A Glimpse

Well, unfortunately Christmas is over and I hope you all had a wonderful time spent giving with family and friends. This Christmas was a little different for me, but one of the best ones I've had.  I got to see my closest friends, and my family time was wonderful. I think what made this Christmas more special than others was the fact that I truly embraced my time home.  Time goes by so quickly, and not to have the long two month break I used to have while I was in college makes my time spent at home that much more valuable.

The holiday went by in the blink of an eye, and here I am back in the city getting ready for New Years.  I can honestly say I am a little ready to slip back into my routine.  Here are a few snap shots I took in New York before I left and some that I took at home :)

This was the little decorative area in the cute home of my friend who lives in Brooklyn. So adorable!

I did some gift wrapping with recycled shopping bags.  

This is one of the little paper trees I told you about that I was going to make. I made mine with some sparkly paper. I couldn't get a big tree, so the paper ones did just fine, and they are super cute!  Thank you Martha Stewart Holiday Craft book!

  

Our tree at home in Alabama

 I got festive and did my nails on Christmas day (it was a stocking stuffer!) If you guys haven't tried the stick-ons they work really well, last for 10 days and comes off with nail polish removal. Cool stuff. Mine are done gold right now for New Years! Speaking of which I hope you all have a fun New Year's Eve night and and wonderful New Year's Day!

Cheers to 2012! Wishing you a great start to a healthy new year!

xo
Andrea

I Am Grateful : Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy (Early) Thanksgiving! What are you most grateful for? I can be nothing but humbled in realizing how much I have been blessed with. Especially when I take the time to think about it and write it all down.  I could make a thousand lists, but here are a couple I would like to share this year.

I am grateful...

Personal

1  To be able.
2. To have a supportive, awesome family
3. For the truest friends anyone could ask for (you know who you are)
4.  For a great job that I enjoy and get excited about
5. To be in such a great place of opportunity
6. To have accessibility to new adventures and places
7. For life's little moments
8. For those placed in my life that have given me something to grow and learn from (situations,
   relationships, experiences, etc)
9. For YOU and your support :)


Day to Day (Things that keep me going)

1. My friends (again) who have continued to stay connected near and far
2. Argo Tea for  keeping me energized
3. Trader Joes for keeping me fed
4. My coats and boots for keeping me warm
5. Google Maps and HopStop for getting me where I need to go
6. My music for keeping me upbeat and quick to work
7. This blog, so I can keep myself and others inspired

Again, I hope you all have a wonderful, plentiful Thanksgiving. Don't forget to remember and cherish what your grateful for!

Don't worry, I wouldn't leave you without a little bit of inspiration.  (Click images for details)

This Cranberry Almond Cinnamon Tart (Martha Stewart Living recipe)  makes my mouth water. It looks and sounds so delicious and is one that is going in my personal recipe box. YUM.

* I want to make this

Lastly I couldn't resist on leaving out a Martha Stewart craft.  I think these Flaming Foliage candle holders are so pretty. I have several little candles in my apartment (gotta keep it smelling fresh!) And this would be such a cute idea to use to spruce them up for the holiday don't you think?

* I want to make these

Well, I'm off to Philly! I will be back soon.  I am celebrating my Thanksgiving with some dear friends of mine.  I'm excited to get out of the city and be in a new surrounding for a little while.  I've never been to Philadelphia, so CHECK! One off my list and many many more to go!

Eat lots, and again Happy Happy (Early) Turkey Day!

xo,

Andrea

Cardboard Safari

Hello friends!  I hope you all had a lovely Friday.  Here's a bit of fun, crafty, inspiration for you.

Many of you may have already known the source to these amazing 3-D cardboard decorative pieces, but I just discovered Cardboard Safari! (found via Snow&Graham blog- one of my favorite paper companies) I had seen many of the deer heads before at Anthropologie and thought they were really interesting.  I love the elephant (Roll Tide!)  and the moose. The wreaths are really great too! 

