I’ve been wanting to get into kandi for a while, but procrastinated until I decided that buying beads is a good enough excuse to get out of the house lol
I bought a sizeable box of various beads from a local arts n crafts store in town. I’m slightly limited as all of the colours they had leaned towards more bright pastel colours (not even a full rainbow, I have no oranges or reds :’3) but it was just the right thing for getting me started so nonetheless.
Starting out was a little bumpy… I remember making my first two bracelets and discovering that they were too loose because I have little bitch wrists, so I had to limit the amount of beads I could use. Took a bit of trial and error but I got the hang of it by my fourth or third bracelet. I remember whilst I was untying one of the loose bracelets I accidentally let all of the beads fall onto the floor and they bounced absolutely everywhere. D: It was disastrous T w T
But anyway, I got the hang of things and here are all of my kandis!!! :3
(Sorry for poor lighting, it was dull weather when I took this photo..)
My favourite one out of the bunch still has to be my puppy kandi. I’ve had these little doggie charms for a while now and have been looking at them and dreaming of the day I finally do something with the damn things lol
I made one kandi based after the colours of my gloomy bear plushie Goober! That was actually the first successful kandi I made on a first try, felt very good in the moment. ^^
My pinkie pie kandi was actually one of the first ones I drafted up but only got around to finishing sometime after I’d made my first three or so kandi.
The Usahana kandi idea came to me based on the colourful flower charms that came with the bead box. I really love this one but today the knot actually came undone! Scary, but thankfully I was just sitting on my bed when it fell apart, and I tied it up again soon after.
And lastly my Ureshii bracelet is based on the cover art for Goreshit’s album Ureshii! which is one of my favourites of his. ^^
I plan to make more edgier bracelets once I get more beads so I can have two kandi cuffs with opposing themed to represent the two wolves inside of me or something like that lmfao
Thank you for reading all my yap if you did! I’ve been having a lot of fun with this new hobby and I wanted to share some of the stuff I’ve made. ^^
I’m maybe a lil late to the party because I was pretty sick yesterday and didn’t have the energy to write this thing out yet but I’m feeling better now soo, here goes I suppose lol
I saw this journal by tyeosaurus and thought that it looked like fun so I wanted to fill it out too! Unsure yet if this should be declared as a journal meme yet bc I’ve only seen one other person copy it but it looked like fun to me. But tyeosaurus if you’re reading this and don’t want this to be a meme I’ll edit this part out for you.
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Team: Crystals!
Number of attacks: 14 (yippee more than my last year!! ^w^)
Number of defensives: 26 (got my ass beat this year 💀)
Points: 1347.25
Battle Ratio: 41.82%
Most attacked character: Bup!
(Quick) General Thoughts: I had a lot of fun playing this year despite getting pretty burnt out midway... I received tons of amazing attacks in so many different unique art styles, I think that’s such a wonderful thing about art fight is the diversity of it all. I’m a bit disappointed that I sacrificed a lot of my wanting to be more experimental/coming out of my comfort zone for wanting to do as many attacks as I could for all of the people and artists who’ve been nice to me and that I admire.
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Okay, I’m going to go a bit more in-depth on how I feel about my overall experience with the event this year.
Like I mentioned in the quick general thoughts, I wish I had pushed myself more with my art personally. I remember at the start of the month I drew a lot of simple chibi-ish character standing in an abstract background art, and while I did have fun with those I was worried that it seemed like I wasn’t putting in enough effort for my attacks. Truth of the matter is that I was very overwhelmed and wanted to pump out attacks as soon as I could for the event. So I did, at first, make more simpler pieces to sort of get comfortable with the pace and then eventually I started drawing more complex characters in more interesting poses.
But I started getting very tired of the way I was drawing, (lmao) so eventually I tried doing a lineless piece, a piece with aunique brush texture and even drew some humans(please be nice to me I’m only a furry artist ;w;). But even so, in the end I still feel like I sacrificed most of my energy and enthusiasm on the way I typically draw, that I didn’t have enough room left for experimentation in the end. Not to mention that I was busy during the month too with family visits and studying for an exam that by the end of it I just had to take a break and focus on other things.
I bring this up because I’ve noticed a fair amount of people express their own disappointments with not getting to do as much as they wanted too. I feel a lot of the disappointment too as I’ve expressed in this journal. I do want to say though that, especially if you’ve had other important life obligations, or just weren’t feeling all that motivated/inspired, or perhaps suffer from a chronic illness or mental struggles that it is never a moral failing that you weren’t able to reach your specific artistic goals or targets for this year.
Artfight is a great event to test the waters with your art whilst getting to create something for your fellow artists out of love for characters and stories. But that is just it. It’s a fun lil event to celebrate art and make art for others out of generosity. There shouldn’t be any expectations from anyone on how much you “should” participate within the events duration or even how you interact with the site itself. If you’ve made even one drawing that’s even as plain and simple as a little sketchbook doodle, you have still participated and created a valuable piece of art for your recipient to enjoy and get amusement out of. Even if you couldn’t participate this year (assuming that you wanted too) there’ll still be a chance in the future.
Dear god, I just went off on a way too long tangent, anyways- I think that if I wanna actually try and do something new with my art during the event next year I’m gonna have to be more mean on the amount of characters I want to draw if I want to spend more time on my pieces. Perhaps I should make a list next time of what specific techniques/styles I want to experiment with on certain characters too. idk. it might be fun to do a more semi realistic painterly style with an edgier oc or a fun 2000s cartoony art style for a cuter character.
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Before I sign off I also just quickly want to shout out some of the awesome artists whom I’ve received attacks from!
I just adorethis attack from SqueakyWebs of my oc Heartfelt. I love how ve captured her gentle and shy demeanour in the pose and composition of this piece, as well as the stylish swirled background that I’m absolutely obsessed with. >w< I literally love this piece so much that I have it as my phone wallpaper rn lmaoo
This attack of Sparkle Twig by CometCatz gets a special mention for the sheer amount of improvement her art has had over just the course of a year! For context she attacked me last year with this piece of the same character and omg, I was already so impressed seeing how much she had grown since last year from seeing her attacks of other characters in my subscriptions box on af, but seeing her attack my character again with her current art skill was just so surreal in the best way possible. I literally just feel so proud of her and so inspired to keep going forward with my own art too! ^w^
And lastly these two attacks by Trivly and their gf Khana Sukre!. This was a collab attack where they both submitted their own pieces of my characters Heartfelt and Fae (whom are also couple) and omfgggg, im still not over this attack and I’m still so, so so honoured that they liked my characters so much that they as a couple themselves drew them both in this adorable matching piece collab, I’m- RAAAUUGGHHHAAAAAAUUÜAÆ🔥🔥🔥 I LOVE IT SO MUCH MY GAY LITTLE HORISESSSSS😭😭😭💕💕💕
Dear god that was longer than I anticipated… But I hope you enjoyed reading and maybe you share some of my own thoughts on how your artfight went, but either way, I hope everybody still had fun creating and getting to share that joy with others. I am going to rest now. ;w;