#what's asking if they want a piece of scrap for their scrapbook or if it's ok to throw away!!!

[bogkeep]

thank you big joel and if books could kill podcast for digging into the five love languages. truly one of those concepts that are like Yeah Sounds About Right because of course people feel loved and love in different ways!!! but then it turns out it comes from a book written by a fundamentalist priest guy and it's like OK SO HE JUST MADE THOSE CATEGORIES UP HUH.

[brisquad-unit-4402]

crimzon ruze dating an artist

i’m gonna be real the hate mail stream changed me as a person

yhis one is about ruze and a reader that likes to make visual art, but if this gets some reception might be interested in writing more headcanons for writers, musicians, programmers, dancers…

tags: gender neutral reader, established relationship, fluff, headcanons

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

let’s get it out of the way: ruze isn’t just a viciously violent mercenary menace, he’s also a viciously violent mercenary menace that ✨ loves creativity ✨

he respects people that can use their imagination, like inventing new horrific ways to kill a corruption beast, or making someone’s day worse in a way that can’t be replicated

so naturally he gravitates to people who put their imagination to use through their own art medium. he has a type for creators

one of the best feelings ever is being able to watch an artist in their element, focused on their vision

there’s always so much to admire. their hands wrapped around the pencil, the way they squint and stare at the lines… he could go on

if he’s really lucky maybe the artist will move around while drawing a character, just so they can use their own body as reference. it’s so cute seeing them lift a hand and compare it to the one they were drawing, even the pout they do when they erase the last few strokes, all frustrated but ready to try again. especially the pout

he doesn’t do the whole “talking about your feelings” thing so when he sees a well-done drawing, well, that just makes admitting it all the more redundant. who needs words when a picture is worth a thousand of them?

ruze himself isn’t exactly an artist, but he’s tried before. it’s tough work. anyone that can control their pen that well deserves respect

if you’re an artist and your love language is quality time then dating ruze is a dream. he’ll do work in the same room as you while you’re preoccupied with your latest piece

it’s just the right amount of togetherness, but you’re able to do your own thing, and so is he. this feeling gets even better with banter, music, anything

he doesn’t mention it often but ruze also likes to work with his hands too. his favorite is papercrafting

you’re the only one in the world that knows he has a diy scrapbook full of photos and embellishments and, yes, some of your doodles and scrapped art you let him keep

always wants to display your art in some way. it’s personal and makes him feel like his house is a little livelier

if you need more space or expensive supplies for your art like a firing kiln, large canvases, pressure pots, or other equipment, then he’ll drop off the face of the earth for, like, a week, then come back with a bounty collected and a cut of it for your art fund

ruze likes the challenge of hunting down and fighting a fearsome monster, and how you brighten up as you plan a visit to a local craft store

he likes to ask questions about what you’re working on. this can be anything from art history to oc lore to symbolism to techniques

it makes especially good conversation at night when he’s about to go to bed with you

…there have definitely been times ruze was the first to sleep because you got hit with inspiration at 1 am though

it would be hypocritical if he were to make you rest, but just don’t overdo it and wake up cranky past your alarm, alright?

and do some stretches, including your hands, and your back. you’re literally dating someone who uses his muscle to make money. you better be treating your body nicely while you’re making art

you should be getting accidental paper cuts, not carpal tunnel because SOMEONE didn’t stick their arms straight out and bend their wrists back while keeping their fingers straight for 10 seconds, then bend their wrists down to the floor for another 10 seconds. not naming names

the type of mf that will sneak up and make some form of sudden physical contact (a kiss? bite? lick? annoying poke to your side?) so your back straightens and then tells you to keep it straight instead of giving you more affection

would NEVER respond to someone talking about their art with “can you draw me?”

that’s probably his greenest flag actually

.　 . • ☆ . ° .• °:. *₊ ° . ☆

✧. ┊ masterpost ✧. ┊ kofi

[invisibleraven]

Phantom Carols

For the @jatp-adventevent prompt: What are their Christmas insecurities?

Day Twenty Three: You Make It Feel Like Christmas <-AO3!

Julie was not a fan of shopping for people. Mainly because she was a gift perfectionist. Each present had to be well thought out, and perfectly suited for the recipient.

This year was especially hard because she had four ghosts to shop for. Like, what do you even get for ghosts?

They could only be seen by people not connected to Julie while playing or at the Hollywood Ghost Club in Willie’s case, so gift cards to stores was out. See also anything to do with food, as all it did was remind them how much they missed eating.

She could get them music stuff, but after her dad found out about the guys, that was what he and tia had opted for, so that idea went nowhere. Ditto games because while they had permission to use Carlos’ systems they seemed to be happy enough playing his emulators of games from their childhoods.

She did up a scrapbook for the band, but she wanted something for each of them to unwrap on Christmas morning.

Which left clothes. Not the best gift, but it was one of the few options she had left.

Her dad had gotten the guys a cheap dresser to store stuff in, and they had more basics now, but their wardrobe was still limited. Julie took advantage of laundry day to peek at their sizes, and off to the stores she went.

Willie was easy; crop tops in funky patterns with equally funky socks. She scoured a few stores and found a good collection, and a truly awful ugly holiday sweater, just because she knew he’d get a kick out of it.

Alex liked shirts with 80’s pop idols and anything pink, though he had admitted that his fascination with the colour came from an incident with a red sock that ruined his whites. So for him, she gets him a pair of red socks, to be cheeky, and a few new shirts in soft pastel colours.

Luke was the easiest; cut offs, band tees, and hideaway socks. The problem was finding shirts of bands he liked that he didn’t already have. Thankfully she found a bunch of vintage Green Day and Nirvana shirts at a thrift store and bought those.

She left Reggie for last. Even though she had taken him shopping a few times, he just bought more of the same few staples; monochromatic shirts, ripped skinny jeans, and that was it. She had offered to get him a new flannel, since his was getting worn, or a bigger leather jacket as he had started outgrowing his before he died. But no dice.

Alex was the one who told her that Reggie’s MeeMaw had bought him the flannel for his last birthday, so there was no replacing that. And the guys had gotten him the jacket, and Reggie considered it his signature piece, refusing to give it up.

“It made the bullies stop picking on him, because he was putting out the tough exterior,” Alex admitted. “He got into a lot less scraps then.”

Julie wished she could have known the guys when they were alive, because the little snippets she got made her more and more convinced that they had badly needed friends outside each other, and a caring environment to grow up in. The best she could do now was give them as much love as she could, both her and her family.

That’s when she got an idea. She still got a few new staples plus some fun doggy socks for Reggie and headed off to home.

On Christmas Eve morning, she pulled the guys into the living room, and thrust a present at each of them. Each of them ripped open the packages, and Luke’s face struggled not to fall. “Oh. You got us socks?”

“Not only socks,” Julie said, giving them each a gift bag. On top were the clothes she picked out, but there on the bottom, she had given them each a set of…

“Pyjamas?” Alex asked.

“Every year, we Molinas get a set of matching holiday jammies,” Julie admitted. “This year… well you guys are my family too. Molina or not. So you get pyjamas too. To wear tomorrow morning for breakfast and stockings are the rest of the gifts.”

“Thank you Julie,” Reggie said, and she could see his eyes were a little glassy, and could hear a tiny sniffle in his voice. That was what made Julie sure she had made the right choice.

“Group hug?” Willie proposed.

Everyone nodded and agreed. Getting up in a large embrace, glowing as whatever magic Julie possessed thrummed through the air, letting them touch, letting the guys be more visible, more present… more alive. It came and went, but right now Julie was incredibly glad it worked, because if she wasn’t able to hug them right then, she would cry.

Okay, maybe she was crying anyways, but so were they, so no one said anything.

Happy tears could flow freely, especially at Christmas.

The next morning they all showed up in their pyjamas, grinning and bouncing, humming and singing as Ray snapped a family photo, and they finally were able to see them, not a bunch of orbs. Carlos thought it was lame, but Reggie timidly asked for a copy for the studio. “Our first family portrait.”

“I’d be happy to do that for you mijo,” Ray replied. And no one mentioned when the tears started anew, until it was time for stockings, and they disappeared. At least until the game of charades that afternoon anyway.

Though Julie was totally blaming that on how hard they were all laughing, and not how much they felt like a family for the first time in so long.

But she was totally keeping that photo for after they made it big and made their inevitable Christmas album.

[glambots]

Could you write headcanons for a reader that's very artistic but also kind of forgetful when they start with projects. Sun and moon and maybe a glamrock chica if you write for her, please

☀️Sunnydrop + Artistic!Reader HCs:☀️

⭐He loves, loves, loves watching you work on your projects. Whatever it is that you do, drawing, painting, origami--no matter what it is, he wants to watch you make it! Getting to see you in your element makes him feel like he can understand you a little better.

⭐If you're the kind of person to hoard your half-finished projects, he's always very "subtly" (read: not subtly-at-all) asking you about how they're going, wanting to see the updates, that sort of thing. He doesn't mind if you never finish any of them, but he's sure you'd feel more proud of yourself if you did! (Plus, then he'd get to keep the finished product, so...)

⭐But, if you let him, he'll keep the unfinished pieces too! Plastered all over his walls. Filling up his scrapbooks. Hanging on his metaphorical fridge--it'd be a real fridge but management won't let him have one >:(. He's just so proud of you and he is not afraid to show it!!!

🌙Moondrop + Artistic!Reader HCs:🌙

⭐Just like Sun, Moon loves watching you work. Only he tends to do it from a distance, or over your shoulder, so you never realize he's there until you look up and--JESUS CHRIST HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN THERE?! ("Oh, don't mind me. I'm just...observing.")

⭐Unlike Sun, he'll just take whatever drawings or pieces that he wants. He doesn't care if they're finished or not. (But if there's a certain piece he really likes, he will bug you about finishing it--just so you'll have finished something, and definitely not because he plans on keeping it afterwards, duh.)

⭐He prefers to keep his little "collection" in a hidden place that only he and Sun know about, but he will leave a few of them up and around their shared room. Just as a tiny reminder, for the both of you. He..."appreciates" how much work you put into everything you make.

🍕Glamrock-Chica + Artistic!Reader HCs:🍕

⭐Okay--Chica doesn't mean to be, but she's 100% the kind of person who finds out you do art and immediately goes, "Can you draw me???" Not to put any pressure on you or anything, but even if it was a stick-figure doodle, she'd cherish it with her life.

⭐Honestly, she's just like Sun in that she likes to sit and watch you work on your art. Humming to herself, kicking her legs, just contentedly watching. She'll even give feedback--mostly without realizing that she's doing it (not until you point it out, anyway). Ugh, sorry! You're just so talented and she's sooo jealous...!!!

