Apparently somehow he got flung across the room during a conference call and lost his ear, ear tips and a whole chunk of his foot and toes as you can see.  So without delay, hubby shoves him on my studio desk amongst the myriad of other incomplete projects.“Fix me, you must.”  So yesterday, out came the epoxy and on with the repairs. First I re-attached his ear with some super-glue then epoxied over it and sculpted back in the details. Each eartip has also been re-sculpted. Then down to the toes…this part was the most tedious as my expoxy started to set up so my working time with it was running out. Luckily I made it and was able to finish up sculpting the missing piece of cloak and the remainder of his foot and toes. That’s it for the repairs.Now to slap on a little paint and voila! Good as new and ready to go back out into the world… on my hubby’s work desk…doing whatever little toy Yoda’s do.

Growing up, the first and pretty much only Italian words I learned were “Mangiare!” (Eat!) and Formaggio (Cheese).   Two of my favorite things today. Now, when I show you this “recipe”, I know some strong heartfelt Italians may consider it blasphemy! (I can hear it now…“You must make giant pots of sauce from scratch, jar it up and use it for what feels like a lifetime”). Well, I consider myself a lazy Italian.  When I want to eat, I want to eat now! Especially with sauce. And jarred supermarket sauce does not do it for me so at least that’s a right step in my Italian heritage direction eh? The reason I don’t make giant pots of sauce is because, well, like much of society today, I just don’t have the time or the space to store it. I barely have time to make dinner. So in preparing my lunch one day, I decided to post my little pasta sauce secret that I’ve come up with over the years. It’s pretty darn easy and can be made with a few simple ingredients that most would already have in the home. It’s pretty fool proof.  So here ya go, your quick and easy sauce fix!

Disclaimer: I take after my father in that unless I’m following a recipe for something I’ve never made before, I don’t measure…I usually go by eye and taste. This recipe is no different as it is to YOUR taste. So just play! Cooking is an art form all in itself

Really, all that’s absolutely necessary is the can of tomato sauce, salt, and sugar. (Garlic powder highly recommended). The more you have, the better you can make it. It’s all to preference.  Here’s the basic ingredients and what to do if you dont have them:

• Small can of tomato sauce (Don’t have it or want a chunkier sauce? No problem. You can substitue diced tomoatoes or crushed tomatoes here. Any sort of tomato saucy stuff. This will be the main part of your sauce…the rest just seasons this)
• Salt (I’d hope you have salt on hand!)
• 1 Clove Crushed Garlic (No garlic on hand? No problem. skip this ingredient and add a little extra garlic powder instead which actually is also optional but it does add tastiness).
• Onion (optional)
• Chopped Basil (also optional)
• Sugar (this is essential!)
• Garlic Powder (also optional)
• Olive Oil (If you skipped the onion and chopped garlic, you don’t really need this either).
• Parmesan Cheese (cheeeeesssse, yum)
• I used to also add tomato paste but just got too lazy and felt it didn’t do much more than just the sauce..so if you have it, good, add a TB or 2. If not, then skip.

To make:

Heat oil in pan (probably like 1-2 TB) and add the garlic and/or onion until it’s translucent and starts to brown. (If you don’t have the onion or chopped garlic, skip this step and just heat up the oil). Use as much garlic and or oil as you like. It’s all to your taste. I usually use 1 clove and 1/2 onion per small can of sauce.

Stir in can of sauce, salt, basil (optional), garlic powder (highly recommended but optional) some grated parmigiana cheese (also highly recommended) and sugar. (Be generous on the sugar…this is the secret ingredient).  I use probably 1-2+ TB per small can of sauce.  The more ingredients you have, the tastier the sauce will be.  Make sure to taste your sauce every so often while you’re stirring and add more of what you like. (This is a “to taste” recipe as I’ve mentioned before).

Heat until everything is hot, and that’s it! Pour it over your favorite Pasta & Mangiare!

Extra tasty cheesy tip: before pouring sauce over your pasta, sprinkle pasta with some shredded cheddar, mexican or mozzarella cheese…then top sauce with some more Parmigiana Cheese

I own every book in this collection (Animation, Layout & Background, Design, and Story) thus far so it was only natural to continue “collecting” this wonderful series with the newest installment,  Walt Disney’s Nine Old Men: The Flipbooks. I pre-ordered this book back in March of 2012 and with delay notification after delay notification, I was super excited when I receive my shipping notification a couple of days ago!

