blush from a beet

Readymade Magazine used to exist, and it was awesome.  It was owned by Better Homes and Gardens, but it was younger and hipper, and something else I just can’t quite put my finger on, and had I been only a few years older (I read it throughout college) I would have possibly had a reason and a means to make more of the DIY home projects they offered (I lived in a dorm).  Nevermind the fact that my subscription was replaced by BH&G for half a year after they stopped the presses (have you ever read BH&G? not my thing at all), or that I still get e-mails from BH&G asking me to become a subscriber, three years later.  I don’t buy many magazines, so I usually end up keeping the ones I do buy for quite awhile.  I have a very small magazine holder of them on my bookshelf, and five or six of those are old issues of Readymade.  But I can’t seem to find the issue that sparked this post, and it’s not online either.  So I’ll just have to talk about it.

This one particular issue had a section on how to make your own make-up.  In recent years since this issue of Readymade was published, DIY culture has been making a strong comeback, so maybe the idea of making your own make-up won’t raise quite as many eyebrows now (still, a lot of eyebrows will be raised).  Well, don’t think I’m crazy, but when it comes to most things, if there is a way to make my own, I am interested to learn.  I haven’t learned to make everything…yet.  But I wouldn’t mind trying.

In the Readymade article, there were recipes for mascara, lipstick, and perfume.  And then there was this: blush.  There’s nothing to make, really.  Just get it and use it.  I finally got around to this just this week, six or seven years after reading the article, and I wish I hadn’t waited as long.

Blush.  It makes your cheeks rosy, you know.

Several years ago, I used to use a blush by Rimmel.  Here’s the ingredients list:
Talc, polyethylene, caprylic/capric triglyceride, magnesium stearate, tridecyl trimellitate, PTFE, hydrogenated polydecene, methylparaben, polyglyceryl-3 diisostearate, propylparaben, silica dimethyl silylate, butylparaben. May contain: Mica, iron oxides (CI 77491, CI 77492, CI 77499), titanium dioxide (CI 77891), D&C red No. 7 calcium lake (CI 15850), ultramarines (CI 77007), D&C red No. 30 aluminum lake (CI73360), D&C red No.6 (CI 15850), FD&C yellow No. 5 aluminum lake (CI 19140), ferric ferrocyanide (CI 77510), manganese violet (CI 77742), carmine (CI 75470), tin oxide

You can probably infer just based on the fact that the list is so daunting, that not all of these things are so great to have seeping into your pores daily.  And the ingredients lists for most over the counter make-up look exactly like this.  You can look up each of these ingredients and their toxicity levels (and whatever else is in your particular brand of choice) here.  The parabens are particularly bad.

Two and a half years ago, I started using several products from Just Pure Minerals.  It is a small business and all of the products are mixed up by hand!  They are all vegan and non-toxic and totally trustworthy.  I absolutely love their mineral foundations and powders, and I don’t see myself trying to make that anytime soon.  I love their blush too.  The ingredients list for the Just Pure Minerals blush:

Mica, titanium dioxide, iron oxides.

The cost is $12, for an amount that will last me well over 6 months.  So if you don’t decide to make your own make-up after reading this post, check out Just Pure Minerals for some non-toxic, handmade make-up.  I will be their spokeswoman any day.

On the other hand, if you want to make your own blush, here’s what you do: buy some beet powder.  Use it as blush.  The end!  What!  Yes.  Too good to be true.  I was skeptical, but it’s awesome.  I was mostly unsure of the color, because beet powder is a bit on the magenta side, and I normally choose a blush more on the orange side.  However, the color looks great and does not come across as magenta or purple on my skin.

I had a hard time finding beet powder locally, although I plan to try again when I run out of my current stock.  I ended up buying it from Ancient Indigo herbs on Etsy, and would highly recommend them.  They grow many of the products for sale in their shop on their own farm!  I fully support that.

Can you make beet powder from an actual beet?  Yes.  You absolutely can, I found out with a little internet searching.  Just cut a beet into slices, dehydrate them, and crush them into a fine powder.

If you're still wondering why someone would want to do this...why would anyone not want to use blush made from a simple beet, and keep using a ton of dangerous chemicals instead?

what I've been up to lately

Lately I have been:

- Sewing and sewing and getting ready to sew some more

- Fulfilling lots of custom Etsy orders (always a good thing!)

