Day of Art with Erin: Cork Board Collage

As a New Year resolution, I am attempting to do something once a week to express myself artistically*.  I had a rough start with that yesterday, but was happy with my results by the end of the day. 

My sister and I went to the mall for make-overs; she is wanting to become a make-up artist (and she is fantastic!), so we are starting to scope out other people's handy work.  My sister had hers done by a chick at MAC, and ended up 'mouth-dropping' gorgeous... I, unfortunately, got mine done at Estee Lauder.  I got the 'romantic' look done, not realizing that 'romantic' was the politically correct term for 'lady of the night'.  After receiving many 'offers', I wiped off all the eye make-up.  Nice to know that I would do fair with that back-up job...

Things continued down hill as I was shopping at Hobby Lobby.  Hobby Lobby has these glass display shelves when you first walk in, where merchandise is sectioned off by themes.  I was looking at a display shelf that had a cute '@' cork board, along with some vases, glass plates, and bunches of fake grapes on it.  As I picked up the '@' sign, to my dismay everything... yes, EVERYTHING, fell off the shelf!  I felt like a little kid getting catch touching something I shouldn't as everyone in a 30 ft. radius stared at me... smooth, Erin... A guy who works there was too kind as he tried to convince me that this happens all the time and helped me clean up.  I do, though, give myself 2 points for not actually breaking anything.

Luckily, as I started working on my project, things got better.  I was wanting to put up some cork board in my office, but had been unhappy with what I have found, so I decided to make a 'cork board collage' to add a little extra 'umph' to my office.

I started out by measuring and cutting the cork board to the sizes I wanted.

 Once done cutting, I arranged them into a design I liked.

 Then I painted all the cork boards white...

 Then painted simple, repetitive designs...

 Hang them up and viola!  Cork board collage!

 All that is left to do is put it to good use...

 Here's another view of my awesome workspace... I love it... I'll give you a better tour some other day :)

*this was carefully worded so I can be rather liberal with it...  :)

Boys will be boys... except when they act like girls...

At the hospital this past week, I was working with a bunch of teenage boys.  For many people, such an experience would be described with many explicit words, but I love it. You never know what is going to come out of their mouths, and as long as you have thick skin and a good sense of humor, it's usually entertaining. Here are two conversations I had with them this week...

The boys were inquiring about my 'stalkers'.  'Stalkers' is a term that one of the patients had coined to describe my nursing students, since they follow me around all day.  School time tends to be the guys' favorite time of the year... it's not every day you get to have a cute nursing student waiting on you, hand and foot. 
Pt. 1: "Can I get a cute, younger one?! I didn't get any last semester..."
Pt. 2: "Man, don't rule out the older ones... I had an older one who gave me an awesome back massage with my bath..."
Pt. 3: "Ohhh, I want a younger one who gives good back massages!"
Way to treat my students like pieces of meat, ordering up what you want... as least it's a good bargaining tool to get the guys to do what I want ;)... boys...

Then the following day, our conversation took an interesting, unexpected turn: 
Pt. 1: "Hey Erin, let me look at your ID."  It has my picture on it, and my hair was long at the time of pic was taken. "I definitely like your hair shorter."
Pt. 2: "yeah, your hair was freakin' long, and though it was really pretty, I like it a lot better this length..."
Pt. 3: "yeah, me too!  It's really cute!  How do you get it to be sooo shiny?"
Um... that was... odd and unexpected... Shocked, I laughed and told them thanks.  I was tempted to ask them if they wanted 'manis' and 'pedis' later and we could discuss the recent celebrity break-ups (Helllooooo, Ryan Reynolds), but I didn't want to hurt their male egos.  

Here are a couple of my pendants with a boy-ish charm theme from my etsy shop, Oddly Sentimental Designs.