Pumpkin Carving

Here's my pumpkin. Excited for Joey's to be carved soon. It was hard, but I did it with utility knife blades and a small knife. I got the template from Cindy's site.

Plans and Slow Progress

I sewed until my eyes crossed last night but I still didn't complete my daily craft- a shirt for a friend's 29th birthday. I made a felt art picture for Sherri's nursery 2 days ago but am not happy with the way the framing turned out. Man I guess that I've hit a funk- I have nothing to show for my past three days of crafting effort. So instead I'll picture some plans:
Here's the image that the birthday shirt is based on:

Everything made from felt-cuts sewn to a ringer-T I got at Goodwill yesterday. The text will be "Eatin your food leavin' dishes" which are lyrics from a song on the new Jay-Z album which Joey hasn't taken out of his CD player since he got it.

Afer that, I'm entering into a hand sewn scarf contest offered by Craftzine:

The scarf has to "represent you" and has to be sewn, not knitted. Which is excellent because I can't knit AT ALL. It blows my mind. I can eat sushi with the sticks though. I'm planning 2 entries. One a felt-art of Gorey's Gashleycrumb Tinies' O is for Olive drawing. The second a quilt-like scraf made up of 10 squares with my favorite West Virginia scenes depicted: Arden, field of flowers, apple tress, our woodstove, sled riding, bare feet in grass, the cemetary, etc etc.

Next up:

Bird Mobile for Sherri. I saw this craft on Jill's site. I have all the cloth I need to make it, I just need some sticks! There are no trees around my house. How does a girl from WV end up lacking twigs? I step on 500 daily in dad's yard.
Any how.
And my pumpkin's getting carved tonight. Excited to post pictures of that. Hopefully it'll turn out. I have big plans, as usual, for that 30 pounder.

Halloween is upon us and I'm hosting a small fondue get-together on Saturday. I'm planning to make this cake which I found on UCreate's site who in turn found it on Martha Stewart's site:


So that's a little taste as to what's to come.
Cheers!

Light Table

Lots in process, lots. And Halloween's coming up, so pumpkins and costumes soon too.

On a side note, I finally made that light table. I had an old medicine cabinet in the garage so I unscrewed the mirror, drilled a hole and threaded some lights through it and put a spare pane of glass over the top. Voila! No more tracing against a window.

Yes I am tracing a TI85 scientific calculator circa late 90's early 2000's. It's for a T-shirt for my Math Field Day geek of a husband. He claims he won;t wear it, but we'll see.

A Sweater for Emmalee

Ahahaha, payback. My former room mate and I had this little game- we would hide this creepy vogue model for each other around the house. It started innocently enough, EmmaLee stated that she hated the model so I, ever the little sister, laid it open to that page on her pillow one day. She retaliated. It escalated. It ended up being a full-out war. I mailed the page to her with a return address as her Grandmother's. "Oh! A note from my grandmother!" she exclaimed as she opened it. I scanned it in and put it up as her Facebook profile picture. She'd hide it in my closet, taped to hanger so I would discover is as I browsed my clothes. She hid it in the sole of a shoe before gifting them to me.
So it's my turn, and I had to give it back. I had this grand scheme to put it in a parking ticket envelope (In Morgantown, parking tickets come in little blaze-orange envelopes, unmistakable) and put it on her car... But she moved to New Orleans before I could :(
So here it is:


My process:
Trace the image by holding it against a window (instant light table! I love this trick. I will be constructing myself a light table soon)


Cut out the pieces just as you would a dress pattern. Pin the felt pieces together on interfacing or paper, whatever:



Stitch!


Viola:

Nursery Art

Sherri's nursery has no art! Problem solved. I spent literally one evening putting this together and one evening framing. This is such a rudimentary craft that you need no artistic training.

I found these totally wonderful frames at Goodwill. Heh. Now a craft for paint-by- number Jesuses, hmmmmm.




I used the untrained, untamed, rough caveman stitch for everything. Very Sally from Nightmare before Christmas.


The objects in white are actually painted over paper cuts from the templates by the amazing Cindy . Everything else is left over felt from the babyshower and left over fabric from apron-makin'. So project cost total? $10. (I know, those Jesus frames were steep at $5/pc at Goodwill- seriosly. Nothing sells for $5 a pc at WV Goodwills)

Tattoo commission

A friend I hadn't talk to in a while called yesterday afternoon to ask advice on the design of his very first tattoo . I'm honored that he asked me to be his design consultant. I wonder if I can create a job out of this... A tattoo is a big deal. A first tattoo is even bigger. And a first tattoo on his forearm for all the world to see is the biggest, so I took the commission to heart.

He wants a West Virginia tattoo, he lives in a New England suburban environment and I know he misses his wild and wonderful. He also wanted to work the 'Country Roads' lyrics into it somehow.
So
Instead of selling tile today, I sketched, traced and scribbled my way to two variations of the same image. New River Gorge- get it? It's a country road, anyway:

Good, I like it. Easy enough to tattoo. I messed up the lyrics written across the bridge though, heh.

Based on this image:


Next Up:

Artistically, I like the angle of this one better. I hate the way the shading turned out. I despise colored pencils and that's all we had at work. But the tattoo artist could do much better.

Which is based on this image:




Mine, designed by me. I wish I still had the little piece of tracing paper. That I drew with my old interior design rendering markers, <3 it the best washy, but vibrant, medium ever. I'll post some old interior design work someday.

I would like to draw up a 3 style based on the old school WV licenses plates:

Sherri's Baby Shower

My best friend is having a baby so I threw her a shower. It was so much fun. I spent all week preparing games and crafts and food and a cake. The party was a huge success. She was glowing and I was sweating, but it wall came together supremely. I've always been crafty, but this really started somethign in me. I haven't put down the scissors since.
A few snap shots:

The CAKE. Lovingly prepared by Heather, Suze and myself. There was a cake mistake, wow was there ever . But we salvaged it and the fondant-mistake and turned into a vulgar and side-splitting "Happy Anniversary" cake for some friends. Pictures of this exist but can not be posted because of the adult content, wink wink.



Bun In the Oven craft: only one pregnant dress has a button. Unfortunately the point of the game is to destroy them to find the button. This is something I saw online somewhere and stole! These little felt creations turned out better than expected. It took just one night (ok, 2) to make 30. And there was an element to fashion design as well, which is always fun. I will put their step-by-step creation on here soon.



I loved this but didn't have a melon baller so I ended up mangling the watermelon which made it look less than delicious. Note to all others- finding an appropriate sized watermelon in October is HARD, I had to use this mini-melon so the wheels were too cramped. Oh well, cute nonetheless.



The Create-Your-Own-Onesie Winner! I just strung up some string and clothing pins to create a cute clothing line, bought some white onesies and fabric markers and let the guests go to town. Momma-to-be pinned the blue ribbon on the winner.



The prettiest Mom-to-be that ever will be. Thanks for trusting your shower to me!