Habemus Papam

To my Catholic readers: I know this is old news to you by now, but WE HAVE A POPE!

After Pope emeritus Benedict XVI resigned, we had several pope-less days and I was so excited to see a Twitter post proclaiming "Habemus Papam-- we have a Pope!" Then I got a text from Pope Alarm just a few seconds later (why yes, I did sign up to get a text for the big news!) and had the honor of being the first one to run around the house telling my family!

I don't remember much about Benedict's election so this week was, I think, the very first that I heard about the smoke tradition. The Cardinals vote on the Pope multiple times each day. After each set of votes, they light a fire and send smoke up the chimney of the Sistine Chapel. Black smoke signifies that they have not reached a decision, and white smoke means that they were led by the Holy Spirit, made a conclusive vote, and HABEMUS PAPAM!

We turned on EWTN (a Catholic channel, where you are much more likely to just get to see everything going on at the Vatican and not have to suffer through all the snide comments on how everyone thinks that they can be a better pope than the popes).

We basically sat there for an hour, watching the smoke and the crowds in the square of the basilica, praying for the new pope, and wondering who it is!

I of course grabbed my travel sketchbook and sat doodling. Lately I've been trying to be more decisive with my sketches, so these are all drawn directly with pen (no erasing mistakes) and then splashed with a bit of watercolor. (I recently discovered the epic Urban Sketchers' blog, and I'm surprised by how much these sketches are similar to their style!).

I think that the Swiss Guard are pretty awesome. I wish they'd shown more of them!

 The wait was very very long... so I drew St. Peter's, a happy pilgrim girl who appeared on screen for about two seconds but was so picturesquely joyful, a clock that they kept filming, and some of the crowds. It's surprisingly difficult to draw things on TV; they sure don't keep the camera pointed in one direction all the time!

The excitement and prayerfulness of the crowd there was inspiring.

And finally, they announced the Pope! Francis I is from Argentina and looks like he will be a wonderful pope. He's a theologian and from the Americas and, judging by his speech, has a sense of humor. I'm excited, hopefully he'll be just as strong and totally epic as JPII and Benedict.

(this is a REALLY rough translation that a friend shared on facebook; more polished ones are now online) 

I was impressed by his humble request for prayers before he even gave the Apostolic blessing. 

He surprisingly didn't come out in the full garb with the red cloak; just the white habit and the stole (basically a prayer shawl but with deep symbolism).

(Here's the Altoids watercolor tin that I made several months ago if you were wondering how it's holding up! It works really well. Also, I found a waterbrush in Mom's scrapbook stash yesterday. It's pretty epic.)

Just because I'm posting pictures that I drew of Pope Francis' election today... here's a pen-only sketch from when when pope emeritus Benedict announced his resignation. Just pretend that the hands are the right size and all that.

I don't remember too much about the previous papal election. We were on a class trip to the state Capitol, and someone said something about the pope being sick during a tour of one of the offices. When I got home that day, Mom told me that John Paul II had passed away. Even though I'm racking my brains, I don't have any strong memories of Benedict's election. We just got a new pope and everything was as it should be. When you are in fourth grade, things seem to just work out like that and there is nothing remarkable in it.

Several months later (Jan 2006, judging by where this was in my old sketchbook) I drew a picture of JPII and then a quick sketch of Benedict XVI. It was only after JPII's death that I read encyclicals and books by him and his sucessor and the wisdom of these two saintly men has really strengthened my faith!

Let's pray for the new Pope Francis I and the entire church!

Sharpie Easter Eggs

I'm sure you've seen pictures of those beautiful works of art known as Ukrainian Eggs (or perhaps you've been lucky enough to see them in person!). This traditional style of decorating eggs uses beeswax, candles, really really really strong dyes, and other materials that most people don't have on hand.

Those eggs are true works of art, though. I've always admired them. Last Holy Saturday, I decided to try my hand at blowing eggs and decorating them with various materials-- and I never got past the Sharpies.

Sharpies are awesome.

