Painting To My Heart’s Content

I enjoyed myself so much at Artsy Sip doing my first painting (since I was in Form 3!) of Van Gogh's Starry Night that I kinda organized a private session with Artsy Sip agaom with a group of my friends and did my 2nd painting - Van Gogh's Olive Trees With Yellow Sky and Sun.

 

Seeing how much I enjoyed painting, hubby got me a set of Acrylic Paints and some blank canvases to paint to my heart's content! #alsobecauseiwontwastemoremoneyatArtsySip

And so I got back and started painting just a week later.

I painted another Van Gogh's painting - Les Alpilles, Mountain Landscape near South-Reme because I am such a fan of his paintings.

Of course my work is nowhere near his.  Although I know nothing about paintings, but his colours and strokes are amazing.
My take is on below left, and Van Gogh's on the right.
 

And just this week, I managed to paint my 4th Van Gogh's paiting - Thatched Cottages at Cordeville.
This was attempted while I was home sick with fever, and my parents so nicely took care of Vern for me.

This is the process of my sketching it and drawing it.

 

And this is the end result after 3 midnight painting sessions.
Left is mine, and right is Van Gogh's.

 

A bigger photo of my latest painting attempt.
Nowhere near the original of course, but I am still mighty pleased with myself.

Ooh, and I got myself a simple table easel too. :)

Here you see all 4 paintings of Van Gogh’s I attempted.

#1. Starry Night, Saint Rémy, 1889 (Bottom Right)
#2. Olive Trees with Yellow Sky and Sun, 1889 (Bottom Left)
#3. Les Alpilles, Mountain Landscape near South-Reme, 1889 (Top Right)
#4. Thatched Cottages at Cordeville, 1890 (Top Left)

The paintings are now on the wall of my living room just on top of my piano. 

Four attempted cheerful versions Van Gogh's paintings. ;)
#vangoghfan 

I would say painting is so therapeutic for me. And I'm so glad to be able to paint whenever I like now. :)

Kids DIY Halloween Costume: The Making of Space Shuttle Costumes

I am no fan of scary, ghostly Halloween costumes. However, I enjoy the cutesy and fun costumes that the kids donned on for Halloween. So every year, I try my best to dress my kids up in some fun costume. 

I am always a last-minute mum in making the costumes. But this year, I am worse. I did this 2 nights before the event (and I only have night time after the kids zzz "_")

I initially wanted to just let them use back last year's Dragon Cape & Mask Costume for this year's Halloween as I am rather busy for the month of Oct & Nov.
But then Khye came home and requested for a Space Shuttle costume, which he says he wants to wear it to his Mandarin class next week.
Shern also did request for a Thor costume but I told him no promise. I will see what I can do in 2 nights.

This post is about how I DIY the Space Shuttle Costumes for Khye and Vern with whatever materials I have at home.

Below is basically what I used to make the whole costume:

- Shoe Box

- White Cardstock / Paper

- 2 Paper Cups

- UHU or any strong glue

- Sharpie Permanent Ink Pen

- elastic bands (not in photo)

- recycled the crepe paper from the Jet Pack Costumes for the "fire" (not in photo)

I got the design and idea from the 

This is a very easy DIY.
Took me about 2 hours to finish it.

The photo below shows you how I did it.
Wrap the shoe box with the white paper (easier if you can get a white shoe box). Then stick a paper on top the shoe box like a flap.
Next, add some wings at the side.
Stick the paper cups in front for the engines. And add a paper in between for the tail.

As for the pointed top, cut a circle and fold it like a hat for the kid to wear.
Then draw some windows wherever you deem appropriate. I also wrote the letters MYS for Malaysia and printed some Malaysia flag to stick onto it.
Then, turn to the back and punched some holes and then thread some elastic bands into it for the kid to wear the costume.
Lastly, glue some crepe paper as the fire below the space shuttle.

 

I also involved Khye in the process. He helped me draw and colour the windows on his Space Shuttle. 

These are my 2 little models and proud owners of the Space Shuttle Costumes. 

More of my little models.
Pardon their Mickey Mouse pants and diapers. Haha.
For best effect, wear black or dark colour clothes.

 

 

 Love to see how happy they are while posing with their costumes at home.

And just tonight was our very first Halloween event at Straits Quay.
And so we brought the boys there and they were so proud to wear their costumes and to collect a big bunch of candies each.

So Halloween is not until tomorrow, and many places are still celebrating it the next week.
So put on your gears and put together a Halloween costume for the fun of it!

Happy Halloween peeps!

Stay tuned for The Making of Shern's Halloween Costume next......




To see more of our previous Kid-Friendly Halloween Costumes, click below

Harry Potter Costume
http://www.tanshuyin.com/2017/03/kids-diy-costume-making-of-harry-potter.html

Rain Cloud Costume
http://www.tanshuyin.com/2016/10/kids-halloween-costume-making-of-rain.html

Dragon Cape and Mask Costume
http://www.tanshuyin.com/2016/10/kids-halloween-costume-dragon-cape-mask.html

Titanic Costumes
http://www.tanshuyin.com/2015/10/kids-halloween-costume-making-of.html

Jet Packs Costumes
http://www.tanshuyin.com/2014/10/kids-halloween-costume-making-of-jet.html
http://www.tanshuyin.com/2014/11/halloween-trick-or-treating-in-straits.html

Train Costume
http://www.tanshuyin.com/2013/11/labour-of-love-making-of-train-costume.html
http://www.tanshuyin.com/2013/11/sherns-first-halloween-with-trick-or.html

Learning the Art and Skill of Making 3D Jelly Flower Cake

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I signed up for this 3D Flower Jelly Cake class by Healthy Food Lab to learn how to make these gorgeous flowers. 

