My new passion that really is an old passion revamped

I recently finished this full piece of artwork that I am proud of. I have done a few other pieces in my past that I've put on the wall but I've been conflicted by them. This piece however, I'm in love with. It is very large and I held on to that canvas for a long time not wanting to "ruin" it. I wanted to put the perfect picture on there. Finally I had a picture in my mind that I really needed to try and get on canvas and once I started I made myself keep going. I was waiting for that moment that Gary Reef talks about where you know that your finished. I had it. The process of making this painting was eye opening. I made myself keeep going when I was uncertain I just reminded myself "if I don't like it I can start over" That really made me feel so much better about giving it a go.

It didn't really turn out exactly like the picture in my head but I'm still happy with what I have. :) Now I'm ready to keep going. I have faith in myself. I know that I can do anything that I set my mind too. I don't have to be afraid! I'm very excited to post my next one. I will try to take a better picture of that one lol...

I've always been in love with creating art. When I was young i had an experiece with my elementary school teacher. I made a drawing with beautiful rainforest leaves and trees. The background was black as night except for the eyes of the animals that inhabbited the forest. My eyes where all sizes and they didn't match up. I was sooo proud of that picture I thought it was a masterpiece. My teacher saw it and gave me the wierdest look like he thought that I was seriously damaged in the head. I was so hurt. It lasted along time that feeling. That experience made me feel as if my art wasn't normal and made me a crazy person. I now know that I was just experimenting and my teacher didn't know anything about art and what it should look like. I was different, most everyone else was making pictures of there houses and flowers and cars. My picture was unique just like me. :) And that isn't a bad thing it's a good thing! And I love it!

Creating this piece has given me the faith I needed to learn more about creating art. All kinds of art. I like to draw but I'm not the best at it yet for lack of practice but I will practice now and I will keep creating art for myself.

My new fairy name :)

Your fairy is called Gossamer Moonwand

She is the moon goddess's messenger.

She lives in spiderwebbed wonderlands and insect grottos.

She is only seen when the seer holds a four-leafed clover.

She wears tiny black spiders on her dresses. She has beautiful blue butterfly wings.

Get your free fairy name here!

Creative Style

I did the questionair "What is your creativity style" The results are very accurate for me. :)Here is the link if anyone else wants to try it.

http://www.psychologies.co.uk/personality-tests/whats-your-creative-style/

Creativity is a release
For you, creativity is first and foremost a form of expression: it creates a special link between the internal and external worlds. It allows you to get a grasp of your powerful emotions, by moulding them into a physical form. In fact, the most important thing for you is to be able to release your emotions. You need to be able to touch them or look at them in concrete form, and to do that you have to find a way to make them come alive. This is how your desires and anxieties take shape. Keeping things bottled up creates a tension that can only be resolved once you have expressed how you feel. This means you have to be strong enough not to let yourself get swept away by chaotic impulses; if you turn your creative urges on everyday life — making a picnic, singing to the baby, choosing what to wear — you can express yourself while staying rooted in reality. Creativity is principally cathartic. It relieves a deep need, an almost primal, archaic impulse. For you, being creative is about having the power to give form to something you feel, to those deep personal issues that are often raw and disorganised. For these reasons you are usually attracted to art that demands physicality, that allows you to express what’s inside, and that unites spontaneity, strength, freedom, power and movement. •

~LifeStyle Change~ II

Well I've been slacking in this area. Superbly. LOL So I decided to make a deal with myself. For every pound I loose I will set aside 10$ for new clothes when I reach my goal weight of under 130 lbs. I want to be in the normal weigh range. So I started at 172lbs :P So I've gotten down to 169 so far. This week I start my running program so that should help. I've already given myself 30$ towards new clothes. Yay! I am thinking of Vlogging my weight-loss? That would be cool! :)

~wanted to add this~

Visit Lovin Mixed Media

~Thoughts for Today~

Well I found out yesterday that Canadian milk doesn't contain hormones or antibiotics because it's illegal here. Yay! Canada! Looking out for the average Canadian and not the bottom line. Woo Hoo! I love it! Plus this means that I don't have to spend more than double the amount of money to get hormone free milk, which is good because I don't have the cast for that.