Sharpies are the ultimate quick-and-easy-(relatively-easy-that-is)-egg-decorating-tool-things.

And, for once in my life, I am actually being a good blogger. I did a craft before the date it's themed on. I've got a very bad habit of doing themed art the day of or even the day after holidays/events, and not posting the pictures and tutorials until a week or so later. (Bad habit if I wanted to be a rich and famous blogger. OK habit for a teenager who just loves art and sporadically posts on her blog for the heck of it.)

Last week, I pulled out the Sharpies and did some more experimenting! These turned out much better than last time-- and I really liked the ones I made last year.

The eggs are pictured below in the order that I made them. Right now, though, here's some tips:

• When blowing the eggs, go ahead and make the bottom hole really big. (See below). This will keep you from getting dizzy when blowing it. Also, you might need to use tweezers to pull the membrane out of the hole; it likes to block the opening up and send raw egg up the end of the egg that your mouth is touching! BTW, I'm just using chicken eggs that we get from Costco.

• You don't need a ton of Sharpies (I've spent a lot of money and have nearly 30 in different colors and sizes, but only use 3-4 markers per egg), but be sure you use real Sharpies. You don't want that half-permanent stuff to bleed all over the place.
• Don't use a pencil to draw in your design, use a very pale marker. I use light pink and light green. The pencils will leave gray in your color.
• Use a rubber band to draw straight lines.
• Hold the egg with a kleenex or paper towel. The Sharpie takes awhile to "set," and nervous, focused fingers will get damp and bleed the color. (Ask me how I know...)
• Blend and smear colors! The unique thing about using an egg is that the Sharpies stay liquid for a good 3 seconds. Use your fingers, a Q-tip, or a bit of Kleenex on your fingertip to smear the ink.
• Sharpies pull each other up, even once the ink has dried. It's great for fixing problems, but be sure you do the dark colors last so you don't risk pulling dark brown into that light yellow you're coloring.
• If you want to color in a large area, hold a Sharpie against a kleenex and let the ink bleed. You've got 15 seconds to rub that color in wherever you want. It leaves a pale and solid color and is great for "erasing" large areas of underdrawings.
• If you really need to remove something, use fingernail polish remover on a q-tip (or something equally abrasive). It doesn't totally remove the color, but I had a major och-nee (oh-noes!) on one egg and this let me keep the background mostly white. I think it might weaken the eggshell, though.
• Use thin wire to thread ribbon through the egg. Most needles aren't long enough. (None of that is pictured here).
• Sharpies aren't toxic. I'm pretty sure you can safely use them on hardboiled eggs.
• Be patient. I spent almost two hours per egg. Rushing things won't get you anywhere. Be sure and use lots of layering to get depth.
• HAVE FUN! Because this technique is AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME and I love it and you'll love it and it's awesome. *emphathetic head nod*

Let the pictures commence!

First I did another egg very similar to last year's eggs. I forgot to snag close-up pictures of it, look for it in the bowl of eggs.

Madonna and Child

I was a little tired of boring old swirly designs and wanted to attempt something more religious. Because Easter eggs, after all, celebrate Easter, only the greatest day of the Church year!

I'm quite proud of this one. :) It's still my favorite!

The Resurrection

The first egg left me wanting to make more! I winged the first one, but for this egg I looked up some traditional iconography for the Resurrection and tried to incorporate it. This also includes my big artsy obsession, Celtic Knotwork.

You know, art is hard enough on a flat surface. Especially knotwork. Try throwing it on an irregular spherical shape... *head explodes*

The Crucifixion

It felt a little odd to do a Resurrection drawing during Lent, so I did one of the Crucifixion.

You can still see the underlying light-pink marker underneath the words. When I draw pictures, the underdrawing gets rubbed away, but it evidently doesn't work as well for lettering!

Our Lady of Guadalupe

Our Lady's picture is very graphic and perfect for copying onto an egg.

Of note on this egg is the rose. Originally my underdrawing had some heart-shaped design that is typical on Ukrainian eggs, but I didn't like it so I used a tissue to smear tan ink and "erase" it. Then I drew the rose on top with light pink, bright red, and dark brown. It took a lot of smearing.

