Trompe-l'œil

Currently I am working on getting a BFA in Costume Design.  One of the classes I am taking is Scenic painting.  Above is the piece I painted That is Trompe-l'œil
faux weathered wood barn door.  Start with a gray base then a gray wash and a pale greenish wash then sketch on with chalk to make boards then dry brush with black and white then cut in cut edges and shadow with black and black that is thinned out  them and then highlight  with a grayish white or thined white that is all there was too it 2 class periods of 50 minuets to make but more than half the class time is instruction so really only 50 mins of real painting time.  Finished today started Tuesday  most of this is a dry brush technique

This Trompe-l'œil  faux finished distressed wall With faux Lat construction with age stains from where faux paintings use to be on the faux walls.  I do not consider myself a very good painted but these are passable in my opinion.  Both of these painting are done on Masonite neither has any real depth other than the thickness of the paint.  I enjoy this class so much so maybe every now and again I will post the things I am painting in this class. Painting time is the same as the one above.  This one was done before the wood one finished last Thursday started last Tuesday.

This one starts off with a white coat of paint. followed by an ombre of yellow to orange the entire length of the piece.  Pencil in the chair rail and base board. Paint them in with whites and gray  then a wash of gray to vintage it or dirty it up. add shadow to base boards and rail.   Wash over yellow and orange area to dirty it up too wipe most off.  Then mask two areas to be missing photos mist with light coat of brown and black spray paint.  Pencil in cracks and lat boards paint cracks and lat board brown high light with white and shadow areas then finished.

Watt Pad and my daughter

My daughter Azure Starr has a Wattpad page where she places poems she writes. She would like to get more readers if you would like to see what she writes please follow like and  like this story: "Free Style Poems" by StellaAstro on Wattpad also contact me at...  She has over 50 poems on there.  She would love more readers and constructive feedback.

Chinese New year / Homecoming

The theme for homecoming this year was Chinese New Year.  My middle daughter had out grown the only Asian dress she had so had the youngest.  So Saturday morning I set to work on making a dress for the middle daughter to wear to the dance that night took 7 hours to make not bad really.

The dress I made is in the one in the photo above on the right with the red frog closures on my middle daughter (17 years).  The other is a shirt on the left I owned that I gave to my youngest ( 15 years)   but tallest daughter ( 5 foot 9 inches) for the dance to wear.  Afterward I just let her keep it because she liked it so much and had outgrown her Asian dress.

I already owned the blue silk fabric. I wish it had been red as it would have more appropriate for the holiday.  It had been waiting since 2009 for me to find a good project for it the other fabrics in that post have log since been used.    But I am sure the fabric is older than that as it had been in the other person's stash for a while before I got it. I still have a lot of the thread and the small hide shown in the other post.   The photo to the right is pretty true to color some of the other photos are not so well matched to the color.

While I was working on the dress for her to wear, my middle daughter, while laying in bed was working on making some hair pieces for her and her younger sister to wear at the dance.  The youngest daughter also in bed did most of the stringing of the beads onto the wire.  While the middle one did all the wire manipulation to create the beautiful hair ornaments below.  Here are some up close detailed photos of the hair pieces.

My daughters actually went stag to the dance as originally they  had not planned on going because of being sick.  The middle daughter wanted a new dress and to see some of her old friends as she no longer goes to that school.  I usually either make a dress or buy a thrift shop dress that I embellish.  So she knew she would get a dress if she went.  Usually I have more than 24 hours notice.  One of her best friends also went stag so they hung out together was nice that they both had someone to be with  Especially since neither really wanted to be at the dance because of not feeling well .  You can see the beaded hair ornament on the back of her head in this photo to the left.

I am currently residing in my sister in laws home where I live in the basement as some remodeling work is done on my home.  Water and mold damage.  So I don't have a lot of space to do projects but there is this nice long hallway that leads to my room.  I laid the fabric out there so I could cut it.  The pattern I used was Simplicity 8244 a reproduction of a 1950's pattern (2016) view A.  Although I am not found of how they assembled the pattern next time I will put the zipper under the right arm not the left as it will line up with button flap.  Also will not sew the button flap shut as the pattern tells you too at the bottom of it makes it hard to put on.  It would be much easier to put on with these two modifications as the opening for the neck waist area would be twice as big.  I have no idea what someone was thinking when they made this pattern that way.  I also would change the way the side slits are made.  Get rid of the slit modesty panel and make the slip about 4 inches taller as it binds a little to much at the knees not good for ballroom dancing which my daughter loves.

The below over exposed photo is when I had the dress half made

This above photo was the finished dress after 7 hours of cutting and sewing.  I might go back and make the modifications to the bodice that I don't like in the pattern now that the dance is over.  The frog closures or knots where hand made by my middle daughter specifically for this dress.  The only embellishments on this dress are the frog closure's and the black piping trim I put around the collar and the neck opening flap and sleeve openings.  Hard to tell in the photo but there is small hints of red in the fabric and my daughter wanted more red since it was being made for Chinese New Year and I couldn't find red pipping in my stash so this is how we worked that out. Since there was also black details in the fabric I added both colors.

This is the video tutorial my daughter followed to learn how to make the frog closure.  I did not make the video but it had embedding available  so I put it here for easy reference but all rights are still owned by the creator.

Both of my daughters being  silly with their friend after the dance was over.  Because of running errands half of the  day and both girls being ill my girls only made it to half of the dance.  It started at 8 and ended at 11 but they only went from 9:30 to 11 since being ill. I don't think they could have handled the entire dance.  But I think they both had fun which is a nice change of things.