⭐Chica loves scrap-booking, so you know she's got albums upon albums full of your works. Finished pieces, unfinished pieces, doodles and scrap drawings and rough sketches, colors tests, whatever! She even had to buy a new bookshelf to store them all in!

[katrinawritesthings]

jonghyun / jinki; at least received; PG

hey so. maybe you noticed maybe you didn't but this april i've been doing something kind of different where instead of posting things specifically for jonghyun i've just been posting old things that i've written these past few years that. not to say that they're not for him because like everything i write is for him now lol but things that i wrote specifically when i was in my feels about him if that makes sense. for me about him

i've posted a couple before if you look you can find them and for the most part they're like the other four things i posted this month where they're like. simple and uplifting or whatever but the thing about this one is that i didn't realize i was in my feels for him until the last like 2 paragraphs and they hit kind of hard i think

not in like an angsty way or anything i don't think but hard in a way that made me go hey i should probably mention it before people read it lol anyway this one is really nice i think but if you don't want to read it then that also is chill

“Whatcha thinking about?” he asks pleasantly. Jinki blinks, and then blinks again, giving his head a little shake like he's coming back into focus. What he focuses on is Jonghyun’s eyes, looking into them with his own, looking vaguely sad in a way that Jonghyun can't exactly place.

“I'm sorry,” he says. It comes out sincerely, but also with a kind of blankness to it that makes it seem like he doesn't really know what he's apologizing for.

Jonghyun hums quietly to himself as he delicately snips away the edges of a Polaroid he took last month. He cuts away the white border, the legs of both him and the chair he's sitting in, and hesitates before he actually closes the scissors to cut through the blue of the sky above his head. He likes that. It was a nice day outside at that little cafe. He'll keep it in.

Putting the scissors down, he grabs the glue stick instead and flips the photo over to glue up the back. Then he slaps it down, not carefully but not exactly carelessly either, into the scrapbook page he's working on. He doesn't really have a theme that he's going with it yet; he's kind of just winging it with this one. He feels like it's coming along though, Polaroids of him and other stuff outside, shots of the sky, shots of trees and bushes planted neatly on the street, one picture of a neat bug that he saw crawling on the sidewalk one time.

Then he picks up one of his glittery gel pens to write the date down, but hesitates with the purple in his hand. He's not sure if it really fits with the color scheme of the page. Looking up, at Jinki sitting kitty corner to him at the kitchen table immersed in his laptop, he reaches out and gently pokes him with the end of the pen.

“Hey,” he smiles when Jinki looks up. He wiggles the purple pen and taps the scrapbook page with his other hand. “do you think this would be good? Right here?” he asks, pointing to just under the picture.

“Mmm,” Jinki hums. “maybe the dark purple instead of the light,” he says, pointing at all of the little art supplies strewn over the table. The direction his finger is pointing in is so vague that Jonghyun is barely sure he's even directing it at the pens, let alone the dark purple, but he grabs the pen anyway with a bright smile.

“Thanks,” he chirps, grabbing the dark purple and uncapping it. He picks up the scrap pieces from the Polaroid as well, sorting through them until he finds the one and that he needs and copying down the date and location written on the bottom of it. Then he continues on his work, looking through his mounds of pictures and stickers and decorations to arrange well on the page and make it look just like the image of it that he has in his mind.

Which isn't really a picture perfect image in the first place; it's just as vague in his brain as the theme is, so he's not really following any sort of guideline at all, except maybe “cute,” but that's always what's the most fun to him. To have an idea in his head and then just work with it and let it happen and allow it to come out naturally, piece-by-piece, mistakes included, until he has something that he can look at and be proud of because it's something that he made by himself.

“Jinki?” he asks at one point, holding up two soft little felt birds, one blue and the other pink. He looks up a second after, to ask for Jinki’s opinion, and finds Jinki looking at him in a way that suggests he already had been for a long time, like he never really looked back down after Jonghyun’s question about the gel pens.

“Both, I think,” Jinki says, before Jonghyun can dwell on that feeling and ask about it. Instead he looks down at his scrapbook, at the right corner of the page that he was going to ask which bird would look better in. Instead, he pictures both birds there facing each other, giving each other a little bird smooch, and is instantly filled with delight at the idea.

“You're so right,” he says, and goes back to his work, none the wiser to Jinki’s alleged staring except for how he is incredibly wise to it now.

It's hard not to be wise to it; it's hard not to notice someone staring at you after you've already noticed them staring at you. He feels it in the way that it creeps over his skin, he hears it in the way that he doesn't hear Jinki’s fingers tapping away on his laptop, he sees it every time he glances up curiously just to check if Jinki is still, in fact, staring at him. He definitely is.

He doesn't comment on it at first, but eventually, his curiosity gets the better of him and he takes a break from his scrapbooking to prop his chin in his hand and smile contemplatively at Jinki.

“Whatcha thinking about?” he asks pleasantly. Jinki blinks, and then blinks again, giving his head a little shake like he's coming back into focus. What he focuses on is Jonghyun’s eyes, looking into them with his own, looking vaguely sad in a way that Jonghyun can't exactly place.

“I'm sorry,” he says. It comes out sincerely, but also with a kind of blankness to it that makes it seem like he doesn't really know what he's apologizing for. So Jonghyun decides to find out in the simplest way that he knows how.

“For what?” he asks, an amused little smile playing with the corners of his mouth. He doesn't want to laugh, because he feels like that would be mean, but this is still kind of funny to him. Jinki opens his mouth, and then closes it and then shrugs vaguely, running his fingers through his hair.

“I don't know, really,” he says. His hand falls to slap lightly on the surface of the table, and then rises to hold his own cheek. “I'm just,”, he says. “Sorry.” And there's something heavy in the way he says it, something serious, and that makes it stop being as funny. Jonghyun chews on the end of his glitter gel pen, watching Jinki sit there and be apologetic.

Apologetic, he thinks. That's the vaguely sad emotion that he couldn't place half a minute ago. Which really doesn't help him now, to be honest, because knowing the emotion doesn't have jack shit to do with knowing the reasoning behind it. He looks down for a moment, and then back up, one of his eyes kind of scrunched in a teasing, but still gentle grimace.

“Is this just you having another one of your self-flagellation parties?” he asks. It feels like the sort of thing that would warrant a vague, unprompted, external apology. Vague, unprompted, internal self depreciation.

“What?” Jinki asks, this time with a blankness that denotes confusion instead of unrealised existential emotions. “No, I—do I really do that a lot?” he asks, looking genuinely concerned. Jonghyun lessons his grimace into more of a comforting, sympathetic smile and shakes his head.

“Not as much as you're thinking that you do, but enough for it to be a thing,” he says kindly. He kind of thought that Jinnki knew it was a thing that he did already. He's been parlay to quite a few of Jinki’s pity parties himself. Not that pity parties are a bad thing, necessarily, or anything, just that they’re a thing that Jinki does sometimes and that's okay, as long as he comes out of them on the other end feeling better and less down on himself, which he usually does. “You haven't started hating yourself for no reason in a while, so I was just curious.” Jonghyun says. Just curious if maybe another one had come up so he would know if it was time for him to be lovely and adorable and comforting or not.

“Oh,” Jinki says. He looks troubled for a moment—Jonghyun wonders for an equally long moment whether or not he just spurred one along anyway—but then shakes his head decisively. “No, it's not that, it's nothing about me,” he says. “I just. I don't know.” he shrugs, and looks at the table, and then looks at Jonghyun. He reaches out a hand to cup Jonghyun cheek this time, warm and gentle, running a thumb softly over his cheekbone. “C’mere,” he says, scooting his chair back and reaching to tug on Jonghyun’s wrist at the same time.

Jonghyun, mildly baffled but without any excuse or reason or even desire to say no, obeys. He lets Jinki tug him out of his chair and into his lap, sitting across his thighs. With a soft oh, Jonghyun finds himself being enveloped in Jinki’s nice warm arms, his cheek tucked into his chest, his head kissed softly by his mouth. He hugs Jinki back, because he wants to, one arm around his back and the other crossing his chest to hook under his arm and around his shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Jonghyunnie,” Jinki mumbles.

Sitting there, in Jinki’s lap, with Jinki’s arms warm around him, Jinki’s lungs and heart moving slow under him, and Jinki’s words inside his head, an apology not from Jinki exactly, but just delivered by him, Jonghyun feels like maybe. Maybe, or maybe definitely. Yeah, definitely definitely. He deserves it. In the same way that Jinki inexplicably knew that he deserved to be given an apology, Jonghyun knows that he deserves to hear it.

So he accepts it, turning his face into Jinki’s chest and squeezing him close. He doesn't exactly forgive, but he accepts that it was given to him and, with Jinki pressing another soft kiss to his hair, says, “Okay.”

[rockthingsbymeg]

It’s okay to be a mess

Request: Hi! For soft Sunday, could you please write an Axl Rose X reader? The reader is a creative person in a lot of ways (writes, paints, tries to play music, scrapbooks, stuff like that) but she feels insecure about not focusing her energies on one thing, and he makes her feel better by recounting his own growth as an artist and how creativity doesn't have to be perfect or public? this turned out to be highly specific but I need it- Thanks a lot! I love the daily themes you have going on ❤❤❤ (sent by anon)

Pairing: Axl Rose x reader

Info: Angst with comfort; 1226 words;

A/N: Sorry it took me this long sweets, I hope you like it.

Y/N stared, with tears of frustration in her eyes, at the mess that was in front of her. There were magazines scattered all around with cuts on most pages, pieces of fabric in different piles, brushes and many other art materials, all of them gathered in the small room that Y/N had turned into her studio.

It wasn't so much the mess that bothered her, it was more what that mess meant. She could never focus on one project at the time. There was a half finished painting on the easel, her scrapbook was open on top of the desk, a pile of photographs waiting to be organized and turned into a mural.

It became too much sometimes. Why couldn't she focus on one thing at the time? Why couldn't she sit down and think about one project at the time?

Tear by tear, her cheeks began to get wet.

She wanted to make art that she was proud of, that she could show her friends and family and say "I did this!" with a smile on her face, even if it wasn't really something that they liked.

But how could she do that, when she worked like this?

She slowly made her way to the desk and, in an attempt to feel calmer, she began to make different piles of everything she had scattered there. Brushes, paints, scissors (why did she have so many?), random scraps, candids of her friends, family and her boyfriend, Axl.

It was a candid she took on her front porch, with the ginger looking ahead, cigarette between his fingers and a small smile on his face. He was smiling because, seconds before she took the picture, Sweet Child O' Mine had started to play on the radio that stood on the window behind him.

