Hot Ticket Tuesdays Presents Kerry: Chef, Fashionista, Traveler, Awesomesauce

So. Last week I dropped the ball. By the time Tuesday came rolling around, I realized that I had not interviewed a Hot Ticket. After smacking my forehead a few times, I decided that I would just need to make this week's Hot Ticket post that much more awesome. To make anything awesome, all you need to do is add my friend Kerry to the mix. Kerry is a fantastic chef, fashion maven, and world traveler. We met a few years ago through out husbands, and I was quickly drawn to Kerry's sense of humor and relaxed attitude. Kerry is quite a crafty and creative lady in her own right, and we've spent many evenings watching trash tv and crafting it up. (We need to have more evenings like that...)

In today's post, Kerry describes art inspired by her travels that she created for her home. I'm psyched that she chose to talk about these projects because I've always admired them. Also, if you want to get to know more about why Kerry is awesome, check out her blog, Cook with Kerry, in which she features one-of-a-kind delicious recipes!

Tell me about a craft and/or art project you made.
I travel A LOT. I caught the travel bug after I studied abroad and never looked back. I love reminders of my trips and often try to purchase art by local artists. But, I've also created lots of different ways to decorate my home using my own travel memorabilia.

My absolute favorite art project is the collage I made from all sorts of paper goods I collected throughout my travels. I put the collages in the doors of an Ikea bookshelf. I tend to keep all of these little scraps, maps, ticket stubs, post cards, etc. I especially had so many from my study abroad days that were just in a big box. Every time I looked through the box, I got happy memories, so I thought, "Why confine these things to a box?"

I also love the collage I made from photos I took at the Las Vegas Neon Museum Boneyard. It's the coolest place where they adopt old, retired neon signs from hotels, casinos, and other businesses. They give tours of the Boneyard and you learn so much about old Vegas and its history through these signs. I LOVE the colors and lines of all the different style fonts. I took a ton of photos when I was there and created a poster using Snapfish and a poster frame.

What inspired you to make it?

For the bookshelf collage,  I was shopping at Ikea and saw the bookshelf doors that allow you to "frame" something in between the glass and back. The idea just came to me to use all of these little pieces of memorabilia instead of something like fabric or a plain paper. I thought that all of the different pieces of paper would be bright, colorful, and interesting to look at -- plus it would be fun for me to look at and remember all of my trips and experiences.

With the neon sign collage -- I went on the Boneyard tour knowing I wanted to take high resolution photos for some artwork for the wall. I had a few ideas and just took photos of shapes, signs, and letters that looked interesting. I wanted to create something large to help cover my walls in an inexpensive way.

Did you come up with the idea yourself, or did you find a pattern and/or template that you used?
I came up with the ideas myself. For the neon sign collage, I ended up using Snapfish to help create the collage with all of my photos. They had an automated way of randomizing photos within the poster size that I wanted -- I was able to look at lots of different random mixtures of photos until I was happy with the layout. I’m not a great photographer and the key to this one was taking lots and lots of photos. The Boneyard made it really easy though – because everything just looks cool (and it didn't hurt we got a pretty sunny day with blue skies!)

With the bookshelf doors, it was a matter of sifting through all of the pieces I wanted to display and moving things around until I was happy. It took a long time to get it just right. As a background, I used maps of lots of cities I've visited and then just arranged the other scraps over the maps until it was pleasing to me.

What type of medium did you use?
Travel scraps, maps, photos, postcards. The Ikea Billy bookshelf frame doors. Cheap poster frame. Printed poster from Snapfish.

What did you enjoy about making this project?
Looking through memories and remembering so many great experiences. Also, I enjoy graphic design so it was just pleasing looking at lots of different fonts, colors, and shapes -- and fitting them together until they looked just right.

What did you think about while you were making it?
I remembered a lot of amazing and fun experiences -- I made the bookshelf collage many, many years after I studied abroad and so many of those scraps were from that time period.

For both projects, I thought a lot about how all of the different pieces fit together so that it looked balanced and interesting.

