Habits are hard to break
Recently, I have chosen to believe that you can build good habits as easily as you can build bad ones. I decided to build a habit of getting in my little kitchen studio and creating more often. “Habits are hard to break” has been a little mantra for me this month. If you want to talk more about this concept IRL, let a girl know.Throughout this newsletter, I want to share some other things I have realized this month that may or not be helpful to read.
Flower shelf
I had this idea for a little bitty shelf that looks like a flower. Here she is!
Here is what she looks like with an apple.
Don’t like apples? What about glasses?
Unsolicited adviceA sketchbook is most useful to me when I prioritize “research”, note taking, working out ideas, gathering inspiration, etc, over being a place to collect finished pieces. I recently went through every single sketchbook I have ever owned, and when I came across the one from my junior year of high school, it clicked. For years, I have tried to keep a sketchbook that has finished pieces, but I felt like I have lacked the creative work ethic I had in high school. That sketchbook was not visually impressive at all- but it was full of notes and reflections and inspiration. I have recently geared my sketch booking to be more like this, and I already feel more excited and curious about things I can make.
Life update: I almost cut my finger off with my jigsaw and then the next day I drilled a shallow hole into my palm
Moving on!
3d wood stained thing
Fairy tale, girlhood magic!! I cut out some of my fav shapes at the moment and stained some wood. Nice
3d wood stained things more mature cousin
This is the same concept, but I got little crazier with lining up my cuts to the hill, and I stained the entire thing. The original idea was just to keep it all stained, but then i was kind of bored with it. I decided to paint the sides green. And then I was like oh yeah.... I like this
Unsolicited adviceI try to work on multiple things at once. This allows me to experiment, go fast, and have fun. I can also trade ideas between projects.
Middle school shop class inspired project
In middle school shop class, we had to cut out key shapes from wood, and then screw hooks into it to hang keys from. I didn’t do any of the project myself because I was scared so I made all of the boys around me do it.
Now that I have almost cut my finger off with a jigsaw, I figured I can tackle the middle school wood shop project but in my own way.
Unsolicited advice
If you want to spray paint some hooks or whatever and don’t want to wait for one side to dry before you can flip to the other side, shove them into an apple or a potato or something. Now you can paint that baby in a 360 kind of fashion!!
I had an awkward day so I came home and painted a chunk of asphalt
and then I felt better. Try it out yourself
Broken mirror bits sunk into concrete in a frame
Step one: Punch out the glass from a frame. Step two: Break up mirror pieces by slicing little lines with your weird tool thing and then pressing on it lightly. Step three: Go grab all of the mirror pieces that flew every which way. Step four: Pour concrete into it the frame. Make sure its more liquidy than usual. (You know, from when you usually pour concrete day to day.) Step five: Put glass into the concrete. Work kind of quickly because concrete firms up pretty fast. Step 6: Forget about the thing you made for like a week. Step 7: Paint it and have fun. Step 8: Attach some chain. Step 9: Hang it up
Unsolicited adviceHave you ever heard the advice of “run the dishwasher twice”? Pretty much the advice is that if you can’t be bothered to do the dishes perfectly, just do them kind of good. Put them in the dishwasher super dirty and run the dishwasher multiple times if you must. Do things imperfectly if it gets you to your end goal. Lately, my artistic “run the dishwasher twice” has been using premixed paints. I will not lie- I am horrible at mixing paint colors. I have pushed through the shame of using premixed colors, and I have found that removing that barrier sometimes has made me create a lot more, and I feel more creative. (Note, I do use primaries and mix colors myself when I oil paint because that is a skill I would like to get better at lol. This is pretty much just for when I used house paints.)
Little shitty mirrors
I have not perfected these at all, but here they are! These are wood shapes that I cut little holes out of, and then put mirror into. It is very hard to cut the mirror without scuffing it up so I need to figure that out. Then I covered my bad cutting work with a little red clay circle which I love.
The sun shape is wood stained and has a chain, and the house is painted and I plan to hang it flush to the wall. This photo was taken before th glue dried, but I will be cleaning that up.
A painting
I did this last month but I forgot about it. A lot of my paintings are kind of like Pompeii. If I don’t finish it in one sitting, I will likely never return to it. It will be frozen in time forever. I hope you get why this is like Pompeii.
Habits are hard to break
This is a little ring holder that I am not done with yet, but I am really liking where it is going. It is wood that I carved the hole out of. It kind of looks like a toilet at the moment.
