What a Winter Week

What a week. It's been wild trying to get everything done for my design classes, like 2 hours of sleep a night wild. I would take this opportunity to complain, if I didn't love every second of what I was doing, but that's not the case. 

Our studio is like a casino, no windows, bright lights, and time goes warp speed. And it's amazing. Jamming to whatever comes up on Pandora, cutting and molding cardboard through endless paper cuts and hot glue burns, and getting to know those diligently working around me, through the delirium and creative energy. I truly love it. 

But when my roommate reminded me that I promised to make cupcakes for her fundraiser tomorrow I had to put it aside for as short of time as possible, and jam out some halfway pretty treats. 

I remembered a trick my boss taught me about dipping the frosting in sugar to make it look crystalline. With it being winter time I decided to expand on that, make them white like little snowballs, and make a complementary cupcake with a simple swirl and silver dragees. 

Overall I'm happy with the rapid turnout. So if ever you need a quick and beautiful cupcake, grab the sugar and sprinkles and don't hold back!  

Stripe Tease

The walls themselves were a huge project, but now, 5 months later, I was dying to tie in the living room with the same fun stripes! With the neutral colors, they can spice up any color scheme. Here's what you need:

-2 White twin sheets ($4.75 each at Fred Meyer)
-1 can of Krylon Pewter Gray spray paint
-2 8" shite pieces of cardboard as wide as your curtain

Simply space out the cardboard 8" apart on your curtain laid on a flat surface and spray away at the uncovered section. Move the cardboard down the curtain to complete the stripes. I was a bit nervous that with light shining through the sporadic paint might look weird, but I barely notice. So easy, and I'm really glad I did it!

I think it made a huge difference! Let me know what you think and if you try it in your own home! I'd love to see what other color combos people come up with! Maybe ombre?? Next room...

A Million Little Pizzas

Knowing that my friends were getting together for a meeting at our house today, I decided to come up with an easy snack that would still be super cute. With a variety of taste buds and my own need to balance the sweet and savory, I came up with six simple recipes. All have less that 4 ingredients and were devoured in minutes! Once the pizza dough shells are made, you can truly fill them with anything.  

Making the Pizza Dough "Shells"

Now for the Toppings!

Here's the six I cam up with, but I recommend experimenting! So much could be made just from leftovers or random ingredients in the fridge!

Sweets

& Eats

Enjoy! And let me know what other awesome combos you come up with, I froze some shells for next time :)

On Blogging & My Aesthetic Journey

Welcome to Luscious Vicious, home of everything deliciously designed, both tasty and non-edible. I encourage you to read the "about me" to further understand what the heck I'm doing here. But bottom line, I love art and design and the very personal media that can be created with two hands.

Before haphazardly posting projects galore out of my own passionate desire to create, well, anything really, I feel the need to explore my own design aesthetic. What do I like? What's my fashion sense? What artists inspire me? What does this even mean? And honestly, I'm lost.

Putting on paper (well virtual paper) the very essence of my personality in visual form is a daunting task and one that I'm not even near prepared for. Ask me on my death bed and I surely will still not know my own design aesthetic. But I have to be comforted in my own ok-ness with this conundrum. I suppose I should be scared given the looming amount of design interviews and portfolio reviews I have to look forward to within this lifetime. Reviews where I will have to vomit a glorious rainbow of aesthetic cohesion that says, "I am Bailey Jones."

Things and ideas I liked last year or even last week I don't really like right now. But now that I'm searching the portfolio of my mind, I'm finding more and more consistencies in things that constantly make me smile and think, "Damn that's so cool." So here's what I like, potentially who I am, and the ongoing journey into the creative mind:

My favorite car in the world. Not because 70s hipster revival told me so, but because both my parents drove Volkswagons growing up and my mom still holds on to her red vanagon dearly. But yes I do love retro themes, bright colors, community cohesion, free spirits, peace signs, and all else that this embodies (except  heavy amounts of drugs).

Baking things. I have a somewhat successful cake business for a college student. And as terribly time consuming as it may be, I don't think my obsession for making edible things look cool will ever wear off.

This is not my family tree house, but it expresses my designerly love for everything natural. Trees, wood, natural fibers, clovers, the color green, and indeed, Swiss Family Robinson Treehouses have been a constant favorite.

Why do these things matter? Because we all come from somewhere. After some review, my current ever-changing "design aesthetic" has been deeply influenced by my family. The things I'll choose to create are likely some off branch of these things, or else just a whim that will further influence my personal style. Whatever the case, I'm excited.

Never Stop Creating.