Tacky Christmas, here we go!

If it's not evident by now, I love tacky Christmas stuff. I think it gives a much needed air of irreverence to a holiday that has been distorted so extremely by society and media. So why not take that that a bit further =)

I contemplated making my own ugly Christmas sweater but decided that with all the holiday crafting that was in store for me, I wouldn't have enough time to really devote the right amount of energy and effort to pull it off well (I am my own elitist hah). But when an announcement went up at work this last Friday that there would be an ugly Christmas sweater contest....well my fate was sealed right there.

So now I am in the planning stages of my Christmas sweater!...or maybe shirt or something...I'll have to see what I can repurpose in my closet. I have a few ideas of how to approach it, though to be honest, with the Christmas dress I made, I had the start of an idea and just went from there. My only issue is that this is going to be worn at work which is in the public eye and so therefore must be "work-appropriate". No swearing, no sexual innuendo, etc (which isn't really my style anyway).

I love the idea of incorporating something so non-Christmas in to a Christmas-y scene, like dinosaurs or kittens.



I love the fair isle knitting look, but probably won't tackle that now. That requires screen printing, getting all of that prepared = too much time and I have none. But I may try to work in dinos pulling Santa's sleigh or something...

Another dream of mine is to incorporate working lights into my garment. I am so not a lights and moving things person, but I might try. I've been seeing these super simple but clever snowmen on pinterest made from battery-operated votive candle lights and thought that would be easy to recreate and incorporate onto a sweater.



My last idea, and I think the easiest to pull off in the short time I have is a vomiting reindeer theme. I have tons of bits of Christmas crap that Rudolph can be yakking up....



But I am doubting myself....I texted one of my bosses at work to see if the vomiting reindeer would fly at work (haha get it), and I haven't gotten a response back yet, but now I'm wondering...if I'm even questioning it, doesn't that indicate right there that it may be a problem? Darn it. I was getting really excited about that one.

Well, on I go to start my Christmas sweater adventure. Next time, no doubt, I'll have pictures to share of the actual sweater!

Photodump

I have been busy. Obviously. I have completely let this blog slide with the looming specter that is Christmas. I always have to start early because I end up sending about 40% of my gifts out of state and I hate dealing with last minute trips to the post office among holiday madness. Anyway, I've been making things left and right but unfortunately a lot of it I can't share yet. I will, however, share some of the things I've made for others that have already received their packages.

Some crochet baskets. A great stashbusher though it was killer on my wrists after a while. I might have to make more for me.



Another steampunky type bug pendant. I have more wings made but no projects for them yet. I think they'll probably turn up in some fun assemblage project down the road.





A sacred heart felt embroidery hoop art. It was fun to bling it out with some sequins. Rather time consuming to sew on one-by-one but worth it.



Most recently I made a necklace for myself using a bunch of chains and beads that my mom gave me when I was visiting in October. I'm pretty happy with how it came out - we'll see if it holds up to wearing all day.



Ok...back to Christmas crafting...I'll try to share when I can.

Tacky Christmas Dress - and how I've spent the first part of my week

I really meant to start making some Christmas presents for some friends and family but I got sidetracked...I got the opportunity to make a fabulously tacky Christmas party dress for someone and I couldn't resist. I didn't realize at the time that it would take me about 4 days to finish it or that my living room carpet is now possibly permanently embedded with glitter, sparkles, and other bric-a-brac that is a casualty of my creation.

I got the dress at a thrift store for less than $5 and picked up the ugly Santa head and gold trim at the Dollar store. Most of the remaining bits were stuff I had in my stash! Pretty awesome if I do say so myself...my only regret is that I couldn't somehow fit in working Christmas lights. I found some at the grocery store yesterday but it was about $8 for a relatively short strand and my budget wouldn't allow it.







Ok, now on track to start some Christmas crafting for my nearest and dearest now!

Apologies! and gearing up for the Holidays...

My humblest apologies dear readers! I haven't forgotten you! The last few weeks have been pretty chaotic at work and at home. I feel like I'm running out of steam here but THANKFULLY I have a week-long vacation next week to try to catch up on a million neglected things, a lot of which will be devoted to gearing up for....Christmas. Yes there, I said it. I am acknowledging the existence of Christmas right here, right now, because if I don't the 24th of December will sneak up on me and hit me in the ass and another year will have gone by without a touch of the lovingly handmade. I have some big and small projects planned in the near future and I hope to be able to share some with you along the way. Some will have to wait until after the big 2-5 to post but you understand.

I don't have anything ready to share right now (big surprise) but I do have a giant pile of cut fabric on my table waiting for attention, more fabric set aside for another project, and ambitions for a truly awesome tacky party dress! (not for me, but it will still be fun to make!)

Until then, happy upcoming, overly commercialized, crazy frenzy holidays! I need to down some caffeine and then get to work!

Assemblage of the more natural variety.

I hosted an Assemblage art swap on craftster because it is an awesome artform and I wanted to see what me and others could get up to with that sort of theme to run with. I definitely tend to gravitate towards more rusty, grungy assemblage projects, but my partner Wulf mentioned loving nature inspired assemblage and I felt the muses telling me to try that way. I did a lot of looking at pictures, googling Andy Goldsworthy (check him out!!) and taking long slow walks around my neighborhood. It was a challenge and refreshing and here's what I came up with...







I couldn't keep the rusty urges out completely, but I think the small bits I added compliment it well. The yarn weaving was another thing I added in that felt organic and...just fit right. I definitely want to do more stick weaving for myself. I think it looks so beautiful and organic.