Meatlocker
This took incredibly too long and involved a lot of experimentation. When buying the chains for this, i cut them myself in home depot by using some wire cutters for sale inside of the home depot. An old man employee got mad at me, but then I think he felt bad because he told me he was only going to ring me up for 4 feet instead of 8. Thank you sir and I am sorry for cutting the chain myself. It will not happen again. It might happen again.
Bonus fun: I spray painted the chain on my open sketchbook, and it made a pretty cool print.
Some drawings and sketchbook pages
To calm my mind, I have started doing these stupid acrostic poems. This one is called “Sailor wants my snack. I gave her some. Im done eatin”
This was a little test with fabric paint that I closed into my sketchbook, and opened back up and ripped some paper off.
For this, I tried to draw the same face from my brain over and over again. Then I later painted around them, and I love it!!
This Is a thing I sprayed bleach on and colored on top of once it dried.
I am never going to make that video but I like the idea. This is a page of planning on some cut outs that turned into random doodles and were later colored in.
Welcome to the “I have no idea where this idea is going” corner
Perhaps you remember this from last month. This is concrete with wood chunks stuck in it that I wasnt satisfied with so I broke it with a hammer. I had the idea to suspend the entire thing from inside of a frame. I built this frame (using my first actual joint technique might I add- I joined this with dowels!!) and then I drilled holes all over the frame the piece and tied it really tight all together. Then I used this big chain I had laying around. I decided to hang it up on my wall because I am still not enthused about this, and maybe if I stare at it a lot the answer will come to me. Though, as they say... a watched pot never boils. But they also say out of sight, out of mind. Who are they? Maybe they know what I should do to this.
I also talked about this last month. This is a box I made for a chunk of concrete that I painted half yellow. I wanted to keep it yellow to symbolize street lines, but I also hate that yellow and wanted it to be a different color, so my idea was to “change the color” by using this red acrylic. I then suspended the concrete from the wires from this lid i made that had two layers.. I don’t know how to explain this, but it was very smart and I feel very proud of that. Then I attached a light to it, and broke the concrete suspension off. Oops. Also, the floor is a mirror so the light and the red bounce all around.
I once had a clear picture for this, but now I don’t know. I still like the concept I have in mind, but the journey this is going on is a weird one.
This one is wood triangle box I made with wires that bent and shoved in with clay shapes. Since these photos, it has been painted white and stares at the skyline alone in the cold every night alone on my porch. It will tell me what it wants to be once it’s ready. I don’t like to be rushed and neither does this precious and complicated triangle wooden box!
If your name is Jorden Durkee or Anna Wiber, don’t look at this. It is your christmas present. I mean it. Don’t look!!!!!!
For two of my best buds this year for christmas, I decided to make them things. I made each of them a set of little hanger things. I used a little cabinet knob, and I am hoping they can hang little bags, little towels, cameras by the strap, lanyards.. whatever on it.
PS- This is the project where I got my finger in the jigsaw and I also drilled into my hand. But it is all worth it.
Anna’s is burst, vessel, burst. Jorden’s is star, horse, star.
I freakin love these so much I made myself one.
Ok the end!
I really loved this month creatively. I hope after reading this you are inspired to choose a habit you want to build!! bye bye.
Katelyn Betz
November
Habits are hard to break
Recently, I have chosen to believe that you can build good habits as easily as you can build bad ones. I decided to build a habit of getting in my little kitchen studio and creating more often. “Habits are hard to break” has been a little mantra for me this month. If you want to talk more about this concept IRL, let a girl know.Throughout this newsletter, I want to share some other things I have realized this month that may or not be helpful to read.
Flower shelf
I had this idea for a little bitty shelf that looks like a flower. Here she is!
Here is what she looks like with an apple.
Don’t like apples? What about glasses?
Unsolicited adviceA sketchbook is most useful to me when I prioritize “research”, note taking, working out ideas, gathering inspiration, etc, over being a place to collect finished pieces. I recently went through every single sketchbook I have ever owned, and when I came across the one from my junior year of high school, it clicked. For years, I have tried to keep a sketchbook that has finished pieces, but I felt like I have lacked the creative work ethic I had in high school. That sketchbook was not visually impressive at all- but it was full of notes and reflections and inspiration. I have recently geared my sketch booking to be more like this, and I already feel more excited and curious about things I can make.
Life update: I almost cut my finger off with my jigsaw and then the next day I drilled a shallow hole into my palm
Moving on!
3d wood stained thing
Fairy tale, girlhood magic!! I cut out some of my fav shapes at the moment and stained some wood. Nice
3d wood stained things more mature cousin
This is the same concept, but I got little crazier with lining up my cuts to the hill, and I stained the entire thing. The original idea was just to keep it all stained, but then i was kind of bored with it. I decided to paint the sides green. And then I was like oh yeah.... I like this
Unsolicited adviceI try to work on multiple things at once. This allows me to experiment, go fast, and have fun. I can also trade ideas between projects.
