Dia de los Muertos/Day of the Dead- Celebrations and Sugar Skulls Part 2

The Dia de los Muertos event at the Hollywood Forever cemetery was one of the coolest cultural events I have ever been to. There were AMAZING altars built and assembled by awesomely creative people, delicious food, vendors vending tons of things I wanted to buy, and some sweet artwork as well.

I am definitely planning to attend this event again next year. And we will for sure be going back a bit wiser on how to best navigate the whole thing. We live about 45 minutes to an hour away from Hollywood, and we left our apartment at about 6:15pm. We didn't make it inside of the cemetery until about 9pm. We got a little bit of traffic on the freeway, but where it really got crazy was probably a quarter of a mile from our exit. It took about a half an hour just to make it to the stop light at the exit. The traffic on the main street in front of the cemetery was NUTS. By the time we made it through that mess, we still had to cruise for a parking spot, which was about a mile away from the venue. SOOOOO... next year, I think we'll leave a lot earlier in the afternoon, approach the location from a different exit, and purchase our tickets in advance. We had meant to buy our tickets online before we left, but sales had closed the day of.

Despite all of the craziness, we had SUCH a good time! Let's check out some sweet photos now...

Dia de los Muertos/Day of the Dead- Celebrations and Sugar Skulls Part 1

When I was in college at Arizona State, I was introduced to the Dia de los Muertos/Day of the Dead tradition in a Chicana/o Studies class. One of our projects was to make little altars out of matchboxes. We also had to attend the Day of the Dead exhibit in the Anthropology musuem on campus. It was one of the best classes I ever took. It was a real introduction to a culture- my own culture- that I had never really been aware of before. I ended up adding on Chicana/o Studies as my double major because I enjoyed the class so much.

I credit this class as being the beginning of my love of all that is DOD. In a later year at ASU I participated in the same exhibit at the on-campus museum by entering a paper collage/mosaic piece. SO! I obviously was very much inspired :-) I especially love sugar skulls, and I have them decorating lots of spaces in my apartment. This year we attended the Day of the Dead event at the Hollywood Forever cemetery in LA and it was SO MUCH more than I expected it to be! We painted our faces - well half of our faces - for this event and for the HARD Day of the Dead event (long story short, the event was crazy disorganized, music was good but we are never going to a HARD event again.) I can't believe I'd never painted my face before! It was a lot of fun. 

And now... our badass sugar skull faces!! :-D

Prepping for the evening

I used Tulip face paints and I LOVED them. I bought an assorted pack from Michael's as well as a larger sized white and black. They're super easy to use, and I used make-up sponges to apply them. They are activated by water so I just wet my sponges or brushes and swirled them around in the paint. They washed off really easily with water and just a touch of soap.

Postcard Swap (Finally!) and a Week of Day of the Dead Goodness to Come

Hello random people stumbling upon my blog! (Since I am pretty positive I do not have anyone regularly checking out my blog yet- maybe my sister. But that's it.) 

I have returned to my Sugar Skull blogging world! Long hiatus, I know. I have been caught up mostly reading other blogs rather than writing on my own! 

But since I just have SO MUCH to share now, I better catch up! 

I want to finally share images and info about the 

International Mixed Media Postcard Swap 

that I participated in this summer. 

It was organized by Shannon, of the blog Musings on Realities.

We were given 10 names and addresses, and our info was given to 10 people.

I received some AWESOME postcards in the mail.

And they're now decorating our craft/spare room as bunting!

Love these blue images

Blue dog and Eiffel Tower!

Pardon the blurriness- I took the photo while it was hanging on the wall

I've been MIA, missing in action... in CRAFTY action!!

AWWW YEEAAHHH!

Well I have been neglecting the bloggity blog for a while. 

But I haven't been neglecting the crafting! Promise!

So check out what I've been up to lately...

It was our 2 year anniversary recently (Woohoo!)

and I made this cute banner/bunting (whichever you like to call it)

and put it up in our room.

I used solid colored card stock and heart patterned cardstock. 

I used a paper cutter for the triangles and traced stencils for the letters.

I used a big yarn needle to thread cotton yarn through the letters.

I've seen bunting and banners ALL over Pinterest and the bloggy world,

and I was pretty pleased with how my turned out. :-D

DIY Canvas Art to Beautify My Bare Wall

Our bedroom wall is bare no more!

So we have lived in our apartment for at least 9 months now, and sad to say,

I have had an empty wall above the bed this whole time.

*hangs head in shame*

I HATE plain white walls! Argh!

I was just super indecisive about what I wanted on our bedroom wall.

I knew I didn't want to pay a lot of money though, and I wanted something that wasn't just a

mass-produced thing as the focus in our room.

So, I pieced together different ideas and cool things I found online,

and came up with...

TA DAH!

It's pretty simple, but I like it a lot  :-) Bf likes it too!

I borrowed lyrics from the awesome Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros song, Home.