This new book took a different approach than the previous in the series and includes 9 small hard covered flip books. Each representing one of the Nine Old Men the Pioneers of Disney Studios Animation. It also includes a small overview book of each animator. All these books are wrapped up in a beautiful hard blue fabric box with gold writing.

Pros:
*Nice hard sturdy display box to keep books protected
*Flip books are hard covered. This is fantastic! Normally, flip books are soft covered which leaves them looking very worn and bent in a short period of time. These books are easy to flip and are surrounded by a hard cover to keep the pages flat and in tip top shape!
*Still keeps the “feel” of the series with beautiful sturdy binding and printing.

Cons:
*I thought there would be “more”. The books are only single sided, so there’s only one short scene of animation for each animator,  leaving the back of the pages blank. This would have been prime real estate for a double sided flip book with 2 shots from each animator. It would have made this set 10x better. (Flip the book one way and see one animation, turn it over and flip the other way to see a different one). I don’t like seeing the wasted blank space when it really could have been used to take it the extra mile. But overall, that’s the only major con I can think of but it was is a pretty big let down for me.
*Even though it still has the “feel” of the previous books, it’s a bit difficult to envision this a part of them. Not sure where to store it on the bookshelf since it’s more of a collector/gift set than a new installment in the series.

Here’s a video I made of each book in the set so you can get an overall idea of size and what you’ll get. I hope this review helps! Please feel free to comment and let me know what you think! Always happy to answer any questions!

First up, Stumpy! My cousin works at a daycare and brought me home this poor soul. (A used-to-be plastic Barbie Horse) She was so loved by the kiddies that the leg was long ago broken and gone. Hair, a mess. So I took her into my ICU for further mending.

BEFORE

However, what if I didn’t just mend her? Why not turn her into something and give her back as something my cousin herself can enjoy? Well, here is Stumpy Redeux!  (Her favorite Disney film is The Little Mermaid, so it only seemed right to make a mer-horse). You can view more progress and final pics of “Stumpy” on my Facebook page.

AFTER

AFTER

Next up, a new necklace for hubby. He always wears a Ying Yang necklace but destroys them within a year. Plus, you wouldn’t believe how difficult it is to find a classy Ying Yang necklace for a guy! Here is the sad condition his most recent one is in. (Purchased it on a trip to the Natural Museum of History last year– That right side was silver..eek!)

Old Necklace

This year, I decided to make him one! I think it came out really nice. Wasn’t expecting that! I used Super Sculpey, acrylic paint and glass beads. Sealed with high gloss varnish. Who knows how long this one will last…lol

Necklace on Hubby's neck

Then we have my Mother-in-law and Sister-in-law.  I got the crazy idea to make a bath and body gift basket for them this year after a couple of “successful” attempts at making soap. So I picked up some packaging and jars from Michael’s and went to town. I made 3 bars of soap, a jar of body butter, a jar of sugar & salt scrub, lip balm, and lotion bars. I decorated each container using Super Sculpey, acrylics and pigments sealed in high gloss varnish. Each has their favorite Disney character as a theme. I also hand made the paper labels using old shredded junk mail. Not as glamorous of a process as I thought it would be but kinda neat that it worked!  Next, more projects just kept piling on! My mom had asked me to create plaques from some t-shirt sayings she saw in a magazine.  I picked up some small wooden plaques from Michael’s, splashed on some color, used some mod-podge and voila! (I forgot to take a picture of the 2nd one I did).

Then, upon visiting my grandma at the nursing home on Thanksgiving, she was mentioning she needed a better magnifying glass to read her dinner menus etc. She loved the one she had around her neck and everyone was jealous! Well, I set out to find a better magnifier for her but it was really difficult to find one that wouldn’t distort that came in necklace form or easy to add a chain to. So, even though this seemed kinda silly, I grabbed a regular handheld one, chopped off the handle, drilled a hole, grabbed some embroidery thread, made a “chinese step ladder” necklace and there you have it…a custom magnifier necklace.  As silly as it looks, at least it’s functional lol!  Unfortunately due to me being sick on Christmas, I didn’t get a chance to take a photo of my grandma with it and I can’t find the photo I took of it finished…grr. Hoping to add that here soon.