Maya has a rehersal today for her first big recital on friday. I hope that she has fun and isn't nervouse. I hope that other family members are going to attend. So far it's just Jason, Mom, Dad and I. No one from Jason's side of the family has mentioned if they are going yet. Granted they are awaiting a late arrival of little baby Grey. I really hope that they get to see Maya dance on stage for the first time though. I'm so proud of her. She is doing such a great job. She still loves dancing, which is great, and still wants to continue with it next year. So we signed her up. :)

That being said I have a costume to fix, I need to buy new leotards and hair pins today before she gets home. I'm not sure how long it's going to take me to fix her leotard. Sigh...but i'm good for it. :)

I'm glad that I got my yuckiness out of the way for this week. I forgot things and made a goof of myself all week pretty much so far. It must be overwith and I'm glad that it happened then and not now.


Oh and as far as soap goes. I've been researching about saponification values and whatnot to try and find out why my soap may be more drying than I would like. Found out that saponification values due vary by manufacturer and somtimes season depending on the oil. So that may be the cause of variation. I bought my refined shea from a new manufacturer so I need to do a little experiment once I get my new supplies(it's taking forever to save up).

Any how I really need to actually get some stuff done today. I'm almost finished my newest painting and I must say I love it. I'll be glad when it's finished. I'm going to put it on a better canvase once I have so cashola. something more professional and use the old canvas for play and practice. That's what I'm going to use all my cheaper canvases for. When I get something I like i'll just redo it on a nicer canvas. Or at least that the plan anyway. I change my mind frequently. Time to go! :)

~♥~ Thoughts For Today ~♥~

Hi,

Times are tough these days. Kind of feel a little depressed about it honestly. I'm waiting to be able to afford to buy some more soap supplies. I'm selling some soap to help make the money. It's 5$ a bar. Or 4$ if you buy a smaller than average one. I was selling the baby soap for 2.50 but I made a new batch that is the smaller 4$ size to keep it the same so to avoid any more confusion. I still think that it will be atleast two more weeks before I can afford more supplies. Possibly longer if I have to spend anymore of my spending money on camping trips. Or groceries.

I'm thinking these days that the whole buying presents for everyone thing is deffinatly draining the bank account too much. I think that Jody's right and we shouldn't buy presents anymore. I think that we need to do something to make it official though. Otherwise people will buy presents anyway and someone will end up feeling bad because they didn't buy anything etc., etc.... *sigh* Except I still think that we should get somthing for our birthday you know. It just feels so anti-climactic to me to get nothing at all. So perhaps Jason and I should still get something from each other or from our little family. But take the guessing out of the equation and just pick something that is a reasonable cost that we would like to have for our birthday and the other person goes through the effort of actually getting it unless Jason wants clothes then he will need to pick them out himself.

I'm thinking I will delet our wishlist (as long as Jason agrees) and Make the announcement for everyone to hear. Possibly by email.

Also I don't think I will be posting much of anything on the steeves Wiki anymore. I'm the only one still doing it and it is a little bit disconcerting actually. So I'm going to post my pictures and thoughts here and if anyone is actually interesting in what I have to say they can visit whenever they have time. It's safer here! Less judgement! And I can post what I like without knowing if and how many people are reading it... That way I can think about what I want to tell the world and think less about why no one bothers to comment on my post. Here it's kind of expected to not have many comments unless someone actually cares about what happenes to be going on in my life at the moment and reads the blog. Less hurt and resentment that way!

I really need to get back to the gym...I'm gaining weight and I don't like it! Perhaps it will make me happier.... I'm sure it will I need some good endorphins right now. I'm spending the money on the membership so I should at least use it.

Glad we had this talk...LOL! :D Atleast I feel better now! And it's a beautiful day outside!

~Angela~

~♥~ A shampoo update ~♥~

Well I've tried for the second time to make a shampoo. I think that this time I didn't check my calculations as thoroughly as I should have. I believe that I was off on the lye amounts a minute amount. Unfortunately by the time I figured that out. It was already too late for my soap. :) Better luck next time. Next time I'm gonna check my number with three different lye calculators. One just ain't cuttin' it. Sheesh!

Anyhow, I found out from an additional amount of reading that this book (making natural liquid soaps) says that if I try to attempt at making a soap with at pH less than 7 the lye/water and oils will separate into there original selves. Poop! :P That sucks! Well lets see if that's true I guess! :)

~♥~ A Soap Update ~♥~

Hey,

Well I posted a new video of my most recent soaps. The most sought after information is probably the info on my first liquid soap. And as you can see in the video it didn't really turn out. It's unfortunate. I think that the recipe is a good one and just needs a little tweeking. It probably would have made an ok hand soap. I was too grossed out by the layer on top and worried that it may contain some little "friends" to use it though.

