on. I knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that everything I had felt and ignored previously was true. That Trevor & I could be together, and could have an amazing, happy, blissful relationship. I stopped lying to myself. And I stopped lying to Trevor, too.

Later that night we were together, just hanging out and listening to some music. There came that point in the beginning of every relationship, where you stare at each other awkwardly for a while. Another one of my convictions with this relationship was that I would NOT say I love you before I really, truly, 100% for sure meant it. But earlier that day I realized that without a shadow of a doubt, I loved Trevor. So as we stared at eachother, somehow I managed to get the words out. "I love you." came out, barely above a whisper. "Clare," he said to me, "I've loved you for a long time."


Trevor & I didn't have an official start to our relationship, there was never that point where he asked "Will you be my girlfriend?" We started going on dates way before we called them dates, so when we looked back on our relationship wondering when our anniversary would be, the day everything became clear between us seemed like the best choice. :)

It's been a whole year since that day, and each day has been better than the last. Trevor is the best boyfriend I could ever ask for, and our relationship makes me a better, stronger, and happier person. Sure, we disagree sometimes, but the important thing is that we always come to a compromise. We put the other person ahead of ourselves, we put their happiness first. I love him more every single day.

So, Trevor, if you're reading this. Thank you for being so nice to me. Thank you for always being there for me, thank you for always listening and caring. Thank you for giving me the motivation to be the best me I possibly can be. Thank you for making me so happy, every day of my life. Thank you for being my best friend!

Happy anniversary. <3 I love you!