demonals

The Incredible Non-Edible Dessert Plush

2010-08-08T16:47:00.004-04:00

I have a good friend at work who I’ve known for years now. We’re alike in personality in many ways, we laugh a lot, and we share a common love of chocolate (especially dark) and sweets. It was her birthday recently, and I decided to give her a gift card to Dairy Queen because she likes the Buster Bar Sundae or Blizzard…..whichever it is. But, I wanted to do something more personal as well. So, I decided to make a plush chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich.
That’s right! A cuddly little plush version of the yummy, sweet ice cream treat! I really didn’t plan much or put a ton of thought into it. As I was mulling it over, I tossed it around in my head as to how I would do it. The days went by and it got closer and closer to her birthday, so I needed to get on the ball and do some work. I figured I’d make it into three pieces: the top and bottom cookie which would consist of two pieces of fabric sewn together and stuffed just a little so they wouldn’t be too flat and then ice cream in the middle. It was this middle part that I knew would be a little tricky. I didn’t want to make it into two separate pieces which I would sew together because then I’d have a seam. Let’s face it; there is no seam in ice cream!! (Though that does rhyme, but I don’t know what that has to do with anything.) I envisioned a round, squished thing of white fabric that calls to mind the nice creaminess of vanilla ice cream.

As I felt the time pressing in on me, I decided to just start and see how it went. I knew that at its heart, the way I had it in my head to do, the plush would basically be just three circles. I found a cup that had the right size for the cookie, so I traced it on my sketch paper/pattern paper and started in on that. I was going to do felt since it might look more rough and cookie-like, but I didn’t have the right brown. I didn’t have any more brown fabric either, as I found out. However I luckily had some scraps which I could use, but I couldn’t make any mistakes and I didn’t have any extra to allow for the shrinkage that always happens once you make the stitches. I went for it and hoped for the best. I used scraps of black felt for the chocolate chips and tried to be intentionally random in both the way I cut the chips out so they wouldn’t be perfectly round and in their arrangement on the fabric. Unfortunately my natural instinct for symmetry and logic war against this creative inclination, so I asked Shawn for help on the last part. He placed them in a haphazard way on the fabric, and I pinned them down so I could sew them exactly as he had them. (Not exactly sewing at its most whimsical, but hey it gets the job done.)

When I was done with that, I sewed the cookies up and set them aside to work on the middle part the next day. However, when Shawn looked at them a little later I either realized or he pointed out that I hadn’t sewn them inside out. How stupid!! You stop sewing for awhile, and you forget what you’ve learned. They definitely looked better with the stitches on the inside, so I stood in my kitchen that night (stronger lighting) and ripped out all the stitches. I’d have to redo it the next day as well as do the middle to finish the whole thing in order to bring it to work that following day. As I lay in bed that night, irritated with myself, I kept thinking about how I was going to do the middle now given that it would be hard to sew the ice cream part to basically closed-off cookies. I tried using a needle that curves one time so it would allow me better access to making stitches through a small opening, but I couldn’t get the hang of it. I decided I would just go ahead and stuff the cookies, finish sewing them up and then be sure not to push the needle through both layers of the brown fabric. Even more hoping for the best!

Once I finished that after work the next day, I found the same cup I had grabbed earlier and used the larger end to make the circle for my ice cream filling. I wanted it bigger so I could kind of fold it over to attach to the bottom cookie. That way, I wouldn’t have a seam and maybe it would look like someone had squished that nice scoop of ice cream between those cookies. It was more difficult than I imagined, folding it down and making it work. Since the fabric was a larger size, I kind of had to fold it in as well as under to sew it onto the bottom cookie. It was a tad annoying, but in the end gave it a bit of that textured look that ice cream has in sandwich form.

If I had it to do over again, I would try to line up the places where I sewed the cookies shut and the spot where I closed off the ice cream after I stuffed it. That way all the messiness would be in one area which could be easily hidden from view. Inexperience once again shines large and bright! Overall though, I was pretty happy with my efforts. The glaring flaws are always hard to overlook, but the appearance was nearly spot on and it was certainly fun and interesting. My friend absolutely loved it and told me later in the day that she had to put it away in her bag because she kept reaching out to it thinking it was the real tasty treat! That’s not a bad compliment to get when you kind of threw it together on a whim.

Oghma Did It!

