DIY
Drawing Animals, Cooking Zoodles, Dollar Store Home Decor, and Photos of Fairies
Another creative week at The DIY Diaries
This week, The DIY Diaries welcomed submissions from four writers who shared their work at our small-but-mighty outpost for the first time. The posts this week offer a fun combo of topics, from visual art to home decor to cooking. I hope you enjoy these posts as much as I have.
It made me happy when I checked my inbox and had a notification that Omy had submitted a story about drawing animals and finding inspiration for drawing subjects and techniques from different sources. Omy not only looks at animals themselves for ideas but also at cartoon storyboards to think about different ways of portraying animals through visual art.
I’ve been following Omy since I started writing on Medium, and I always appreciate her work. By the way, if you’re a creative writer and/or visual artist from a Caribbean or Latin-American country, check out Omy’s Medium publication called Ilusiones.
This week Daniella Montage kindly wrote up her processes for making two different DIY home decor projects, both of which are fun and affordable. She had me hooked with the title of this first article, and then she really brought it home by completing her project with supplies from the dollar store. Guess how much it cost her to make a knife block…
And then she transformed a plain white candle in a plain glass holder into a charming gentleman who helps her celebrate Halloween every day of the year. She was able to make this project with supplies that many of us would already have on hand at home.
If you have even a slight interest in learning to take better photos, I hope you’re already following Duvy McGirr, but if you’re not, there’s time to follow her right now! She often writes posts in a series to go in-depth with a behind-the-scenes look at how she takes photos in different circumstances, or (as in the piece below) how she edits and adapts photos to make new works of art.
I think you’ll love how finding a simple leaf that looked like a set of fairy wings inspired Duvy to invent a world of beautiful fairies based on her photographs. She sent us part two in her series, so I’ll link to both parts below (the first was on her personal Medium page).
pockett dessert is another Medium writer whose account I’ve followed for a long time, and like Omy, pockett is also an awesome visual artist. The article that pocket sent is a fun combo of cooking ideas, a recipe, poetry, and photographs.
If you know pockett’s work, you’ll know that her photos bring professional lighting, framing, and other qualities to the everyday. I love how the photos here look like they are documenting a cooking show, and the zucchini looks so delicious that I want to try her recipe ASAP.
I also shared an article about food this week, by writing about some of the things I’ve learned over the years about how to cook tofu. There are some great tips in the comments, too, from folks like Mona S Gable, Albina Hays, Mulan, Jerikho Jordan, and The Sober Vegan Yogi, so as the saying goes, don’t sleep on the comments!
As ever, thanks to everyone who has been sending their stories for me to post in this DIY forum. I appreciate the variety of topics and the focus on sharing. I also love how so many of the articles combine both personal and how-to styles of writing, as well as photos of your projects to let readers get a closer perspective on your projects.
Please do let me know in the comments if you’d like to be added as a writer, and if you’ve sent work before, please know that the door is always open for you to send more. :)
Thanks again,