She loved Axl to no end, but thinking about him right now made more tears stream down her cheeks. He always seemed so focused on his work, word after word flowing from him almost effortlessly, focusing on one song at a time until the entire band agreed that it was perfect.

Why couldn't she do that?

With the picture still between her trembling fingers, Y/N slid to the floor, resting her head against the legs of her desk and just letting her frustrations weight down on her.

Work had been taking a toll on her, and while her art had been her escape for a long time, it now felt more like a burden. She got lost inside her head to the point where she didn't hear Axl walking from her living room to the room she was in, rubbing the remains of sleep from his eyes.

His eyebrows immediately furrowed in concern as he found her and slowly made his way over, crouching in front of her and reaching for her cheek.

"What's the matter?" He asked softly, rubbing a thumb over her tears.

Y/N looked into his green eyes for some seconds before speaking. She loved him so much. Just his presence managed to calm her racing mind down a bit. "Why am I such a mess?" She asked, voice strained.

"What are you talking about baby?" He asked, confused as he took a seat in front of her, placing his free hand on her knee.

Y/N sighed, feeling tears well up in her eyes again. "Look at this..." She vaguely gestured to the room around her. "It's a mess. Nothing is finished. Nothing is good enough." She spoke, looking down at her hands on her lap.

Axl gave her a sympathetic smile. He knew that feeling all too well and he hated to see the woman he loved feeling it too. "Babe, you're not a mess. Much less because of that." He said, moving closer to her body until he could place a kiss on her forehead.

"Yes I am." She cried, voice so small and fragile that it made Axl's heart physically ache. "I have all these projects unfinished. I don't have anything that I can show to everyone else and say look, I made this, without feeling like I'm literally showing them a toilet with a piece of crap inside..."

In any other occasion, Axl would have chuckled at how blatant she was with her words, but today he just smiled softly. "You don't have to show what you do to others. And it doesn't have to be perfect." He planted a kiss on the tip of her nose. "Do you like the things you do? Your paintings, your poems and everything else." He asked, cupping her face in both hands.

She thought for a bit. "Most of it, yeah."

"Then that's all that matters." He smiled, stroking her cheeks.

"But you're not like this." She spoke, looking into his eyes as if they would give her the advice she needed. "The things you write, they're good from the start. You can show it to others and you know most people will like them. And you don't go around having fifty different pieces of lyrics to fifty different songs at once."

"Who told you that fucking lie?" He chuckled, seeming a bit surprised.

Y/N stood silent for a moment, confused. "No one?" She answered, though it came out as more of a question.

Axl looked into her eyes for a bit before getting up, holding his hand out to her. "Come with me."

Y/N took his hand and got up, guiding her to her room (where he had been sleeping with her in for almost a whole month now. He might as well just move in.). As they got inside, he had Y/N sit on the bed while he picked up a beat up notebook that always stood under his pillow.

Y/N had never looked inside it, out of respect, but she had always been curious about what was inside. As Axl took a seat beside her and opened the notebook, pages scribbled with nearly indecipherable writing and multiple loose papers came into view.

"The lyrics you just talked about? They're there." He extended the book to her.

It was a small action, but Axl's lyrics were deeply personal to him and Y/N understood the trust he was putting on her as he did it.

"I've had that book since I was fifteen I think. I write most of my lyrics there." He spoke as Y/N's eyes moved over the pages and papers.

Y/N loved Axl a lot, but she would be lying if she said that she liked everything that she read. It was a mess, the handwriting sometimes so quick and weird that it became impossible to read, some sentences didn't even make sense at all...

It was a mess just like Y/N's studio was.

"I might not do as many things as you do, but I'm not much less of that mess you think you are." He smiled, cupping the side of her face and bringing her eyes up to his.

Y/N felt her heart melt at the loving look in his eyes. He always knew what to say to her, to make her feel that everything was going to be alright, no matter how shit she felt.

"You're amazing. You know that right?" She smiled softly, nuzzling into his palm.

Axl just smiled at her and pulled her into a kiss, wrapping his arms around her frame.

------

Finishing Soft Sunday/100 followers celebration.

Thank you so much for reading. Likes, reblogs, comments and any kind of way you show me you liked this are endlessly appreciated💛

Requests are closed.

taglist: @curly-hudson

Thanks @dustnbones​ for beta-reading this; check out her fic blog @dustnbonesfics​💛  

[merskrat]

I found the little stone jar I bought from Ron’s store, which is only online now. It would have been so much better if he were still here. I found the little bones that used to live in my dreads and put them in the little jar. I found my How to Talk to Cats book, which was always good for a laugh so I never got rid of it. I found one tiny painting, but not two, so I commissioned another even though it won’t be the same. I found a blue glass bottle that used to be filled with sand from key west back when key west was a happy memory. I found brown hairs in between the pages of books. I found a love note folded up tiny with a chain without anything on it. I found drawings and notes that friends left me to let me know that they stopped by because I never had a phone. I found a stack of CDs, and at the very bottom of the stack I found the one I wanted, but it looks like it was damaged. I found my ugly sweatshirt that I would wear when I was hungover, or when I was tired or sad, that my friends would see me wearing and say “no, it’s not that kind of day.” I will be wearing it a lot in the city with the air conditioning blasting because I know greg was joking when he said he would throw it away because it is the single most important piece of clothing I have ever owned. I found a red seed beads strung on a loooong piece of dental floss that I was sure had been sitting in my old jewelry box in the city, so sure that I asked my husband to check for it and was sure that this one couldn’t be mine, but I was wrong. I found my first ever skank, patched up with floss and polka dot fabric, ripped in half, it is so worn out. I tied a little scrap of it around the end of my braid and felt that there was a kind of poetry to wiping my tears away with this absolute relic and what a treasure it is. I found pictures that so many people will want copies of, and I sent some to a few and they were grateful to me, and honestly surprised that I would even offer. Some of them I will keep to myself a little longer, something to ruin my eye makeup with on the train. I found zines from the anarchist bookstore in Nola, and a copy of a book that was out of print when I ordered it. The guy from the farm that they published from gave me his personal copy, and I wrote my name under his. I have been trying to think of the name of this book for at least eight months, so finding it was a big relief. I found that my grandmother had finally succeeded in convincing my grandfather to get the lilac bush that gave her such bad allergies cut down. I found shells on the beach and I found my collection of interesting sea glass, different colors melted together or interesting shapes. I found a scrapbook of photocopied pictures that my friend made me before I moved away for one school year. I remember how tightly her little three year old arms wrapped around my neck in the first picture and wonder if she still has the original. I found a piece of art that my dad had made in school. He doesn’t remember making it, but we had the same art teacher and she was sure, so she gave it to me. It is too delicate to move. I found bits and pieces and loose papers and notebooks that aren’t important but I was too lazy to throw away. It felt right to find these things but I would have happily gone without them in return for finding something else. I found that people’s memories do not go as far back as mine.

[detectivejigsawpines]

A mind is a terrible thing to lose

“What other choice do we have?”

For a moment there was silence between the two old men.

Then Stan looked at his twin sharply.  “Tell me somethin’, Poindexter.  Have you ever made a deal with the triangle that didn’t end with ya bein’ screwed over one way or another?”

Ford blinked.  “Well-no, but-”

“Yeah, but nothin’.  I’m not doin’ that.”  With that, he began shrugging out of his suit jacket, and then untying his tie after he shrugged out of the sleeves and let it drop to the floor.

Ford’s expression was a comical depiction of disbelief: eyes popping, mouth hanging open, eyebrows up in his bangs.  After a second, though, he remembered how to use his mouth.

“Stanley, what are you-have you gone mad?!”

“Probably.”  Stan pulled his tie off, and began unbuttoning his shirt.  “I’m gonna need your sweater.”  He looked down at their respective pants.  “...Both black, so he might not notice if they’re the same, but I’ll need your boots too.”

At which point Ford finally caught up with his brother’s thought processes.  “...You can’t be serious.”

“Watch me.”  The younger twin held out his clothes.  “We don’t have much time, hurry up!”

“Stanley, you don’t understand!  If I use the memory gun on you, you’ll be-!”

“And Bill will be gone forever, and the kids won’t have ta grow up in this hellhole!”  With his free hand Stan gestured at the chaos of the world around them.  “It’s worth it, Stanford!”

Ford looked like he’d been poleaxed.  “Stan…”

“It’ll fix everything,” Stan insisted.  Ford feared that there was an unspoken, And you were gonna kick me out at the end of the summer anyway, so it’s not like I’ve got anything ta lose at the end of that sentence.

But he finally gave in to his brother’s impatient glare and removed his coat and sweater, handing them over and taking Stan’s clothes.  Then he silently exchanged their shoes and put on Stan’s fez, while Stan fluffed up his hair and worked on changing his voice to match Ford’s.

“Heh, this is gonna be like that time when we tried ta fool Ma so you wouldn’t haveta go ta boxing,” he said with a gruff laugh, clearly hoping to pretend that his hands weren’t trembling a little as he pulled on Ford’s gloves (stuffing the extra finger holes with pieces of wadded-up tissue that had been in his pocket).  Then he admitted more sheepishly, “...Course, we better hope Bill’s less perceptive than she was.  From what I’ve seen, though, he’s gonna be too busy gloating about ya ‘giving in’ ta notice much.”

Ford didn’t say a word.  His mouth started to open as they grabbed onto the bars of their cage again, but then Bill was back, with the kids clutched in one hand, and there was no time for him to say what he’d been thinking.

It’s not worth you, Stanley.

********

Grunkle Stan wasn’t gone.

He wasn’t completely back... but he was there.  He’d been found again.

The despair that had enveloped the family in the forest began dissipating as they laughed over Mabel’s eccentric scrapbook entries.

After a while Stan, Mabel and Soos dozed off, all relaxed against each other and drooling shamelessly.

Dipper, exhausted as he was, wasn’t ready to join them just yet.  Gingerly he slipped free of the armchair, and began making his way through the debris towards the kitchen.

“Dipper?  Where are you going?”

The boy froze up at the sound of his other uncle’s voice-and was startled by the feeling of his fists inadvertently clenching.  Quickly he opened them and said, keeping his voice low, “Just gonna see if we have anything salvageable to eat.”

He went on into the kitchen, and tried to pull the door closed behind him-except that only half the door was still there.  Dipper sighed, and got a chair to help him climb onto the counter and begin searching the cupboards.

Nothing...nothing...a few cans of partially eaten brown meat (ugh)... and nothing.

Dipper forgot about eating and went out to sit on the front porch.

