Tales of the Month and CHRISTMAS ART RAFFLE!!!

(The main picture is not my own. The words were added by me.) 

Do you guys remember my struggles last month with choosing a name for my monthly book series posts? Well, I'm happy to tell you that I picked one!! Thanks to my ever helpful brother, Josiah, who came up with the name, I chose Tales of the Month. :)  

Escaping Peril by Tui T. Sutherland

WINGS OF FIRE IS SO GOOD. I love that series a ton. :D And, like all the books before Escaping Peril, this one definitely lived up to the greatness. The cover is pretty awesome. :3 And the title has a DOUBLE MEANING. :OOO  Like, how cool is that?! And the ending. Oh my word. The ending is sooooooo amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

I must keeping reading the series! XD

Playing Cupid by Jenny Meyerhoff

Playing Cupid is so cute. XD The character drama was fun to read. <3 I love short, little, fluffy reads like this. I love all the characters in the book. And Clara, the main character, has a secret admirer, which is so cute!!!* It was really unique reading about the matchmaking business that Clara owns. 

**It's pretty easy to tell who the admirer is. But don't worry! I won't spoil it for you!!! XD

The Fever Code by James Dashner

The Fever Code is fantastic. Seriously. So. Amazing. All the books in this series were awesome but this one takes the cake. I loved reading about how the maze was built! It was soooooo sweet to also read about the Gladers when they were little kids. :3 And the ending of the book made me want to start The Maze Runner series all over again! XD I don't know what else to say about the book without spoiling everything. :P But let me just say again, I love love love The Fever Code so much.

Solitary by Travis Thrasher

This book was so not what I expected. It was different, but I think it was better than what I thought it would turn out to be. Solitary felt a little like a romance-- no wait. It did feel like a romance and with a bits of horror-ish elements thrown in. There wasn't really a whole lot happening for the first half to three quarters of the book, but it was definitely setting the scene for the next three books.* And the feeling for the book was spooky. I loved it.** XD

*Even if there wasn't a lot of action, it was still a really fast read. The short sentences and speedy dialog and small chapters made it that way.  

**Even if Chris was a... well. A little girl crazy with his crush. XD He thought about her constantly. XDD 

- - -

Now we finally come to the part you all were waiting for. THE CHRISTMAS ART RAFFLE. *does jazz hands* XD 

This is the first Christmas for Faeries and Folklore, so I thought I'd do something special. And a raffle came to mind. :) 

Now, there will only be one winner and two runner ups. The winner will get one fully colored picture done by me. And I will draw on paper and color it with colored pencils. And the two runner ups will each get one sketch/drawing where I use just my drawing pencils. 

The rules are simple. XD

• In the comments down below, write a number from 1 to 100.
• Give a brief description of what you want me to draw if you win. There's only one condition though, I don't really anything else besides manga and chibi humans, so please only ask for a human. XD And if you want, you can say which style you prefer most, manga or chibi. 
• Please don't be a sore loser if you don't win. Who knows, if this goes well, I will surely have another raffle. :D
• And the entries have to be in by the 9th of December, which is a week from now. XD

The winner's and runner ups' art will get posted on Christmas Day! :D I can't wait to see what you faeries want me to draw! XD

What books did you read last month? What do you think of the Tales of Month's name? Are you as excited for Christmas as I am?!! XD (I was ready for Christmas a month ago. XDD) What do you think of the raffle? Are you going to enter? 

Oodles of Doodles!

Oh my goodness, guys!!! I can't believe I didn't post last week. DX I wrote down this whole post and I set a time for it to go up and it didn't get published. I am so sorry. I did not even check to see if it had gone up at all during the week. Gah! D: Here's the post I would have posted last week.

And I also want to say before I start the post... Happy Thanksgiving to all my American faeries!!! I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. :3

[I added the words and frame but I did not take the picture of the lined paper. Here's the source.]

That's right! I doodle. Quite often, actually. I usually start doodling in school when I'm getting bored. :P I haven't done as much doodling in school this year as I did last year but, still, I can't help but do it every now and then. XD 

I did these doodles when I should have been doing science. Oops. XD 

As you can see, I like doodling faces most of the time in school. I like trying new eyes all the time.

This is, again, during science so please excuse the random equations. :P

Sometimes my faces look like they could be the same person but with different expressions. Like the face on the bottom right on the picture above this one and the face on the right on this picture look like they are the same person.*

*I don't think I meant to have that happen. XD

I sometimes draw in red pen when I'm doing school because it's fun and bright. :D I did just about all of these doodled faces in one sitting.* XD I think these are some of my favorite faces I've doodled this year.