Were you doing anything else while you worked on this project? If so, what? (For example, sometimes I watch tv while crocheting.)
Watching crappy TV -- I'm sure. Actually, sadly, I remember exactly what I was watching when I was making the bookshelf collage. Don't judge, but it was back when Living Lohan was on E! I was watching that. I’m not even sure HOW I remember that since it was at least 5 years ago!

Were you pleased with the finished product? What pleased and/or displeased you about it?
I love both of these projects. They are fun and colorful and remind me of great times. They were relatively inexpensive, too, which is always nice.

With the neon sign collage, I think there were some limitations with using the Snapfish program and I think that it's not as perfect as I'd like, but overall since it was so easy and inexpensive, I really can't complain too much.

Will you make it again?
I'd definitely make these again! I still have lots of photos and scraps....who knows what other forms they can take!

Lastly, what is your favorite color and glue?
Pink, orange, turquoise -- really, you want me to pick? But, I always feel badass with a glue gun!

Hot Ticket Tuesdays Presents MAGGIE.

Maggie: She's what defines Hot Ticket. To fully describe why Maggie is so amazing, I need to provide you with a bit of background:

After a turbulent sophomore year of high school, I decided that I wanted to leave home and go to boarding school. I went from a 500-person school in the small central Massachusetts town I grew up in to a 1,000-person school in the western part of the state. I was fairly shell-shocked and unprepared when I arrived at NMH (Northfield Mount Hermon). Every morning for the first two weeks, I woke up and vomited due to anxiety and homesickness. I cried a lot. I was a mess. I missed my second day of classes because of the vomiting issue. Later that day, a note was delivered to me. The note, written in light blue gel pen on recycled loose leaf paper, was from Maggie, one of my classmates. Maggie wrote how she noticed that I wasn't in class that day, and she welcomed me to hang out with her. It was one of the nicest gestures I have ever experienced.

I decided to brave leaving my dorm room, I and went to visit with Maggie. One of the first things I noticed about her half of her room was that it was impeccably decorated. Her posters were in frames. She had a stereo system, and a beautiful wrought iron lamp that she told me her father made. I learned that her dad was a blacksmith, her mother was an artist, and that Maggie dreamed of performing in musical theater. She talked to me about her favorite performer at the time, Ruthie Henshall, and how her father had taken her to see one of Ruthie's shows. Maggie seemed confident and vibrant. Over the next two years, we became best friends, and we've managed to keep in touch since.

Maggie currently lives in Portland, Oregon, and she works as a collections information manager at the Portland Museum of Art. (I looked up her title and everything!) She continues to have impeccable taste and a love for musical theater. She continues to make me laugh and smile whenever I hear from her. When I asked Maggie to be this week's Hot Ticket, she wrote back and told me that she isn't into the crafts, per se. She suggested that she write about her love of design and how her home reflects her creative choices. I loved this idea, naturally, and encouraged her to run with it. Below, Maggie talks about making her apartment into her home.

Tell me about a craft and/or art project you made. 
I was so excited and flattered when you asked me to do this, but it was a harsh reminder that I haven't been making things as often as I used to. I truly believe that art is everywhere, though, and that, surely, I could find something from my life to talk about even if I don't have any big or inspiring projects to share. I thought about a few small home improvement things that I've done over the past few years and then I thought about talking about my flea market and thrift store treasures and then I thought about having a snack and then it hit me: every topic I entertained was about my HOME. Really, my favorite project to work on is making my home a comfortable and welcoming place. So that's what I'll talk about.

What inspired you to make it?
"I have always been a woman who arranges thiiiiings . . ." My parents always made a beautiful home for us and when I left at 14 to go to boarding school, it was very important to me to maintain a sense of homey-ness from afar. Since I left for boarding school, I've had a different room of my own every year of my life, with very few exceptions. If the location isn't stable, at least the feeling can be, you know? That, and it's compulsive.