Middle school shop class inspired project
In middle school shop class, we had to cut out key shapes from wood, and then screw hooks into it to hang keys from. I didn’t do any of the project myself because I was scared so I made all of the boys around me do it.
Now that I have almost cut my finger off with a jigsaw, I figured I can tackle the middle school wood shop project but in my own way.
Unsolicited advice
If you want to spray paint some hooks or whatever and don’t want to wait for one side to dry before you can flip to the other side, shove them into an apple or a potato or something. Now you can paint that baby in a 360 kind of fashion!!
I had an awkward day so I came home and painted a chunk of asphalt
and then I felt better. Try it out yourself
Broken mirror bits sunk into concrete in a frame
Step one: Punch out the glass from a frame. Step two: Break up mirror pieces by slicing little lines with your weird tool thing and then pressing on it lightly. Step three: Go grab all of the mirror pieces that flew every which way. Step four: Pour concrete into it the frame. Make sure its more liquidy than usual. (You know, from when you usually pour concrete day to day.) Step five: Put glass into the concrete. Work kind of quickly because concrete firms up pretty fast. Step 6: Forget about the thing you made for like a week. Step 7: Paint it and have fun. Step 8: Attach some chain. Step 9: Hang it up
Unsolicited adviceHave you ever heard the advice of “run the dishwasher twice”? Pretty much the advice is that if you can’t be bothered to do the dishes perfectly, just do them kind of good. Put them in the dishwasher super dirty and run the dishwasher multiple times if you must. Do things imperfectly if it gets you to your end goal. Lately, my artistic “run the dishwasher twice” has been using premixed paints. I will not lie- I am horrible at mixing paint colors. I have pushed through the shame of using premixed colors, and I have found that removing that barrier sometimes has made me create a lot more, and I feel more creative. (Note, I do use primaries and mix colors myself when I oil paint because that is a skill I would like to get better at lol. This is pretty much just for when I used house paints.)
Little shitty mirrors
I have not perfected these at all, but here they are! These are wood shapes that I cut little holes out of, and then put mirror into. It is very hard to cut the mirror without scuffing it up so I need to figure that out. Then I covered my bad cutting work with a little red clay circle which I love.
The sun shape is wood stained and has a chain, and the house is painted and I plan to hang it flush to the wall. This photo was taken before th glue dried, but I will be cleaning that up.
A painting
I did this last month but I forgot about it. A lot of my paintings are kind of like Pompeii. If I don’t finish it in one sitting, I will likely never return to it. It will be frozen in time forever. I hope you get why this is like Pompeii.
Habits are hard to break
This is a little ring holder that I am not done with yet, but I am really liking where it is going. It is wood that I carved the hole out of. It kind of looks like a toilet at the moment.
Meatlocker
This took incredibly too long and involved a lot of experimentation. When buying the chains for this, i cut them myself in home depot by using some wire cutters for sale inside of the home depot. An old man employee got mad at me, but then I think he felt bad because he told me he was only going to ring me up for 4 feet instead of 8. Thank you sir and I am sorry for cutting the chain myself. It will not happen again. It might happen again.
Bonus fun: I spray painted the chain on my open sketchbook, and it made a pretty cool print.
Some drawings and sketchbook pages
To calm my mind, I have started doing these stupid acrostic poems. This one is called “Sailor wants my snack. I gave her some. Im done eatin”
This was a little test with fabric paint that I closed into my sketchbook, and opened back up and ripped some paper off.
For this, I tried to draw the same face from my brain over and over again. Then I later painted around them, and I love it!!
This Is a thing I sprayed bleach on and colored on top of once it dried.
I am never going to make that video but I like the idea. This is a page of planning on some cut outs that turned into random doodles and were later colored in.
Welcome to the “I have no idea where this idea is going” corner
Perhaps you remember this from last month. This is concrete with wood chunks stuck in it that I wasnt satisfied with so I broke it with a hammer. I had the idea to suspend the entire thing from inside of a frame. I built this frame (using my first actual joint technique might I add- I joined this with dowels!!) and then I drilled holes all over the frame the piece and tied it really tight all together. Then I used this big chain I had laying around. I decided to hang it up on my wall because I am still not enthused about this, and maybe if I stare at it a lot the answer will come to me. Though, as they say... a watched pot never boils. But they also say out of sight, out of mind. Who are they? Maybe they know what I should do to this.