So how did I do it? Lemme show you...

I'm following all my faves now on Bloglovin...

And now you can follow me too!

Awww yeeaahhhh! Check me out! :-D

Follow my blog with Bloglovin!!!!!

LInky Party at Liz Marie Blog!

Just a quick post!

I'm joining the Linky Party over at Lizmarieblog.com!

Check it out! :-)

 

Some Handmade Love for the Mamas in my Life

Mother's Day was just this last weekend

and BF and I went to see our mamas.

And I made them some cool stuff! :-)

Here are the cards I made my mom and BF's mom.

I used:

- cardstock

- scrapbook paper

- heart punch

- decorative scissors

- 3D Zots

Coachella Fest and my sweet barefoot sandals

Jeez! It feel like I just got back from Coachella, 

and they already posted this pic on their Facebook page this morning

Am I ready to buy tickets again so soon after this year's Festival??

....YES! 

Coachella is such a crazy/awesome/ridiculous experience 

and as long as I have the money and time to go, I will.

However, since I still have not posted anything about this year's Fest, 

I figured now is as good a time as ever to do so.

We got a shot of us in front of the 2010 poster,

which was mine and the gal pal's first Fest.

But then we forgot to get one of all of us in front of the 2012 sign! Whoops!

Why hello there, San Francisco. I love you rain and all.

Mkay. It has been far too long since I have blogged absolutely anything. 

So I have some catching up to do with life as of lately. 

Because I know all of the readers out there are supah interested!! 

(wink wink. tongue in cheek. because there are no readers yet! lol)

SO! First ridiculously fun thing I did recently was actually a trip for work. Imagine that- a work event was fun!

We took our students to San Francisco for spring break!

We stayed at a great hostel right by Fisherman's Wharf. This was actually the 3rd time I stayed at a Hostelling International location- twice in San Francisco, and once in San Diego. These hostels are really wonderful. If your are looking for luxury, you are better off with a five star hotel somewhere. But if you're looking for affordability and convenience while you explore a new city, I would definitely recommend these hostels. They even have private rooms if you are going with a significant other. 

This hostel was the Fisherman's Wharf location, at Fort Mason, an old military base. 
And this was the view from the "backyard" of the hostel!

Yup! That's Alcatraz Island!
( And my orange raincoat ;-D )

Mt. Baldy Badassness

So many fun trips lately! This Saturday we went tubing up at Mt. Baldy. 

The twisty-curvy drive up there was pretty nausea-inducing. Blech. 

But once we got up there it was supah cool!

Snowy Mountain! Wooo!!

Ok, so there wasn't THAT much snow on the mountain, but it was still lots of fun!

I can only imagine what it looks like in the middle of winter.

Now, how about some sweet action shots!

Etsy purchase for the win!

I was at work today doing 20 things at once, including tracking an Etsy package I was expecting any day now. Dude. Love the feeling of clicking on that tracking number and seeing "Delivered" pop up. Hells yessss!!!

If my blog title hadn't already given it away, lemme just say that I LOVE, with large capital letters, sugar skulls.  

I majored in Chicana/o Studies in college, and even though I'm Mexican-American, I didn't know a lot about my culture before college. So what better way to learn than by majoring in the dang thing?! :-)

So I learned about the history of Mexican people in the United States, 

Chicana/os, Xicana@s, and the like. 

I really developed an interest in the tradition of Dia de los Muertos, and all that the holiday/day of celebration/remembrance involves. Including sugar skulls! Our kitchen is adorned with sugar skull decor and I always have an eye out for sweet sugar skull accessories, decorations, and well, pretty much anything!

If you've never checked out Etsy (how could that be possible?!?! lol) I would most def recommend you check out this dude- Jose Pulido. His shop's name is Mis Nopales Art, and if you like sugar skulls or Chicano pop art, you should take a look at his stuff! (Check out my Paul Frank Macbook cover in the background. Hehehe)

My Day with Frida at LACMA

My first post! Yay! So I thought I would start by sharing a trip I took our international students on for work. We went to Los Angeles for the day this last Saturday, and spent time exploring museums, The Grove shopping center, and nearby Farmers Market. Lots of inspiration for craftiness all over the place!

So I knew Saturday would be a good day with a lot of great things to check out, but I didn't realize just how awesome of a day it would be.

"Las Dos Fridas," by Frida Kahlo 

 LACMA has an AMAZING exhibit right now called "In Wonderland," that features some wonderful Surrealist female artists from the easy to mid 1900's. and Frida was one of them! I was so ridiculously excited to see Friday artworks in real life. I stared at this painting for so long, I think the guard that was keeping watch over it was started to get suspicious I was going to go grab it, or at least hug it. Ha.As you can see, I LOVE Frida, and she is the background of my blog here. The crazy awesome painting of her with the Daft Punk shirt was done by an artist named Fab Ciraolo, a Chilean artist. He is for sure worth checking out.