It was no easy feat. It took me 4+ hours to complete the big heart-shaped cake and the small one. It looked easy but it was not. Besides learning the know-how and technique, the preparation work for the flowers were also quite tedious.

We used only natural colouring for it.

Like dragon fruit for red and blue pea flower for the blue, pumpkin for yellow etc.

And all these fruit/food juices needed to be juiced beforehand. So the preparation process by itself was already a lot of work. (the teacher did this for us beforehand)

During our session, there were a teacher and 2 helpers around to teach and guide us. 

The teacher showed us which tools to use for which flower, and the technique on how to do it. She demonstrated for us once and voila, we needed to then do our own!

I was really nervous at the beginning. My first flower was the yellow rose on the small jelly. 

There was only supposed to be like 4 or 5 layers of petals but then I was nervous and didn't really know how to angled it properly to "bloom" and thus I had so many layers more. 

But just like what the teacher told us, "anyhow also your flowers would look pretty"! 

And then she proceeded to teach us other flower techniques and we did the carnation, and the purple/white flower and also the technique of the lotus flower (not in my jelly).

We also did flower buds, baby's breaths, on the big jelly. 

The teacher was awesome. I liked that she was not a fan of "gawdy" colours, just like me! haha. But she was also kind of a perfectionist, which means she made sure her work was great and she taught us how to achieve that great work too!

The helpers there were great too, guiding us and helping us keeping the heat on the stove of our colour mixture. It needs heat so that the jelly component is kept liquid and not hardened. 

See, I told you it is a lot of work!

But the end result was sooooo satifsying.

We were all in awe when the teacher overtuned our jellies to reveal our masterpieces! All of us went "Awwwww......" and couldn't believe we did all that!

Thanks so much to the teacher's guidance!

And so this was my work. 

 

Zooming in to the individual flowers. 

 

 

 

The bottom layer of the jelly is the Dragin Fruit Santan flavour so it was really delicious.

This is how it looked like when cut open.

Our class in progress.

The group in our session with the awesome teacher and one of the helper.

It took me about 5 hours to make the 3D Jelly Flower Cake, and about 5 mins to cut and finish the whole cake with my family! lol. "_"

Let me say this class is super worth it.
I paid RM380 for this class.
It was a 5 hours class. They provided everything for you.
The tools were new and for us to bring home.
They cooked for us the jellies beforehand. (The last bottom layer of jelly they cooked it on the spot for us)
The provided all the fruit/food juices for the colouring.
There were 1 teacher and 2 assistants.

And the skills taught and guidance provided were really excellent! :)

For those interested in the class, please head over to Healthy Food Lab to register for the class.


***Please take note that this post is NOT sponsored. I paid for this 3D Flower Jelly Cake session with my own money. All text and opinions are of my own and represents my honest opinion of the product(s)/service(s).

Some ME Time To Paint & Sip @ Artsy Sip

My sis went to this Artsy Sip place for her company's team building session. She had fun there and so she jio (invited) me there. 

And so last weekend, my sis, mum, my cousin sil and me went over to Artsy Sip at Nagore Square, Penang.

So what we got is this. 

They supplied us with everything we needed for a creative day out. Canvas, acrylic paints, paintbrushes, apron, everything.

We even had a glass of wine each.

And then all we needed to do was to just paint and sip for 3 hours. :)

There were 2 instructors there to help us and the theme of the day was Hot Air Balloon. We were free to follow and there would be some basic step-to-step guidance on the drawing of the theme. 

They also encouraged us to deviate from the painting, to make it unique and special to us. 

But of course we were free to paint anything else we wanted.

I did not paint the hot air balloons because it didn't bring any meaning to me. Maybe after I'd visited Cappadocia in Turney then I'd be painting that.

Shern had been learning about arts in school and he had been crazy about Van Gogh's Starry Night. He'd even did a small painting of that in school, and in this year's Learning Log cover, he had drawn the Starry Night using marker pens.

And so I decided to paint my take on Van Gogh's Starry Night!

Firstly, took a sip first with my mum and Sew Foong sitting in front of our blank canvases. 

You could see the faint sketches I made to my drawing. On where the moon and starts and tree and swirls should be so that I could get the proportion right before I started painting it. 

And clink.....sip sip sip. 

It was such a relaxing 3 hours.
We just painted and chatted and sipped (though my half glass of wine finished in like 1/2hr!).

I must admit that I was a little nervous and as well. I didn't paint since I last left high school and that was like 18 years ago. Maybe even more because the last I did art class was in Form 3. Hahaha.

And I was intimidated by the large blank canvas staring at me!
But once I started painting, it got easier and then I got more daring to just mix the colours and paint and paint and paint.

 

And this is the end results after 3 hours.

Tadaaa.......not bad at all!

I added my name at the right corner of my painting and also the date for memory sake!

This is the class in progress.
You see, lotsa people here to just relax and paint as well.
A mixture of young and old and women and men.

And this is the instructor's take on the hot air balloon.

The acrylic paints and brushes and wine.

So who is buying my painting now? hahaha

 

Our paintings. All so beautiful if I must say so! ;)

And when I brought it home, Shern told me, "wah....nicest Starry Night ever".
And it is now on the wall on top of the piano! :)

Have a try there and release the artistic side of you! 

I think I will be back soon.....or maybe I should just go buy some blank canvasses and paints and draw to my heart's content. :)

p/s - Please take note that advance reservation/booking is needed.

***Please take note that this post is NOT sponsored. I paid for this Art and Sip session with my own money. All text and opinions are of my own and represents my honest opinion of the product(s)/service(s).