{339} bubble letters

my friend karen gave me this idea forever ago. finally get to use it before the end of the project!

{255} paper dolls

this idea has actually been on my list since the beginning of the project! i've been reviewing that list from 8 months ago a lot recently because i'd like to exhaust some of those ideas before the project is over.

can you believe that i actually had to google how to make these paper dolls? i couldn't figure it out on my own. lol oh, well. that's what google is for.

{187} zentangle

i'm part of a 365-project group on facebook and lately i've been visiting the group a lot more often to check on progress and provide updates on my own project. i'd seen a lot of yvonne kettner's project (to create a daily zentangle) but i'd never researched how awesome zentangles were until today. it was the greatest most creative hour i'd spent in a long time. zentangles are awesome. i feel inspired to create more. i wish my project was to create a daily zentangle. :) anyway, here is my name inspired by yvonne's project.

{182} musical notes

use your imagination. look through the paper to the other side where you can believe that the following picture is actually of my name. i thought "hey, musical notes. good idea." yeah, this was rough. it was an easy name to create but it's one of those that is really a loose interpretation on actually being my name.

{180} maze

almost halfway! day 183 will push me over the half-way mark! woot!

so, i came up with the idea for a maze. at first i was going to make the maze in the shape of my name but then that became too complicated so i thought a simpler idea would be to make my name as the only path through the maze but just build the maze around it. well, about 147 hours later, this was the result. use your imagination to see the name! :)

{159} eyes shut

there are a few 365 blogs that i check every single day and this is one of them. i love her project because she is also doing words so it's easier to get inspiration from what she does (she creates the phrase "love one another" every day).

for friday's post, she did a blind contour drawing and i thought that was a great idea--create my name with my eyes shut. so, i took a similar lead and kept my eyes shut and used my left hand to guide my other hand around the paper...or so i thought.

i was sure that when i'd open my eyes that i had coloured everything in quite perfectly (i first drew the outlines and then attempted to colour them in) but it was way off! the outlines were okay because you keep your pen down the whole time but when it came time to use the pencil crayon, i completely lost focus on where i was colouring! great idea!

and whilst i coloured and drew, george slept on the table next to me. :)

{158} paint-by-number

this was such a fun one to make! i'm going to give it to the youngest E to colour--she'll have a blast!

i got the idea from this post on rebecca's blog. i had saved the image for awhile knowing that some day i, too, would attempt to do this with my name. it's such a great idea. when the youngest E has completed the colouring, i will post the results. :)

{153} draw something

ever since i got my iPhone a few weeks ago i have been obsessively playing with certain apps. one is "my fitness pal" (so far i've lost 9 pounds! woot!), the other is "100 floors" (addicted), and the last is "draw something." i'm a creative being so i totally love that one. i hate when i log on and no one has played the turn yet so i can't draw anything.

well, i wanted to do my name for awhile so i told esther that i would waste a turn and draw my name instead of the actual word i was instructed to draw. then i just texted esther and told her what the answer was. that was the only this was going to work!

if anyone out there in cyberland wants to play with me, my username is "unlauren".

{152} stars

so, last week my blog was the inspiration for the 365-facebook group that i'm a part of. today it was Genevive Daigle at www.dailycreativebygstar.blogspot.com 's turn to inspire. since she mentioned on facebook that she loves stars, i decided to draw six stars and then figure out how to form the letters of my name within the stars.

thanks for the inspiration! wouldn't have come up with this one on my own. :)

{132} magnifying glass

more sherlock! i just can't help myself. :)

{129} barren tree

i've attempted to draw this barren tree before but then i got carried away with it and totally messed it up. today, i decided to try again. rather than colour it in and add leaves (which is what was my downfall last time), i decided to leave it at just a simple pencil drawing instead.

in hindsight, it's looking a little sad. oh, well. that's the challenge with this project--some days are just simply going to be much more ambitious and others are going to be half-hearted because it has been a long day or i'm up early or i'm running late or i simply don't want to colour any more! what an incredible challenge this project has been. i'm already thinking about next year's project--i totally think i know what i'm going to do but...i still have 238 days to decide.

