I actually wondered if I would publish this or not; I’m not in my normal element at the moment. October in general hasn’t been a regular month, I have been staying at my mom’s work, she is a nurse at a nursing home and this is my second time here, I came roughly around the same time in 2017, when my mom had surgery, I only stayed for eight or nine days whereas I’m going on my fourth (and hopefully final) week, and I’d like to get back to some of my old routine again.
Anyways, I’ve had some issues with being able to type between trying to find the perfect level and lessen the amount of swelling on my feet, it’s been somewhat difficult. I did, however, write up my posts from last week in advance so I was smart in that regard but since I figured I’d been home by now, I didn’t exactly bother to do this one.
I would like to write up a full post of my experience here so I will not be discussing much about this month, just going ahead with the October playlist for you instead. If you would like to check out the rest on Spotify, click here.
Unholy by Sam Smith featuring Kim Petras This Is Why by Paramore Beep by M.I.A. Diseased by Icon For Hire Wolves by Marshmello x Selena Gomez Kick Me by Sleeping With Sirens Feeling Good by Michael Buble Red by Taylor Swift Shenandoah by Celtic Woman World’s Smallest Violin by AJR 5 Foot 9 by Tyler Hubbard Down Home by Jimmie Allen Teardrops On My Guitar by Taylor Swift Truth About You by Mitchell Tempenny Fancy Like by Walker Hayes Hell On Heels by Pistol Annies
I was able to listen to one album before I left, and it was Icon For Hire’s sixth called “The Reckoning” and it has become my new favorite lately and perfect for Halloween too! Speaking of holiday tunes, I think I will be doing a couple of album reviews for Christmas, because you know how much I love doing blogmas every year. So, down in the comments I want to see your guesses on what recent release is on my list for this year.
Since discovering dot art back in 2019, I’ve felt like my journey with art in general is on another level. I absolutely love the feeling of creating something new and being at peace with the imperfections that come with it. After I finished with my Christmas projects, I wondered how long I would last until I had the itch again, and if you are wondering, it was only three months.
We have three chances a year to go up north to visit with my family, the first is around my nana’s birthday and I tried looking for little figurines or plush stuffed pigs on Amazon and Wal-Mart, and I just couldn’t find anything that stood out the most and I searched for a fairly long time and became frustrated that there were more things for guinea pig lovers than the pink ones… I don’t remember what pushed me into creating something for her, but once I had the thought, I just went crazy with the number of ideas to do with them.
I found this unfinished wooden cut out of a pig face on Wal-Mart’s website and I just thought the whole thing had enough sass to it that I knew everyone would love too. While I was went looking for the pig, I ended up finding a sea turtle design and thought it could be a great idea to do for my Aunt Laurie and Uncle Mike because they love beach themes, but my aunt really loves turtles too. I worked on the projects at the same time, but I will not be sharing my thoughts on it until the end of June, which is my aunt and uncle’s birthday month.
What you will need:
Canvas – you can use whatever you can find, whether it’s wood or ceramic.
Acrylic paint – I use DecoArt paints and the colors I used were pink, red, black, and white.
Dotting tools – you can purchase a set of tools online, but you could use anything in various sizes like a pencil, Q-Tip, toothpick, etc.
Paintbrushes – this is totally an option, as I only used it for the base coat and the tongue, but you can definitely dot these spaces or leave it out entirely.
Damp towel or baby wipes to was wash your hands/feet and anything else that has accidently paint on it…
One of the main reasons I adored this pig was because of the outline around the ears, eyes, mouth and nose. I was worried that once I started doing the first layer of paint, they would disappear but for the most part, they stayed visible for me to do the black dots, but we are getting a heard of ourselves, so let’s rewind a bit.
The canvas itself was the perfect size, as it wasn’t too big or too small, one that even the big bad wolf would probably enjoy. I started off painting on the floor of my room and I went with a very light shade of pink; since I didn’t have the right color in my collection, I had to make it with my neon pink and white acrylic bottles. I put the pink in two slots in my palette and added the white as I heard (and tested it!) this worked better to blend and create the right hue of the paint and it covered the entire thing, but my thought process for the overall design was to add dimension between the cutout and dots. I actually went back and forth on the base coat because I thought it was too much but I’m very glad I decided to do it because it added an extra oomph to the whole thing!
