Melted Crayon Art

I usually talk about stuff I like but this post will be different.
I just had to get it off my chest.
I DO NOT get what the big deal is about  *melted crayon art*.

I found out about it on Pinterest and people seem to think it's sooooooooooo cool. And I sooooooooooooooo don't see what's so neat about it. To me it just seems like a big waste of crayons. Unoriginal, unimaginative.





Here's an example of a better one. It's good enough that it's been sold on Etsy.
Not bad. The melted crayon's been made to look like dark and gloomy rain. Ok.... But $79 for this? Really????? I think $8 is even asking too much, IMHO.





Then there's ones like the picture to the right where people just glue crayons to canvas or cardstock and melt the crayons with a hair dryer and they love how the wax drips down. Seriously????

Maybe it's something that I have to do to "get" it. Maybe it feels really good to watch the crayons melt down? Well too bad I don't think I'll ever find out what the appeal is. I won't be wasting a box of crayons on trying this out.

If someone reading this can enlighten me to the great appeal of melted crayon art, well... we'll see if that's possible. :-P

Locker Storage Cabinets

Seeing this brought back memories from when I was younger. I used to think it would be neat to some day have school lockers in my home to use for storage cabinets. I thought it would be cool to have it in my bedroom to keep my clothes and other things in. I think I glamorized lockers because I never had the generic lockers throughout my school years. In elementary school we had cubbies at the back of the room. In middle school and high school we had lockers but they had wooden doors and no locks. So seeing these standard issue lockers that all other American kid supposedly grew up with made me have a special place in my heart for them.

I still think it would be neat to have lockers in the house, but I'm not all tickled fancy by the thought like I once was. Guess time does that to you. :) 

More on the Bird House Key Rack

I had talked about the bird house key rack idea in an earlier post, and I found some things at a store last weekend that made me think of it again. 

I thought this bird house could be a good candidate for being used as our bird house key rack. Add some hooks to the bottom, mount on the wall. Easy Peasy. I like the orange star on it, and the size. It would come out a little from the wall though, so I wonder if you could saw it in half or more so it's only a couple inches thick. But then that might look weird.

This one isn't a bird house but it seemed to go with the theme. I like that it's already got the hooks, and you can clip pictures, notes, messages, etc to the bird cage section. This one isn't exactly my taste but I thought it was neat.

Koi Fountain

It's hard to tell from this picture, but this is a koi shaped water fountain. 

It's about 3 ft tall, so it's a good size fountain. 

Since I like koi and water, I was instantly drawn to this. 

I'm curious if this is meant for indoors or outdoors. 

I would imagine indoors, but I'd imagine you'd need quite an entrance way in your house to display this. 

I mean, where else would you put something like this? 

Just trust me, it looked neater in person.

Green Gargoyle

 I recently spent an afternoon painting pottery with a friend. There's these studios where you can go, select a piece of ceramics such as a plate, cup, or something ornamental like this gargoyle (technically a grotesque since it doesn't have a sprout), and paint it. I really enjoy doing this, and should make time to go more often. This was only my 3rd experience (aside from some minor pottery exposure in grade school.) 

The studio I went to the previous times had closed, but I was able to find another place in town. This place is only open part-time, as it is a side business run by a school art teacher. She didn't have as many varieties of items to choose from, nor as much variety in paint. I debated whether to free-hand something like a cup, or just paint something that already had form. I had tried to prepare for this visit by coming up with ideas of things to free-hand. But this grotesque was too neat to pass up. 

This is what my grotesque looked like before it got fired. Even though I was using green glaze, the grotesque looked all gray. And I was using a sea sponge to try and get a mottled effect, but I couldn't tell if that was going to come out or not. This is one of the challenges and appeals of painting pottery for me. 

And this is what my grotesque looked like after firing! It didn't come out quite as dark as I wanted. I should have done a few more layers of glaze on this. But I think it kind of looks like oxidized copper, and I like the variations in the color. 

I'm already trying to plan my next visit. What to paint next??

World's Smallest Car

Apparently this is the world's smallest car. I thought the Smart Car was small, but this takes small to a whole new level. Actually I wonder how these compare to the Tata mini cars I read about. Although since the description says it's only big enough for the driver and a shopping bag, this definitely sounds small. 

I think this looks like something out of a vintage cartoon or comic book. I'm not a Tin Tin expert but I'd imagine I'd see one of these in the Tin Tin books. It wouldn't look out of place in the Wallace and Gromit world either. 

While there's no way I'd ever own one of these cars (especially with a sticker price of $12,676 for something so small!) I do think it looks really neat. I think I like the "anti-conventional" appeal of this car. Start with the fascia. It doesn't have the standard "car face"!!! Only one headlamp, so it's a cyclops. No front grille, so no mouth. And what's with those three round circles under the headlamp? Fog lights and something else? 

I've been pleasantly surprised to see the Fiat 500's cruising around town, but something tells me I won't be seeing any of the P50s around. And that's just fine with me. I think this would be cute as a toy car for kids. Little 10" models, or even plastic ride-in types.