Blueberry Tea, Vampires and My Art Kit

I am sipping some hot blueberry herbal tea, and pondering why it's a beautiful shade of pink:

 

I don't care what the groundhogs said--it's spring already.  Maybe not to gardeners, or meteorologists--but trust me, we ain't getting snow this year!  It's going to be warmer and warmer, and then the sweltering heat will be upon us.

So, with Spring in mind--fruity herbal teas are my current passion.  My son calls the coffeemaker the "teamaker," isn't that cute?  I do drink coffee, but I drink herbal tea almost every day, so that's what he thinks it's for.  My favorites right now are blueberry, peach and french vanilla; I never would have thought I'd like French Vanilla tea, but I do!

I received my "Bella's Dress" edition of Breaking Dawn Part 1 on Valentine's Day.  I love it, and yes, I have turned into a 13-year-old girl:  I hung the fabric poster on my wall :)  The box itself is beautiful and destined to be used in a mixed media art piece.

Speaking of art, I have some new goodies to play with.  I have 3 different brand bottles of ink: very dark purple, pearl pink and green.  I also bought 8 Caran d'Ache Neocolor II Artists' Crayons, but we haven't gotten to play much.  I bought a set of Blick brand pastels, and I've had a lot of success with those.  I made a beautiful sunrise (or sunset) over the ocean on a random piece of foamboard.  However, I won't be doing that again; the water makes the paper peel up off the board.  

Lesson learned: not all paper is good art paper! 

These are pictures of my Art Box with my new things mixed in with the old.  Not for bragging; I've realized I love taking photos of art stuff. 
Paper and canvas panels are in a book bag along with the set of pastels and Gel Sticks.  Here's my tackle box turned Art Kit:

The top level has my glue stick, water mister, tiny tube of gouache, art pens, Neocolor IIs, plain chalk, scissors and a recycled bottle to hold my Mod Podge.  I need to use another glue bottle like that to hold gesso, or add a bottle of titanium white craft paint.

The bottom level has the watercolor pan, the rest of my Big Brush pens, paintbrushes and white-out (which is awesome!)  It used to hold my Mr. Sketch markers, til they ruined a piece on me; now they are forbidden to the depths of my craft supplies storage!

Totally An ADD-Day (picture heavy)

This being a new blog and all, I haven't mentioned yet that I also LOVE and spend waaaay too much time playing World of Warcraft.  (aka WoW.)  I read the books, know the lore and I keep abreast of all the latest game info and I can even gossip about characters in the game.  Other people have celebrities, I have WoW.  My husband and I have played consistently since the game's release in 2004 and I have characters in the game that are technically older than my son by a full 2 years.  Ouch, didn't realize that til just now.

So, to get to the point of this post:  Today, well every Tuesday, is a day where they shut the game down to...do something computer-y which I don't understand, but TODAY a new part of the game begins.  In WoW-speak, Patch 4.2 is up and running, and we need to save Thrall!!  So, instead of eating, cleaning, or doing anything else, I want to play my game and revel in the awesomeness that is Blizzard.  (Blizzard is the company that created the game.)

My point: I should be playing my game but instead I'm blogging.  And then I realized I need to link my characters to my blog or something, because I do love them, I should after spending so much time with them, right?  And I want to check out some of the new fan art on Blizzard's site. I love the ART of the game as well as art from it's fans.  So you will most likely be subjected to a few of these in between my book reviews and crafty tutorials and so on and so forth.

This is Lady Sylvanas, also known as The Dark Lady.  This is a fan's artwork, from here. 

This is Deathwing.  He's bad.  Very very bad.  Linked from here.

See, who wouldn't want to live here?  Well, except for Deathwing and all......  Linked from here.

SO----
As if the excitement of WoW isn't enough, I also got my order of art supplies from Dick Blick.  I'm ready to do some collages right now!!  (Notice I'm still here blogging though....)

A side note:  Do you see this paper? 
It's high-quality paper, 40 sheets of it, and it's a huge 12" x 18"!!!  Do you know how much it cost?  If it was in the scrapbook aisle as opposed to the art aisle, it would be at least $10 on sale and with a coupon, and it would be just 12x12.  This set me back $3.15.  Yup. I'll say it again: $3.15!!

Oh, but it's just plain and not patterned, you say?  Check these out:

Those cost me $6.63.  So all together, I got TONS of awesome stuff for tons less than a single pack of stickers from the scrapbook aisle.  Seriously, I wish I had known this before last week!

Oh!!!  AND the markers.....  And this Colorless Blender: It's only $2.27!  And it fixes your mistakes, and then you can clean it on a paper towel, but it also blends and does...other artsy things.  Watch the video (you can skip to 1:22 into it to see this baby in action.) 

Oh, and one last thing calling my name:

I won this awesome craft kit from Amy at Positively Splendid.  Woot!  It came in the mail yesterday, and my son did an actual double-take when he saw it.  Look at all the stuff in it!  And the really funny thing is that I'd bookmarked the set to buy for my son.  Gotta love that, right?

OK, off to do, well, all of the above :)  Thanks for sticking with me through this crazy post!!