The next day, I finally got started on how I gave her some personality, and again I was so sure how this part was going to turn out at first. I am still learning how to follow a line while making my dots. I made simple small designs for when I did the Christmas tree and Rudolph ornaments but since I only had to follow the slits of its features, I figured it would be easy enough for me, and thankfully it was and to make things even better for me, I used one of my smaller tools, they are really great with details, especially tiny ones and I have realized through doing this project, I am definitely confident creating each section. At first, I was going somewhat outside the lines so that I could still see everything but then as I went on, I managed to cover up most of them with the black paint.
I hadn’t even completed the mouth before I was falling in love with the overall result. The black really set a tone to the plain pink base coat and you could see we were both loving the magic coming to her. I tried to not get so confident that I would be taking risks and messing up the whole project, but I also couldn’t hide my excitement either!
Once I finished the outlines, I left it to dry for about a day. I gave myself time in between each layer so I wasn’t choosing over the comfort of my body and what I wanted else I could do to the pig. I was also in a brand-new position as I wasn’t on the floor anymore, I decided to use my new little table I got for Christmas, and I was really unsure how my body would react and definitely didn’t want to overdo anything either so once I started experiencing some pain in my lower back and eventually my knees, I knew I would need to stop at some point. Whenever this happens, of course I become upset with having to stop in the middle of a project but knowing my body’s limits is a very important. If I continued to push myself, I could possibly make mistakes and would be frustrated with myself about that as well.
When I went back to it, I was conflicted about how much I really wanted to use the dots. I really love the contrast between a regular painted section and a very populated dot area, and I knew it even before I did the ears of how cool that effect would be to the overall design. So, I decided to paint the tongue red. It would be another smaller part so as long as I didn’t go off my original idea. After I completed it, I went forward with doing a dotty inside of the mouth, and I am still not 100% happy with how it turned out, but I think adding the hot pink larger dots on the rest of the pig helped because the color contrast between the lighter pink of the background and a milder shade of the same paint really made it pop. Once I went around the chin with those big dots, I literally couldn’t contain my excitement for how cute she was becoming and I had to show her off quite a bit to my folks but also had to shield her away from my family–especially my nana, because she knows that anything pig worthy goes to her automatically! A part of me wanted to show her but I knew how important it was to reveal it face-to-face, so I kept a very big secret for at least a week and a half, which is impressive to my standards!
When I finally finished with everything, our plan was to glue or tape down a cute pink bow around its hairs, it had three little semi-sharp “hairs” poking out on the top of its head and decided to include some dots on them, in case we didn’t have time to put it on her, but in the end, it turned out we didn’t have a way of making sure it stuck there forever so I’m very glad I put dots around that section anyways!
As of right now, they haven’t found a way to put it up in my nana’s room. She has a big room, but she has a lot of decor, photos, and posters all over her walls, so finding the right placement for it is going to be a little bit tricky. While we were up there, I was even trying to find a spot for it and I had a difficult time with it, so good luck Mike!
I hope you enjoyed this “little” how to do post. The second post will be going out in June, so we have some time to find more projects in the meantime!
Another month has come and gone, as we venture into May, where there’s new chances for new music and here’s hoping, blog posts too! Originally I wanted to write up a March playlist for you but it didn’t matter how many times I said it in my brain, by that time I was on vacation my energy was gone! So, I’ve already decided that I was going to double the amount of songs on here.
Here are my Top 20 songs that I really enjoyed for both March and April!
Low Key by Ally Brooke featuring Tyga Perfect To Me by Anne-Marie Plain Jane by A$AP Ferg featuring Nicki Minaj God Is A Woman by Ariana Grande You Should See Me In A Crown by Billie Eilish Dumb Blonde by Avril Lavigne featuring Nicki Minaj Gorgeous by Taylor Swift Miss Me More by Kelsea Ballerini Crown by Camila Cabello Miracle by CHVCHES All Around Me by Flyleaf Done by The Band Perry Vertigo by Khalid Freedom by Sugababies Redlight by NGHTMRE featuring A$AP Ferg Peace by Alison Wonderland She Sets The City On Fire by Gavin DeGraw In Your Eyes by Axero featuring Katie McConnell Give You Up by Dido Trip by Ella Mai
I feel like I’ve listened to a lot of other songs that I searched and searched on YouTube for the past two months but unfortunately, it only replays the ones that I constantly listen to, which isn’t really a bad thing but it can be annoying sometimes!
There were a couple of days where all I wanted to hear was Flyleaf and country music. Now Flyleaf sounds like something I would do, but country music? Honestly, I have a love/hate relationship with the genre itself. I do think it can get very boring at times, because the themes and beats are always the same, but I tend to go for the sassy songs about break ups, cheating boyfriends, etc. Those songs always boost my mood when I’m having an odd day, so I like to listen to Carrie Underwood, Taylor Swift, The Band Perry, Miranda Lambert a lot.
