Crafting Days! : Hand Carved stamps

So I have been holding onto these for about three weeks now since I wanted to give them to my friends at our monthly craft meetup. It was so hard to keep them a secret but now I can finally show them off! I got the idea while searching through Pinterest (of course) and I already had the supplies so I wanted to give it a try

Supplies needed:

• Image to cut
• Printer
• Tracing paper - I used Vellum
• Pencil
• Linoleum cutter - I used a speedball cutting tool
• Carving block - I used the speedball speedy carve block
• Patience

1. I first found an image of what I wanted to carve and printed it onto regular paper

2. I then used vellum and my pencil to trace what I wanted to carve

3. I placed the vellum, pencil side down, onto the carving block and used my nail to transfer the pencil onto the carving block. The image should be mirrored from the print-out

4. Go over any parts of the image that did not transfer completely with pencil

5. Cut around the image to cut down the working area and to save the rest of the carving block for future stamps

6. Start carving by using the smallest nib for detail then move onto the larger nibs to take away chunks!

7. ENJOY STAMPING!

Throwback Thursday: Toronto, Canada 2011

A few years ago, I traveled to Toronto for the first time with a tour. The tour was very compact and I didn't get to see many much of the city, but we did go to the main tourist areas. After leaving Niagara Falls, we headed straight for the heart of Toronto and ended up at the CN tower.

Whenever I go somewhere new, I always try to get to an observatory deck to view the entire city and this was the place! The CN tower also has glass floors that allows you to look straight down to the streets and I wanted to experience that for myself. The wait to go upstairs did take some time so make sure you make time for it!

Crafting Days!: Two New Birthday cards

I am starting another weekly post called: Crafting Days! I have been crafting a lot and I wanted to start to dedicate a portion of my blog to just that. Working on different projects allows me to take a creative break from doing the same thing over and over again.

I have been working a lot of paper crafts and this weeks post is going to feature some more handmade cards! I created these two cards for birthdays last weekend. A lot of my inspiration is found on pinterest, it is so useful but it is also trouble at the same time. As I start pinning I start to find new tools that I don't have or new stamps that I *need*. 

Card #1 was all card stock paper materials. I used my Silhouette Cameo  to cut the balloons and then hand drew the strings hanging down. I had a lot of fun making this card and was glad that the recipient liked it as well!

Card #2 is made out of card stock with flags that were cut from washi/decorative tape. I then found a random piece of twine in the kitchen and glued it on top of the flags to give it a 3D effect. This was inspired by a card I had found on pinterest. I don't have any pictures of this card in progress since I was not home when I made this card.

Throwback Thursday: Seattle, Washington

After our Alaskan cruise, we had some time left to roam around Seattle before our flight back to NYC. Since we were already two weeks into our trip, we didn't really plan for things to do in Seattle so we just ended up walking around. 

We ended up walking to the Public Market where we waited for someone to buy fish at the  Pike place fish company so we can see them throwing it around. We probably stood there for a good 15 minutes with other tourists watching them do their thing.

After roaming around there for a bit and eating, we ended up walking to Bill Speidel's underground tour which gave a nice history of the city of Seattle and where it all came from. In all honesty, I was a bit creeped out during the tour because the tour guide was talking about how some people have seen ghosts on these tours. I don't care if they were just joking around but I don't mess with those things!

I really do want to go back to Seattle though. I have to admit we were a bit lazy to go see things after our cruise, but I think it is worth a trip out to the west coast again just to visit.

Tri one on : My first triathlon!

So this isn't really photography related but this does explain why I haven't really been creating things in the last few weeks. I have been training for my first ever triathlon which was on June 15th aka Father's day!
It took place at North Hempstead Beach Park in Long Island. The event consisted of a 500 meter swim, 10mile bike ride, and a 5k run to finish it off.

I was very nervous leading up to the swim and actually panicked once I hit the water. It didn't help that the water was so murky you couldn't see anything! Thankfully the lifeguards were nice and they kept talking to me while I was in the water. I eventually finished the swim and transitioned into the bike portion without issues. Everything after that was pretty smooth, the swim was definitely the hardest part for me. Days leading up to this race I had nightmares that I didn't finish or I would forget my wetsuit at home. Now that it is over, I can start thinking about art!

P.S. I am so grateful for my family and friends who showed up to watch me, even on Father's day. During the race, people were telling me that I was winning for the best fans and I couldn't agree more. =)

Throwback Thursday: Boston, Massachusetts

When I last went to Boston for a weekend, it was when I first started photography. I was into heavy editing as well as monochrome pictures for some reason. Sometimes I look through my old photos and ask myself why and maybe in the future I will do a post highlighting all of my "best" pictures from way back when. This Boston trip was one of our first trips as a group of four people and because of it, we have found our travel partners for life. When you find those people, stick with them forever because no one else would come close! We spent a whole day following the 2.5 mile freedom trail with stops along the way to eat.