Well, there you have it. Some custom handmade gifts for the holiday! Hope you enjoyed!

This was such a fun project to work on that I’m very happy to continue with the next installment, “Photosynthesis”! I learned A LOT doing this project. Everything from board to screen was done by me with a couple of small elements used from previous segments (such as the blood pumped out of the heart and silhouette design by Kirsten Lepore) Not only did I have to use my creative energy to come up with how to design the scenes but I also had to do research on how everything actually worked in order to make sure it was portrayed accurately! I’ll admit, at times it was quite puzzling, but whenever I got stuck,  I just spoke to Clinical Nutritionist and Educator, Janet L. Mc Donald, MS,RD (creator of Biol-O-Gee R.A.P.) and she would explain the processes in great detail which allowed me to understand and apply the knowledge to each difficult scene.

Biol-O-Gee R.A.P (Rhythmic Animated Poetry) is a great way to teach students about different aspects of science. Who doesn’t create a song when studying for that big test? I know I used this method many times to remember my studies throughout school. I still do it now! You can learn more about this program and see clips of other subjects that were done by visiting the Biol-O-Gee R.A.P. website.

Here’s the clip of the “Respiration” segment that I had done, courtesy of the Biol-O-Gee Facebook Page! Now on to Photosynthesis!

Step 1
Open up all of the .jpgs you want to convert in Preview all at once. File>Open (To select multiple files, hold down the Command key).

Make sure the sidebar is open and you can see the thumbnails of each page. If the sidebar is closed, you can click the little icon at the top or go to View>Sidebar

Step 2
Click and drag over all images to select them all.

Step 3
Click the little gear icon at the bottom of the sidebar and click “save selected”.

Step 4
Choose a folder to save them to. Change the format from JPEG to PDF then click save. Once that’s done, close the preview window you were working in.

Now, we’re not quite done yet. This has saved each file individually in your folder. Essentially what it did was save a copy of each .jpg as a .pdf. This is where I would normally get incredibly frustrated thinking it was going to combine them all for me! Well, nope…it’s not quite that easy. You’ve got to do a little more work first but don’t fret, we’re almost there!

Step 5
Repeat Step 1 instead this time open up the .PDF files instead of the .jpgs. Preview will open each PDF separately in multiple windows. But have no fear, we’ll fix this shortly.

Step 6
Open the sidebar again. Move your first image window over to the side as your main composition. Then drag the files from the other opened windows into the main window composition. (Essentially you want to drag them in the order you want them to appear in the PDF. These can always be moved around later though).

Step 7
Once that’s done and all images are combined in one preview window, close all windows except for your main composition and go to File>Save As. Choose where you want to save your file and make sure the format is set to PDF.

Voila, you now have a multi page PDF! I hope this tutorial has helped someone create a multi page pdf from jpgs using Preview for Mac. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to post a comment

I just did a quick search and found that some of the Ford CMAX car commercials I worked on are up on youtube! I guess this means they’re somewhere in TV land now as well.  I enjoyed working on them and they were actually pretty fun to animate Take a look-see and let me know whatcha think!

Ford “Whee”– I animated most of this one:

Ford “Be Great”– I animated bits and pieces of this one:

Ford “MPG”–Mostly made some changes and edits to this one with a touch of animation:

I thought there was one more, but I cant find it. If I do, I’ll be sure to update. Thanks for lookin’!

crileycustoms.weebly.com

I painted Duncan using a mix of oils and acrylics. His base coat and dapples were done in water miscible oils then white details, eyes and hooves done in acrylic. The base is finished using real sand that I painted over. I also added some details to the base such as hoof prints for a more realistic effect. Overall I am very happy with how he turned out.I am most in love with how his mane came out! (You can click the below photo for his full gallery page).

Click on photo for Duncan's Gallery

This is my first completed piece done with oils. I have to say, I really enjoy these water miscible oils …BUT…I only seem to have the hang of black and white. I don’t know if it’s because of the water miscible-ness or what,  but I found that when I tried to base coat another mini with the browns I had, it was not happening.  I do like the idea of water miscible to take down the toxicity of oil painting but I may try grabbing a few regular oil paints to compare the two. (I’ll just be sure to turn the fans on ) If there’s is barely a difference, then I think water miscible is the way to go.  However I have a feeling straight up oils are going to be a better result.