Despite the limited amount of blog posts this month, I still managed to write up some album reviews for you! I have really missed doing these types of posts the most, so I will try to come up with more posts like them for the next couple of weeks. Here are the ones that put up in April!
So it’s time for this monthly playlist, but it’s not a Tuesday or Thursday. Since the 20th, landed on a Tuesday, I ended up messing up the last two weeks of March. Tomorrow I have something special for you that goes with the whole music theme so hopefully that’ll make things better for you!
March had a good amount of music and I always think that any new music that comes out this month has the potential of being a big favorite over the summer. Don’t believe me? Look up the release date of “Lean On” by Major Lazer and “Heathens” by Twenty One Pilots!
This time I think there’s a lot of variety, some rock and hip hop, plus a lot of pop music in the mix! Hopefully you’ll enjoy the selection below as we’re back to our normal ten songs and a full playlist from Spotify! If you’d like to check that out, click here.
Red Cold River by Breaking Benjamin Walking In My Shoes by THE FEVER 333 Friends by Anne-Marie and Marshmello Pray For Me by The Weeknd featuring Kendrick Lamar Vincent by Ellie Goulding The Champion by Carrie Underwood featuring Ludacris High by Whethan featuring Dua Lipa Empire by Tommee Profitt featuring Steven Malcolm Get Off by Zo Happy Place by Alison Wonderland
And I’m trying to do more reviews that were a little out of my comfort for this month too! I’m really enjoying doing them while my folks decide to take a nap in the afternoon. It’s my alone time to really dive into some genres that I don’t normally listen to! If you missed any of them, here they are again!
I love going Spotify’s “new music” tab and scrolling through the many new artists and music coming out on Fridays. It’s become my favorite pastime! Sometimes I treat it like going into your favorite bookstore and selecting a new book based solely on its beautiful cover. I will scroll through the selection of music and pick up interesting album covers and try it out.
I’ve reviewed a lot of different music on here. I mostly talk about pop, rock, heavy metal, and the occasional celtic music, but I hardly ever discuss country music. I’ve always had an up and down relationship with both country and rap music. They’re both diverse, but very similar in their lyrics and sound. Every once in a while, I do get out of my shell and check out different artists and tracks, and this is one of those times.
I found Sandra Lynn’s music by the look of the cover, but I was thinking that maybe she was a contemporary artist, and then I heard her voice and I was pleasantly surprised by the subtle country flare she had and so I decided right there that I would review her newest EP of only four songs that came out on January 18th!
The first song that we start with is the title track of the extended play. I really like the use of the piano in the beginning, it’s very sweet but I wish it turned up more in the actual song than just somewhere in the background. Besides that, the song itself is pretty good! It’s not an “overwhelming” country song so if it was played on modern adult radio stations, I think it would do pretty well! Next is “Rest In Pieces” and I was a confused about how this could sound, I figured it would be in the same “loss” category as the previous song, but I was still intrigued nonetheless. I’d consider it a breakup song that isn’t about a cheating boyfriend and getting revenge afterwards, even though I’m not saying those are awesome or anything, its just very upbeat but light-hearted too.
Third is “Somebody Kissed Me At The Bar” and I don’t want to compare Sandra to any of the other female country stars, but I am definitely sensing Carrie Underwood in this one! It’s very gentle and a nice mellow, but romantic song. I like it! Lastly, we have “From The Outside” and I really like this one. I think it’s more pop than country, but I am still feeling like it’s the summertime. That’s one thing that’s always constant with the genre itself, you feel like every song is perfect for the end of summer or early fall. At least, that’s how I’ve always sensed throughout the years!
I thought the EP as a whole was really good! For anybody who knows me what I’m about to say is going to shock you, but I wish there was at least one ballad on it. I guess you could count “Somebody Kissed Me At The Bar” as a semi-ballad since it was very soft in parts. I just think her voice needs to be highlighted with a good piano ballad. Maybe if I go through the rest of her music on her profile on Spotify, I can find at least one on there.
Have you heard of Sandra Lynn’s music before? If you’ve listened to this EP, do you have a favorite on it?
I love going Spotify’s “new music” tab and scrolling through the many new artists and music coming out on Fridays. It’s become my favorite pastime! Sometimes I treat it like going into your favorite bookstore and selecting a new book based solely on its beautiful cover. I will scroll through the selection of music and pick up interesting album covers and try it out.
Got Meghan's Blog 