"Uncork the Alleghenies ": A Fun-Filled Event for Wine Lovers

Looking for a fun wine-related event to attend this year? Look no further than the 11th Annual Uncork the Alleghenies wine festival!

Uncork The Alleghenies is back! This year, the 11th Annual Uncork-the Allegheny’s will be coming to Blair County Convention Center on Saturday March 12th from 12pm – 10pm. With free souvenir wine glasses for everyone who attends as well as reusable shopping bags and caricatures handed out by our talented artists during lunchtime or dinner time if you want them too (depending upon availability).

This event has everything that makes these types of events so entertaining: food samples & tastes; live entertainment including music performed by vocalists while guests enjoy themselves at photo booths with props ranging anything imaginable—it doesn't stop there though because wine seminars will give wine lovers the opportunity to taste wine and learn about wine production from local wine experts.

Tickets are now available on their website and we have a wine lover's special for those of you who purchase tickets

Looking for the perfect gift for your special wine lover? Look no further! Frugal Fashionista has an array of gifts from handmade tumblers and wine glasses to wine glass holders and corkers! See customer favorites here!

Pennsylvania Spring Events: A Guide to Fun in the Sun

Looking for some fun plans this spring? Pennsylvania has tons of events happening all over the state! From arts and culture events to food festivals to outdoor activities, there's something for everyone to explore. Keep reading for a guide to some of the best spring events in Pennsylvania.

Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh also has a ton of events coming up for spring. One of the most popular events is the Pittsburgh Folk Festival which takes place each spring in downtown Pittsburgh. The family friendly event celebrates world culture and features events like live performances by international musical acts, arts and crafts vendors from around the globe, and lots of delicious food! The event features over 100 different events during its three day run.

Future events in Pittsburgh:

Pittsburgh Winter Beerfest - Feb. 25th & 26th @ David L. Lawrence Convention Center

See here for tickets!

Pittsburgh Arts & Crafts Spring Fever Festival - March 18th-20th @ Monroeville Convention Center

See here for tickets!

Philadelphia

Food events are a popular choice in Pennsylvania. There's always plenty of these events happening throughout the year but springtime is when they really ramp up! The Philadelphia Flower Show is one of the most popular events in all PA and it takes place each March at Lincoln Financial Field (home to football team). This event features live music, food trucks, carnival games, and more!

Future Events in Philadelphia:

Philadelphia Auto Show - March 5th -13th @ The Pennsylvania Convention Center

See here for tickets

Harrisburg

Harrisburg is known for its events, and the city has a ton of events coming up for springtime. One of these events is ArtsFest which takes place at Riverfront Park in downtown Harrisburg. This event features live music, arts and crafts vendors, food, and more! Another popular event in Harrisburg is the Pennsylvania Farm Show which takes place at the PA Farm Show Complex. This event is billed as "the largest indoor agriculture exposition in the world" and features events like livestock shows, a giant petting zoo, tractor pulls, and more!

Future events in Harrisburg:

ArtsFest - May 28th-30th @ Riverfront Park

Learn more here!

So whatever your interests are, Pennsylvania has an event for you this spring! Be sure to check out the events calendar on your state's tourism website for a complete list of events. Have fun and enjoy the warm weather!

iPad Pro Journey Combined Days - Using Procreate As a Beginner

By Toni Hetrick

I’m a little behind on posting each day’s experience with my new iPad Pro.  Worry not, I have continued drawing each day, I just haven’t had the time to create a blog post each day.  I have decided to consolidate a few posts into one to bring you up to speed.  

On day 3 of drawing, I started off by again spending a little time experimenting with different brushes.  I did this by selecting a brush and seeing what effect it gives off when in use. I am still in awe with the number of brushes that come with the Procreate app.  I’m happy that as a beginner, at least so far, I have been able to follow tutorials using the brushes that I already have without having to purchase anything additional.  After taking a few minutes experimenting with the brushes, I moved onto YouTube. 

During my search I came across a tutorial from Holly Pixels: “Bullet Journal Doodling in Procreate How to Draw a Pencil”.  This kind of tutorial is right up my alley for multiple reasons. First, it wasn’t an incredibly long tutorial and the image seemed simplistic enough. Since I’m new to this, I feel it’s best to learn the basics before tackling a very difficult tutorial and feeling defeated. Also, I am very interested in creating images that will work well as stickers to include in orders for my business.  This is something that I have only been able to do a few times because I have been purchasing from companies where you must place a minimum order of let’s say 100 stickers. It’s rather expensive, and then you are stuck with 100 of the same exact sticker.  Words cannot express how excited I am to be able to do this on my own.  

The tutorial went smoothly.  She does a great job explaining the process.  I don’t use a bullet journal; however, I do use a planner and am happy that I’ll be able to create my own stickers to use.  Even though this was a very simplistic tutorial, I believe this was the first time where I made a light sketch in pencil and then created another layer to create a bold outline of the shape that would be used from that point on.  This is as simple technique that will be used for several drawings in the future. I was satisfied with the end result and plan on following Holly Pixels to try more of her tutorials.  

Here’s my finished product. :)

The finished product. :) Looks yummy.

After successfully completing the pencil tutorial, I was pumped and craving more.  I headed over to Art with Flo’s channel and chose one of her tutorials. This time, her tutorial, “ANYONE Can Draw This DONUT in Procreate”, caught my eye.  Her tutorials are great and I’m happy that I found this one. If you are new to procreate I strongly suggest that you check out her channel. It was fun and I learned new techniques on how to achieve different shading and depth perspectives.  Without this tutorial, I can say I don’t think I could have created something like this on my own, at my current level. If you haven’t already picked up on this, I am a huge fan of tutorials.  It’s absolutely amazing the amount of information available for free. Below is the exact tutorial I followed. To the right is my finished product. I foresee many donut creations in the future.