I want to make a mini cute one like this! This moose one was done by Snow & Graham. They covered it with their NEW daisy wrap. So cute! They are going to post a tutorial on it soon, so keep your eyes peeled!  I would love to try this with some paper doilies. You could paint the base any color you want to show through the cut outs. I would prefer something like a light neutral gray, a blue-gray or any color with the tone of the wall the daisy moose is setting against. Or just the brown of the card board could be lovely also don't you think!? Ahh! Definitely going to do this, and you should too!

p.s  have a fabulous weekend!

Taking Note : Innovate and Decorate!

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend!  Mine was definitely eventful. I took a short trip to Brooklyn to help my dear friend Liz move into her new place! I also want to give her another shout-out and congratulate her once more for her new job as a sign artist at Trader Joes! She graduated with me at SCAD and majored in Illustration.  I'm so proud of you!  I also checked out the Farmer's market in Unions Square this weekend, which was amazing. So many yummy foods and interesting people around.

Today was the first day I climbed my three flights of stairs and hit the 4th floor unexpectedly because I actually wasn't out of breath!  Talk about success.  Today the VP of design at Martha made my day. He introduced me to a girl who I've heard, but never met. I say "heard" because she sits a row behind me and she has the greatest southern accent. All I could think to myself was, I have to meet her at some point to share my common bond of being a southerner with her!  When I was introduced to her, the exact words used were "Andrea, come meet your cousin!"  Loved it.  She is from Mississippi, practically from Alabama because she rests on the state line.  It was so nice chatting with her, and made me nostalgic for home.

Speaking of home, now that I'm away and have my own, I've been paying a lot more attention to nifty ideas for future reference. I love repurposing old things.  It's a lot cheaper than buying something new, and always adds so much character to a space.  Right now I can't do too much to my place, but when the time comes, here are some really clever ideas I'm keeping in mind!

Ikea wheels on an old crate for magazine storage

Love the old door in the back corner! 

I know, more storage for books, but I have so many books! And what's better than repurposing an old spool? Very clever.

These are paper covered shoe box lids.  Cheap and very cute for adding some color and fun to a space.

lastly, old drawers used as little display shelves. So adorable!

{click images for source}

Portfolio and Weaving Final

Hi everyone! Good news. If you go to the portfolio tab, you can now see a slide show of my work! Go have a look and let me know what you think! Here are some pictures of my weaving project while it was still on the loom and after completed. You can see larger images of it in the slide show as well. I made a throw and I used misti-cotton for the warp and the weft. The structure I used was a combination of the Huck structure. I had to make a 6 yd warp and do two panels on top of each other, cut the first half off and then finish the second peice. After getting it off the loom I had to wash and then join the two piece together to achieve the width of the blanket. I've been using my cozy blanket a lot given how cold it has been! I spent many hours awake working on this project and I had to overcome a lot of obstacles in the beginning, but just let me say it was all totally worth it!

In the beginning...

the warp

The weft yarn

Weave!

The end!!

CAD Projects

Ok so I FINALLY get to relax and post some of my work! Here are some patterns I created in my CAD surface design class. Let me know what you think!

This project was a texture mapping project for furniture. We were to make patterns inspired by a news article that we found. I found an article in National Geographic about a graphic research team at the University of Washington that is designing a program to build 3D cities out of images taken from flickr. A lot of the buildings they have replicated from the images are from Rome (click here to view the article). My patterns were inspired by the elaborate motifs in Roman architecture for this project. The title of my theme is "Imperial Escape". This was presented in pdf format. I couldn't get the pdf pages on here so you could see the professional presentation, so this is the best I could do as of now.

(You can see more views of these in my portfolio.)

This project is my final. We were free to make any pattern we wanted and texture map them on to any surface and then present them in a powerpoint. My patterns are inspired by French and vintage styles. I mainly looked at French furniture to get inspiration and sketched my life away. I've always wanted to create a damask, so that's why I created one for my main pattern and then I created a stripe for a coordinate. I was so excited to put these onto stationery because it is one of my loves! I used the damask pattern to go on the cards and then used the coordinate as a fun surprise on the inside of the envelopes.

Copyright Andrea Yu 2009