I also talked about this last month. This is a box I made for a chunk of concrete that I painted half yellow. I wanted to keep it yellow to symbolize street lines, but I also hate that yellow and wanted it to be a different color, so my idea was to “change the color” by using this red acrylic. I then suspended the concrete from the wires from this lid i made that had two layers.. I don’t know how to explain this, but it was very smart and I feel very proud of that. Then I attached a light to it, and broke the concrete suspension off. Oops. Also, the floor is a mirror so the light and the red bounce all around.
I once had a clear picture for this, but now I don’t know. I still like the concept I have in mind, but the journey this is going on is a weird one.
This one is wood triangle box I made with wires that bent and shoved in with clay shapes. Since these photos, it has been painted white and stares at the skyline alone in the cold every night alone on my porch. It will tell me what it wants to be once it’s ready. I don’t like to be rushed and neither does this precious and complicated triangle wooden box!
If your name is Jorden Durkee or Anna Wiber, don’t look at this. It is your christmas present. I mean it. Don’t look!!!!!!
For two of my best buds this year for christmas, I decided to make them things. I made each of them a set of little hanger things. I used a little cabinet knob, and I am hoping they can hang little bags, little towels, cameras by the strap, lanyards.. whatever on it.
PS- This is the project where I got my finger in the jigsaw and I also drilled into my hand. But it is all worth it.
Anna’s is burst, vessel, burst. Jorden’s is star, horse, star.
I freakin love these so much I made myself one.
Ok the end!
I really loved this month creatively. I hope after reading this you are inspired to choose a habit you want to build!! bye bye.
Katelyn Betz
November
Habits are hard to break
Recently, I have chosen to believe that you can build good habits as easily as you can build bad ones. I decided to build a habit of getting in my little kitchen studio and creating more often. “Habits are hard to break” has been a little mantra for me this month. If you want to talk more about this concept IRL, let a girl know.Throughout this newsletter, I want to share some other things I have realized this month that may or not be helpful to read.
Flower shelf
I had this idea for a little bitty shelf that looks like a flower. Here she is!
Here is what she looks like with an apple.
Don’t like apples? What about glasses?
Unsolicited adviceA sketchbook is most useful to me when I prioritize “research”, note taking, working out ideas, gathering inspiration, etc, over being a place to collect finished pieces. I recently went through every single sketchbook I have ever owned, and when I came across the one from my junior year of high school, it clicked. For years, I have tried to keep a sketchbook that has finished pieces, but I felt like I have lacked the creative work ethic I had in high school. That sketchbook was not visually impressive at all- but it was full of notes and reflections and inspiration. I have recently geared my sketch booking to be more like this, and I already feel more excited and curious about things I can make.
Life update: I almost cut my finger off with my jigsaw and then the next day I drilled a shallow hole into my palm
Moving on!
3d wood stained thing
Fairy tale, girlhood magic!! I cut out some of my fav shapes at the moment and stained some wood. Nice
3d wood stained things more mature cousin
This is the same concept, but I got little crazier with lining up my cuts to the hill, and I stained the entire thing. The original idea was just to keep it all stained, but then i was kind of bored with it. I decided to paint the sides green. And then I was like oh yeah.... I like this
Unsolicited adviceI try to work on multiple things at once. This allows me to experiment, go fast, and have fun. I can also trade ideas between projects.
Middle school shop class inspired project
In middle school shop class, we had to cut out key shapes from wood, and then screw hooks into it to hang keys from. I didn’t do any of the project myself because I was scared so I made all of the boys around me do it.
Now that I have almost cut my finger off with a jigsaw, I figured I can tackle the middle school wood shop project but in my own way.
Unsolicited advice
If you want to spray paint some hooks or whatever and don’t want to wait for one side to dry before you can flip to the other side, shove them into an apple or a potato or something. Now you can paint that baby in a 360 kind of fashion!!
I had an awkward day so I came home and painted a chunk of asphalt
and then I felt better. Try it out yourself
Broken mirror bits sunk into concrete in a frame
Step one: Punch out the glass from a frame. Step two: Break up mirror pieces by slicing little lines with your weird tool thing and then pressing on it lightly. Step three: Go grab all of the mirror pieces that flew every which way. Step four: Pour concrete into it the frame. Make sure its more liquidy than usual. (You know, from when you usually pour concrete day to day.) Step five: Put glass into the concrete. Work kind of quickly because concrete firms up pretty fast. Step 6: Forget about the thing you made for like a week. Step 7: Paint it and have fun. Step 8: Attach some chain. Step 9: Hang it up
Unsolicited adviceHave you ever heard the advice of “run the dishwasher twice”? Pretty much the advice is that if you can’t be bothered to do the dishes perfectly, just do them kind of good. Put them in the dishwasher super dirty and run the dishwasher multiple times if you must. Do things imperfectly if it gets you to your end goal. Lately, my artistic “run the dishwasher twice” has been using premixed paints. I will not lie- I am horrible at mixing paint colors. I have pushed through the shame of using premixed colors, and I have found that removing that barrier sometimes has made me create a lot more, and I feel more creative. (Note, I do use primaries and mix colors myself when I oil paint because that is a skill I would like to get better at lol. This is pretty much just for when I used house paints.)
