My Own Petroglyph: Van Gogh Edition

Yesterday, I went to Los Gatos with my boyfriend. I flew up from San Diego to visit him in San Jose and it has been a blast of a week (lots of pictures and prose about it soon). Los Gatos is a cute little mountain town with shops and boutiques and bakeries. It was about 10:30 AM when we arrived there and it was peaceful and quiet. We walked around admiring the stores and window-shopping and decided to paint some plates at Petroglyphs. I thought it was a strange store name so I looked up the meaning on Wiki:

Petroglyphs (also called rock engravings) are images created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, pecking, carving, and abrading.

So basically caveman drawings :D I took forever to pick out something to paint, because I wanted something small, functional, and interesting. A star-shaped box it is! It will be great for putting all my jewelry in or any other little things I want to store. I almost painted a cupcake container but a simple-shaped box left more room for creativity!

I wanted to do something crazy so I went with Van Gogh's Starry Starry Night. I found a picture in a magazine and got started. Even though it's my first time painting plates in a long, long time, I got a little gutsy and wanted to try etching. First you paint all your pretty colours very thickly. Then you put on thin topcoat of a dark colour and scratch it with a stylus or a stick while the top layer is still wet. It lets the bottom colours show through nicely.

These paints are much lighter now but they will darken considerably after being torched in the kiln. So I didn't just paint a weird dark tower with 10 suns and a really bright sky. Hopefully everything turns out fine because I definitely mixed paints as if they were acrylic too. Oops.

Bottom layer:

Bottom of lid:

Inside of box will be a golden yellow; Van Gogh's Starry Starry Night:

The bottom of the box + signature:

We also tried the speckling technique! Dip a brush in a bit of paint and flick the other side of the brush towards your target. Voila! The stars were done with bumpy paint to give texture and 3-D awesomeness.

Up close side detail:

The finished, etched, unbaked product! Click image to enlarge and see the pretty detail :D The village was hard to draw on with the special ceramics pen (will show up after fire) but it's visible. Hopefully after glaze and fire, the Van Gogh-ness will be preserved. This was really fun!



Meow Meow hard at work on his espresso cup + saucer. Isn't he adorable? Also, note the massive amounts of paint we used. Muahahhaaa.

Sad story though. Today, when we went to pick our masterpieces up, the worker said that the kiln broke down yesterday T___T What awful luck! We're hopping on a plane at 8 AM tomorrow morning so they will have to be mailed very carefully. I was so excited to see them today :( Oh well. More pictures when they arrive! The whole ordeal cost about $25 ($8 sitting fee + $14 product). It was a really fun and creative experience. Yay play dates :D

Pandaphilia: Surprised Panda Earrings

Pandas, pandas, pandas! I get really obsessed when I see other people with panda things too, and when my roomie bought these little guys from Claire's last year, I had to get them too. They're adorable clay-styled post earrings of surprised pandas. I wonder what they're so shocked about. What do you mean all the bamboo is gone? (Haha yes I did take these on top of my Mac.)

Panda twins meet for the first time!

They will be riding on my ears back to St. Louis tomorrow. See everyone back at school!

Polished: Wet n Wild in Jade + LA Girl Flare in Turquoise

I have a habit of painting my nails 2 different colours - one colour on each hand. Two of my favourite brights are greens and blues, so this was my winter look for a few weeks. I had Wet n Wild in Jade on my left hand and LA Girl Flare in Turquoise on my right.

Jade is a really beautiful green shade that reminds me of grasshoppers. Wet n Wild dries really fast and doesn't like to chip, so it's the perfect $2 nail polish. I bought this bottle at Walgreens. I love the bottle design. It's sleek, chic, and vintage. Adorable.


Turquoise is very turquoise indeed. LA Girl nail polishes can be found in Forever21 stores and are $2.80 a pop. Not bad for matte shades (or glittery ones, which they have stocked). I like this blue because it's well-pigmented with one coat, unlike NYC sheer, watery polishes. I would definitely try other LA Girl polishes (I'm dying to try a matte mauve).

(Messy just after painting)

Both of these polishes lasted very well for 2 weeks or so. Worth every dollar :)

Pandaphilia: Giant Panda at the Mall

I love pandas. Everyone who knows me knows that. It's so embarrassing that after having this blog for so long, I haven't said a word about pandaphilia: the love for pandas! And of course, since pandas are so kawaii, I can't resist taking pictures and buying huge stuffed animals. Of course sometimes I can't afford to break my wallet and overflow my room with these cuties, so I just snap snap snap away : )

This not-so-little guy was sitting all lonely on the hardwood floor in a puzzle and toy shop at Quail Springs Mall in Oklahoma City. I love puzzles too and can't resist spending a free afternoon piecing together a 1000-piecer. Anyway, Mr. Panda is probably 3 feet tall and was at least $70.00. I wanted to carry him home so badly!

Infinitely bigger than my face!

I have many, many more panda friends at school :D I will take pictures of them and my panda shrine.

Stay kawaii!