- Finding ways to make my Intro to Digital Photography college course feel new and fun since this is my 10th time to teach it (time flies)

- Starting two new part-time jobs as a learn-to-skate instructor (!!) and a shop girl at a small, adorable local business (Shop girl makes me think of You've Got Mail.  It's just that sort of shop, only we don't sell books.)

- Riding my bike every day even when it's freeeezing and snowing, and feeling really stinking proud of that fact.

- Ice skating and loving it as much as ever.  I can't ever remember a day in my life where I had skating practice on my schedule and didn't want to go!

- Making lots of bees and other art in my very own darkroom (that I share with my studiomate Steve)

I haven't been baking much bread.  Oops.  I'm trying to get back on track!

year of bread 5&6/50: nestle tollhouse, betty crocker, and clabber girl

I used to watch Saved by the Bell while getting ready for school in the mornings, when I was in elementary school.  Reruns came on at 7 am, for some strange reason.  My absolute favorite episode was the one where the whole gang starts a business making spaghetti sauce, from Screech's grandmother's secret family recipe.  Their business really takes off, and eventually it comes out that the recipe was stolen by Screech's grandmother from a Betty Crocker cookbook.

There is also a similar episode of Friends, "The One with Phoebe's Cookies."  Phoebe's grandmother had an amazing chocolate chip cookie recipe.  She passed the recipe down to Phoebe, but Phoebe lost the recipe when her apartment caught on fire.  Monica's only request for a wedding gift from Phoebe is to have her grandmother's recipe.  Phoebe has one single cookie left made from the recipe, hiding out in her freezer (I guess it wasn't damaged in the fire?).  So she gives the cookie to Monica, and Monica bakes batch after batch after batch of cookies trying to figure out the recipe, but she fails.  Eventually Phoebe says that the recipe originated from her great-great grandmother from France, Nestle Tollhouse (say it with a French accent!).  Of course, Monica recognizes this as the brand Nestle Toll House, hands a bag of chocolate chips to Phoebe and has her read the recipe on the back of the bag, which it turns out, is her "grandmother's recipe."

No, my grandmother doesn't have a secret family biscuit recipe (that would be pretty cool, actually).  But after seeing a biscuit recipe on the back of the Clabber Girl baking powder when scouring the pantry for Saturday morning breakfast ideas, I decided to take a cue from Screech's and Phoebe's grandmothers and try it out.  There's a reason why they make an effort to put those recipes directly on the packaging, you know, and a reason why fictional grandmothers steal them and call them family secrets: they are really good!

On Saturday morning, I made these with unbleached, all-purpose flour.  On Sunday, I tried them again but with whole wheat flour (I added 1 Tbsp. gluten to the flour).  The result with both was delicious!  The whole wheat ones are a healthier given the extra fiber, so next time I'll either make the whole wheat version again, or do a 1/2 and 1/2 version.  I also used soy milk and vegan butter substitute since that's what I keep on hand.  And I cut them in an endearing heart shape since we're getting close to Valentine's Day!  And the fabric for my sewing project matched my plate, so that became my backdrop.  Thanks, Clabber Girl.  Maybe I'll start claiming this as my secret family biscuit recipe.

sewing soakers

I love putting multiple interests/skills into one project.  Two years ago, I decided to start taking screen printing classes so I could combine my love of drawing/designing and fabrics.  Sometimes I make prints on nice paper, but nothing makes me happier than printing my own custom fabric, then sewing it into something one-of-a-kind.  So when my catlady ice skating friend Dayna, who also studied art in school, and I, started talking about drawing cats skating and potentially using the drawings for some kind of project, visions of screen printing ice skating cats onto our own fabric immediately came to mind.  Last week Dayna, Lindsay, and I got to work to make this dream happen!  This is my 3rd sewing project of the year.

Dayna had screen printing experience as well, so we printed the fabric with my at-home screen printing set-up.  The design was a collaboration between me, Dayna, and Marie.  I just invested in 6 new screens not too long ago, so of course given that, along with my recent sewing ambitions, I am envisioning lots and lots of fabric printing in my near future!