My family isn't very artistic but three of my siblings joined in the fun. My sister's is pretty obvious, but I bet you'd have a hard time telling about the 4 and 11 year old boy's ones. *rolls eyes* My brothers are math and physics geniuses, not artists.

My 8 year old sister did this one entirely on her own. It's "Mary holding Baby Jesus and the back of the egg is the cross after they took Jesus down and you can still see his blood on the cross and on the ground." She then told me all about how Jesus' blood washes away our sins because He died to save us and all about how sad Mary was when her Son died.

She also told me that she wants to make a special egg to commemorate her First Holy Communion this spring. :)

I made these eggs early so they can be gifts for family and friends on Easter Sunday, but they are so so so much fun to make that I'll be making them through the rest of Lent, and probably during the whole of the Easter season. You'll be seeing a lot more of these around the blog!

I think my family likes the decorated eggs so much because it means that I'll offer to cook breakfasts of omlettes and scrambled eggs!

Did you make Sharpie-ified Easter eggs? I'd love to see them! Please leave a comment with a link to your blog or flickr or whatnot. If lots of people decorate eggs with this technique I might do a special post highlighting all of them. :)

Random Musings on Colors, Shapes, and Miracles

 I found this post buried deep in the "edit posts" section of my blog dashboard. I wrote this on one of those days when you could just feel the Creator at work, when everything from the curling pages of my literature book to the dirt on a pair of shoes held a sort of unimaginable wonder that sends shivers of joy tickling down your arms.


I hope you have days like that, too. I hope you are trying, (as I am trying)  to see God everywhere... Everything He has made has some reflection of His goodness and truth and beauty...


I normally don't post my random musings on this blog. Normally I post about art and craft projects. But you can't do anything creative without inspiration.


And so, since I've nothing else to post today, you get a random musing from yours truly.


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(Okay, this post is one of the dangerous things that simply makes no sense. It's one of those thoughts, like an image, that are bright and beautiful in your mind but are the dullest, plainest things when put onto paper.)

I'm an artist. (Obviously.) I love shapes and color... I've often thought that they are some of God's greatest gifts.

Color. I simply love it. Blues you can swim in. Reds you can taste. Browns that smell like fresh-cut wood or brownies. Of course, color isn't really like that. But how can you explain the absolute beauty of color? The richness which you can drown in or fly in or simply stare at for ages... Rainbows of light, dancing across your vision... It is so strange, that colors are so tangible?

And shapes. I've been known to stare at random things, committing them to memory. There was once a picture book of Heidi in my grandmother's house, and when I was just five or six I would spend hours at night (being far too full of soda to sleep), admiring the clean lines and the messy lines and the squares and circles and colors and shapes...

I recently found that book after several years. I knew every page. I knew the colors... and I knew the story. Is that weird? Is it strange that the things I remember most about our vacation is one moment when I opened my eyes in the salty water and saw the light swirling in a rainbow under the surface of the ocean?

What never ceases to amaze me is how God made shapes and colors... and makes them real. Is that so strange, too? Let me explain. Ever since I was little, I've trained myself to dissect what I see into shapes and colors. Kind of like that Tanagram game (though I am never any good at Tanagram). I see a box, but it is also a cube. And a cube is made of squares. Squares are made of exquisite straight lines. And the colors on the box... Each a world in and of it's own. So it is that lines and colors and squares and cubes form a box-- and what a box! A box is a box! How miraculous!


(Honestly, try to stay with me. Boxes are boxes and that is a miracle. And THAT is a fact.)

It's like science, just a little bit. Protons, neutrons, electrons, and forces make an atom... an atom makes a molecule... Zoom out so far that it makes your head spin, and you see a person. A living, breathing person made in the image and likeness of God. Zoom out farther. There are more. Zoom out farther. There is a whole universe. Zoom back in... who knows how far God has zoomed? And what the real miracles is (aside from the fact that any of this exists) is the fact that all this makes a world. A world to honor God.