*Guess you can tell I was bored. :P

I have this notebook with a sleeping cat on the cover and I think I got it when I was around ten years old. And I named it my "doodle book." And I took family gatherings all the time when I was younger.*

And, anyway, I doodled this in my doodle book. It was a really quick drawing and I didn't care much about how it looked in the end. :P It's a drawing of the new set of main characters in The Wings of Fire series. I had felt like drawing them in chibi human form. And that's what happened.

From left to right is: Winter, Moon, Kinkajou, and Qibli.

*XD I still do. It's perfect when you don't want to talk to anybody. :P

Here's another quick doodle. :) It's just of some random girl I came up with.

I drew this during my youth's Bible study last week. XD I really like the way the smiley face on the top right looks.

I felt like drawing a person crying because I don't do it that much and I need the practice. 

- - -

Sorry that this is such a short post with more pictures than words. I just don't have any words really to say. :( Sorry again.

Do you guys doodle much? If you do, where do you doodle the most? In church? School? Somewhere else entirely?

Caraval - a Book Review

Alright, faeries, I know what you're thinking, this is a magical book about carnivals and clowns and romance. Right? Wrong! This book is not about carnivals. You were right about one thing. It has romance. :P But no carnivals, no clowns, no elephants, no ringleaders, no unicycles. No, wait, scratch that. It does include a unicycle.

Yeah Points

• The place called Caraval is so awesome! There was an air of mystery about the whole island and its inhabitants. And you're not sure who to trust and what's really real. And, like they often remind you in the book, "it's just a game..." 
• The way the Stephanie Garber describes the Scarlett's emotions is very unique. Scarlett feels in color and then the author says what the feelings are behind the colors. It made the book really beautiful sounding and poetic. I enjoyed it. :) Here's a quote from it:

 “Shades of the rich ruby love she’d felt during the game mixed with hues of deep-indigo hurt, turning everything just a little bit violet.”  -Stephanie Garber, Caraval

• Julian was a dashing young man and quite clever. He had a Captain Hook (from Once Upon a Time) and Carswell Thorne (from The Lunar Chronicles) feel to him. 
• Legend was a very intriguing character. I'd like to learn more about him in the second book, Legendary. 
• The book had a very different take on magic. It was hard to tell real magic from fancy tricks in Caraval. There definitely was some real magic, but it didn't always come the way you think magic would. 

I really only have one thing against this book and it was, sadly, a rather major thing in the plot; and it was the romance. 

Nah Points, Ahem, I mean, Nah Point

• I really, really, really wanted to love the romance between Scarlett and Julian totally. But I couldn't. I just can't. There were to many incidents where Julian or someone else (like Dante) was looking at Scarlett lustfully. Like, ew, why. And Julian had to pretend to be Scarlett's fiance which meant that they had to have the same room in a hotel. And Julian did not seem to mind that problem one bit. (Double yuck.) Thankfully, Scarlett could avoid anything bad from happening. Here's a example of Julian's... "charm":  

“Inside the house, violin music, richer than the darkest chocolate, started playing. It seeped outside and whispered to Scarlett as Julian’s smile turned seductive, all shameless curves and immoral promises. An invitation to places that proper young ladies didn’t think about, let alone visit.”  -Stephanie Garber, Caraval

How could I root for any of the guys in the book when they acted like that?

Also on a side note, there were a few characters that got drunk. :/ Phooey.

- - -

All in all, I did enjoy the book. It was written quite well and I truly wish those distasteful things weren't in there, but they were. So I'll just have to live with it. But I wouldn't recommend this book to younger readers at all. I think I'll give this book 3 stars.

- - -

I want to say... Happy Remembrance Day to all my Canadian readers!!!! And happy Veteran's Day to all my American readers!!! I'm so glad we live in such awesome countries!!! :D   

Have any of you faeries read this book? If not, will you? And if you have, what did you think? And what do you think of my nickname for you readers? Does "faeries" sound good to you? :D   

Books of October + This Needs a Better Name

Wow! It feels like October really flashed right by.* :O I can't believe that it's the 4th of November already! 

I've been making this a monthly thing, writing about the books I've been reading. When I started doing it this last month I was gonna just do my favorite books I've read in the past month. Now I decided I'm going to change that and do any books I've read and feel like talking about. And this series of posts needs to have a better name. I tried to come up with names but they are all really cheesy. XD I wrote a list of names and you guys can tell which is best or you can suggest a totally different name in the comments.

Beware! The names you'll read below may be too cheesy and awful. If you get hurt in the process of reading them, Faeries and Folklore will not be responsible for it.  

