Day 151: Mr. Men

Mr. Men! There are too many!

I notice that some of Mr. Men have more fancy shoes than Little Miss.

If you have never read the book from this series, check out the official hompage! Mr. Men and Little Miss by Roger Hargreaves

Day 150: Little Miss

The shirt of the youngest National Spelling Bee from Virginia reminds me of one of my favorite comics when I was young. Mr. Men will be posted tomorrow!

If you have never read the book from this series, check out the official hompage! Mr. Men and Little Miss by Roger Hargreaves

Day 149: Memorial Day

I never understand why there is still a war these days.

Today drawing is based on MSNBC Photoblog.

Day 148: Touching Chain Bridge

I finally reached a foot of Chain Bridge today. You can check out story and photos from the trip at my paddling blog. :)

Day 147: A Wish

There are times that I wish my parents were still here and told me what to do next.

Day 146: Paddling with Christine at Lake Anne

Boat rental at Lake Anne now opens! I invited Christine, my former 5-year roommate, to stay over during this long Memorial Day weekend since we have a lot to catch up (including more paddling to do together) and she is deserved a mini-vacation after a bad car accident last year.

Hope you enjoy the stay, Christine!

Day 145: A Fist Fight

And I was completely defeated. Little Elise won!

In case you haven't seen my posts on Day 79 and 103 Little Elise is my friend's baby. :) It's amazing to witness a baby development. We decided to take an hour off during working hours to pay them a visit.

Day 144: 45 Cards Sold!!!

Today I've just learnt that last week 45 copies of my Food Drive Volunteer Thank You cards were sold (in one order) to someone in California! This was my first big sale since I joined Greeting Card Universe over a year ago. I am so excited! Yeah~  

(To my customer...Thank you so much ~~ I hope you got a lot of food donation!)

You can check out the card by clicking here.

Day 143: Don't let an ice cream crime happen

Go get a pint lock from Ben and Jerry's.

Check out their Fun Gift under Misc. section. :)

Day 142: Haagen Dazs Anthem

Day 142 Haagen Dazs Anthem

A close-up shot of the ice cream

There was a very old Haagen Dazs advertisement on TV last night. And the music was so pretty that I couldn't help searching for the info.

It's called Haagen Dazs Anthem. (You can watch their advertisement by clicking here.)

So to honor the tasty ice cream and the beautiful music I decide to give my Day 142 to them.

By drawing Haagen Dazs ice cream I learnt that

- To date Haagen Dazs has 34 flavors for their ice cream. 6 of them are limited edition flavors.
- It's amazing how most of the flavor has brown color.
- All flavor is written with small font only.
- Their "pralines and cream" flavor is available only at Walgreen.
- Most of their limited edition flavors are not available in January except "blueberry crumble."

Did I tell you that I love ice cream ?

Day 141: "Me without You" - A very cute book to have

After I went through the art festival yesterday I stopped by Paper Source, a lovely store where you can find cards, gift wraps, books, stationery, etc. I love their "Do something creative everyday" motto. I came across a book misplaced on their display called "Me without You" by Lisa Swerling and Ralph Lazar, a very cute book to have as a reminder or buy as a gift when you want to tell someone how much they mean to you. Each page has a different rhyme ending with u sound along with adorable illustration. You can take a peek on a preview on Amazon.

Anyway, I love this book so much that I (bought it) and decided to create a rhyme in Thai as you can see here. I also wrote English translation in small red fonts so my English-speaking friends don't think I am swearing online.

Check it out. Sometimes our everyday life is so complicated that we need something so simple like this.

Day 140: Northern Virginia Fine Arts Festival

This is my first time going to Northern Virginia Art Festival or people usually just call it Reston Art Festival since it's held at Reston Town Center. This is annual event. This year there are 200 artists selected out of 900. With my minute experience in art world I would say the quality of work is high but I found the festival is not as quite as engaging as I hope. I couldn't pin point what it is exactly. If I am probably comparing this to the river front park near Art League at Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, I would say maybe it lacks of activities. 

I would love to see artists in action, drawing, painting, sculpting or hammering their current project instead of just guarding at their booths and most of them looked really bored. I personally think the process of creating art is more appreciative than just the final product. I don't know if it's a rule by the festival or else. Or maybe having performance along the main street instead of at the end corner of the festival. Or maybe a line of tables for local or young establishing artists.

And seriously the booth that got most crowd on Saturday was the artist creating wooden utensils. I love their Swiss-Cheese-shape pot rest.

And I personally love the project that relates to the audiences more than the project that just express the artist's technique or expression. Don't get me wrong. There is nothing bad about it. And I have a lot of favorite hi-technique art work on my list myself. But there is a reason I prefer an urban sketch than abstract work. Maybe because it is something I can relate to. It's more accessible. It's an everyday item from an artist's point of view which I think it's refreshing.

I still recommend visiting the festival. There are lot of fantastic eye-opener work.

I will write more about the work I like from this festival.

You can read more about the festival here.

Day 139: On-land Kayak Class

Oops, sorry for the delay. This is from my on-land kayak Rental Classification at Riverbend Park on Friday.

You can read about my class and check out the photos from my Newbie Paddler blog.

Day 138: Guess who ?

He is on the news in US a lot this week. Guess who ?

Day 137: Tree Texture

I just love drawing tree texture. 

Day 136: Vacation for others ?

This week my sis is still in Calgary where all the lakes up north are still frozen. (She actually works.) My friends will be in Tennessee, California and Mexico.

Me ? I'll be paddling at Riverbend.....20 minutes from my place. : /

Don't ask me about color choice on this one.

