The Colorful Engineer

fine art by caroline serafinas

Miniature Polaroid Magnets

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During last week’s heatwave Meatball and I spent a lot of time in the basement to keep cool. Browsing through blogs, I stumbled up this Polaroid magnet idea from Ambrosia Girl and thought it was adorable! What a cute thing to pepper the fridge with! And so began this project.

I graciously used the Polaroid template on the website and got started.

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The longest part of this project was probably selecting pictures to use. I also, for some reason, convinced myself I needed twenty of these little magnets. (A few didn’t make it to the end.)

After printing out the pictures, I pretty much followed the instructions on the website verbatim. I even glued the pictures onto the back of old sketchpad, since I have plenty lying around. The other super tedious part was cutting out all the pictures with an X-Acto knife. It could have been that mine was just dull, but it took forever. And my edges weren’t the best. It was at about this point that I regretted, for the second time, printing out 20 photos.

Finally starting to resemble the final product. The edges on the board were painted with a white paint pen:

And lastly, after the paint dried, I “laminated” with packaging tape. Here’s the final bunch!

And here they are, doing their job on the fridge:

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Cool New Mugs

Recently I found myself browsing through stores while waiting for a flight out of the Portland, OR airport. I stumbled upon these hand warmer mugs in a Made in Oregon store:

Of course the mugs are slightly less cool now that I’ve seen they can be ordered off of Amazon, but nonetheless, they are still a nice addition to our collection of mug. And I’m sure they’ll be much appreciated when the winter months roll in!

Patio Paint

The lower level of our deck received a face-lift last year when we slightly expanded it and re-stained. Since then it has still sat idly by even though its just a few short steps away from our basement bar.  So we (I) decided we needed some welcoming decor. I bought some colorful paper lantern lights from Target and wanted to build upon that with a tiki/tropical theme. Enter Patio Paint.

In addition to the paint, I bought some relatively cheap ($2-3) pieces of wood from the home improvement store, primed, then transformed into some simple outdoor art (to the tune of some country music).

Slightly more involved, was this creation:

The writing was done using a wood burner…. and I’m not sure if it was worth the effort. Maybe because it was my first time, or maybe because I bought the cheap wood burner, but writing this short phrase took way too long. Next time I’ll stick to the paint.

Garden Update

The garden is a few weeks in now… and things are growing! The tomatoes really took off once the weather got warm. And the basil and cilantro are in full bloom. The peppers and onions are even starting to look like they might survive. The one bare spot is the rosemary patch. I’ve seen some sprouts, but I’m not sure what its deal is.

And then there’s the rampant wildlife in our backyard… 

I think I managed to successfully chase the bunny out of the yard today and barricade its entryway.

Evolution of a Birthday Gift

Mike’s birthday was actually a few months ago, but I forgot I had taken these pictures. He works in the power industry, hence the man working on power lines.

My Obama figurine used to reference the size of this painting: a petite 3″x3″.

Dave Matthews

Completed in 2003
16″x22″
Oil

I was a big Dave Matthews fan. Can you tell? Not to brag, but this might be some of the best arm hair I’ve ever painted.

The original picture is from a Rolling Stone magazine. It’s kind of funny putting the two pictures side by side. The more I look at them, the more different they look. Maybe I should just call my picture “Man in a Top Hat”.

Courtesy of Rolling Stone

Photoshop Fun

Although I use Photoshop quite a bit, I’m not very skilled at it. Luckily, there are some pretty informative tutorials out there. Like this one, that shows you how to delete people…. a handy skill!

I took my niece this weekend to get her ballerina pictures taken. Although I really liked the way this picture turned out, I didn’t really like the other little girl that infiltrated the scene. So with some minor effort… ta-da! She’s gone. The paint job is a little rough around the edges, but hey, it’ll do. I’m learning…


Our First Garden

I should start out by saying that I have a weak green thumb. This year we decided that we wanted a real vegetable garden. In the past we’ve had mediocre success planting potted plants- tomatoes, peppers, and herbs. Some years we would have an abundance of peppers, some years we’d harvest only a handful of tomatoes, and one year we got maybe one tomato but managed to attract some monster caterpillars, which coincidentally I saw on display at the Smithsonian that year. (Or something similar at least.)

Despite our not-so-great success, this year we decided we were ready to graduate to a real garden! Not holding back at all, we also decided that a raised bed constructed out of stone would also suit our needs best. Silly us. What a pain it was to haul 132 bricks from Lowe’s to the backyard of our townhouse. So this is what we’ve been doing the past three weekends. Finally finished up yesterday!

We started seedlings in late March/early April, which according to everything I’ve read, is late. 
But still it is so satisfying to see something grow from a seed.

Planning out our first bed.

Starting construction. Because our yard has a slight slope, we had to dig out 
some soil on the side closest to the deck.

 
Completion of the sunny side. Hoping to grow tomatoes, hot peppers, spring onions, basil, 
and cilantro over here.

Completion of the shady side. On this side we planted some kale, spinach, and mint. 
Also threw in some flowers for color. We’ll see how those do in the partial shade.

View from the top.

 Despite the advice from far more experienced gardeners than I, I decided to go ahead 
and plant our tiny tomato seedlings outside. The weather was fantastic this past week, 
so I thought what the heck. If they don’t do well, worst case I’ll dig them up and replace
them. Meatball has already ran through the garden twice…

Girl in Blue

 Completed 2001
16″x20″
Oil
This painting is hanging at my parent’s house, so I was proud of myself when I remembered to snap a picture of it over the Easter weekend for the sole purpose of posting it here. 
I’ll be the first to admit that this is not an original work by me. I know I copied it from another artist… but who, I can’t remember. I tried Googling, and found nothing. I even tried TinEye but it came up with zero results. I’ll have to keep looking…

Eye of the Tiger

Completed 1998
8″x10″
Oil

One of my most favorite paintings from the 90’s. In 1998 I was still in my awkward freshman/sophomore years of high school!

About Me

Hello, I’m Caroline, an artist from Maryland. I appreciate you stopping and taking the time to look around.

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