Little shitty mirrors
I have not perfected these at all, but here they are! These are wood shapes that I cut little holes out of, and then put mirror into. It is very hard to cut the mirror without scuffing it up so I need to figure that out. Then I covered my bad cutting work with a little red clay circle which I love.
The sun shape is wood stained and has a chain, and the house is painted and I plan to hang it flush to the wall. This photo was taken before th glue dried, but I will be cleaning that up.
A painting
I did this last month but I forgot about it. A lot of my paintings are kind of like Pompeii. If I don’t finish it in one sitting, I will likely never return to it. It will be frozen in time forever. I hope you get why this is like Pompeii.
Habits are hard to break
This is a little ring holder that I am not done with yet, but I am really liking where it is going. It is wood that I carved the hole out of. It kind of looks like a toilet at the moment.
Meatlocker
This took incredibly too long and involved a lot of experimentation. When buying the chains for this, i cut them myself in home depot by using some wire cutters for sale inside of the home depot. An old man employee got mad at me, but then I think he felt bad because he told me he was only going to ring me up for 4 feet instead of 8. Thank you sir and I am sorry for cutting the chain myself. It will not happen again. It might happen again.
Bonus fun: I spray painted the chain on my open sketchbook, and it made a pretty cool print.
Some drawings and sketchbook pages
To calm my mind, I have started doing these stupid acrostic poems. This one is called “Sailor wants my snack. I gave her some. Im done eatin”
This was a little test with fabric paint that I closed into my sketchbook, and opened back up and ripped some paper off.
For this, I tried to draw the same face from my brain over and over again. Then I later painted around them, and I love it!!
This Is a thing I sprayed bleach on and colored on top of once it dried.
I am never going to make that video but I like the idea. This is a page of planning on some cut outs that turned into random doodles and were later colored in.
Welcome to the “I have no idea where this idea is going” corner
Perhaps you remember this from last month. This is concrete with wood chunks stuck in it that I wasnt satisfied with so I broke it with a hammer. I had the idea to suspend the entire thing from inside of a frame. I built this frame (using my first actual joint technique might I add- I joined this with dowels!!) and then I drilled holes all over the frame the piece and tied it really tight all together. Then I used this big chain I had laying around. I decided to hang it up on my wall because I am still not enthused about this, and maybe if I stare at it a lot the answer will come to me. Though, as they say... a watched pot never boils. But they also say out of sight, out of mind. Who are they? Maybe they know what I should do to this.
I also talked about this last month. This is a box I made for a chunk of concrete that I painted half yellow. I wanted to keep it yellow to symbolize street lines, but I also hate that yellow and wanted it to be a different color, so my idea was to “change the color” by using this red acrylic. I then suspended the concrete from the wires from this lid i made that had two layers.. I don’t know how to explain this, but it was very smart and I feel very proud of that. Then I attached a light to it, and broke the concrete suspension off. Oops. Also, the floor is a mirror so the light and the red bounce all around.
I once had a clear picture for this, but now I don’t know. I still like the concept I have in mind, but the journey this is going on is a weird one.
This one is wood triangle box I made with wires that bent and shoved in with clay shapes. Since these photos, it has been painted white and stares at the skyline alone in the cold every night alone on my porch. It will tell me what it wants to be once it’s ready. I don’t like to be rushed and neither does this precious and complicated triangle wooden box!
If your name is Jorden Durkee or Anna Wiber, don’t look at this. It is your christmas present. I mean it. Don’t look!!!!!!
For two of my best buds this year for christmas, I decided to make them things. I made each of them a set of little hanger things. I used a little cabinet knob, and I am hoping they can hang little bags, little towels, cameras by the strap, lanyards.. whatever on it.
PS- This is the project where I got my finger in the jigsaw and I also drilled into my hand. But it is all worth it.
Anna’s is burst, vessel, burst. Jorden’s is star, horse, star.
I freakin love these so much I made myself one.
Ok the end!
I really loved this month creatively. I hope after reading this you are inspired to choose a habit you want to build!! bye bye.
Katelyn Betz