Ow, everything hurt.  He rubbed his sore arm, and wondered if the hospital was open-if so, it was probably crowded with everyone else in town.  Soos had said that as far as he knew, they were all still alive, but his primary interest had been finding the Pines family as soon as the chaos ended so he didn’t know for sure-

Ford stepped outside, looking far less stiff and straight-backed than normal, and joined Dipper on the sofa.  And without warning, Dipper looked up at him and asked, “How could you?”

His tone was more devoid of awe than it had ever been when he was addressing his idol before.  Ford froze, breath hitching, and stared down at him.  Dipper continued, voice rising a little, “How could you do that to him?!”

Logically, Dipper knew why, of course.  The metal plate in Ford’s head meant that they couldn’t erase Bill out of it, so Stan was the best choice for that course of action.  But to be able to use the memory gun on your own twin, and basically destroy everything they were-he could never imagine doing that to Mabel, no matter how messed up things might become between them.

Ford let out a choked sound, and his shoulders drooped even more.  “It was our only option left, Dipper-”

Something exploded in the boy’s brain, and he leaped to his feet.

“IT WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN OUR ONLY OPTION IF YOU HADN’T TRIED TO CORRECT HIM ON HIS STUPID GRAMMAR!”

It had been a rough indeterminate amount of time for Dipper recently.  He’d spent three days (sort of, since time didn’t really exist during Weirdmageddon) constantly fleeing for his life and hiding from everything, nearly lost his sister to an evil bubble, gone through the entire emotional spectrum several times over, and been forced to watch his family and friends almost be destroyed by a giant Dorito in a top hat.  All his pent-up anger and hurt wanted someone to blame for all that, and it had just found a perfect target.

“YOU COULDN’T STOP FIGHTING WITH HIM EVEN THOUGH THE WHOLE WORLD WAS AT STAKE!”  Dipper couldn’t remember the last time he’d yelled at someone like this, waving his arms in the air and just ranting every angry thought that came into his head like an ugly tidal wave.  He was surprised the others hadn’t come out to investigate the noise; maybe they were so tired they were sleeping through it.  “YOU JUST KEPT HURTING EACH OTHER, OVER AND OVER, AND NOW GRUNKLE STAN BARELY REMEMBERS ANYTHING ABOUT WHO HE IS BECAUSE YOU-”

The tirade was brought to a halt by the most unlikely sound: a small, quickly drawn-in inhale through the nostrils; specifically, a sniffle.

And when he looked at Grunkle Ford again, he was horrified to see silent tears spilling down his face.

It was the second time Dipper had ever seen Ford cry.

The first time had been when he was holding Stan, but all he’d really seen of that were his uncle’s trembling shoulders, and when he finally pulled back there’d been damp trails on his face and on Stan’s (technically his) coat.  Seeing it happening right in front of him, though, was more than a little frightening.

“No, Grunkle Ford, I-I didn’t mean it-!”

“You’re not wrong.”

His uncle was holding himself, huddling into his trenchcoat and burying his fingers in the sleeves, and he was still crying.

“No, I’m sorry!”  Dipper climbed back onto the sofa and, unsure of what else to do, began digging around in his vest pockets in the futile hope that he might have some tissues.  “I didn’t mean what I said!”

“You did mean it, Dipper,” Ford corrected him softly.  “People who are angry are more likely to be honest about their feelings.”

“But it wasn’t fair to you!”  Dipper finally found a scrap of cloth that seemed relatively clean-he wasn’t sure where it had come from, but decided not to worry about it for now-and offered it to him.  Ford looked at the cloth in confusion for a moment, then took it and used it to rub under his eyes and clean his glasses.  “This wasn’t all your fault-Grunkle Stan could’ve calmed down, or I could’ve not fought with Mabel, or a lot of other things could’ve happened instead to fix all this.”

“But a great deal of it is my fault-specifically, everything that happened to Stanley because I trusted Bill.”  His hands shook, and he balled the cloth into one of them in a tight fist.

Dipper wasn’t sure what he should do...until at last he decided to act on his instincts, Mabel style.  He climbed into his uncle’s lap, and hugged him gently around the middle.

********

When they had both calmed down somewhat, Dipper murmured, “...I think I need to go back to Piedmont with Mabel.  I’m sorry, I know you really wanted me to stay, but-”

Ford shook his head.  “That is completely fine, Dipper.  I wouldn’t want to be taught by myself either.”

“No, I wasn’t-I was thinking maybe when I’m a little older, like after we finish high school and Mabel’s gone off to some fancy art school in New York or something-”  both of them laughed-  “then we could talk about that apprenticeship again...but I don’t want to be separated from her for the rest of our teenagehood.”

Ford nodded thoughtfully, and leaned back against the sofa.  After a moment he said, “You’re a wiser man than I am, Mason.”

Dipper didn’t know if he agreed with that, but he leaned against his uncle’s chest with a small sigh, and finally allowed his eyes to close.

[amoveablejake]

Jake Reviews: Pocket Notebooks

Look, I promise I’ll try to make this interesting.

Okay, I’ll level with you. I wasn’t quite sure what to write about this week. Infact I had started to work on one piece a minute ago but I’ve scrapped it because it didn’t feel quite right. Instead I’ve decided to turn to our Jake reviews section and thought hey, why don’t I review the thing that I use most throughout the day: my pocket notebook.

Now, if you don’t have a pocket notebook I really have to ask what you’re doing with your time. How are you operating to your full potential. With a pocket notebook lurking in your shirt picked, back pocket or even despite its name your bag you’ll be equipped and ready to take on the world. All those pesky things you have to get down will have a home to reside in so they can leave that head of yours to think about other things like, oh I don’t know, your complete adoration for fair isle jumpers. Now you might be saying now, well I keep my notes on my phone and that’s all well and good but it’s not quite the same. In years to come you won’t look through the notes section on your phone, no, you’ll want to sit down and flick through your notebook and see that you never did in fact pick up more tea bags and how did that turn out in the end. It’s these mysteries that will be all the more comforting when coming from a little book rather than the robot in your pocket.

There is also something undeniably hygge about documenting your days in a little notebook. It’s taking the time to do something for yourself and to slow down. I don’t actually journal in mine but then again, I suppose I do but not specifically. As I’ve said I keep my to do list in there but also I use it as a scrapbook and general notebook where I make little lists of things I’d like to do, places I’d like to see, films I’m going to watch in the near future, scrabble scores and when the world allows, travel information. I might seem like I’m operating from a different time when I write train times down in my notebook but hey, when that phone is out of charge you already know I’m going to be smiling at you from the correct platform.

I often have to resist the urge to start a notebook before I’ve finished the old one and that is quite the challenge. This is most down to the brilliant field notes notebooks that I use. Their covers and build quality are both fantastic and I’m always longing to move on to the next so I have a different cover to admire for a few weeks or so. But no, I’ve got to finish each one completely so that I can fill up the collection and have a complete record of my days even if it consists mainly of notes that will make no sense to anyone else. But really, that’s the charm of it. The notebooks are extremely personal and similar to my ever growing photo albums I hope that one day future versions of myself and maybe, a smaller version will enjoy sitting down and reading through them. Whilst it may seem like you’re just reading a to do list or the odd travel notes there is a much more intimate quality here that really connects you to that time that the notes were taken. It’s this, which I’ve realised again, is quite a hygge feeling that I’m trying to create and it’s what I keep telling myself when my eyes longing gaze at a fresh notebook begging to be used.

*sigh*

- Jake, a man eagerly anticipating his next notebook, 03/01/2021

[kaen-ace-of-diamonds]

Grade Book

Word Count: 1600+ (oneshot) [AO3]

Genre: Angst/Fluff

Characters: Korosensei, Class E (mentioned), the Second Reaper (mentioned)

Summary: When he was a man, the Reaper kept meticulous records of those he killed, as a mark of pride in his own work. Now that he’s Korosensei, what he wants to leave behind for good is a record of pride in his beloved students.

Written for the @assclasszine.

~0~

The Reaper is a methodical man.

It would be a rookie mistake to leave evidence of his work around his apartment, he knows that. Nobody but himself ever comes inside it. Even then, when he vacates his various residencies after some time, he leaves them emptier than they were when he first moved in, in body and soul, and it feels as if no one ever lived in them at all. He is a spirit, a god of slaughter, and the spaces he passes through leave no trace of human presence, only death.

At least, that’s the way it’s supposed to be, according to both his reputation and his own standards for what a legendary assassin is made of. But the Reaper is only human, after all, and he can in fact succumb to the average human compulsions. He’s fairly certain that it’s only humans that feel the need to meticulously list and organize things, the pleasure centers of the brain stimulated when a pattern is found and adhered to. He theorizes that it comes from the desire of a weak species to find some order or control over their lives, which can be ended or thrown into irreparable disarray out of absolutely nowhere.

The Reaper is not weak, and needs no such reassurance. He has very little life to upset in the first place. But he finds the process comforting anyway.

This time around he has been lucky enough to rent an apartment that comes with a desk. When he returns home with his most recent mission completed, he retrieves his blank black binder and a ballpoint pen from his suitcase, and sits down at it. He’s always surprised at how pleasant he finds the mixed scents of looseleaf paper, old wood, and fresh ink.

First he documents the details of the mission, taking it all down in a cipher of his own creation to hide his own location and methods, as well as the names of his employers. He doesn’t assume it to be unbreakable, but he supposes it will give anyone who doesn’t know him quite a job to do in solving it. He feels neither fear or doubt when he sets out to kill. At least, this is what he tells himself. 

This habit used to be for study purposes, back when he was in training himself. He used to have a section for reflecting on the mistakes he’d made, working on ways to do better. He makes no mistakes as a full-fledged killer, and when that section reappears in recent entries it is reserved only for the failings of his apprentice. Now instead he sticks firmly onto the pages identification photos of his targets, front and center, and the photos he takes to give his employers the proof that his job has been completed as ordered.

He writes down biological observations, the initial information on them given him by those employers (as well as whatever connection both share), any specifications they may have given him for the kill, the weapons and methods that he used in bringing about their deaths. He is tempted sometimes to put in the pictures and text clippings from the various newspaper articles about them — even the pitiful scraps that the largely overlooked ones get, in remembrance for average lives — but always decides against it. It isn’t his own personally gathered data, and he’s not some run of the mill serial killer, after all, gathering trophies and memorabilia from a hobby. 

The Reaper is a professional, the best of the best. His work is his life, and it is only fitting that one of his very few indulgences in that life is documenting that exceptional work. Statistics are not all of what makes him the world’s most perfect assassin, of course. People in his circles discuss what does, behind his back in hushed, bitter tones. He has heard many of their conclusions over the years, all of them wrong. The conclusion that he himself has drawn — which certainly lends it credence as the right one — is that his success comes from two things. It’s not only the core of ice that’s long since replaced his heart, allowing him to commit any gruesome task asked of him with the clearest mind and the least regret. It is also the intense devotion to his trade that has replaced any other emotion that might get in his way. He has nothing else, and needs nothing else, except for the death that has always surrounded him.

