Decorative!

I am not an artist. I am probably the farthest away from being an artist that a person could be without being clinically dead. I can't draw. I can't paint. I can't sculpt. I can't even sing, for Christ's sake. I have tried hobbies - jewelry-making, knitting, drawing, painting. I suck at all of them. My true talent lies in criticizing others and being misanthropic. They say to stick with what you know. But I'm also excruciatingly chintzy. I want to say I'm frugal, but that's not true. I will spend an unreasonable amount of money on alcohol, food, and other things of completely no consequence. But when it comes to things I need, I'm like "SIX DOLLARS FOR A TUBE OF TOOTHPASTE OH MY GOD!" So, I spend a lot of time at the dollar store, and such.

But now things are changing a bit and I've got to find a new roommate. I've been here six months and the place isn't really decorated. I don't know, I suppose I just wasn't sure how long I was going to be here, and now I know I'm here for at least another year (probably more like two), I'm ready to start decorating. I scoured the internet for wall art -- way too overpriced. I looked on craigslist. Nothing worth putting actual money into. But then I had an idea.

I've got this old sushi cookbook that I got on sale at Borders for like $12. It was like a sushi-making kit; including a bamboo sushi roller, a wooden rice spoon, and the book. I wanted to learn to make sushi, so I got it, and hey it was dirt cheap. I've since become a MASTER sushi chef (well, not a master but I CAN make sushi now), and haven't given the book a second glance in years. This is the book:

I stole this image from Google image search because my camera sucks.

Inside the book are pictures and recipes and how-to's on how to make sushi. The pictures are quite nice and so I thought it'd be a neat idea to pull out some of the pictures (yes, destroy the book) and either frame them in separate frames -- I was thinking 3 separate images and 3 frames -- or put them in a collage-style frame and put them on a wall somewhere. I went to hobby lobby and got a silver-edged collage frame for $4.00, and removed the insert image:

These are the kinds of people that would never hang out with me.

So anyway, I gutted the book, I gutted the frame and using my elite folding-and-taping ninja skills, got the pictures down to size and into the frame. Voila:

Awh lawdy, I'm inspahred!

So I'm feeling real artsy-fartsy right now and I was so inspired at Hobby Lobby, I decided to take on another AMAZING PROJECT. I bought a bowl (it's technically a dinner bowl, but it's ugly enough that it lands more in the "decorative" column in my book than the "utility" column):

This bowl cost $1.80

I also bought some "decorative rocks" (not to be mistaken for regular rocks, mind you):

These cost almost twice as much as the bowl

So put the rocks in the bowl, put a tealight in the rocks, instant ambiance (except not instant because I had to go to the store and buy the rocks and drive home and unwrap everything and find the tealights, but you know, it was still kind of fast):

I am practically Martha fucking Stewart except without the prison record.

So yeah, I am kinda proud of myself even though these are very basic, simple things, I think they turned out well and will help make my apartment more a "home" (and by "home" I mean like "a home" as in for "crazy persons").