2010-07-05T15:20:00.005-04:00

As the organizers of the UP! Fair began to meet and discuss our plans, I started feeling decidedly unproductive in my efforts. I was present during the meetings and I provided feedback here and there, but I didn’t feel like I was doing enough. I hoped to be a good bit of help at the actual event, but I wanted to contribute more. Anything that might need to be done concerning promotional matierals, the workshops, content provided would be handled by most of the team through their own artwork. So where exactly did I fit into this talented group?

I wasn’t sure, and I’ve enjoyed feeling like I didn’t belong. So, what could I do to be involved in a bigger way? There’s the sewing projects I’ve done for my “line” of demonals, but I didn’t feel like those belonged at a convention celebrating artists, sequential art and independent publishing. My stuffed creations don’t fall into that category at all. So, what else is there?

Then I thought about making something to give to the guests tabling at the event. It would be an extra thing that they might enjoy would foster a nice partnership between them and the UP! Fair. I wanted it to be useful, so it wouldn’t seem like junk where they’d squinch their eyes up and say “Gee, thanks,” as they tossed it in the first trash can they could find. I considered doing a card holder with an approximation of the UP! Fair logo, so they’d have something readily available to keep any and all business cards they collected at the event together. It would be practical, functional and decorative. Ultimately, though, I nixed the idea. I wasn’t sure if it was the right way to go, and I was afraid that it might not hold the cards well enough to be useful.

I kept thinking about it and thinking about it, and then I remembered an idea for a stuffed creation that I wanted to do based on something mentioned in Art & Story. I have no idea which episode of the podcast this happened, but Jerzy and Mark were talking about the humidity level in the studio and how it was affecting their ink. They complained about it seizing up and getting gloopy (my word, not theirs!), and one of them made the off-hand remark about an ink ghost coming in and stealing the moisture in there. I immediately started wondering about an ink ghost……..what would it look like? I thought that would make an awesome stuffed animal, and figured on making it one day. Well, I decided I could take that ink ghost, make it into an ink monster and that might be a fun thing to provide our guests!

As I was designing the look of the ink monster, I went online and Googled monster as an image. I was trying to figure out what kind of face I wanted to do. I imagined my little ink monster forming out of a puddle of viscous ink, rising out of the murky black as a rounded shape. He kind of galumphs along, with the bottom part of him kind of slurping along the ground as he leaves an ink trail behind him. I didn’t want to do arms on him, though I don’t rule out that he has them. I also didn’t want to do a mouth because I wouldn’t be able to it justice in felt or fabric, since I saw it in my mind as a maw opening up with strings of ink stretching vertically across that vast, dark space. (Think of a Scooby Doo ghost mouth if that description doesn’t quite get the idea across.) So I needed eyes, but what kind of eyes? My ink monster is not malevolent or angry, but despite his bulky movements he’s not stupid either. I checked out a few images, and as crazy as this is going to sound I realized I don’t have to do two eyes! What a revelation that was! Think outside the box, Carrie, because you don’t have to view things in the traditional way. I really liked that idea so decided to make him a Cyclops. How fun!

Then I started thinking it through to see how I might pull this off. I came up with the idea to make a large pattern with rounded edges made in a haphazard manner. When I had the fabric cut, I draped it over something around the house that I could use as a guide for the size that I wanted and then I sewed the folds together to make it keep the general shape. I also wanted to create the feeling that the fabric around the bottom of him was loose, to give the impression that it might undulate as he moved. I filled the middle with polyfil and then cut another bit of fabric out and sewed it on as a bottom.

When I was done……….I hated it!! It was an absolute disaster and I was extremely disappointed with my efforts. It looked like this big, squat blob-like flower with an eye. I put it on the counter near our laundry room door where we sometimes put paper that needs to go in the trash. I couldn’t quite throw him away at that moment, but planned to later on. My husband had other ideas though, and I found later that he had disappeared. I asked him about and he told me he had hidden it because he wanted to keep it. In fact, he had named him Humboldt because it reminded him of a squid and we had recently watched something on television about Humboldt squids.