Where am I going with this again? (You'd better get the computer to always rebel against me when I get into my musing mode. Then you won't get strange, rambling posts that aren't anything like the beauty that was bouncing around in my brain. Just like art, you know. It never turns out the way you wanted.)

Everything is such a miracle. Especially colors and shapes that combine to make a visual world so beautiful that it simply amazes.

Here's a fun exercise to try. You've seen your house a million times. Look at it again. Zoom in. See the indiviual shapes. The colors. The fact that that bush looks an awful lot like a sleeping cat. Really look. Really think.

Now look at your house again.

It is a house. Isn't that the most amazing thing in the world? And, even more than that, it is a house that is a home. It's more than a house; it's a place with memories.

If you look at a thing 999 times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it for the 1000th time, you are in danger of seeing it for the first time.

~G. K. Chesterton

Wonder. Why don't we have wonder in the ordinary things? The guy I just quoted, G.K. Chesterton, wanted the world the re-awaken wonder.

We've become dull in our thinking, and forgotten that every thing we know and everything we will ever know is a miracle beyond comprehension.

Take just a moment, right now. Look at your computer  monitor. (Or ipod. Or whatever you happen to be reading this blog on.) Look at its shape. Look at its color. Choose a color and stare at it and wonder. Think about what all goes into a computer. How many thousands of atoms? How does it all work? Wonder.

Art is, to me, simply observing the miracles God has given us. And that is a perfectly legitimate way of glorifying God, isn't it?

Sacrifice Beads

Have you ever heard of Sacrifice Beads (also known as Good Deed beads)? They are a small set of moveable beads used to count sacrifices and acts of love.

St. Therese of the Little Flower used a set of sacrifice beads as a child. Each time she preformed a selfless act or good deed, she pulled a bead from the knotted side to the side with the Cross. Her goal each day was to move all 10 beads closer to the Cross, just as she was growing closer to Christ. It was a challenge to herself to grow in holiness.

The sacrifice beads can be used as an "exercise in virtue." Count your sacrifices and good deeds, or force yourself to pull a bead each time you give in to a vice (ie, every time you snap at someone).

I've used my beads many times to keep track of my prayers when I can't find my rosary. It's also replaced the rosary in my purse; it doesn't tangle as much!


These beads can be used to count many things!

 Above you can see a set of Sacrifice Beads, (which will soon be) available in my Shoppe. This is a nice set made from a miniature cross and a St. Therese medal, with beautiful Czech glass beads.

Below are two other sets I've made:

My own old, worn out set

Czech glass beads and larger medals; for the Shoppe

Sacrifice beads can be made in many styles.

The most typical way that these are made are by weaving ten beads onto a string: one side has a medal of St. Therese (to remind us of her holy life, which is a model for us, and to ask her to pray for us), and the other end has a Cross. Other medals may be used.

Another, older, way is to use a knot instead of a medal.
Some people add an extra bead, like the instructions below show.

Any quality of supplies can be used. Pony beads and plastic crosses are popular with groups of kids. You can use metal crosses and glass beads. Strings can vary from various strings, cords, and twine to embroidery thread.

I was going to make a tutorial, but I found a well written and beautifully photographed tutorial online. { The Little Ways } graciously gave me permission to use their instructions on the blog!
 

How to Make Sacrifice Beads

Courtesy of { The Little Ways }

Variations

Bracelets-- Some of you may remember my old post on the craft fair. I mentioned that a lady was making sacrifice bead bracelets. I've found her online: { Good Deed Beads.com } She uses tunnel cap beads, lobster clasps, and curb chain to make the string of beads into a bracelet.

This bracelet is very elegant

Here she used "mood beads" that change color!

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P.S. Don't forget to check out my post on Christmas Photography. It has been updated with some new photos! 

P.P.S. I managed to delete/lose an entire memory card of photos of my jewelry, including pictures for a tutorial. I won't have time for another photoshoot until sometime next week, so my next post might be late. :(