Watching The Cure in Mexico City!

At the end of March, The Cure announced that they were going to tour Latin America.  I was so excited at the news and knew I needed to be a part of the music.  I decided I would attend the April 21st concert in Mexico City, Mexico.  My mom makes a good travel partner so I asked her if she would like to attend the concert with me.  She agreed and we bought our tickets for Mexico City, traveling to MC on April 20th, leaving MC on April 23rd.
April 20th came with great anticipation!  I couldn't wait get on the plane and get to my destination, Unfortunately, a suspicious package would shut down the interstate to the airport while I was en route.  The traffic delay would ultimately make me miss my flight (Insert seriously sad face here). Fortunately, I was able to book a flight two hours after my original departure time. 
Touching down in Mexico City was a welcome relief.  I arrived at the hotel a few minutes before my mom (she flew in from AZ).  Once getting our room, we made a quick trek to the supermarket for some essential bottled water and then called it a day, we had an event packed day to rest for.
Sunday came early for me.  I was up around 5am.  The hour back (time change) did work in my favor, but anticipation was my real alarm clock.  Mom and I still needed to pick up our concert tickets at Will Call.
Finding a Ticketmaster Will Call was difficult.  I couldn't get English directions, just fingers pointing in a general direction. Three hours in to the search, we were able to run encounter a nice man who spoke enough English to get us where we needed to go. I gotta say, that after the search we went on for Will Call, holding the tickets in my hands felt so AWESOME!
When we got back to the hotel room, Mom decided to take a siesta.  I took those two hours of quiet time to apply many layers of eye liner, perfecting my Cure concert look. By the time Mom woke up, I was ready to go to a concert! Unfortunately, I had wait around for Mom to get ready. Does she always take this long to get ready?!?!
FINALLY, Mom and I were able to catch a taxi from the hotel to the stadium, Foro Sol.  A quarter mile from the stadium, pedestrian traffic became just as heavy as vehicle traffic. An unofficial uniform worn by most--a black tee; many tee's showcasing the mug of Mr. Robert Smith.
When we exited from the taxi, it took some major walking to get to our seats.  There were just so many people.  I would later find out that the show was sold out- 57,000 tickets!
57,000 people is really a very cool sight. At the end of the four hour concert, there were 57, 000 smiles.  This was my 8th Cure concert and my first time seeing The Cure out of the U.S. I'm really glad I decided to see The Cure in Mexico. 

Reflecting on Reflections

One year ago today, I met the drummer for The Cure that I had had a crush on at the age of 14.  The meeting happened, and for a couple of minutes I was in Heaven.  Great memories I'll keep with me until my end of days.  Thank you JC!

Jason signed my concert ticket

Necklaces inspired by The Cure

At the beginning of June, a Cure friend, Katie T. and I decided we wanted to work on Cure band inspired craft. We settled on making necklaces. Each person would make their own Cure inspired necklace and upon completion send the craft to the other person...A Cure crafty swap! The Cure have so many iconic designs and album art that I love. I thought this craft swap was gonna be a breeze, I could knock out a necklace overnight. Things would not go so smoothly. So many doubts, so much desire to represent The Cure in a fashionable design that Katie T. could enjoy. So, I finally decided on dark, Gothic roses with a band symbol from the album, "The Cure". Everything but the black beads, were made with polyclay. Three weeks later, that necklace was packed and sent to its owner.

The following week, I received my Cure necklace designed by Katie T. I was so excited to have my very own Cure necklace. Katie did great things with beads, color and texture. The necklace was so professional looking, like something I could have bought straight from TheCure.com store.

I'm also including a picture with the flash, so you can really see the texture.

Here I am wearing my COOL necklace, made by Katie.

Katie T. was kind to do a write up about her creation...a more in depth process of her magical, creative ways. :)
  When I first started the project, I wanted to make a necklace with the entire "Cure" written out with the Wish-era "C" symbol. This proved to be too technically challenging--if I made it small enough so that it wasn't tacky, it was too difficult to cut out the letters. I decided that I would just do one "C" instead. I drafted the design in Adobe Illustrator, and then printed it onto poster board to make stencils. Then, I used the stencils to cut the shapes out of polymer clay and texturized the "C" and the blue background before baking. After a light sanding around the edges, I painted the clay with liquid acrylic paints to give it an "antiqued" look. I decided on a bronze theme, so I finished the necklace with Vintaj brass chain and accent beads. I believe the black beads are onyx, but it's been so long since I bought them that I can't remember! I really wanted just a touch of red and blue in the beaded chain, so I added red seed beads for a little "pop" of color. I went to a couple different bead stores looking for the perfect blue beads. I wanted a natural stone with swirls of blue, white, and black, and right when I was about to give up, I found these sodalite stones! The project was such a blast!

 I would really like to expand this craft swap idea. I want it web out as far as it will go. Doesn't necessarily have to be Cure inspired crafts...but would be cool if it was.

Love Cats Toys

This week, I took on the task of making a couple of cat toys for some furry companions. Since these toys are for Cure friends, I wanted the toys to have a Cure theme. I took a design from my favorite album artwork off of The Cure album, Wish. I first made some quick shape templates on scrap paper and found bright colors to match the artwork. It was fun trying to use felt and floss to re-create drawn artwork; but I did use a NON-toxic paint to add cloud detail on the blue felt.

I think the hardest thing I encountered was finding a plastic filling with enough CRINKLE sounds to keep a cat inerested. I ended up using a cut up water bottle. I made sure all sides of the plastic were smooth to the touch before anchoring it on my felt with a stitch. The eye layers were layed out on the blue felt, and stitched down with the black (pupil) lines. With plastic between black and blue felt; I stitched all together with a simple back stitch all along exterior.

*Not pictured is my last minute addition of sporadic black fringe on hearts' exterior. I'm not sure about the size of the finished project, I kind of think it's a bit on the big size (4 X 4inches). Even if it isn't the cats' favorite toy, I know it will be the best looking toy.

*my hand sewing got a little wiggly when I tried to multi task by sewing AND walking on the tredmill.

Jason Cooper Pin

At the age of 14, I had a crush on the drummer from The Cure- Jason Cooper. I did the typical, posting his picture in my locker and on my notebooks, telling my friends to call me the future Mrs. Cooper. As I grew older, my crush for JC turned in to more of an admiration of. Admiration for his success in life, his hard work, his adventures...as a cool person. So, together with another, I helped to dedicate a facebook page to Jason Cooper. The FB page has to date, 50 members...and growing. As a way to say thank you to those supporting me and The Great JC, I put together a pin one can wear to show their support. Minimal in design, I used masonary nails, bronze wire and gold embossing powder to make the following:

I am offering the pins for free (one only needs to cover shipping).

Freezer Paper Stencil- Concert Tee

Many of you know that my ultimate favorite band is The Cure. I like to wear my concert t-shirts to show the world my admiration of the band. There is a large selection of concert t-shirts for adults, but the selection for little tykes is near non existent...or very over priced. So, I took it as a challenge to try and make a Cure logo shirt for a toddler, ON THE CHEAP.
I've see plenty of tutorials about the wonders of using freezer paper as a fabric stencil. The stuff is easy to find and a big roll of it runs around four dollars. You simply tear a sheet off and draw your desired logo on to the paper side of the freezer paper. Cut your design out, and on a low to med. iron setting, lay logo on to fabric, plastic side down--and iron. The plastic side melts to your fabric! The fabric paint I used is by Duncan and has the word SOFT printed on the outside of the bottle, but I think any fabric paint would do. *Make sure to place cardboard between layers of fabric. To control the amount of paint applied, I used a brush and did a dapping like motion ( I didn't want the bristles/paint to get underneath the sentcil). Before the paint dried, I dusted with FINE glitter in desired sections of logo. I let the paint dry for an hour before I pulled freezer paper. Finally, I did warm (low setting) iron over recently painted project; to heat set.
Easy as pie! And with the supplies you use to do this project, you can make many more shirts for all your friends and family. The gift of COOL!

Talenthouse Submission

So, I spent the better part of the day working on my submission for a Talenthouse/ The Cure artwork contest. Below, you will see my submission. The song for inspiration is "Friday I'm in Love".

Pin I Love

I have an obsession of making pins. I see them as little works of art one can wear to add a little something more to their outfit--like sprinkles on a cupcake. I'm including pics of few pins i've put together for fun.
This pin was for breast cancer awareness. This was not the first pin drafted, as the original was deemed, "too racy".
The Original, in all it's nippled glory.

The kiss design was made in homage to my favorite band of all time, The Cure. Lead singer Robert Smith is known for his signiture red lips, therefore; I thought it a great idea to represent them. On one set of lips (the pair on rob's mouth) you can note a small variation. These lips were molded to simliar artwork drawn on The Cure's, "Just Like Heaven" album single.



Last, the eye. A fellow Cure fan had mentioned she was looking for a necklace that had a "sort of third eye." This is my representation of her idea, in pin form. I added fine, red vein detail with fibers off a piece of red felt. I glossed the entire eye over with a clear embossing powder. *All items pictured are made from polymer clay.