• Faery Good Books
• Books, Books and More Books
• Tales of the Month (credit to my bro for this name. XD )
• Folkish Books
• Opus of the Month (credit to my sis, Lostfairy, for this one)**
• Reading Creations (credit again to Lostfairy)
• Reads I've Been Reading 
• I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO NAME THIS POST SERIES AT ALL.

Yeah, that was all I could come up with. :( Thank you, Josiah and Lostfairy for your help!!! It was much appreciated! XD

Now on to the post I promised you all! 

*Wink, wink. Did you see what I did there? XD

**Opus means books. XD

- - -

The Kill Order by James Dashner

I don't know what to say about this book. I have such mixed emotions about it. I really, really loved the story and plot and snuff, buuuut there were a few more swear words in this book than in the first three books.* What I did like about the book was that we finally got to see what the world was like after the Flare and before the Cranks were around and before WICKED stuck their noses into EVERYTHING! *glares at WICKED disapprovingly* The book had a very different feel to it, but it was also very much the same as the other books.**

I'm really looking forward to reading the final book in The Maze Runner series! 

*That was kinda disappointing. :( 

**That makes, like, zero sense when I say it that way, but it's true! XD

Crossed by Ally Condie

I loaf this series so much! XD This book again had a slight hint of bitter sweetness about it. I love the romance between the characters.* I'm not sure if I liked this book as much as the first one, but it still is a book I would buy and recommend. :) I liked how the book was from both Cassia's and Ky's point of view. I loved learning bits and pieces of their past, it was so sweet and sometimes heartbreaking. 

*Ky is my one of my book baes. XD  

Cake Pop Crush by Suzanne Nelson

If you have not picked up a Suzanne Nelson book, what are you waiting for?! Go pick one up NOW!!!!  XD Seriously, though, they are so good. I've read Cake Pop Crush before but it was just as good the second time round as it was the first. This was the first ever Suzanne Nelson book I read and it has a special place in my heart. ^.^ The relationships between all the characters was so enjoyable and cute. Dane was a real cutie. XD

The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkin

This book is such a fabulous classic. The humor and style is priceless. ^.^ I've read this book a long time ago and reread again last month. I forgot most of what happened so it kinda felt like a new-ish read for me. I loved the characters way more reading it this time round and I was far more connected to the story than before, too. Bilbo is such a sweet little hobbit. And Gandalf has this uncanny ability to come when he's needed most. XD It's great! 

If you haven't read this book yet, you totally should! 

Save the Cupcake! by Lisa Papademetriou

I love reading this book so much! The characters feel so real. And the recipes in the book are really unique!* The book is a beautifully written story about friendships and how they can change for better or for worse. So the book can kind of feel really sad but there's a enough happiness in the book for it to be a middle grade novel. 

*I haven't tried them out yet, so I don't know if they taste good. XD

Sticks and Stones by Sarah Mlynowski, Lauren Myracle, Emily Jenkins

Like the first book in the Upside-Down Magic series, this book was a delightful, quick read! The story and characters are just as charming as they were before. And in Sticks and Stones the authors write the book from two of the characters' point of view, instead of one. :D I loved learning more about Bax's backstory in this book. 

Wayfarer by R. J. Anderson

Wayfarer is sooo different from the first in the series, Faery Rebels! Honestly, I'm not sure if I like that or not. In the first book I loved Knife and Paul together tons, and in the second one I liked Linden and Timothy together buuuut not nearly as much. :/ I wish I had liked this book more because the first book is one of my favorites now and I wanted the second book to live up to that. 

Don't get me wrong, I really did enjoy Wayfarer! I liked seeing what the world looked like from outside the Oak and the new magical abilities were really cool. It just simply wasn't my favoritest book in the whole wide world. :P

Unblemished by Sara Ella

This book was good and kinda cheesy at times. I'm not sure if there were too many deaths that weren't actually deaths. Like if the main character thinks a person is dead, they most likely are not; and if someone else in the book says someone is dead, they are more likely to ACTUALLY be dead. The romance in there wasn't too bad. I like Ky and Joshua a fair bit.* But the main reason I want to read the next book is the epilogue. Seriously, it's the epilogue that draws me in to read more.  

*There is way too many Ky's (or Kai's) in the book world. DX :P  

- - -

How was your month? Did you get lots of reading done? Have you read any of the books I talked about? Which post series name do you like best? Do you have a better name?

Online Art Again!

I'm back with another online art post! There's a lot of art I haven't shown you guys yet, so get ready, people, for arrrrtttt!!!!