After more research and some new purchases. I'm going to add some preservative to the next batch. I bought one that is paraben free and all the ingredients come from natural sources. I believe anyway. More research is probably needed on that.


Also I found some very useful informations concerning shampoo's in general, which are very helpful. I found out that the lower the pH in the shampoo it will be healthier for cleaning the hair and better at it. A shampoo in other words needs to be more acidic than regular soap to wash away the dirt. Plain distilled water is a pH(Potential Hydrogen) of 7 and anything from 7-10 is considered good for a regular soap (7 is better for more sensitive types like me) And My soap has tested a 7 with a paper pH tester kit. Rain water is even less than this. It is a 5.5 on the scale. And is the perfect pH number (5 to 6) for a shampoo. As you can see from this picture to the left. (I copied this photo from the Killerstrands blog page. I hope that's ok. ) So I think that by lowering the pH of my liquid soap recipe to about 5.5 and by using more potassium hydroxide like recommended in the book "Making Natural Liquid Soaps" I may end up with a Shampoo that I will love and will not dry out my hair like regular all natural liquid shampoos and shampoo bars. (My fingers are crossed.) I also plan on adding a preservative(as mentioned above) and panthenol. Panthenol being Vitamin B5 which is one item on the ingredients list of your shampoo that actually penetrates the hair shaft to moisturtize your hair. Along ofcourse with any oils.

Now you may be asking yourself how I'm planning on lowering the pH of my liquid soap. I'm going to use rain water instead of disstilled water. As much of it as possible for the dillution part of the liquid soap. I'll boil it and strain it to make sure there aren't any little hitch hikers of course. This, unfortunatly will involve me waiting for it to rain. :0P LOL Also though you can use a citric acid (Vitamin C) solution to neutralize and lower the pH of your liquid soap down to as low as a 4. So if I don't have enough rain water I can always add more citric acid solution. In an effort to be as natural as possible. I will start collecting rain water. So I don't have to add as much citric acid solution. Cool eh? :)

~♥~ Adventures in Soapmaking! ~♥~

hi,

In case you don't know already. I've been making soap. Once I made my own laundry detergent and had to use a soap that was full of fragrance and chemicals for my homemade laundry detergent. i was wondering is there a way to get a good soap to use. Even the Dove unscented and Ivory have fragrance and Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (a chemical detergent) in them. And make my eczema flare up. So the answer I found on YouTube. I watched tons of videos on how to make my own soap. And I read everything I could find. After two months I started soaping. And I fell in love with it! Now I have a wonderful passion. I think that I may eventually even be able to sell my soap. I am still a beginner though. I want to share with others my journey to the perfect soap recipe or several of them ..lol. So I started my own YouTube account. And the rest is history. Now that I've figured out how to put my videos on my blog (fingers crossed) I will be able to do a post here as well as the video to explain more about the soap I'm making or the adventure I'm having. It should be fun! :)


Let's try it out shall we?









Very Cool! hee hee!
So this video is about me redoing a batch that kind of failed on me. If I'm going to post here I should explain a few things I guess.

Lye is Sodium Hydroxide and is used to make soap from oils. Soap is basically a salt. The process by which the oils are turned into soap with the lye is called saponification. If you use too much lye then your soap is lye heavy. If you use more oils than what is need to make the soap. Meaning you will have extra oils in your soap for moisturizing the skin it is called Superfatting your soap. Some also call it discounting your soap. Instead of adding extra oil you just subtract a percentage usually 5-10% of the amount of lye needed to completely saponify your oils. It really is chemistry. It's fun chemistry. Wow the first time I made an excellent soap I was ecstatic and now I can't stop. Or don't want to.

I've been waiting for a new scale in the mail now for a few weeks. It should be here tomorrow! So get ready for some awesome soap videos. :0) In my videos I'll take you through the process but I can explain so much more about the soap now that I can write about it too. I'm excited about this. I can hardly wait! :0) I have so many ideas and some of them are a little complicated. Some have been tried but are difficult to complete without "repercussions". I'm all in now though. Someone says "well if you do it this way then it will probably fail" HA! I'm gonna try it anyway because you never know I may have thought of something new and if it doesn't work, well then I've had fun trying. So your welcome to follow along. :0)



Happy Soaping!