And what did we make with all that cat fabric, you ask?  Soakers!  Soakers are soft blade covers for skates.  They help completely dry the blades after skating, and keep them from getting scratched up.  They are normally terry cloth (fabric material) on the inside, but the outsides can vary.  We printed our outside fabric with the cats.  It was a simple broadcloth from the quilting area of the fabric store.  We got lots of colors and are working on sewing up more pairs for all our skating friends!  When we finish them up, I'll make an illustrated tutorial of how it's done, but we modified the instructions from the Figure Skating Advice blog.

And by the way, these are my NEW figure skates.  They are so beautiful!  I have been figure skating for 16 years, and had my last pair of skates a total of 14 years!  5 of those years I did not skate regularly, but 9 years of skating is still a really long life for skates!  They were so worn out.  I am still keeping them around for when I get to teach skating classes for children on the weekends (skating with 3 year olds can be rough on the skates), and since I only had one pair of soakers between the two pairs of skates, this was the perfect, functional project for me.  My other pair of soakers is pretty wild...they are made of faux giraffe fur...13 year-old me picked them out and thought they were ah-mazing.  Miraculously, they are still in perfect condition after all this time.  The fur makes them a little more heavy duty than the average soaker.  That was a funny sentence to type!

If you're wondering what that print looks like, here is the computer file I made the transparency from (click to see it larger).  I drew the Russian splits cat.

I've already started on my next project, which I'll post about soon.  It's this vintage blouse pattern that I'm in love with.  It has everything...a big collar, a huge button, a front yoke, and elbow-length sleeves...it's perfect.  The fabric I chose is peeking out on the top left of this picture--navy and yellow tulips on a cream backdrop.  It's sewing up beautifully and if it fits well/I'm able to make it fit well, I know I'll be making several more of these!  More on that later.

a trip to the art museum

Last week, I went with Corey and my friends Lindsay, Dayna, Marie, and Marie's son, to the Columbus Museum of Art.  At first I was a bit skeptical of their featured exhibit, Let's Go LEGO.  While I know that art can be made out of any materials, I just wasn't sold on an entire exhibit of art made of Legos.  However, I quickly got in the spirit of things once we started walking through the exhibit, and it turned out to be a lot of fun!  I snapped pictures of a few of my favorite Lego sculptures, including this Lego Tide, which totally felt reminiscent of Andy Warhol's Brillo boxes.

There were Lego cigarettes.

And Lego clouds, that were actually made by a photographer who makes Lego props to go in his photographs.

Then there was a huge room filled with what was called Lego Columbus...a COLUMBUS, OHIO, MADE OF LEGOS!  It was pretty exciting.  There was this Lego greenhouse, which I'm pretty sure is supposed to represent Franklin Park Conservatory.

There was a downtown Columbus skyline of all the big buildings.

Little public transit buses.   Corey and I agree that now whenever we see a real bus, we think of Legos!

There was even a Batman!  And, apparently, an alien, though we never found him/her.

A well-known ART sculpture/sign in front of Columbus College of Art and Design downtown.

And the Ohio State stadium, which was SO HUGE, compared to everything else, it got its very own room.  Typical.

We looked around at some other familiar favorites in the museum's permanent collection.

They have some hands-on areas for children.

I always spend a long time with this Diane Arbus classic, but unfortunately, this print wasn't made by Arbus personally, but was printed a year or two after she died by someone else, from her original negative.  Still really cool.

Is it my (faux) modeling pose, or my entranced-by-art pose?  Actually, it was my glazed over look halfway through before I drank a cup of coffee!  Museums will wear you out, seriously.

No doubt, that's Corey's modeling pose.

Of course I love the paintings, but I'm also always smitten by the intricate gold frames.

John Singer Sargent.

A trip to an art museum is always a pleasure.  I love seeing old art and new art, reflecting on things I've learned about art history, and finding inspiration for my own art work.

year of bread recipe 4/50: deep dish pizza dough

Guys, I'm killing this baking-50-bread-recipes goal.  I need to take a break and get behind my sewing machine!

For recipe number 4, we made deep dish pizza.  We just acquired a cast iron skillet a few months ago and it is amazing.  I can't believe I didn't buy one years ago.  Corey found this thread awhile back and made the recipe suggestion by commenter sfafard a few times.  This was my first time to handle the dough-making of this recipe, and my bread-baking goal is as much about just getting in the kitchen and making bread as it is trying brand new recipes, so it counts.