This book is merely a testament to that. To his work, if not himself. Like the shadowy god for which he’s named himself, when somebody finally takes his life, whoever he is will disappear into the misty night. Unimportant and unacknowledged. Only the work he has left behind will remain. Only the trail of blood stretching endlessly into the horizon.

The Reaper supposes that it is perfectly fitting. Such is the inescapable point of life, isn’t it? 

He writes out the name and time of this latest death, in a top corner, like he assumes a doctor would do. The point of his pencil lingers on the grayish paper, and idly scratches out the vague form of the kill’s broken form on the street.

~0~

Korosensei has very little experience with things like textbooks and strict curricula. So though if asked, he would vigorously deny anything so unprofessional as winging it, that is the majority of what he is doing at first. Karasuma must have his suspicions, of course, but he never says so outright, only gruffly barks him towards the right direction like an irritated sheepdog.

He doesn’t think he’s ever had teammates before, any more than he’s had this many students to train. The small sea of determined young faces looking up at him is unlike anything he’s ever been faced with. They’re certainly on the other side of the universe from the eternal dissonant calm on the face of his apprentice. Where the Second Reaper is ice inside, his children are pure youthful fire: overwhelming, beautiful, and sometimes even terrifying to behold. 

So it is almost second nature to begin recording them. Some part of him mourns the loss of his old scrapbooks, but he supposes that this grade book is a perfectly worthy replacement.

He doesn’t even notice it at first when his books become more than that. More than they have ever been, even at their most thorough.

All the information in his students’ files he meticulously copies down. Personal information and opinions come next, along with lesson plans, weapons data, the tactics they choose and their results. With all of his new appendages, it’s easier and faster than ever before to take down all his thoughts before he loses them. It’s all just logs and facts and records, really, just a whir of necessary information...until it isn’t.

All of a sudden, it’s candid photos instead of yearbook and ID standards, with the bright smiles of his students’ true selves instead of the dull-eyed depression their school life has forced upon them. It’s a diagram of the makings of anti-Sensei bullets, above the top ten best shots in the class. It’s train and plane tickets from their resort trip, bordering the pages of their vacation pictures, and four whole pages of bits and pieces from their festival success. Outstanding test grades are plastered everywhere, from cover to cover. 

Also scattered around are tentacle-drawn sketches (improving with each new attempt, if he does say so himself) of the best aspects of his classroom. He thinks he’s finally captured the wryness of Karma’s smirk, the strangely familiar shape of Kayano’s face, and most intriguing of all, the bright, striking sharpness of Nagisa’s eyes, glowing with killing intent. 

Korosensei fills so many pages that sometimes he forgets that his time and their space is limited. His pencil shakes over the page when it hits him that the date of his inevitable destruction is drawing near. He’ll need to wrap it up, as painful as it is...

Yes, that is exactly what he shall do, he decides, heart leaping a little. His personalized graduation albums are a work of art, but he supposes it couldn’t hurt to leave one more hidden treasure for Class E to find here, after the final bell has rung. So he gathers up all his books from the beginning of the year to now, and sets them all in orderly piles in a box, which he stores safely inside of his desk. 

He almost wants to take them all back out again, and look through them one last time. Maybe adjust some things. But no. No time for that. Besides, his raw and unedited feelings ought to mean the most to them, anyway. They are so very pure of heart and bursting with passion themselves, after all...

Korosensei straightens up and looks out the window at the ravaged moon. He hopes and prays that his children will be the ones to kill him, in the end, before he can destroy them. Those faces of theirs would make for a fine last sight. And he doesn’t want to be the one who snuffs those brilliant lights out, after all, before they’ve even reached their prime. He hopes they will always know how special they are, and how much they are worth, and how deeply his adoration of them runs even when he is gone. 

The Reaper never once told anyone “I love you.” Korosensei isn’t quite sure how to, either. But for his students, he has given it his best try. 

The name of the Reaper is gone, and the trail of blood has run just about dry. And when Korosensei disappears, it is life and love that he will leave behind, for his children to carry with them as they surge forward and thrive.

[julianwinchester]

1ST PROJECT

1. How are you settling in - how do you feel about being part of your tutor group?

Fine. I can just get my head down and work if I’m on a good thread and I want to and don’t feel overly distracted or frustrated with other people, but I haven’t really gotten to know any one closely yet. I enjoy being in a space where all I have to focus on is being creative and especially doing work I personally enjoy making.

2. What are your first impressions of the learning environment?

Fairly self-guided, I could ask for certain materials if needed. Getting out of it what I put in, little direct tutoring so far.

3. What are the differences to your previous learning and experience at A-Level?

I didn’t take any art classes at sixth form, so being in a space just dedicated to art is what I was looking for.

4. What if anything, do you need to find more about?

-What we actually do and don’t have access to in terms of materials, spaces, and guidance from tutors/other teachers with experience relevant to what you’re doing

-What is actually expected of you in the sketchbooks- my tutor says that it shouldn’t be a scrapbook and yet every well-graded sketchbook I’ve seen is very much a scrapbook. Do I need to write this much? Or is this too little?

-How to try different materials and get taught how to use them (ceramics, textiles, woodwork)

5. Where do you see yourself currently in terms of art/design/media?

-I have interests in working in all three areas and like the overlap between them.

6. What are your current strengths?

-Concepts, coming up with ideas out of the gate and being confident with them.

-Eye for design/what works visually and what doesn’t.

-It doesn’t take long for me to pick up what I’ve tried so far in Photoshop.

7. What are the areas you need to improve on?

-Follow-through on ideas I like but am not sure how to do

-Explaining/documenting my process- big problem at GCSE. I usually hate writing down my thought process after the fact, but I don’t mind explaining it out loud, so finding a way to bridge that gap

-Working from home

8. Record some actions that will help you achieve this.

-Document my reflections/notes/creative process in a more natural, train of thought way as I work so I don’t put it off

Week 2 09/09/18 - 13/09/19

1. How did you understand the rationale for the project?

Broadly, I understood it as making work which was true to our interests/interpretations of a particular subject, which we derived from the initial conversation and brainstorm we had in groups.

2. How have you made use of your studio time?

Sketching and writing in my sketchbook, testing materials, making pieces unsure if they were going to be a part of my final piece or not

3. What is your understanding of the “Creative Process” and how it applies to your way of Working?

Basically creating, scrapping and elaborating on ideas as they come to you- actively making inspiration. Testing materials/ideas/recycling/borrowing concepts regardless of whether or not they will work and trusting your own intuition/taste. “Sketching and writing in my sketchbook, testing materials, making pieces unsure if they were going to be a part of my final piece or not”

4. How have the contextual references you have found helped you think about new approaches to your work?

The book “No Sleep” by Adrian Bartos has been a huge inspiration so far- seeing how nightclub and event promoters designed flashy, attractive and personality-filled posters considering the lack of resources compared to what I’m capable of in Photoshop has made me want to take advantage of the platofrm even more, and have more fun with the design. Design elements like dithering, blocky type, collage, and repurposing sha

5. How have the practical and material elements of the work gone? (a) have you kept Notes?

Working with ink is fun and something I’m used to, but smudging and miswriting can be frustrating considering the inital aesthetic I was going for was meant to be more clean and technical. Later, while I moved into digital collage, all of my base materials were physical, and working with plasticine meant that I was also able to experiment in how the texture of the clay turns into the black and white, dithered aesthetic of the collages that I was doing. For much of the early project, yes, I’ve kept notes, but I tend to forget to while working digitally

6. What could you do better in the future / what are your plans for next week?

Write and make notes in my sketchbook/blog while working, rather than having to go back and write them after the fact.

7. Have you started photographing your work, keeping the images in a relevant folder?

Yes.

8. You had a tutorial this week, how might you use that to reflect on your progress?

Figure out if I’m making the right kind of notes/how to make those right kinds of notes.

FURTHER NOTES:

There were certainly points during class-time where I had to find things to do and procrastinated, which has been a consistent problem for me in the past. This was especially true in documenting; while I was happy to go crazy and spend lots of time working in Photoshop on my collages, it was really mostly by chance that I came across that idea and from messing around with Adobe Capture on my phone, which is not the most sustainable model of working.

I had a blast researching posters from New York’s nightclub scene in the 70s, 80s and 90s, pretty much completely incidentally when we were asked to pick out books at the library at the beginning of this week

MEDIA - THE RIGHT KIND OF WRONG

Week 3 - Art/Media/Design Projects 16/09/19 - 20/09/19

First project, personal directions:

1. How well did you respond to the first project brief?

Considering the brief was (I believe purposefully) vague, and with my understanding the first brief was mostly about thinking in the creative process and being open to radical shifts in direction, I thought I fulfilled it well.

2. how well did you use your time this week?

I was really happy with the notes I made initially, and the idea of indiscriminately writing down every idea relevant to the project. I became kind of latched onto this idea of creating colourful, noisy gifs or short videos and I spent a lot of early class time working on the sound bytes for them, none of which I ended up using for my final pieces. A similar thing happened with experimenting with physical animation and a phenakistoscope, and it was frustrating feeling like I wasn’t really going anywhere with those ideas. However, I felt like they are getting me closer to my original idea.

Week 8 Art/Media/Design Projects 21/10/19 - 25/10/19

Third project, identifying future directions:

1. Identify overlapping themes, particularly in your personally directed work:

a. are there connections between ideas, approaches to materials or attitudes

that you have you used in all or any of these projects. If so, what are they? If

not, what are the main differences?

-Digital collage has ended up being something I used a lot more than I anticipated I would, since most of the work I’ve made independently before the Foundation year has been gouache and physical collage. I definitely follow the same process of sketching out mostly complete final piece ideas and doing extensive research, but I’ve also found that both projects have had a pretty radical change half-way through.

-I think research being a big part of my projects is a consistent theme for me, but I also consistently have a hard time documenting all the progress, since I’m not sure how to in most cases.

-In terms of consistent themes, all three were relatively different in themes; Media had to do with the supernatural, which is a theme I’m familiar with and interested in, and involved dipping my toes into animation and sound design; Art was based off of an idea I had had well before the project, and involved participatory art being being in a more curatorial role.

Compare how you have used your time between this project and the last. Consider

being open to different ideas and potential changes in direction.

exploring and evaluating different material possibilities.

creating more complex or unexpected outcomes.

developing an understanding of different artists and designers working in a similar area.

creating a better understanding of the different approaches to practice in each area.

presenting and/or explaining your ideas to others.