Shawn encouraged me to try again, so I did. It’s amazing what a small tweak here or a change in design there can achieve. I decided to ditch the whole one-piece pattern idea, and instead cut out a front and back pattern. I saw my ink monster, as I said, as tall and somewhat slender so I was careful to draw that kind of shape. I then pared back on the amount of “drips” at the bottom of the pattern (the little ins and outs to make it look like an ink splotch). I also tried to make those drips as random as possible but with enough forethought so they wouldn’t end up lining up somehow front to back. I kept the eye the same and the piece that I cut out to sew to the bottom, though I didn’t actually make a pattern for that.

He came out tremendously different and so much better!! I used some leftover pieces of orange felt that I had rather than using black, in case it was a flop too. But he wasn’t, though he came out a bit too slender for how I pictured him. So, the only thing left to do was to make him a little bit wider and find a fabric that evoked the texture and qualities of ink. Shawn and I took a trip to JoAnn’s to look around. Normally I would go by myself, but I wanted a second opinion on what might look best. We found a couple of good candidates, one in particular that was swimsuit material and really had the “feel” of wet ink. However, part of what I enjoy about stuffed animals is the soft texture, the cuddle factor. I had discovered a remnant that was black which had a shiny quality to it as well having that softness that I so enjoy. Ultimately I went with that one and quickly made another prototype. (It’s so much easier when you have the patterns already completed.)

He’s a beautiful, little ink monster in my opinion. My only complaint with him is that since the material I found was not as stiff as the felt so rather than sticking out and retaining that shape, they folded under his body. I’ll have to cut out a pattern around those drips and use that to sew to the bottom rather than just closing off the hole where he’s stuffed. If that works out, then he’ll be pretty damn near perfect for what I’m able to accomplish at this stage in the game.

I’m considering him to be the unofficial mascot of the UP! Fair. That hasn’t been truly discussed yet with the other organizers, but to me that’s what he is. I wanted to come up with some sort of back story for him, nothing long and involved just a base for what he is as well as a name. I sent suggestions to Shawn at work one day, and the few that got bandied about weren’t quite right. I was thinking of him as some sort of muse, so I Googled gods and goddesses and found a site that listed names from various cultures. I saw one listed whose description caught my eye: Oghma (Scottish, Irish) - God of Communication and Writing, and of Poets. I thought that was rather appropriate for the UP! Fair, so I sent it to Shawn. Thus, my little ink monster became Oghma, the Ink Monster. Shawn and I discussed the back story on the way home from work, and we came up with the idea that he isn’t a muse in the normal sense of the word. He’s the reason why your ink seizes up and becomes thick. He’s the one behind your sudden frustration on where to take the story or what kind of person a character is going to be. The smudge of ink that appears on your nice, clean page……..that was Oghma. Whenever something goes wrong…………Oghma Did It!! But, he is not a creature to be hated or abused. He makes you ever more vigilant of what you are doing and drawing. When something isn’t coming together like it should, you can be certain that Oghma is behind it. Not to irritate you beyond all else, but to make you consider other possibilities. Sure, he can be annoying and sometimes he might just be messing with you for the fun of it. But more times than not, he’s there to help if you can figure out what he’s trying to tell you!

UP! Fair Launches This November

2010-06-14T17:42:00.012-04:00

So, fast forward to late November of this year. It's another holiday season, and the following week you'll be dining on whatever constitutes a Thanksgiving meal in your house and most likely visiting relatives.......so either thoroughly enjoying yourselves or just counting the minutes before you can leave and go home again. Whichever category you fall into, I urge you to consider making a trip to Lexington, KY that weekend before, the 19th and 20th. A wonderful group of artists and creators will be celebrating sequential art and storytelling along with independent publishing at UP! Fair. It is a free event chock full of new work to be discovered on our exhibition floor as well as fun and informative workshops (also free) to attend, led by the guest cartoonists and authors.

UP! Fair will be held in the The Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning in Lexington. Along with me and my husband, Shawn, of Branded in the 80s, this event is being organized by an amazing group of artists and writers. Sara Turner is one-half of Cricket Press, the other half being her husband, which specializes in custom screen-printed posters, letterpress, illustration and design. She has published titles such as File 49 and Boys in the Den as well as collaborated on The Replacements, Silver and the Periodic Forces, and Equalizers of the Divide with Jerzy Drozd. Jerzy is the proud papa of his graphic novel The Front, along with being contributing editor of Sugary Serials, an anthology of all ages comics which you can find online as well as buy both the single issues and collected editions. He also co-hosts the Art & Story comics podcast with Mark Rudolph and Kevin Cross. