Crafting with Lavender - Crayon Art

By Emsu

I didn't mean to craft alongside Lavender, but she got very curious with what I was up to and wanted to pretend she was helping out. She wasn't helping out, but I let her stick around because she's so stinkin cute.

Such a little foot.

I bought the small canvas from Michael's. I actually wanted to do a painting, but since we are trying to save money and we had all these crayons, I figured I would just use them instead. My concept was to make a bouquet. You will soon see how this quickly turned into some sort of rainbow tornado..

Lavender trying to assist me.

When doing crayon canvas crafting, you should start by peeling the paper off all the crayons.

Lavender: "You should play with the crayons first!"

All done!

Once your colors are peeled, you should lay out a big spread of newspaper, get some pliers and a blowdryer, and make your art. I use the pliers to hold the crayon close to the blowdryer and the canvas. Without pliers, your fingers can start to burn a bit. Plus, it's easier to get a splashy effect by using the pliers.

And voila! It actually did start to look like a bouquet in the first 5 seconds, but after the colors showed no signs of not splashing all over the place, I just went with it. It adds a nice swirl of color in our dining room. 

Has anyone out there used melted crayons for crafting projects? I would love more ideas! I have tons and tons of crayons!

Our Apartment; The Dining Room

The dining room was the first room decorated. We decided on a dark slate color and a light grey for the walls, and switched the lighter color from the bottom half to the top. I wanted a room that mixed minimalism with thrift store finds. Again, thanks to Ikea, Salvation Army and a host of other second hand stores in Ann Arbor, we were able to do this all for a couple of hundred bucks. 

We brought the table top and the legs from Ikea. Buying them separate is a much cheaper option that buying a complete table. The chairs were purchased from a couple of different thrift stores in Ann Arbor, as was the mirror. 

The art work was our attempt at the crayon paintings you find on Pinterest. Rather than just lining them up and allowing them to trickle down the canvas, we used a hairdryer and just made pretty patterns with the crayons. 

The cabinet is the White PS Locker from Ikea. We got the lamp from another thrift store while the little bunch of flowers are dried from our wedding day. 

The room has become a really nice space to relax in, whether it be for dinner or when Mary Soo needs to spread her books out during a study session. 

Marriage and Dating

Even when you're married, dating is important. I would go as far as to say it's especially important. Yes, italicized, that's how important. It goes without saying that married life can be pretty boring...the same person, always there, always loving you and stuff, it's really nice, but it becomes rhythmic pretty quickly.

I (this is Emsu, hi!) am enjoying the summer after my first year of law school, and Raus is enjoying working life after a year of unemployment and getting legal (ie, getting his green card). It was a tough year for the both of us, and our lifestyles + our recent marriage gave us the excuse to essentially never go out on a date. It was a dark year.

But with that behind us, we have been using our summer to leap back into the world of dating (each other) and discover our new home state of Michigan in the process.

Our first big date was to spend a day in Detroit - which, despite what the hundreds of recent news articles say (especially this little gem), is a pretty cool city (it does have many problems, but I think there's some sort of renaissance taking place there).

Our Date in Detroit!

My co-workers mentioned that I needed to try The Pupuseria, an El Salvadorian restaurant, so the date began with lunch there.  The place is famous for their pupusas, which are fat, corn tortillas filled with your choice of meat, beans, or cheese. They are delicious and criminally cheap (I think each one was like $2, and 2 would be enough to fill you up). They also had pineapple Jarritos...so that along with the cheap delicious pupusas made this place amazing.

Raus and I then drove over to the nearby John K. King Books; four stories of stacks upon stacks of used and rare books - a book nerd's heaven. We randomly got lost in the yearbooks section for awhile, reading all the little notes Wendy and her friends had scribbled in her junior high yearbook from 1982. Ended up leaving with a couple classics, totaling $7. It's the largest used and rare bookstore in Michigan! So it's awesome.

Next up was the Detroit Institute of the Arts. If you haven't heard, some of the artwork from the museum may be sold off soon in order to pay for the city's debt, so I recommend checking this wonderful museum out before it starts getting chipped away. It really is a wonderful museum...lots of interesting pieces, with little pods placed throughout the museum that explain the meanings behind some of the paintings and photographs. This is much appreciated by people like me, who like art but don't really know what's going on. 

And then (this was a busy date) the Heidelberg Project. I had never heard of this place until the beginning of the summer, when a friend recommended I check it out. It's a whimsical, weird, playful, incongruous outdoor art installation located on the east side of Detroit. It's really awesome and makes me wish an entire city looked like this, with polkadot people to match it. It was probably my favorite part of the date...not counting the pie part (keep reading).

This one reminds me of Roger Rabbit...when the toon world meets the real world!

For dinner Raus and I wanted to experience all this Detroit jazz people kept going on about, so we went to Cliffs Bell's downtown. It was really nice - live music, excellent food - but it was pricier than we expected. Actually, this whole blog post was going to be dedicated to going on "cheap dates," but then we went here and that concept no longer made sense. We enjoyed it, but are definitely going to look for a cheaper jazz bar/restaurant option the next time we hang out in Detroit.

Us in black and white, to make it look more jazzy! (and to cover up our funky sunburns)

The night ended with some mini pies from the local grocer's in front of the TV. The date was a good one, made great by the grocery store pies finale.

Raus and I want to document our dates in hopes that we encourage other married (and non-married!) couples to make the extra effort to plan nights out together. We know it's not easy. We also know most of our dates won't be as elaborate as this one, but even just going outside somewhere for a few hours together every week would be great for us and our marriage. More dates to come, and we hope this post kindled some ideas out there!