-I think organisation and note-taking has been a problem on both projects, I want to make the split between in-studio and at-home work more proportional, with time management being more of a problem with this project especially.

-I definitely haven’t been afraid to change direction, almost to a fault, since I closely documented every thought/decision that has gone through my head

Looking back over the last eight weeks are there patterns emerging in how you manage your project work?

-I definitely either latch strongly onto an initial idea, or don’t have one at all and do research, and I have a hard time working in that in-between stage when I need to develop an idea (especially if it’s one I don’t feel strongly about, such as with this current project.

Begin to outline your own particular strengths and weaknesses in relation to all of these approaches. Consider where/ how you fit into these different ways of working.

-I enjoy the research and

-Documentation in general is difficult for me, as it was at GCSE, especially since I have been tending to do all my digital work and research digitally. However, I really enjoy doing research for my work (something I have been doing for a long time, looking up references/inspiration/learning about the subject) the problem is just in getting my thought process and research down.

-I tend to treat the prompt or brief pretty flexibly, which hasn’t been such a problem on the first two projects since experimentation and being open to ideas was a major part of them. Despite the specificity of the Design project’s prompts, and my confidence in how I was going to approach my second try at that project (Switching from the Train Station to the Selfridge’s prompt)

List some of the artists, designers, photographers and filmmakers that have had the most influence on you in the last eight weeks.

what disciplines or areas do they work in?

what subjects did they study?

-Stephen R. Johnston

-Charles Freger

-Mason Lindroth

Use this week’s reflections to identify, or confirm possible future career directions.

-This last project has gotten me thinking about Illustration as a career differently. My initial difficulty with the Design project, criticism I received from my tutor about approaching the Selfridge’s brief by design rather than brand, and the fact that I changed briefs halfway through all of this project made it more frustrating than the previous ones, which is slightly discouraging because it was apparently the most “illustration-y” of the three, and illustration was the pathway I was considering choosing.

Ensure you have your Digital Portfolio updated.

[cawefee]

hi! i love love love your blog! it’s amazing! anyway i was just wondering if you have any tips on starting junk journaling? i tried a bullet journal a couple of times but i was always too concerned with the neatness of it whereas i think junk journals are more scrapbook-y (which i loved doing as a kid)! 💓

Hello! Thank you so so much! This ask made my day. 🥰

Oh, my. Well, for starters, take your time with your journal! That’s the hard part at the very beginning. I remember first starting out and wanting my spreads to look like other people’s so badly that I ended up getting upset when it didn’t. Please go at your own pace and don’t force yourself to make a spread when you don’t truly feel like it.

Second, junk journals are exactly what is stated in the name: it’s random bits and pieces put together, sometimes. I know how you feel when it comes to neatness, I was that way at first! It’s hard to not clutter a page to be honest haha. I say to lay out your pieces before taping/gluing them down so you don’t regret what you put down because it looks too cluttered or doesn’t match, you know? It helps a bunch! Find things that match, but not too much. A few little pieces of odds and ends make the spread look nice! I reccomend being a little paper hoarder when it comes to junk journals haha! I have three envelopes and two little tins full of pieces of different papers in many colors or designs that I’ve saved that I don’t want to go to waste. Book pages, random magazine articles, colored paper, etc. It’s so helpful to keep things around because you’ll end up using them all in a spread sometime! When it comes to junk journals, I feel like that’s very helpful. Especially when you feel like you’re at a journal block.

So, to sum it all up:

Keep paper scraps

When you’re hit with sudden motivation or inspiration to journal, make sure to go for it!

Don’t force yourself to journal: you may clutter up your pages and it may turn out not how you wanted it to. (At least, from my personal experience).

Find any little odds and ends and save them for junk journaling. It gives you more options for spread making.

Lay everything out before sticking your spread down.

Start minimal, small, and make your way forward by adding more and more in each spread until you like what you see.

I really hope this helped! Happy journaling! ☺️🧡

[honeyedhoseok]

Plant A Kiss! Part Two TEASER

A/N: Here’s a little teaser for the fic I’m posting tomorrow (that officially announces my return from hiatus!!!) Read part one here!!!

Summary | After two months of working with Always In Bloom, you have finally gotten the ropes of the flower business. You and Hoseok visit the Winter Bride–who turns out to be the entire definition of bridezilla–and Hoseok takes you out to dinner after.

“My flower package is just a small add-on cost to Ornate Event’s prices here—” Hoseok says in a small voice, “but it’s not too much of a price difference—”

Sohyeon cuts him off, shaking her head. “I’m not worried about money,” she says. “I’m worried about quality for price.”

She reaches over the table to flip a few pages of the scrapbook before she comes to a stop. She points a crisp, apple red fingernail at a picture in the bottom right corner—a golden, squat vase holding an arrangement of soft pink, orange and pale-yellow flowers.

“Would you be able to make these for table pieces? And these—” she points to another picture of white flowers you couldn’t recognize bundled up with twine, “as brides maid bouquets?”

Hoseok studies the flowers for a moment, before holding up a finger as he digs his phone out of his pocket. “I don’t have my book with me today, I’m sorry—but our website has every flower we have in the shop posted on-line.” He quickly pulls up the web address and turns the phone around to Sohyeon. “We have all the flowers in these pictures except for the white ones—they aren’t in season—”

“What? Not in season?” Sohyeon asks, her brow furrowing. The clamminess in your hands returns as you watch her expression darken. “I’m paying good money for this wedding and you’re telling me I can’t have the flowers I want because they’re not in season—”

“Not to worry,” Hoseok interjects with a soft, but firm tone, giving her a warm smile. He doesn’t allow her rising, frantic voice get to him like you did. “There’s another shop out of town we can check and just have them ship the flowers over here. I’ll do it without charge since we weren’t able to accommodate your choices at In Bloom.”

He lets his finger trail over the laminated page of her scrap book, looking at her other choices. “You have a great eye for these things,” he compliments, holding her gaze once again. “All florists could use a customer like you.”

Sohyeon deflates visibly, and Hoseok continues to smile his beautiful, cheery grin at her, coercing her until she returns it with a small tilt of her mouth.

“I like him,” she says to you with a satisfied hum.

You are dumbfounded at Hoseok’s ability to turn a situation around so quickly when you couldn’t—but it could only mean one thing: you had a lot more to learn from him.

You shrug, giving her a nervous chuckle from across the table. “Me too,” you agree, phone still tucked between your ear and shoulder. You catch Hoseok’s small, satisfied smirk right before you murmur affirmatively, “I think we’ll keep him.”

“That wasn’t so bad, right?” Hoseok says once you are in the safety of your car again, free from the shackling, penetrating gaze of the winter bride.

“She’s as cold as ice,” you mutter, sticking your key in the ignition and cranking the car. You hadn’t bothered to come out and heat it up before, so now you and Hoseok were sitting in it, forced to bare through the chilling breeze that came out of your vents until your engine could catch up.

Somewhere in the back of your mind, a joke bloomed—the inside of your car wasn’t much different from the atmosphere of the meeting you’d just escaped, technically—but you decided not to share it aloud.

“She’s just—” Hoseok pauses, searching for the right word. “Sure of herself.”

“Hoseok, don’t try to sugar coat it. She doesn’t like me,” you whine. “She was so irritated with me the whole time—if you hadn’t been there, I would have come out of that meeting headless!”

Hoseok chuckles, shaking his head as he sticks his hands under his armpits for warmth, slightly shivering in the passenger seat. “Oh, come on,” he says. “It wasn’t that bad. You did great!”

You are still unconvinced, but you let the topic drop as you back the car out of the parking space and pull back onto the main road.

“I’m starving,” you say. “Want to go get lunch?”

“Actually, I have to get back to the shop,” Hoseok says. When he sees your crestfallen expression, he backtracks, apologies lacing his tone. “But how about we get dinner? I get off at six.”

“Oh! Dinner?” you say, a little surprised. A face-cracking grin threatens to break the nonchalant facade you were trying to keep up, and you scold yourself internally. “Sure, I’ll pick you up from work.”

“That’s okay, I’ll have my car,” Hoseok says, shaking his head. “I’ll pick you up instead. Will you be at Ornate Events?”

You nod, and Hoseok gives you a little excited grin.

“Great,” he says. “I haven’t seen Jisu and Yoongi in forever!”

[moth-maam56]

OTP Questions: GLOW’s Ruth Wilder and Sam Sylvia

1. Who likes to sit in the other’s lap? Ruth started with a glass of water in one hand and a script in the other, a pencil between her teeth. She kept leaning over his shoulder to cross out paragraphs on his outdated script. He whined she was disrupting his flow and to just get over here. So she came around the front of the chair and sat on his lap. She replaced her newer script copy in his hand and they got back to work like it was the most natural thing in the world.

2. On a cold day, who likes to snuggle up to the other? Sam complained when Ruth didn’t pull on a coat on the way out the door. But when she’d snuggled herself inside his jacket hours later, her arms wrapped around his torso, he didn’t mind so much.

3. Who cooks the food and who does the dishes? Sam cooks, Ruth cleans up.

4. How would they describe each other to loved ones who haven’t met their partner yet? Ruth says he’s sardonic, but very sweet if they were patient. Sam says she’s insufferable, intrusive, naïve, and if they say a bad word about her to him, he’ll punch their mother.

5. Who is more likely to kiss their partner on their forehead? Sam. Only because he bitches that it feels like Ruth’s infantilizing him or some shit when she does it. Thankfully, she prefers to kiss his scruffy cheek anyways.

6. Who makes a scrapbook of all their memories to give to their partner for a special event? (Ex- anniversary, birthday, etc.) Ruth makes a scrap book for each season of GLOW. If there happen to be a few more candid pictures of her and Sam, he pretends not to notice (though he was soft on it).

7. Where would they go to get away from everyone else and just be alone? The editing room.

8. Who would want to take cute pictures for Instagram? Sam would rather self-immolate than become a slave to the internet’s digital soul-killing machine. Ruth always just rolls her eyes and instead takes indulgently over-the-top pictures with the girls instead.

9. Who would most likely call their partner, dude, babe and idiot, all in the same sentence? Sam.

10. How do they let their loved ones know they are dating? Ruth accidentally forgot to hide a hickey in the locker room. Sam sat Justine down at their kitchen table and he explained how he and Ruth were new, but it could turn out to be something. Justine would always come first and she shouldn’t treat Ruth different. Justine laughed so hard she wheezed. She said she’d been waiting for months for them to figure it out and asked what took them so long.

11. Who breaks out in a dance when they hear their favourite song? Ruth.

12. If they each went to go buy a piece of clothing for one another, what would they get? Sam got her a nice green blazer. Every knock-off Hepburn ought to have at least one in their closet. Ruth repaired his favorite leather jacket that had a rip on the inside since he refused to let her buy him a new one, sentimental sap that he is.

