Bubble Dreams

There is always something that gives me grief when I embark on a new paper project. This time? The bubbles. >:(  I think I made it more stupidly difficult than it should have been, but when you only have a 40 minute window of time during which the baby naps, this process of finding the "best solution" takes eons!

End of rant. Other than those bubbles, Mercury has been the fastest yet! 

MLP Parasprites!

I made these little critters to offer at Salt Lake City's Crystal Mountain Pony Con back in mid July, but was unable to attend. Ah, well. Maybe next year. ;)

Fiery Soul

The next Sailor Moon character to join my paper lineup, sailor Mars! The compulsive part of me would now like to see all five of the inner scouts completed... so here it goes! Just Mercury and Jupiter left now!

Swingin' on Love

So how long ago did I start this project, and how long did it take for me to finally finish it? Ah, well, at least it got done, right? I love me some paper art! What an incredibly rewarding medium. Seriously, it allows illustrators to work with their hands and use their puzzle problem-solving powers.

A Toothy New Year

Happy New Year! May it be filled with all the creative endeavors our little hearts can stand!

On a previous note, Christmas was sadly undercrafted. I had delusions of grandeur, and didn't consider how much time a short engagement wedding would consume -- especially one 4 days before Christmas. BUT! I was able to make a gift for my brother-in-law (whose name I drew out of the mystery hat this year). He's a pediatric dentist, if you couldn't guess, so I made him a healthy tooth and a cavity zombie tooth.

He later reported their success:  One of his patients needed to have some teeth pulled, and he notified the parents who then straight up told their little girl what needed to happen. She did what any child would do:  she freaked out. After a few attempts to calm her down, my brother-in-law then pulled out the two teeth plush toys I made, and let her hold them while she calmed down and underwent the procedure. Apparently, she clung to them with force. :) 

Oh, That Crazy Life

Much to my disappointment, I haven't had ANY time to put towards artistic endeavors. Instead, October, November, and December have been and will be ridiculously packed! I could list off everything I've been slammed with, but suffice it to say that I feel like this. ->  @_@

One of the things I've been swamped with is my dear friend's upcoming wedding. As the maid of honor, I've been tasked with a fair share of to-dos, but nothing has been more exhausting than making over 150 tissue paper pom pom flowers. With the help of the other bride's maids and my wonderful mother-in-law, I finished them off this morning -- but not before Kiki so graciously offered her assistance. Yes, kitty. I see you arm deep in that tissue paper.

Hopefully I will have more things to post after Christmas. In the meantime, here's a sneak peek of a project I was working on before the chaos whirlwind whisked me away:

(I hope I'll get a chance to finish it!)

Conductor Venus

Marching to the beat of her own drum~a~lum!

A Stitch in Time

Here is my most ambitious cross-stitch project yet:  The Kingdom of Hyrule (light world map)! It is my and my husband's goal to fill our apartment with little Zelda Easter eggs... like coasters that look like the pixelated boulders in 'Zelda, a Link to the Past' or storing our milk in containers labeled Lon Lon's milk...

Anyway! What I have so far really doesn't look all that impressive, but there are over 14,000 of those blue stitches. If I haven't yet developed tendinitis, I will by the end of this project.

Pattern purchased from "Pixel Comfort" on Etsy.

Selfie

Super quick self portrait <3

Furry Fiends

With my talented husband as a guide, I totally just built my first professional puppet. Dallin wanted to give me some practice designing, patterning, building, and sewing before we begin constructing the puppets for our little personal project, "Fleeced" (working title).

I think he turned out pretty swell for my first go at the entire puppet building process.  :)

By the way, head on over to The Golden Glue Gun to check out the hubby's stuff.

Color / Shading Practice

I actually finished this a few weeks ago, but I didn't want to post it without a background and lazy me just never got around to it. However! It has a background now. Originally, it was going to include trees and foliage and tree spirits and just general greenery goodness. As you can tell, the effort stopped with her.

Anyway, as the title states I was mainly using the sketch for color / shading practice.

In Loving Memory

About a month or so ago I finished a commission for a friend of a friend. It was a gift, a portrait for a gal whose mother had just passed away.  :'<

I must confess, I don't feel like portraiture or caricatures are my strong suit at all. This was quite a challenge for me. It took me forever to dump out some pretty awful sketches, not quite capturing what I wanted or how to make the mother (with so much detail, wrinkles, and folds in her face) look her age without her looking stylistically weird.

But then, I found it!

 And the project lived happily ever after~  :->

Sketch-a-doodle

Moar Sailor Moon fanart! Disney-fied! Wheee!

Also, I was digging around in our bookcase where we keep our multitude of sketchbooks and came across one from 2006-2007. Most of the doodles were pretty terrible... okay, they were ALL terrible, but there were some that sucked less than others. I found one of Princess Mononoke (my very first introduction to the Miyazaki world) and thought it might be fun to redraw it now that I have a little bit of anatomy and character know-how floating around in my brain.

2007 on the left / 2013 on the right

Green-eyed Girl

It's always fun to play around with and emulate different styles!

Mini Paper Art

I did some paper art mini's for two very lovely gals! They're the same size as an owl I mentioned in a previous post (3"x3") and are of each girls' characters. Minis are always fun (especially since, from cut to frame, I can finish them in about a day).  :)

Gameboy

A while ago I bought a Pokemon cross-stitch pattern off of etsy (see end of post). I've been sporadically working on it, but with Christmas drawing near I decided it was high time to get it done if I wanted to give it as a gift. Then I went kind of crazy with the frame, making Dallin cut out the pieces for me. :)

 

Side note:  that frame is 18-inches long. It's a behemoth.

Pattern designed by Siobhan Barbour  *  www.fingerpricks.com  *  www.etsy.com/shop/lithy

I'm not that girl...

Often times I don't like to share sketchbook pages (the-kind-of-person-who-doesn't-like-others-to-see-their-incomplete-work), but as I was doodling, the expression on one sketch in particular reminded me of the song from Wicked called "I'm not that girl..." So I polished it up and threw in some color.

Ultimately, it turned into more Sailor Moon fan art. :P  I thought that Sailor Mars especially identified with Elphaba in that moment as she watched her unrequited love choose another. :)

Theme:  Rejection

Craft Baskets

I was in Joann's, patiently waiting for Dallin to finish gathering his loads of fabric when an adorable flannel caught my eye. Not only was it ridiculously cute, but it was also on sale for $2/yard and it looked like there was about just a yard left. Score! Then, my gears a-churning, we scurried over to Hobby Lobby where I found the perfect specimen to use with that fabric:

Behold! My first, completed sewing project of my adulthood!

Kiki thought it looked pretty swell too :)

Momma and Baby

I think I may have mentioned that we draw names in both my and my husband's families for Christmas. On his side, as soon as I found out who I was giving to, I knew immediately what I wanted to create. I was so excited that I bought all of the supplies back in early November.

From start to finish, this piece was extremely satisfying and seemed to create itself. I love it when the process works out that way.

Theme:  Love

Sugar Rush

The promised photos. Dallin had some great expectations for this little house (as in it was going to be a two story monstrosity and probably three times the size), but he ran out of ingredients to make more gingerbread dough. So we gussied up the yard instead.

 

 Can't forget to add one drunk little candy man (courtesy of my brother)!