Again thank you for visiting the blog. If you enjoyed this tutorial please click the heart below to show some love. Stay tuned for future blog posts following my new digital art journey.

iPad Pro Journey Day 2

It’s day 2 of my iPad journey. Initially, I messed around with the different styles of brushes that come with the Procreate app.  At some point I want to develop good hand lettering skills, if possible, so I dabbled with some of the calligraphy pens. I’m definitely going to need lots of practice.  After that, I decided to follow another YouTube tutorial. This one by Art with Flo caught my eye as this style of art is very popular right now. I grew up loving cartoons and comic books so if I can get the hang of this style I will use it often.  

I chose to use a picture of my stunningly beautiful sister as the base/reference for this project.  Unlike me, she is a cosmetic genius. I look forward to her Instagram posts, to see what glamorous look she’s created for the day.  If you are interested, head over to Instagram and follow her for makeup suggestions. You can do so by clicking here. Anyways…..back to this drawing. At the beginning of the YouTube video, she instructs you on how to choose a well-lit image with clear, crisp quality especially of the eyes.  I felt that this picture would work well. The only downside to my image selection was the flyaway wisps of hair, but for now, I’m willing to overlook that and learn.  

I agree with the creator of the video when she says that you can complete this without being able to draw.  This was really mostly tracing, which I’m not sure about you, but I find it very relaxing. I felt the video had a decent pace.  I had to pause it a few times to complete a task to my liking and then would start it back up for further instruction. Since I’m so new to this, I find that the areas where I’m having to replay and pay closer attention are when a new brush is selected and detailed instruction is not given on exactly what category that brush is under.  Or sometimes a new layer will be added and placed somewhere and it’s done just a little too quickly for me to see if there are multiple layers. But with the magic of technology, it’s easy to back up and replay what I’ve missed. That makes the learning experience stress free.

Overall, I feel I was able to follow the instructions well.  My sisters’ hair is very dark so I didn’t mess with very many variances in color streaks in the hair to give it that crazy comic pop.  I may go back later and experiment further. The example the video provided added white streaks in the hair. Initially, I followed that instruction but I didn’t care for that look so I duplicated that page and removed those streaks to see which I liked better.  I think I prefer the one without the white. My sisters’ shirt has detail in it that I will likely go back and work on as well. This was not something that was instructed in the video; however, I would like to test my skills at airbrushing the shirt to give more of a cartoon effect.  I enjoyed this tutorial and look forward to following her YouTube page.  You already saw my reference picture above, now below you’ll find the two finished products. What do you think? Feel free to drop a comment below. As always, thank you very much for stopping by the website. If you enjoyed this post please click the heart below to show some love. Stay safe and healthy.

iPad Pro Journey Day 1

Over the last 6 months, I have worked very hard and have been very blessed with sales. That work has allowed me to achieve yet another goal for my small business….purchasing an iPad Pro.  My reasoning behind setting this goal was, with an iPad Pro and some additional software; I will begin the journey of learning how to design my own graphic images.  I already make simple designs using silhouette software, but I’m always looking to step up my game and excel in any way I possibly can. In addition, I used to LOVE to draw. I was actually quite good at it.   However like with many things in life, I got older and busier and didn’t set time aside for drawing. Getting back to drawing will allow me to love my small business even more by creating pieces of unique digital art that can be displayed in many ways.  I’m hoping that as I move along in this learning journey, I can share my experiences with you. Perhaps you are a beginner as well. Perhaps you are considering the same type of purchase for similar reasons, or maybe you just need some entertainment. At any rate, I’ll try my best to share my journey with you.

I was in luck that the new 2020 iPad Pro was just released and was on sale.  I purchased from Amazon and approximately 4 days later, this 12.9-inch beauty arrived at my doorstep.  I also purchased the Apple Pencil from Amazon. It shipped and delivered in 2 days. Praise Amazon Prime! Not going to lie, unboxing the iPad made me feel like royalty.  Nerdy vibes were high that day. The crisp white packaging, simplistic yet modern, stole my heart.  

I am already an Apple user, which made setup incredibly easy.  There were just a few simple steps to follow, after which the iPad was able to connect to my iPhone and that was basically all she wrote.  There were a few steps that I choose to skip over like setting up Apple Pay, etc. I don’t feel that I will need those, and if I do, they can be updated at a later time.  Once everything was up and running, my next step was to install an app called Procreate. Why Procreate? After much research, I feel that Procreate is a very popular tool that several designers use.  It appears to be user friendly and there is plenty of tutorials available online. The best part is the price. It’s just $9.99. From what I understand if there are any updates that are made after your purchase, that update is included in the $9.99 fee you have already paid.  I priced other software companies and this was a great deal less expensive.

My first project was a guided YouTube tutorial from Art with Flo.  I chose this video because she starts off by saying, “Anyone can draw this”.  I took that challenge and was pleased with the end result. I did have to stop the video and replay in different sections, as I felt she went too fast for me as a first time user.  The only spot that I hit a snag was when I needed to download the two free brushes from her website (thank you for that btw) and get them installed onto the iPad. I ended up installing them on my laptop and moving them over to dropbox.  I then opened the Dropbox app on the iPad and easily installed the brush by just clicking on the file I wanted. I should have timed myself on this first drawing, but unfortunately, I did not think of that. For the very first project, I would say it went well.  I have put my finished product below for you to see. I plan on trying more of her tutorials to continue to learn the app. I have also posted links below for the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil. As always thank you for visiting the website and reading the blog. Feel free to leave a comment below and if you enjoyed this post please show some love by clicking the heart below.