Hi there! Welcome to my blog. Feel free to join me on this crazy adventure called life. For my professional life, I’ve focused on informal education i.e. not the typical teacher in a classroom lecturing at her students but fun unique educational experiences in places like museums instead. I love…

Series organization, reading order, and more — Just as the doors in this series caution, sometimes confirming a few details can help you make the best decisions. Have you heard of the award-winning series set in a boarding school for children who journeyed to magical lands (i.e. Narnia, etc.) and come back home? Have you considered starting…

Trying out full-color portraits — For week 6 of my 8-week Beginner’s Acrylics Painting Class, we used our monochrome portraits from week 5 as a foundation with our lessons on full-color still life paintings to create a full-color portrait. Let’s dive into how we explored painting portraits with acrylics. Full-color portraits Our instructor had us use the…

Learning values in portraits — For week 5 of my 8-week Beginner’s Acrylics Painting Class, we used our values and monochrome lessons from week 2 to create a monochrome portrait as an extension of our monochrome still life. Let’s dive into how we explored painting portraits with acrylics. Master Copies Our instructor explained that one of the…

2 “3-in-1” sets, 2 accessories in space-themed sets. Which is “best”? — Recently, I wrote about how I purchased my fourth LEGO space shuttle on a trip to the LEGO store for my birthday. Now that they are all assembled, how do they compare? Let’s walk through each set to compare and contrast their results in the following categories: Build/ Assembly Design…

Using color to create a still life — For week 4 of my 8-week Beginner’s Acrylics Painting Class, we used our color theory and mixing from last week to expand upon our monochrome fruit still life from the second week to create a still life of a few personal objects. Picking Your Still Life Subjects The instructor had sent us home last week…

Bringing some color into your life — For week 3, we expanded our lessons on values in monochrome to colors, learning about color theory, the color wheel, and color mixing. Activity 1: The Color Wheel While somewhat basic, this was extremely helpful to me. I honestly don’t remember learning the color wheel as a child, which has likely contributed to some of…

Lessons in monochrome and confidence — I’m officially done with the second week of my Painting with Acrylics class. Somehow, that means I’m a quarter of the way through. What did we explore in this second week? What can you learn from my experience? Hopefully a few art activities, tips, and inspiration. This week we focused…

It’s all about the mindset and it can be easier than you think — One of the most awkward and frustrating parts of being a writer is the lack of feeling like you are actually a writer. …