I have to make a disclaimer here that it's winter time and a lot of times it's dark outside when I'm working on these things.  Even though I'm a trained photographer with professional lighting equipment, this blog is more about having fun for me than my leisurely life becoming a photography assignment, so, you get what you get with available light.  I do love working on my food photography skills...but unfortunately I lose that motivation during winter!  I'm just being honest here.

Our toppings (filling?) were Tofurky Italian sausage, red onion, bell pepper, and feta cheese.  We rarely, but sometimes eat cheese.  We also topped it with fresh spinach before eating.

This deep dish pizza dough is great and definitely worth trying!  It has a great flavor and when baked in a cast iron skillet, the edges of the crust are amazing.

my new serger

I have a new potential sewing friend...my new serger!  I say potential because we're not exactly BFFs yet.  We still have a little ways to go because one of us is a little persnickety and one of us is sometimes lacking in the patience department.  I'll let you figure it out.

This was my Christmas gift from my very generous and thoughtful parents.  It's very exciting because I can now sew finished seams more easily!

This is how my serger looked right out of the box.  It was threaded with color-coded thread for learning purposes.  Threading this thing is no easy task, but I am learning.

It came with a little scrap piece to show me what the serged edge should look like.  Then I practiced...a lot...on my own fabric scraps!  When I was finally feeling brave enough, I set out to sew my first pair of undies using the So, Zo...What Do You Know? pants pattern.

This is my first pair of pants (So, Zo is British!) waiting to be sewn up.  Sorry if this is too much information for you, I did ask myself if it was too much to be posting about sewing underwear on my blog, but I think this could inspire someone else to learn to sew them, because that's how I was inspired, so I determined that it's okay.  Don't worry, no modeling shots! That would be extremely weird.

The pattern is very easy to follow.  There are 3 pattern pieces: front, back, and gusset.  The only adjustment I had to make was going up 1 size.  The pattern advised that if your material isn't stretchy enough, you may have to do this.  The instructions are also easy to comprehend, but the process itself is just a little tricky to get the hang of.  It was especially hard for me to learn to sew the flat elastic on evenly.  I am still getting the hang of that!  But I think it just takes practice.  I serged the gusset and side seams, and sewed the elastic on with my regular sewing machine on the zig-zag stitch.  I think you could sew it on with the serger (with the top knife disabled) if you used regular flat elastic, but I chose picot (it has a decorative trim sticking off one edge) so the serger wouldn't work on it.  If you had a coverstitch machine then I assume it would be no problem.  If you don't sew and that sounds like a lot of crazy jargon, sorry!

Anyhow, I sewed three pairs of pants and the first two were practice pairs that I didn't completely finish, because some areas got a little wonky.  The practice was necessary and I'm glad I did practice on the real thing instead of just scrap fabric since this is such a small item and not much fabric was wasted.  Sewing the flat elastic around the curved leg openings is extra difficult!

My third pair was a winner and I hope to start a fourth this weekend and have even better success with it.  If you're thinking of sewing some pants for yourself, I'd say go for it!  If you don't have a serger, I wouldn't let that stop you.  I could have learned this a long time ago on my regular sewing machine.

year of bread recipe 3/50: ted bread

Well, I lost my steam a little by developing a cold the second week of the year.  However!  I am feeling better and now back on track with my sewing and bread baking goals.

I'm still on a mission to bake the perfect loaf of sandwich bread before I move on to something else.  So this week, I scoured my cookbook collection (I own only 6 cookbooks, not a lot for someone who likes to cook as much as I do--I think it's because most of my generation, myself included, finds recipes and cooking advice online, right?  There's something really nice about a printed cookbook, though.) for bread recipes.  I landed upon this recipe in The Grit Cookbook which was a gift from my dear friend Casey last Christmas.

It's called Ted Bread and the description says it's great for toast and grilled sandwiches.  It uses a combination of whole wheat and all purpose flours.  I also chose it because it has a rising time of only 40 minutes.  And, because of that, I didn't use my bread maker for any part of this bread!  That's right, I mixed it and kneaded it by hand...and guess what, it was amazingly easy.

This is what it looked like before going into the oven...and this is what it looked like after coming out:

I had a piece of peanut butter toast for breakfast.  It's very tasty!  It's still a little more crumbly than how I envision the perfect sandwich loaf, but I'm thinking it's because I didn't activate the gluten enough while kneading it.  I could also add a little more gluten to the flour next time to help it out.