13. Who still blushes when their partner compliments them? Both. It’s never boring to get validation from the one person whose opinion you want over everyone else’s.

14. Who would dedicate a song to their partner at a karaoke night? Bonus - what song would it be and why? Ruth always sings Madonna’s Crazy For You in her bad Russian accent to make Sam laugh. It’s the song that played the first time he tried to kiss her.

[rohitkkumar]

WTC Final Virat Kohli shows his Bhangra skills while fielding at slips

The room had the scent of freshness about it, a nice change from the heavier, musty smell of her old apartment. Tara held a cardboard box with all her more intimate belongings – the kinds of things she wouldn't want the movers to find if they 'accidently' took a peek inside the box labeled "PERSONAL" with large black marker.

"That'd give them too much of a thrill," Tara smiled to herself as she surveyed her new surroundings. She found the apartment a few days before, and immediately she knew she had to have it. The hardwood main floor opened up into a spacious living room from which connected a small white kitchen complete with dividing counter-space. A bathroom with shower and bathtub were opposite, and nearby led into her new bedroom – white walls and spacious floor waiting to be filled. Tara stepped into the empty bedroom, the "PERSONAL" box cradled in her arms.

The movers weren't due to arrive for another hour, and in the meantime Tara had little else to do. She had taken the day off of waitressing at the coffee house so she could set up her new apartment, and without her computer to update her blog or even a couch to daydream on she had nothing left except to wait for the rest of her things to come in.

Tara looked down at her box and stroked the edges pensively. "Hmmm, I guess it wouldn't hurt..." she murmured. She glanced around the empty apartment, a grin tugging on the corners of her mouth. "I'll just take a peek till those guys get here..."

She closed the door to her new bedroom and sat down, placed the box between her legs, and opened it. Inside she found a few of her tank tops, tight blue jeans, mid thigh-length skirts, thin socks, and other bits of clothing. Tara wore those kinds of clothes whenever she could – her more-than handfuls of breasts felt so snug in her tight tank tops, and her jeans hugged her ass perfectly. Others definitely noticed as she sauntered along the streets in a short skirt or while she was waitressing, hips swaying and breasts jutting. Their attention always had a way of making her smile.

But that was just a cover for her real treasures. Pawing aside the upper layers of clothes, Tara pulled out a lacy pink thong. The dainty thing wrapped around her fingers like a silky string, and she sighed – She hadn't gotten to wear it for anyone lately. Her work demanded most of her time, and combined with the rigors of being an aspiring author and maintaining an online blog for the masses, she was just too busy to find herself some guy to show off how sexy she looked with a little pink thong on - and nothing else.

"Oh well," Tara thought with a shrug, "I know I'll still enjoy it."

With a catish grin Tara stood up and slipped off her white panties. The change was easy since she wore a short skirt with her tight t-shirt, and when the thong slid up and around her ass she felt a little jolt run through her. She could remember posing in them before for one of her boyfriends – and the pictures of that little photoshoot she still kept in her scrapbook.

Her still-warm panties found a place in the box and were buried again as she sat and dug deeper. She touched the soft leathery corner of her personal scrapbook. "Gotcha!" she pulled out the small tome and set it onto her lap. The plain cover hid the pages and pages of pictures Tara had found in her explorations into the darker side of the internet.

Halfway through she found the high-resolution black-and-white photographs she adored, the ones with a pair of red lips barely touching the head of a stiff cock or a woman pushed down onto a plush bed by a man taking her from behind. Often she had fantasies develop around these pictures, ones she typed down for her blog – ones she brought with her to bed late at night. She looked at a picture of a tall strong man holding a limp and naked girl in his burly arms, his face hidden by the shadow as he held his prize before him. Claimed by him.

Inspired, Tara put the book aside and rummaged around some more in the box. At the very bottom her fingers brushed by something firm and long – just what she was looking for. She pulled out her hidden toy, a rabbit vibrator, squeezing the firm yet yielding gel shaft into her palm and stroking the clit stimulator in slow deliberate circles.

"Hmmm... If only you were real..." Tara mused, stroking her finger down and over the bulbous head. She imagined it belonging to the strong man in the photo, tall and fit, his cock ready to fuck her at just the sight of her shaking her ass in her pink lacy thong.

"Mmmm..." She thought of how he would want her so bad that she would feel it in his gaze, feel it in his grip around her waist, and that he wouldn't hesitate to push her to the floor and take her like an animal. Her panties were getting moist at the thought, and when she lifted up her little skirt she could see the light pink fabric darkening with her juices...

Tara began to move the toy along her wet pussy, a little tease as she imagined the man rubbing his cock up and down her aching slit. "Naughty girl, getting fucked on the bedroom floor..." She pulled her panties aside, imagining her dainty hand was his instead, pulling away the light protection of fabric with rough and powerful fingers that grazed her soft inner thighs. She could see his muscles tensing, readying to thrust inside her hot and ready pussy as she pressed the toy into her tight pus-

*KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK*

Tara shoved the dildo under the clothes in her box along with her scrap book and jumped to her feet in half a second, her heart pounding as she rearranged her panties over her frustrated sex.

"Shit, the movers," Tara thought, "They must have come early!" Carefully, she smoothed her skirt down over herself and brushed at her bedhead hair with her hand before stamping to the door. "God damn, they were supposed to be here in an hour... ughhhh!" Tara gripped the knob and threw open the door, but her glare melted. Three men stood in the doorway, looking down at her.

"Are you Tara Bridges?" The man in front asked.

"Yeah... That's me..."

"Looks like you have some furniture to move in," The man looked down at his clipboard, "Single-piece couch, table, some dining room chairs, queen-sized bed plus headboard, and assorted cardboard boxes – Is that right Miss Bridges?"

"Umm, yes, that's right."

"Alright then," He looked back and motioned to his two partners who disappeared down the steps, "My associates will start moving up your things while you show me where you'll have them."

Tara stared at the man blankly for a moment before starting, "Uh, Sure! Yes, thank you! I, well, let me show you around then!" She quickly turned back around, trying to hide her warming face.

"Oh my God! They are sooo hot!"

Tara gave the foreman a tour of her apartment, glancing back at him constantly. She pointed to one corner of the living room and the other, her eyes scanning over his muscled arms and strong chest whenever he pointed in turn. They were no doubt developed from his job lifting furniture all day, she thought. Then she led him through the kitchen and into the bedroom, ushering him in before her so she could check him out from behind. She rubbed her thighs together when she saw his ass and legs, his body so taut and developed that she could see it through his pale shirt and blue jeans. When he turned to the side to look over the room, her eyes immediately fell down to his crotch, which bulged even then with his manhood.

"Pretty big, isn't it?" He said.

Tara jumped, her face red. "W-what?"

"No problem – we can fit your bed in here just fine," He continued looking around the room as Tara let out a little puff of air that had gotten caught in her chest. "I've got to get myself a boyfriend with a cock like that... God, I'm too horny right now for my own good..." Tara reflected, trying to keep her eyes off the foreman's package. She kept glancing back despite her best efforts.

There was a shuffling in the living room. Tara looked around and saw the other two moving men, quite buff and toned almost as much as the foreman, carrying her large couch in as easily as if it were an empty cardboard box.

"Where'll we put it?" One of them asked.

"Mmm, the places you men could put it..." Snapping out of her lusty daydreams, Tara managed to point, "Um, right there is good for now."

The two men put the couch down and went back downstairs while the foreman stayed with Tara. Her knees were feeling weak just by standing next to the man. She could feel his heat even from a foot away.

"This is a pretty nice apartment you've got," he said, "Excited about moving in?"

"Oh yeah - yeah, I'm pretty excited," Tara replied.

"We're usually having to move refrigerators and cabinets and cat trees for little old ladies that smell like mothballs, so this'll be a nice change of pace for once."

Tara laughed, "Mothballs?"

He smiled, "Yeah – could hear 'em rattling around in everything we were moving. Couldn't get the smell out of my clothes for days."

"Haha, well I don't think you'll have to worry about picking up a bad smell here – no mothballs or cats for me!"

"I'll take your word for it. Seems to smell rather nice in here, actually," he flashed Tara a sidelong glance. She felt herself blush even harder.

"So, uh, what's your name?" Tara suddenly found the need to brush her hair back and study the hardwood floor.

"Name's Roy, Miss Bridges," he said.

"Ah, then you can call me Tara, Roy," she extended her hand politely.

"Well then Tara, it is a pleasure to meet you," he reached forward and took hold of her hand. Tara watched her dainty hand disappear in his firm, electric grasp. They shook, he barely moving yet Tara felt his strength all through her arm. She thought her knees might buckle.

She was relieved to hear the two other moving men enter the living room again. "Roy," said one of them with a box under each arm, "in the time you've spent talking up the pretty lady you could've emptied out half the truck!"

"Yeah," the other grunted as he set down a large box, "bet she's tired of you trying to oogle the goods instead of helping us move 'em!"

Tara really blushed then, but Roy just laughed, "Alright, alright, I'll help you pansies out," he turned back towards Tara and hiked his thumb over his shoulder, "See what I get to work with? They still won't forgive me about those mothballs." Tara smiled, and Roy turned around and disappeared out the door.

Tara felt much better about being interrupted then – this show was better than photos for sure! Tara leaned in the bedroom doorframe with her arms crossed under her breasts, watching the men work. Steadily, the bare apartment filled with her things – lamps, chairs, rolled up carpets, and countless cardboard boxes.

The two other men trudged into the room with her heavy computer desk between them as Roy brought up two large boxes perched on either shoulder. Tara noticed the other men were more heavily built than Roy – they were stockier, their legs and arms knotted with muscles, while Roy's build was more lengthy and toned. Tara couldn't keep her eyes off them, and her thoughts drifted to how they would look without their grey work shirts covering their sweat-slick chests...

Tara was snapped out of her reverie as Roy approached. The other men thumped her refrigerator down behind the kitchen counter, and the rest of the room was filled with her things already.

"So," Roy said, "That seems to be just about everything, Miss Tara Bridges. Just the bed left to move in, but that shouldn't be a problem" His confident voice made Tara melt. It was the kind of voice that Tara imagined whispering in her ear on her many boyfriendless nights...

"Really? I thought I had more things..." "Damn it, I wish I had more!" Tara entertained the idea of taking a hasty trip to the furniture store – she was sure they were on the brink of taking off their shirts for real.

"Nope, though I wouldn't mind if you did have more," He stretched his arms out and rolled his head, "It's not every day we get to work for such a lovely lady as yourself."