In case you were wondering, the heading picture that says "Online Art" is a screenshot of the Animal Jam art program I use to make online artwork and then I used Fotor to add words. :)

CHIBI ANIMAL JAM YOUTUBERS!!!!! It took hours to draw this art. I used the Animal Jam YouTubers avatars as inspiration and from there I made them into chibi people. From left to right is: Aparri, Bepper, Snowyclaw, Wisteriamoon, and Julian2. I don't really watch YouTube all that much. And I've never watched a Julian2 video in my life, but I felt like doing some of the most famous AJ YouTubers and Julian2 was one of them. I've watched a few videos from all the other YouTubers that I drew and the one I've watched the most of is Aparri. He can be pretty funny, actually. XD

I specifically drew this one simplistically. I used a the circle tool and a straight line tool for most of the drawing. There's not really a whole lot to be said about this art, expect that it was fun to do. XD

Pixel art is super easy! :o I enjoyed making this one a lot. When I had first set out to make the Masterpiece on Animal Jam, I was planning to draw kawaii cherries. But, then I saw how cool it looked without a face and so I made two masterpieces out of it. One with no faces and one with faces and the word "cherry." I'm not sure which one I like best, I think they are both pretty equal. XD

Okay, confession time, I love Disney Fairies. When I was younger, I read all the Disney Fairies chapter books my library owned over and over again because I loved them so much. I loved fairies so much, I seriously thought they were real.* 

Again, I wanted to draw a simple picture. I tried to draw a face for chibi Tinkerbell but she looked better without one.**:P

*Obviously, I'm mature enough now to believe otherwise. *snorts* And I totally don't have a homemade fairy house downstairs that I check every day to see if a fairy has come to live there. Pfffft, why would I have that?!  

**I know she has a strapless dress all the time but I wanted to change her slightly. 

MOMO, THE CUTEST WITTLE FLYING LEMUR IN THE WORLD.* There was one scene in the Avatar TV show where Momo sticks his wittle coot face in the camera and it's too adorable. So I got inspiration from that scene for this picture. And he makes the cutest little sounds too! *tries really hard not to think of the actor who makes those noises for Momo and Appa* #theTricksterfromtheFlashTVshowsomehowmadecuteanimalnoisesandheisacreepyoldman

*He's from Avatar: The Last Airbender. 

I haven't really done much scenery up to this point. So I wanted to try my hand at drawing the perspective from up high and far away. I think I did okay. And I like the way the butterfly looks. XD

  

I drew this for my sister, Lostfairy. She likes The Legend of Zelda a lot, like me. XD So that's why there is a Legend of Zelda fairy on the Masterpiece. And the background was supposed to look slightly like stone but I don't think most people would see that when they look at it. *shrugs* Oh, well. XD

I made a username Masterpiece for myself as well. For the two Masterpieces, I did one object that suited our personalities, and a fairy tale book is so me. XD I have a collection of a bunch of fairy tale books and children's classics. 

This is a inside joke between Lostfairy and I.* It may or may not have to do with a certain boy being certainly cute... :P

*It may look a bit like a dab but it is so not. XDDD 

I had a hard time with her nose and lips, to be honest. XD I think I did okay-ish... I still need to work on those two things. It was fun to draw such a big eye.* For the words, I used the straight line tool again. And then I used my mouse to draw tiny squiggly lines to make it look like it's breaking or something. XD

*And not have to draw another one to match. Sometimes it's really, really, really hard to match them up. >.< If anyone has any tips for having identical eyes in drawings, please tell me!

- - -

Sorry, guys, that this post turned out to be shorter than I wanted to be. I'm kinda tired right now so hopefully next week's post will be longer and better. :( 

How's your guys' week been? Did you like the art? I haven't posted all my online artwork yet, would you want to see more of it soon? 

Chibi Step-by-Step

I've always wanted to show you guys a step-by-step of how I do my art, so today's the day I'm gonna show you!! 

You, obviously, need a blank piece of paper and something to draw with. I like drawing with a Ticonderoga pencil, but any good ol' pencil works. And a eraser that doesn't smudge is handy, as well. 

I start my drawings with a circle for the first base of the head.* And it's okay if you can't get a perfect circle. You erase most of that anyway, so it doesn't really matter if it's perf. 

*I said first base because I then add a chin (second base) and later add hair. XD

Here I started getting the base for the chibi person body. If you don't know what kinda of pose you want you can look up chibi bases or find a picture of a real person doing the pose you want. 