In all, very good flavor, and I'm sure I'll make it again!  I hope I can visit The Grit restaurant one day next time I'm in Georgia.

tuesdays are my favorite

Tuesdays are my favorite!  At least, they have been since August.  I don't teach on Tuesdays, but instead cobble together an eclectic schedule that I think is fitting of an artist.  I get to do a lot of my favorite things in the city all in one day and I have time to create!

The first thing I do is ride my bike in the cold to my 7 am figure skating practice.  Okay, the first thing I do is drink a cup of coffee.  But then I ride my bike to my ice rink, which is strangely warm and inviting after my frigid ride!  Skating is my favorite way to start the day.  I don't post about skating much here, but I have been figure skating since I was ten years old and it is one of my absolute favorite things to do.

Today after skating, I biked home and showered, then headed to my studio/darkroom near downtown.  I usually ride my bike there but today I drove because we have a lot of slushy snow and ice patches along the sides of the streets.  I'm hoping everything will melt ASAP!  At my studio, I had a note from my studiomate Steve telling me that another artist in our building had bought 5 of these little photographic bees I have been producing for a project.  I sold them once at a market we have in our building, then left my stash of them on my desk with the sign saying $1/bee.  I didn't expect someone to come in and want to buy some randomly, so it was a fun surprise to walk in to.



Steve also sometimes leaves little things for me, like apples from the apple tree in his yard, or a book about 1990s crafts, or this "Got Coffee?" magnet, which was today's treat.  What can I say, after 3 years of sharing a studio, he knows my interests.



This is my corner of the studio:



I have an awesome desk, super comfy desk chair, and a sweet avocado green cabinet.  All were surplus from a medical center at the university.  I highly recommend buying office-type furniture through a university surplus!  I wouldn't have been able to afford the quality of furniture I have in my downtown studio or my home studio area without doing so.  Plus the 1970s office vibe is kind of my favorite.

While at my studio, I developed film in my darkroom.  Some of the film was from a recent night time photo shoot (left roll below, if you know a lot about film and are wondering why it looks so thin--it was very dark!) and one roll was engagement pictures of my friends Callie and Aaron.  I can't wait to make them a beautiful black and white print!

It was COLD in the darkroom.  Can you read that?  It reads 48 degrees F!  Cold!  It is usually that cold.  Luckily Steve keeps a space heater in the darkroom, BUT while I was developing my film, the electricity went off for 15 minutes! It was so strange.  Luckily I didn't need electricity (I used my phone as a timer) and I just opened the darkroom door to let natural light in (once the film is in the developing tank you can turn on the light).

After finishing up in the darkroom, it was time for my weekly ceramics class!  My ceramics class is about a half a mile from my studio, which is awesome because when I have to drive I can park for free at my studio and not pay for a meter.  The best thing about the walk is the view of the Columbus skyline.  It's probably my favorite view of the city!  The reflection of that bridge is so beautiful in person.

The bridge I was walking on had patchy spots of thin ice that just looked like water!  I almost slipped a few times.

My ceramics class ritual is to make a cup of chai tea and sip on it for the entire 3 hour class (reheating it from time to time, of course).  People in my class have remarked that I must be a serious tea drinker but that couldn't be further from the truth.  I normally drink coffee, but this is just easier to take to class since we have an array of ceramic mugs and a microwave handy!  I've done it so much that now I start craving chai tea as soon as I walk in the ceramics studio.

Now that my clay skills are back up to par, this term I am focusing on making matching sets!  It is an extra challenge because it's harder than it looks to make multiples of the same size and shape.  Today I started with four slab cups, about 5 inches tall each.  I think they will be decorated in a coordinating but not identical way, and they are going to have another coordinating component like a matching saucer, maybe.  I'm working on gathering inspiration for this term (8 weeks) and planning to make most if not all of my pots fit into a sort of design theme that I come up with.  This is more fulfilling than just showing up to class every week and making whatever I come up with off the top of my head.

After ceramics, I picked Corey up from work and we grabbed a beer at our favorite bar in the city.  I had a delicious chocolate stout!  Now I'm at home wrapping up my lesson plans for tomorrow's class.

And that's just a typical Tuesday.