"Hehe, thank you. I try to be pretty, ya know?" She felt giddy around Roy – he'd be populating her fantasies for nights to come, she was sure.

"Naw, you don't have to try I'd say," he looked around the freshly moved-in bachelorette's apartment, "I suppose your boyfriend will be bringing over his stuff pretty soon, eh?"

"Boyfriend? Ha! Haven't had one of those for awhile," Tara said, with just a hint of bitterness. Sex was so hard to come by since her last boyfriend, and her fantasies could only go so far to satisfy her. "Maybe you can ask your girlfriend to find me one, hmm?"

Roy laughed, "No girlfriends for me. I like to keep things pretty simple, and not just any girl will do. But you should be having tons of guys falling over themselves trying to get to you!"

Tara shook her head, "Mm-mm. Maybe none of them are brave enough to just come and get me."

"Oh, don't be too sure," Roy said, "I'm sure someone is going to catch you fairly soon, Tara."

Tara smiled – she was hoping he would ask for her number, but she heard the thumping steps in the hallway again.

"Looks like they've got your bed. I should probably go help them – they'll get cranky if I don't." Tara opened her mouth but Roy dashed out the door before she could say anything. "Damn," she huffed, smoothing out her skirt for the second time that night.

The three men entered Tara's apartment carrying her great bed between them and trudged into Tara's bedroom. She followed after, eager to see the burly men working for her again. They grunted and strained, muscles tensing and rippling, all for little Tara's benefit... The thought made her rub her legs together – she stepped behind her large bed sheet box as she felt herself getting hot again.

They positioned the bed with a loud thump. Somehow they were able to bring the large bed all up in one piece, a feat which further impressed Tara. All three men left the room again, Roy giving her a final sidelong glance as he walked out the door. She looked on, not wanting them to be leaving so soon, and pulled her black sheets from the box.

"God..." She breathed, reveling in how those men hoisted her huge bed into her apartment, along with all her other things. Soon her dark sheets were lain out over the bed, as well as her pillows – A soft black island in a pale white room. Tara heard front door close firmly and heavy familiar footsteps thumped through into her living room. They were discussing something in their low voices, Roy's more boyish-tone distinct from the deeper tones of his associates. "Oh, they'll be put to better use than moving my stuff soon enough", she thought, rubbing her legs together, "if only just for me and my little toy..."

She sat at the foot of her bed and her mind wandered. Her mind flashed with short visions of hot and heavy sex, of strong men forcing her against her soft sheets, pressing her face into the pillows as they took their turns fucking her long and hard. Big strong men, like the ones in her living room right then... The movers were surely not helping her get over her horniness, and Tara felt like if she didn't get some relief soon she might very well make her fantasies a reality. Her hand crept up her inner thigh, wishing somehow she would get more than just fantasies tonight...

There was a polite, deep cough at the open bedroom door. Tara jumped to her feet, noticing only now that the movers had stopped talking. They stood inside her bedroom's doorway, Roy in front with arms crossed. They were grinning as she hastily straightened out her skirt, a blush crossing her face.

"All moved in, Tara," Roy announced, and Tara nodded quickly.

"T-thanks guys, you helped me out a lot!" Tara said, wondering if they had seen her hand under her skirt.

"Now, about our payment..." Roy said.

"Oh, right..." Tara said, "Let me just get my checkbook..." She stepped towards the doorway somewhat slowly. She was beginning to think of ways to keep them around – invite them to stay for coffee, or to move in just one more piece of furniture that she hadn't quite bought yet, or -

But Tara didn't have the chance to think. The door slammed shut before she got there.

"Not that kind of payment, Tara."

She stopped. "Um, do... do you guys only take cash then?"

This time they all laughed - strong hearty laughs. "Oh no, we're not going to take money from you, Tara." Roy said, stepping forward, "I discussed it with my boys, and we all agreed that we'll be taking something else tonight..."

Tara felt very small before the wall of muscle-bound men, "W-what will you take then?" She asked, backing up slightly. There was nowhere to go. A knowing chill ran up her spine. Roy grinned.

"You."

The men were on Tara in an instant – their strong hands grabbing her arms, roving up her legs, fondling her breasts. She couldn't even let out a yelp– her lungs were paralyzed around her terror-chilled heart. The men pawed her inner thighs, over her taut belly, down her back, up her neck, around her breasts – petting her whole transfixed body through her clothes.

"Oh god! What are they doing!?" Tara panicked. Their hands were so hot, and they pinched her ass and grabbed her breasts so forcefully, so eagerly. Tara tried to cross her legs, but powerful fingers pried between her tightened thighs anyway.

"Stop!" Tara cried out, "Get off me!"

Her protest fell on deaf ears. They boys had found their new toy. Roy spoke behind her, his chest pressing against her back.

"I told you Tara, I don't settle for just any girl. And it seems like you do want this..." She felt his hand slide up her thigh till it disappeared under her skirt. She jumped as his hot fingers ran across her hot, moist thong.

His chuckle reverberated through Tara's light frame, "I think you want this more than you're ready to admit!" He stroked along her wanting slit, and Tara's knees nearly buckled as she let out an involuntary moan.

"N-no! Get away from me!" Tara began to struggle, to break free from the groping men. But they were too strong for her, and it goaded them on. They lifted Tara's arms up and peeled off her t-shirt. Her skirt slid down her legs and pooled on the floor. Tara stood between them, only her lacy bra and pink thong to protect her. Their rough hands touched bare skin as she vainly tried to cover up and push them away.

Roy's voice played in her ear. "It's been awhile since we had an employer as sexy as you, Tara..." A hand grabbed her bare ass as another grasped one of her laced breasts, "or as ready to get fucked. We're pretty pent up, you know..." With a click, her bra went slack and fell to the ground. Roy cupped her bare tits from behind before she could cover them herself.

"Mmm, that feels so good..." Tara thought, despite her fear. Her alarmed gasp turned into a moan as those rough fingers toyed with her hardening nipples... "NO!" she back-thought, "What am I thinking!? I won't let them rape me!!" Her heart pounded in her chest, but she couldn't tell if it was from terror, or excitement.

"You're not going to fuck me, Roy!" She yelled, her heart jolting at the thought of Roy and the men taking her. She redoubled her struggle, trying to land a kick on the men holding her. They simply pressed closer.

"But of course I am, Tara. We all are..." The foreman replied as more rough fingers slid under her minute throng strings. The fabric clung to her sex before peeling away and dropping to the ground at her kicking feet. The three men felt in turn between her legs. Tara tried to lock her thighs in vain. No doubt they felt how wet she was getting, she knew. Tara felt her thighs loosening to let their pressing touches in despite herself...

[artpix3d]

6 Creative Gift Ideas That Will Make DIY Lovers Busy

The Internet allows you to buy any gift for your partner. Just open Amazon and here you go. After all, you can buy anything you want just staying home. But what is the real value of the purchased gift? Does it have real emotions? Unlike this kind of gift, a DIY-present compares favorably to your beloved. It’s a great way to show your mate your special feelings.

We tried to collect the best gift ideas for your beloved, which you can do by yourself. Simple instructions make it easy to create memorable surprises. You don’t even need special skills, special tools, and expensive materials. Interesting and beautiful gifts for a girl- or boyfriend can be made without extra costs, and they will remind him\her about you for a long time.

DIY decorative pillow

Pillow is one of the most homely and touching gifts. Such a souvenir can be sewn quite simply and quickly. It will warm the person up with the memories for a long time. The pillow or cushion can be sewn on a sewing machine or by hand. You can use synthetic fluff or other modern synthetic material as a filler.

You can fill your product with buckwheat husks or put an aromatic sachet inside for a pleasant smell if you wish. The pillow can be decorated with lace, embroidery, applique. It also can be made not only in the form of a classic rectangle but also in other shapes. Experiment and the gift will be special. This pillow will be a pleasant decoration for a bedroom or room for a long time.

Decorative letters on the wall

It’s not necessary to be a handmade master to create an original DIY-gift. Anyone can make a beautiful present for the beloved with their own hands.

An uncomplicated memento can be made from wooden letters that are sold at many office supply stores. A more difficult option is to make them yourself or ask a friend for help. It can be original love messages or inspiring words made of DIY-letters of wood, threads, cardboard, etc.

Light bulb with heart

To make lovely and delicate DIY-gifts you can use many scrap materials. What could be simpler than a common incandescent light bulb? Today, such bulbs are practically not used for lighting, but if at least one little thing has survived in your home, then it can become a wonderful DIY-present.

You will need a light bulb, a small piece of wire, and a stand. A cardboard cube will work as a stand, or you can use some other suitable item.

You can simply put a wire heart inside the light bulb or equip a whole small world there, and then install it on the base. So your souvenir is ready.

Gift set of goodies

There are dozens or even hundreds of gifts with sweets. Thus you can make a thematic with goodies. It can be used as a stand-alone present or used as packaging. Creative surprises are always pleasant to receive.

The way of decorating the box is best associated with the hobbies of a loved one: cinema, football, music, etc. If your girl-\boyfriend is a fan of any computer game, then you can use its elements in the design. A small box decorated with hearts will be nice storage for a Valentine's Day souvenir.

Original panel

How are nails and relationships related? You’ll understand it when you read the gift-idea for a lover. At home, it’s quite easy to make a real work of art with a little effort. An unusual panel, the drawing of which is created with the help of small carnations and threads stretched through them, will perfectly decorate a home or workplace.

It can be geometric shapes (triangles, squares, circles), inscriptions, drawings that are equally well suited as a drawing for your work. Take your time and carefully study the recommendations before starting so that everything works out.

Mini-photo album

Recently, mini-photo albums have become popular. To make it, you can use a half-cut sketchbook as a base. It’s better to place one photo on a spread in a small photo album. You can use quotes, interesting signatures, and drawings to decorate the photo album inside. The popular scrapbooking technique is suitable for decorating a souvenir.

Don’t know what to choose? Give 3D Crystal!

Of course, this is not a do-it-yourself gift, but a great option for any person and any holiday. By ordering a 3D crystal from us, you save time and show originality and attention.

Our website offers a variety of 3D crystal types. So you can make an original gift with a 3D crystal photo of your loved one or with a special message. Such a gift will be a stylish and original decoration for your bedroom.

Give your loved ones gifts! Especially DIY-gifts. They can help to share your feelings and bring you closer to something deeply intimate, truly feminine. When choosing a gift, it’s important to think about the person’s interests. It’s completely inappropriate to give an employee a checkbook described above with very intimate desires. Fortunately, in most cases, the boundaries of what is permissible in communicating with colleagues are fairly well guessed, and we know our relatives’ and friends’ desires.