Bohemian : NOHO, Manhattan

I am usually not a person who goes crazy over secret dining restaurants but I wanted to try at least one of them. In NYC, there are plenty and I happened to get the phone number for Bohemian which is a secret Japanese restaurant in Manhattan. In order to get reservations, you would have to know someone who has gone before and you can only make them 30 days in advance.

My one year anniversary was coming up and we ended up going there for dinner. We both ordered the tasting menu which was only $58 pp, so that we can try the food they had to offer. The portions were small and in the beginning we were both afraid that we would be hungry after dinner but

Farmers vegetable fondue with cream cheese dip : The vegetables were very fresh but this was meant for two people. 

Uni with cream of mushroom croquette: This was my first time eating uni and it was very interesting. I wouldn't say that I loved this dish because of it but the croquette was pretty tasty. I didn't like the uni only because it was brine-y and I don't particularly enjoy that.

 Washu beef sashimi: This is in competition for my favorite dish of the night! The beef was so tender and when paired with the garlic and wasabi, it was so good. Sadly, those pieces of beef were about 1x2 inches and it was shared between the two of us. I really wanted some more of it.

Branzino: This by far was the largest dish and it also took the longest to come out. This is the other competitor for my favorite of the night. The fish was lightly seasoned and cooked with the vegetables which absorbed all of the fish oil. 

Slider: For this part of the course, you can pick either the slider of the sashimi rice bowl. Since there was two of us, we each chose one of them and split it in half to try. The slider was highly recommended on yelp so I was excited to try it but it was nothing special to me. However it was cooked perfectly medium rare.

Sashimi rice bowl: The sashimi rice bowl was also nothing special to me. The fish was really fresh and the rice was nice and sticky.

Panna cotta: The lemon panna cotta was very smooth with the exception of lemon zest inside. Very tasty as well.

Overall this place is very  nice if you are looking for a special restaurant to celebrate an event. There is a 2 hour limit to seating though as they can fit about 20 people at one time. We did get to stay a little later than 2 hours since the fish came out later than expected. Even though the portions were small, we still left pretty full.

One of my other hobbies!

Photography and eating are not the only hobbies that I have! I actually do a lot of random crafts and I recently got into scrapbooking and paper crafts in general. A few months ago, I bought myself a die cutting machine called the Silhouette Cameo and since then I have been trying to find things to do with it. Several people have borrowed it before but I wanted to make sure that I actually used it to get the most out of it.

Last month for Mother's day, I used it to create 12 cards to hand out to all the women in my both my family and my husbands. All cards were made using card stock and cut using my machine. The cards were made using a template I bought off of the Silhouette Cameo's online store and the envelope was designed by me.

Well, we are less than a week away from Father's day so of course I had to make more cards. I can't let the men in my family feel left out! This time, I wanted to do something different and actually design my own cards. I started to look online for inspiration and I found plenty. I ended up with two different designs.

The first design was meant for all the uncles in the family. I had used a silhouette of a tie and rather than have all 4 ties cut out, I used the designer software that came with the die cutter to put a bit of a pattern in it. I then decorated it by adding a striped background and washi tape to the front

The second design is meant for my dad and father in law. Every layer to this card was also cut using the designer software so that I wouldn't have to do any calculations to make sure that each layer was smaller than the previous one. The hammer is also cut out and I used double sided tape to stick it to the card, which gave it a nice 3D effect.

May 2014 via Instagram photos

(My favorite photo from last month)

Trying something new! I actually post on Instagram often, but a lot of the photos there do not make it to my blog. At the beginning of every month, I'll be doing a blog post on my favorite from from the previous month and showing a gallery of all my Instagram images. I have been pretty good with posting once a week for my throwback Thursday posts so once a month shouldn't be too bad.

Well, looks like last month I did some travelling. I went to Kansas City for a few days for work and got to see some amazing architecture. I was also featured in three different blogs, one of them being Style Me Pretty : Living!

The gallery of images can be found below, enjoy! =)

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Throwback Thursday: Lynn Canyon Park, Vancouver, Canada 2011

On our Northwest trip back in 2011, we had landed in Seattle and decided to drive up to Vancouver for a weekend before our Alaskan Cruise started. On our way up, we were looking out the windows with gaping mouths because of all the tall trees and mountains surrounding us. Coming from NYC, you don't really see that often! I guess that's how people feel like when walking through the streets and viewing our tall skyscrapers lol.

On this trip, we wanted to do some hiking so we looked up a few places nearby where we were staying and we started to read about Lynn Canyon Park. It wasn't too far and there was also a suspension bridge that we can walk across. It was quite a hike for us to get there, but we were prepared. At this time, I had my Canon 7D swinging around my neck and thankfully I wasn't too clumsy. Now I actually travel with my Sony Nex 6 so that I wouldn't have too much weight on me.

We also couldn't resist taking a group picture  =)