Day 135: The Creative License Page 101

From The Creative License by Danny Gregory basically he said art is about the individual through whom vision is channeled. It reflects the peculiarities and idiosyncrasies of the mind not a capture of reality with photographic accuracy.

My watercolor instructor, Peter Ulrich, said the same thing. He told us just to hang a photo if the accuracy is what we want.

Day 134: How to Get to Fletcher's Boathouse

I can't help drawing 'How to get to Fletcher's Boathouse' today. You can read about my paddling and check out the photos from my blog.

Day 133: Dental Flossing

I had never been a big fan of using dental floss until I had to pay a couple hundred dollars for an onlay created by a fancy modeling machine last year. You need an onlay when the cavity is too big for filling but not quite as bad as crown. What a pricey lesson. 

So I just drew this as a reminder that dental flossing is important (the brush or toothpick is way too big as you can see) otherwise the food that is stuck between the teeth will get rotten, create bad smell, the germ will grow, then it will mix with the good food being consumed while the teeth start deteriorating...right in the very same mouth.

Well, hope it doesn't gross you out. Ha Ha.

Day 132: Work Hard and Play Hard

Let see if my weekend will work as plan. 

Day 131: "That's All I need...to be appreciated"

It's another super busy day at work but I made time after work to join a 1.5-hour class at REI on how to select a kayak. I finally met the owner of the paddling school I attended a couple times. He was leading the class with another REI staff. Ha ha, and he remembered me, a Canadian Trip Girl. (I took my first paddling class (canoeing) with the school just because I wanted to be on all those beautiful lakes in Canada with my sister last year. It's a must! You can't miss it if you go there.)

The class was full. It's amazing that there are zillion things to talk about a small little boat. I learnt quite a lot today such as how to load a kayak from the back of a car by using bath mats, why sit-on-top boat was more suitable if you want to bring a dog on board, your paddling style was the key to select a paddle and a blade, etc. But what I liked most was to witness people express their passion about what they do and share their knowledge with others. 

Read about my clumsy paddling experience at Newbie Paddler.

When I got home I was able to catch my new favorite show - Undercover: Boss. I love it. There were two things I liked most from the shows today. One of the full-time staff at Second Cup, decided to make Latte Art for every single Latte he sold. He wanted to make his 8-hour job more interesting. He was very knowledgeable about coffee. He played music at the store once a week just because he believed music and a coffee store worked well together. 

Another episode after being recognized her hard work at the end of the show one of the employees said "That's all I need...to be appreciated."

I personally find it very intriguing when I see people going nuts about what they do and they do their best to make it better rather than just get it done or get it out of the way. So please be passionate about what you do. Go nuts. If you don't think you find one, just keep looking for it and keep trying something new. You'll never know what you like until you give it a try. Do your best. It will be rewarding and you don't feel sorry later. 

And one day it will be appreciated.

Day 130: A Piggy and a Pickle

A project I am working for my friend at the moment. It's a secret (until it's done)!

Day 129: Don't Stack Books Vertically

I think you already knew. Don't stack books vertically because the one you want is always at the bottom.

Day 128: Would You Adopt Callie ?

This is not what I have ever planned for my 365 project. But this is very personal to me since it is about a life of the cat I used to live and play with and now her life depends on us.

I am helping my former roommate putting together a flyer adopting her cat, Callie. I lived with them for over a year so I can tell you that Callie is smart, energetic and quite unique.

Currently we are fine-tuning the information on the flyer. Please keep an eye on an official one on my Facebook and your email inbox if you are in DC area. It will be posted in a day or two. You will find out more about her personalities, reason and contact info from there. 

Please help us by forwarding our flyer to your family, friends and friends of friends. We really want to find a real home for Callie soon otherwise my friend has no choice but giving her to a shelter which we don't really want to. No matter how nice a shelter is it is not a home.

*Update (5/11/12): The flyer is now available for download from my Facebook. 

*Update (5/30/12): Callie just got adopted!

Day 127: Drive without GPS

..is  very challenging and a good learning experience! The image shows the routes I was supposed to be on and the actual ones I was on. Oh well, I am going to make my paddling trip at Fletcher's House happen! So I'll keep you posted!

Day 126: Face Painting

I volunteered face painting at Spring Festival in Reston today. Just want to see what it was like. Here were the samples I made for kids to choose from per staff advice. And wow, kids loved face painting. Spiderman and Butterfly were most popular.


In case you are curious the face painting samples were just made from a color paper, then I colored them with markers and color pencil, and I taped a popsicle stick onto the back of the paper face. This way kids can hold it for me or just looking at it while I am painting their face. :)


There were two kids brought their own images, Toothless (the dragon), oh and her brother wanted a yellow and green tractor on his cheek and then another kid wanted some sort of round weapon, which I had no idea what it was called, on his whole face. But I was up for challenge! There were only 2 face painters per shift and the line got really long. I didn't even have a chance to take a break during my 2-hour shift.


Love doing it! (Photos from the event should be up on Volunteer Reston on FB soon.)

Day 125: Rock and Wave

I still explore what would be the best way to paint wave. I am using a piece of aluminum foil on this painting. 

Day 124: From the Two Previous Practice

I decide to combine the practice from Day 121 and 122 to create this painting. Well it's sort of big (12"x16") so I will finish it up later. Please stay tuned.

Day 123: I love 365 project so much that...

...that it's haunting me at 3 am.

Day 122: Still Orange and Purple

Still orange and purple today. Just in a different setting. :)