Did you come up with the idea yourself, or did you find a pattern and/or template that you used?
I follow design blogs (like this one) and I have a boatload of ultra-creative friends, including my supremely artistic parents, who inspire me all the time. Some project ideas I borrow, some are born of necessity, some are the result of sheer boredom, and some are challenges.

Here's an example of a sheer boredom style project. I had a can of stain and some paint samples and a really drab IKEA bookcase. It was inevitable:

I got this A/V cart at a local thrift store for $15 and gave a fresh coat of spray paint in the parking lot next to my apartment . . . LIKE A BOSS:

The reason I got the A/V cart was to give my projector a home. Once the projector had a proper home, I had to re-paint the apartment to upgrade the viewing experience. I chose a dark color to give the screen contrast and did a little research on the best white paint for a projection wall (Sherwin-Williams Pro-Classic Extra White Enamel):

Once the living room was painted, the bedroom needed some attention:

Ollie helped . . . sort of. Before he stepped in the paint and pranced around the bedroom:

This is Maggie's awesome cat, Ollie. Another thing that Maggs and I have in common is that we  both take lots of pictures of our cats. Also, Bebe the cat did the same damn prancing around with paint on her feet deal. Oh cats.

The mini-blinds were next to go. Unfortunately, I have an awkward (beautiful, but awkward) window situation in the bedroom and plaster walls that make drilling holes for curtains next to impossible. I do, however, have picture molding throughout the bedroom. I designed a system of curtain rods that could be suspended from regular molding hooks and asked my super-hero blacksmith Dad to make them for me (home-field advantage << sports reference). Here is the hanging system:

And here is the finished product. Bye bye mini-blinds!

!

My next project will be converting this fantastic vintage surveyor's tripod into a floor lamp. Did you know that wiring lamps is the easiest thing in the world?

What type of medium did you use?

By any means necessary . . . 

What did you enjoy about making this project?

I like the thinking and planning and doing. Ollie likes the relaxing when it's done:

What did you think about while you were making it?

I think I love home projects so much because rearranging and organizing and making things is a time when I can just relax and stop thinking a little bit. I think about what I want to do all the time, but once I'm doing it, my mind shuts up for a while. 

Were you doing anything else while you worked on this project? If so, what? (For example, sometimes I watch tv while crocheting.)

I'm always listening to music and singing. Some projects have theme songs and some have whole albums. I have no shame in admitting that the living room was painting to approximately eleven complete runs of the Guilty album. I think I refinished the bookcase to Melissa Manchester's practically perfect Home To Myself. Sometimes, there's dancing involved.*

*usually

Were you pleased with the finished product? What pleased and/or displeased you about it?

I'm always pleased and displeased. I tend to get a bit impatient when I'm working on home projects and that is pretty much always a horrible combination. There are always things I could have done better if I had waited longer or taken a step back, but who has the time? Yeah, I know. I do. Mistakes have been made: 

I should talk to Maggie about how I painted my kitchen bright yellow so that it looked like a giant Easter egg in combination with the light blue cabinets. Sometimes colors go very, very wrong.

More to the point: it's a house, it's never going to be pristine or perfect and sometimes we just have to make concessions. For instance, Ollie and I like to fight over the fabrics we both love and neither one of us is going to budge on this issue:

I am, however, always really happy about finishing a project and having a new excuse to invite people over. Even though my home is always a work-in-progress, I feel like I have accomplished something good every time my friends gather and have a fun, cozy time in my home. Here is a recent example (pre-paint):

Will you make it again?

I'm never satisfied and I have a hard time sitting still. I'll be moving things one inch to the left for the rest of my life.

Can I post a picture of the final product? Please???

Duh-town. Here are some pictures of the two homes I've been in for more than a year (since I was 13). The first set of pictures is from my apartment in Los Angeles, where I lived for three very happy years. The second batch of pictures is from my current apartment in Portland, where I have been for about six months and hope to stay for a long, long time.

Lastly, what is your favorite color and glue?
Right now, my favorite color is mustard yellow and I'm pretty sure everyone's favorite glue is Mod Podge, right?