I also made another piece that is quite a bit larger but it got too "flowery" for my liking...not to mention its rather heavy being mounted on a piece of plywood!

I really am not a huge fan of bugs...unless they're made by me

I had someone ask me if I could try to make some sort of artsy bug pendant and I thought why not try? It was a bit trickier than I imagined trying to combine a bunch of different elements without getting the proportions way out of wack. But I finally settled on two little guys that have quite a bit of personality!

The first little guy...he's no more than 1.5 inches long with a pen nib as his thorax covering...The wings I made myself!





How do you ask? My secret...but it does involve wire and tissue paper. Actually I think there's a slightly easier way to do it so the next time I need to come up with some buggy wings I'll try to make a tutorial. It's pretty neat actually.

Here's the daddy. About 2.5 inches long, with some impressive filigree detailing. I used some PearlEx powders to color the bodies.







I've got another request to make more so there'll probably be more in the future!

A Gust of Energy means some Stashbusting for me!

I really can't say what prompted me to go on a 4 day spree of stashbusting but I did. I started with some jewelry for a friend that turned into a need to use up some beads to using up other stash that was laying around. I googled projects to use up beads and stumbled upon a variety of windchimes/suncatchers. I've made a couple before and thought why not make some more! I had some beads to use up, but even better, I had a ton of flat-back marbles that I bought a long time ago and hadn't used up. As well there was silverware that I picked up for....some reason? Anyway, add those, some wire, some nice pieces of wood and voila! Some funky windchimes and a little more space to collect more stash.

Secret projects and other musings

So once more I'm at a point where I don't have anything new to share because the stuff I have been working on is for someone else and must be kept hush hush until they receive it lest I blow the surprise here. But I have been thinking a lot about nature and taking a lot of slow lovely walks. It's refreshing and nice, and has opened my eyes a lot more to the beauty that can be found just in my neighborhood. So that being said, I'll share some things that have inspired me this past week found around the web...

What Have I Been Up to?

Been doing a lot of screen printing - got a bunch more FQs in my shop now.



And had fun with a rather rainbow inspired custom order for 10 FQs of my fox print in tons of different color combinations!



I put all my screen printing stuff away for now though. Next project: Assemblage art! Not sure where that's going yet...

Make your Binder feel a little more special

I'm not a person that gets sick very often...but during the week I picked up something nasty and now I've spent about 90% of my weekend being miserable on the couch. So there has been no progress on anything at all for the last few days but I do have something I can finally share: I made this custom binder cover for a really sweet lady on craftster who is just getting into making her own patchwork creations. I had a lot of fun with this, and explored applique quite a bit more than I have in the past, and I am totally loving it.

















Does anyone else get the feeling that I LOVE ALL THE COLORS!!!

Labor Day Weekend means getting busy with the screen printing for me

The last hurrah of summer always leaves me feeling a little sad. Sad that the long warm days are growing noticeably shorter, and that being that I live in Michigan, the season of Fall is little more than a couple of weeks long before we're plunged into the annoying and always much too long throws of winter. My bf and I did have tentative plans for the holiday weekend but being as I've put in way more hours at work this week than I would have liked, I kinda put a veto on doing anything that involved having to drive hours away from the comfort of home. So instead I decided I will tackle a custom order of 10 FQs in different colors of my fun little fox circle print!



I'm going to hit the fabric store as soon as it opens and of course there will be holiday sales! I'll probably get way too much fabric and then when I get home I'll be going print crazy! I'll have to take some fun artsy pictures of the foxie rainbow.

Speaking of custom orders, I did one for a very sweet lady who is working on a jacket with patches all over it, and she asked me to make some to add to the ones she created. This was a little different since she wasn't stuffing her patches, but I think it was really effective, especially if you're adding the patches to something and you don't want there to be so much extra bulk that padding would have. Here's two of the patches I did - they were all Doctor Who themed, and look, my first k-9!





I asked her to send me finished pictures and she agreed so I will be following up with that at some point. I love seeing what people make with my stuff!

In other news, I am 6 sales away from my 100th sales Mark!!!



I want to do something special for the 100th sale so here it is: Whoever is my 100th sale will receive free shipping, AND get a special thank you gift from me =) Also, as a thank you to everyone who has supported my shop in the last year and a half, I am putting a coupon out there for everyone to use to get 20% off their purchase (not including custom orders) until the 100th sale is made. Just send me a note before buying and I will email you the code!

I really had few expectations of my little shop when I started this whole thing, and now a year and a half later, I have met all sorts of new wonderful people, have mailed off my art to places all over the world, and am so much closer to paying off my student loans!! It's a good place to be.

Updates and ramblings

The week has gone by in a flash and I'm trying to catch up it seems like. I just added my Game of Thrones bag to my etsy shop with new and improved pictures. I also managed to finish a project for a lovely lady in AZ that should go out in the mail next week sometime hopefully...but in avoiding things I should be working on, last week I decided to break out the screen printing stuff and made myself some fun shirts.

I've been meaning to print my jawbone on a shirt for the longest time and I finally did! Excuse how wrinkled it is, I had be wearing it previously.



This one was kind of fun; some rather loose screenprinting application and a laser-eye bunny! The little orange mark in the middle of its body was a flub but I don't mind it too much (I guess, it's not coming out now).



I also played around some more with bleach and a bleach pen which was fun. Nothing worth posting but I have those in the back of my mind for future shirt embellishing projects! I have 4 blank shirts on standby for when inspiration strikes.

Ok back to some more stitching - working on a fun custom order for a lady who is making a jacket out of patches. I'm intrigued!