I found a pose a real person was doing online and felt like making the whole person into a chibi drawing, so I did. In case, you were all wondering which picture I was using for my chibi person, here it is >>>

I know the pose is super model-ish, but I thought it would be kinda fun to try to do something like that.*

*I haven't really done that many poses with chibi people doing arm stuff. So I was kinda unsure of how this would turn out. XD

Here I added the eyes/month/nose* and a little bit of clothing. I've heard that the eyes on a manga person and chibi person are the most important part because they are so expressive. So I did them first for before I add anything like hair and most of the clothes. 

*Or, in less words, I added the face.  

Now I have drawn the clothes. Wrinkles make the clothes look like they are actually on the person. I haven't mastered where to put the wrinkles yet, but it's super helpful to have reference picture to look at. XD   

Hair time! I love drawing hair so much. XD I also added eyebrows and ears and pupils and light to his eyes.

Inking is next! My sister, Lostfairy, and I own three artist pens which we got last Christmas.* The brand is Faber-Castell. I use the black pen with the smallest nib most.**

*I adore them so much!! XD

**For those of you who don't know what a "nib", it's the pointy writing part of a pen. :P XD

For inking, don't ink all the extra lines you drew for the base.* I forgot to ink everything on this picture, so please forgive me. XD I accidentally didn't ink all the wrinkles on his left arm.  

*Because, obviously, that would look completely weird AND YOU GUYS ARE TOTALLY SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW NOT TO INK EVERYTHING. SO I DON'T KNOW WHY I SAID ANYTHING.   

Once I was done inking, I erased all the pencil lines. Note: if you don't draw lightly with pencil, it will be much harder to erase when you are done inking. And it will be more likely to smudge.

On to coloring!!! WOO!!! I was going to color this with colored pencils, but decided not to because it's fun to do black and white sometimes. I did the darkest shadows with my brush pen.* And little lighter shadows with my smallest nib pen and drew thin lines for the shadows. And for the lightest shadows I used my gray brush pen. :) 

I didn't fill in the eyes because I wanted them to stand out. And I think it worked. ^.^ 

*It's so fun to use!

- - -

Well, guys, I think that's it. What did you think of the step-by-step? Do you think I should do more???

Art Post and Posting Schedule Revealed!

The post you guys have a been waiting all week for is here!!* Art post!!! Yay!!! :P

*Actually, I have no idea if you been waiting for this all week or not... Maybe that's cuz I haven't said my blogging schedule yet... Hmm. That's probably it. Okay, I'm gonna say it now! Imma gonna try to post every Saturday! So check back here every week if you want to see more. 

So on to the art post! 

This girl turned out more like a Tinkerbell character than I thought I would have thought at first.* It took me months to actually finish this drawing. XD I had it left it for awhile with just a bit of coloring to do and for some reason didn't color it for ages. 

I think I like the way it turned out but it's not my fave. Don't ask me what happened to her hands and feet... They are hard to draw. XD I think I did okay-ish at the hallway, but I need to work on backgrounds/scenery more.

*If you know which Tinkerbell character, I will give you an imaginary cakey chocolate chip cookie. (I made those cookies with my sis, Lostfairy, this week. XD And they're yummy. :P) 

DA FLASH!!!! CHIBI STYLE!!!!! I had a lot of fun doing this! It was a bit challenging doing a side running pose. I didn't feel like inking this one because I felt like it didn't need it. I think it would make it look too bold and I wanted it to look like he was actually running. :P

Remember when I said I would post the first picture I did with my "new" colored pencils. Well, here it is, folks!!! I did a drawing of me and my sister and around us I wrote a bunch of our little sayings and inside jokes.* I drew us wearing clothes we actually wore a lot in the summer, so that was fun.** :3 

*I cropped the words out of the picture because they wouldn't make a lick of sense and they are kinda private. XD 

**In case you don't know who is who, Lost is on the left and I'm on the right. :P

For all of you who can't tell what it says on the bottom, it reads "Scary Sword Master Samurai with pet Dragon." 

I drew this with my sisters, Lost and Tracey, one evening. We were playing the Idea Game, which we got from my book Manga Crash Course. It's where you put together random personalities and abilities and other things and then draw a character with all those things you got. As you can see I got a Scary Samurai person with a pet dragon. XD 

I rather like the way it looks in the end. :) My shading has definitely gotten better. And I enjoyed making him look semi-evil. XD I love Chinese dragons and dragons in general and this is my first time* drawing one. :P I think this is one of my fave drawings I've done so far. :D

*At least, that I remember doing and doing well. XD

What do you think of these drawings I've shown you today? And are you excited that I actually having a blogging schedule?! XD