{127} key and (sher)lock

i've been doing a lot of reading abot sherlock holmes. actually, "a lot" would be an understatement. it's all i do, it seems. cara (who totally rocks because i tag her in my posts all the time) gave me the complete works of sherlock holmes and i can't put it down. in the one week since she gave it to me, i've read two complete novels and am half-way through one of the short-story books. it is so good.

so, while reading outside i felt compelled to do a name with sherlock in mind. i tried for awhile to do something cool with a pipe or something sherlock-ian but finally i settled on a key (which unlocks things) and put his name and address on it. more sherlock posts to come!

{124} camouflage

today i decided to grab a piece of paper, my pail of pencil crayons and head outside. so, for a good 40 minutes i sat on my lounge chair colouring today's name in a camouflage print.

i started off by just free-handing the letters of my name first and then i grabbed two other pencil crayons and started drawing these shapes. it was a whole lot of drawing and colouring and my hand was totally cramping afterwards. just using the word "hand" again is making me appreciate so much what my hands are capable of. they are the mediums that i use to create. reminds me of a quote: "i craft because my hands get jealous of all the work my brain does." true story. :)

{113} one line

blah, this took two seconds to do. not one of my most inventive names. so, i just took my marker and decided to see if i could create my name using one solid line without every lifting the marker. it worked! there are only a few darker spots throughout the line where i paused and went "hmm, am i stuck?" but i made it through. :)

{112} dot-to-dot

you know, after 112 names, i'm really starting to forget which ideas i've already used but, though i thought i already used this  medium, i hadn't! bonus! i wrote my name in script on a blank piece of paper and then put another blank piece of paper overtop so i could see the original shining through beneath. then i simply put dots in the logical places required in order to make a dot-to-dot of my name. only 55 dots. i'm going to get the youngest E to try this one and then, since she can't read handwriting yet, ask the oldest E to read it! hopefully it works!

{102} hieroglyphs

after i saw this post from a fellow 365-er, i knew i had to do something with hieroglyphs too! so, i didn't have a book at my disposal so i just googled "write like an egyptian" (which was also one of the coolest things i've ever googled) and this site popped up and it was as simple as typing my name in and then the hieroglyphic version of my name appeared! then i hand drew out all the symbols, coloured it in and voila! i wish that i had the descriptions of what each symbol means because for all i know, i've drawn some horrible term but i still think it looks pretty neat.

{100} spiralaurens

another new word for the vocab: spiralaurens. i knew today, though it was momentous to reach 100 posts, wouldn't be my most spectacular of names but it was fun to do another video to go along with today's project. after a few failed attempts at other ideas (save for another day), i just simply decided to write my own name in my own printing 100 times in a spiral. i imagined to run out of paper but it turns out that 100 names does not take as much room as you'd think. so, here it is: the picture of 100 spiralaurens and the video of it being made. :)

triple-digits! no backing off now!

{99} burger

last week i'd drawn a sketch of what the "lauren burger" consists of. the ultimate indulgence for me (which is why i don't keep any of these ingredients in the house) is this concoction (listed from the bottom up):

- homemade bun bottom
- thick slice of cold ham
- 3 bread and butter pickles
- thick slice of cheddar cheese
- raspberry jam
- 3 dill pickle chips
- a little more jam
- homemade bun top

ah-mazing. it sounds horrendous but, trust me. it's ah-mazing. the combination of the jam and the chips is really something incredible. hey, don't knock it till you've tried it. :)

anyway, so my little sketch inspired me to draw my name as layers inside of a burger. it's the lauren burger!

(ps. please. no high hopes for #100 tomorrow. i have zero ideas...)

{83} mandala-inspired

lately i have been loving mandala (such as this pin) and i wanted to do a name that was inspired by a piece. so, i found these mandala colouring sheets (i couldn't find my pin but there's a picture below) and was inspired by its design to create my name inside of it. i had no idea just how painstaking creating something like this is! i mean, it took a long time and i suffered a lot of hand cramps drawing all the little lines and cirlces (especially the circles!). but, i totally love it. i wish i'd rotated the "l" a little more so it was less "c" like but, other than that, i really love it.

{78} pig latin

at first i was just going to simply write "auren-lay" but it totally need a pig to accompany it so that it'd make sense. so, after two attempts, i managed to get this pig and then i adjusted the tail so that in its squiggles, it would read "auren-lay". i super love this one. when i post it to facebook (which i do with some of the cooler names), i'm going to ask and see if people know what its meaning is; let's see how many people know their pig latin!