This is the other beaded hair piece my daughters made together one stringing and one manipulating the wire. The above hair piece was warn by the daughter to the left long with two hair sticks you see in the photo.  You can't see the beads in the photo as she let her hair down half way through the dance.  She put it back up at the end of the dance without putting the beads back in her hair. It had been on the side of her bun.

0-3 months white dress

My oldest daughter had been working on a gift for a baby cousin that had yet to be born.   This is for a kind aunt and uncle, my in laws, who let us stay with her when we had mold damage in our bathroom of our home which caused us to leave our home.  Which took several months to remedy.  The aunt uncle  are kind and let us stay at their home through an operation on one kid and several illnesses in my children they where and are good sports about the whole thing.  We love them dearly.

This dress is hand crocheted in size 10 thread.  My daughter added 2 antique mother of pearl buttons to the back and tons of ribbon roses to the dress.

21,415,166

Sometimes seeing the number of views I get is down right scary.  21,415,166 viewers.   I don't have any clue how my stuff  could be look at that many times.  But thank you all the same.   I feel loved

Drawing eye candy

It has been years since a got new nice supplies for art.   This is so exciting to me I can not wait to use these this and next term for my costume design classes.  I have gotten to do some drawing as of late.  Am very excited to be able to do more of it.

Some of these were Christmas gifts the small ones with out the big names.  But the prismacolor pens and pencils those were purchased yesterday the excitement of getting them at 50% off.

Also found out this last week that I get to do the costume design for the touring play next spring for UVU and the makeup for the play " a year in the life of frog and toad" should be a fun and busy year.

swatching Portuguese socks

First off Happy New Year

Still ill so I  thought I would test out my theories on Portuguese socks while laying in bed.

I also thought some might be interested in how i did my swatching.  These are the notes I took while doing this.  May be helpful to some may not bu tit is helpful to me.

first test Dec 31

size 10 cotton thread
50 stitches cast on 3 needles
knitting needle size 00

knit in round with white for this should have been red to be traditional
which hand was doing what red left white right

1. first 10 rounds  white
2. then k2t yo around eyelet picot row ( in the future i want the picot round to be a contrast color)
3. knit 10 round white  (This should have been yellow and the flower color) on 10th  row join to to first round knitting one stitch from needle to one stitch on cast on to close  top of sock and give a finished edge
4. did one more row in last color used ( which if it had been red like it should of I would have stayed red but since it wasn't had to switch to red for  background color)
5.  add second color do 1 round k

first test Dec 31, 2016

size 10 thread
50 stitches
knitting needle size 00

knit in round with white for  This should have been red to be traditional
red left white right

1. 10 rounds
2. then k2t yo around eyelet picot row
3. knit 10 round white  This should have been yellow and the lower color) on 10th  row join to to first round
4. do one more row
5.  add second color do 1 round k (if I had used red the whole time would not matter but since I switched this really should have been two rows)

work pattern to test
test leaves

this gave me 10 stitches per inch  and 12rows with size 00 needles need to go need to go smaller on needles

try again want 14 per inch

Jan -01 2017
needle size 0000

usually when you knit socks the picot band at the top is usually knit on one size smaller needles than rest of sock so i will do that in the a real  pair this i more to test the tension and stitches in the actual sock area test rose

work pattern to test

test leaves

 00 needle

this gave me 10 stitches per inch  and 12rows with size 00 needles need to go need to go smaller on needles way smaller so I will drop two sizes

try again want 14 per inch or as close as possible to that


I am working a stripe pattern  (looks like candy cane Christmas stuff to me) on the back of the sock just to carry the thread from point a to b on a real sock this too would have a flower patter.

next test on Jan -01 2017
needle size 0000

On a side note to self

Usually when you knit socks the picot band at the top is usually knit on one size smaller needles than rest of sock.  I will do that in the real pair this I more to test the tension and stitches in the actual sock area

test rose

size 0000 steel needles

I have needles that go down to size 000000 hope I don't have to go that small if so the picot band will not be knit on smaller needles just how it goes.

It has been a while since I have knit with needles this small.  Taking me a little bit of getting use to holding stuff this small again.   Thinking I will finish this as a sock not for any one to use mind you too small and not how I would want it to look.  But it might be cute next year as a Christmas decoration.

Plus it will give me a chance to work the toe section to figure out those decreases.  Since the toe style is different than any I have used.  I would rather do these as toe up socks but can't do that until I know how the pattern works both forward then backward.

So now you have seen what a test looks like to me and the thoughts that go through my head as I figure it out.  Happy Knitting to you... I will go back to testing this once I have the Santa stocking all done.

Santa stocking

Have been working on the Santa stocking for my cousin been in bed most the last few days.  So it is making a little bit of progress.  The one on the right is the one I am trying to match color wise. I think it is pretty close.  My tension so far is pretty close to that of the original sock I am copying.  But we will see what happens when I get to the intarsia part the color work area of the socks hanging and the Santa body.  I have not done much intarsia so in my knitting it is very much a week point for me.

 As to the color matching

• My cream is a little light in color but that could  be age of the old wool.   
• My red is a brighter red also could be age.  
• My green is more a blue green that has nothing to do with age I just had a hard time matching that color and the skin tone well I purposely made that a tiny bit darker less pink more peach also for that part since so little is used it is tapestry wool.

• The angora part the beard that is not coming out as close as I would have liked it to be.  But since the store only had one type of angora I had not a whole lot of say in that part of the yarn choices. 

Because of the intarsia color work the pieces is knit flat then joined in the round after the green section is done.