The Botcon Quest Begins...

Day 39-40: It's time to party like an Autobot! Just deposited my graduation checks (finally...) and some prize money I got for winning second place in an essay contest (I'm still pretty excited about that :3). And you know what that means? I'll tell you what it means! It means that my sister and I finally went and reserved a hotel room for Botcon!

We're going to Botcon this summer!!!!!!! YAYYYYY!!!

Aaaand...this is how I feel about that. :)

So yeah, the highlight of my day. Now I'm just kind of praying that nothing goes wrong. :_ Because that would be...close to soul crushing really. I'm really looking forward to this. Now that I'm done with school, every time I think about my future it's like looking into a big blank space of nothingness. No purpose. No immediate goals. No point really....

It stinks.

So I guess it's just nice to have something really fun and nerdy to look forward to. And I get to share it with my little sister. n_n; If we keep going on like this we'll have something of a Botcon tradition. And things always seem to look better when you have someone to have fun with instead of just pallin' around with me, myself, and I.

That and we can freak out over meeting Gregg Berger (the voice of Grimlock) together. They haven't released the final guest list yet for the convention (so we don't completely know if he's coming) but we have great hope that he'll be at Botcon this summer. And I can't wait to see who else is gonna come! I'm so getting an autograph band! :D I think I'm going to bring the picture I got autographed last summer and add more signatures to that. ;3 By the end of I'll be proud to have it hanging on my wall for all to see!

And it's such a nice looking hotel too! Maybe it's because we reserved a room early - or maybe it's some kind of attendee discount Botcon's got going on - but it was the same price for the largest room with two beds as it was for a not-as-fancy-looking room with only one. So cool! Sleeping in style!

Now we just have to work on those plane tickets...hmmm......

Lanterns in the Sky

Day 38: Last few day's project finally done. :) I found out recently that those floating lanterns featured in Tangled are actually real. Well, maybe without that purple sun on the side...and there's no missing princess....or magic hair....but still! They exist!

It turns out that there's this big festival celebration in Thailand where they release tons of these things into the night. I found some photos of the festivities on shutterstock that are really stunning. I'll put one up below, but I didn't strictly copy any one cloud of lanterns. Just used them for inspiration really. :)

I think it turned out pretty well. I was uncertain about adding more colors into the sky because I was so taken with just the plain blue, but I think I made the right choice.

...I also may have been thinking about what Van Gogh said in Doctor Who about the sky being all different colors.....

n_n; Oh well. I like it. It turned out well. I want to make a bigger version (this is just a sketchbook sized one). I'll have to look at the remains of my Bristol pad, but I know it's bigger than a normal sheet of paper...I think that'll have enough room though for a good balance between up close, detailed lanterns, and background speck-lanterns.

I'm thinking about turning this into a pendent too. You know, like one you wear. It think it'd look cute smaller. And with any luck I might be able to sell a few and raise money for the ongoing Botcon quest.

That and if it's smaller maybe I won't see all those early mistakes glaring so sharply at me... ^,,^

It would also give me the excuse to add glitter! xP

 A reference/source-like/inspiration thing...

The Hummingbird Sketch

Day 37 - A sketch I did today. I was putting some photos I got from shutterstock to good use and having some fun with my art pens at the same time. The source photo is down below if you care to compare. Personally I think the bird came out rather well for a freehand try, but the stick?

^-.-^ Mrs. Mittens and I say Blech! to the stick.

.....although I kind of like how you can still see the greens, yellows, and reds I put in there to try and make it not look so flat (I only have the one brown and yellow and it needed something more)....

I've been stocking up on lovely photos from shutterstock when Dad doesn't use up all the downloads on his subscription, looking for ones that I could practice my sketching skills. But most of them, I notice now, require more colors than I have, so maybe I should start thinking about expanding my collection. :)

Of course....that requires money, which is a bit of a problem. I've been looking around for a job, but it's so much more difficult than I had first thought. D<

I have applied for some blogger jobs I found....and I'm so nervous I won't get it! The two I really want stop accepting applications today, so hopefully tomorrow or early next week I'll get a phone call. I want it so bad! If only because I have no idea what else to do if I don't get it.... u.u; I'm trying to save up so my sister and I can go to Botcon this summer and I still need a couple hundred dollars.

So, yeah...I'm crossing my fingers and praying real hard, but right now the only thing to do is wait and see. I have a possible plan B with maybe trying to sell some resin necklaces with little collages or Transformers or Disney things inside....My sis and I are going to hobby lobby today because she wants some fabric to make a Prowl pack for the convention (She wants it to look like she has doorwings. It sounds so cute and nerdy!) so I thought I'd look around to see how much the settings cost. I dunno. Maybe it'll work. Maybe I'll be fortunate enough to find some kind of paycheck before the end of the month....I don't know.

*Sigh* Well. At least my little hummingbird looks decent. I'm rather fond of him. Although I wonder if maybe I didn't over correct with the colors when I was cleaning up the scanned version...oops. n_n;

The Birch Forest

Day 36 - Ooo! 26 hits in the last hour or so. Very impressive! Thanks guys! I guess you like the new background...

Which is fill with one happy thing and several sad...

I am a bad author. I'm sorry readers, but at this moment I am. I promised I'd get up the next chapter of my online Transformers story Friday or Saturday but...yeah, didn't happen.

Friday was an interesting day (and not in a good way). Saturday was just busy. And Sunday I was just tired. :(

Sorry.

....sorry sorry....

Sorry  And I should really stop apologizing shouldn't I?

Anyway. My lil sister set up a bake sale this last Saturday. It was just her and her friend running the little table, but they had three different kinds of cookies, two kinds of cupcakes, apple pie wraps, and lemonade. And all of the sweets were homemade. All of them. Even the apple pie filling!

O.O I still can't believe it actually. It all tasted so good!

And she made $41 total! In one day. She's saving up money so we can go to Botcon this summer in San Diego. I'm so amazed and proud that she did all that in one day, but I'm also sad because it means my 12 year old sister is doing better at saving up money than I am.

I just don't know what to do with myself ya know? I mean, I've never thought about life after college. Not in any specifics anyway. It was like graduation was the unreachable dream. Something you keep striving for for years but in the back of your mind you secretly think it'll never actually come to pass.

So life after college is...empty. All the jobs I come across all want things like 'certain type of degree I don't have' or '3-5 years experience in our particular  field' and pretty much a dozen other things that I don't have. So what the heck am I supposed to do? All I want to do is go to Botcon! T.T

Dang. I've made myself sad....sorry. Help? What do writer-wannabees and artists actually do once they're released out into the world? o.O They go mad! That's what they do! Mad and cause trouble and die before they're thirty.

^-.-^ Mrs. Mittens is telling me to stop lolling about in self-pity and go do something useful...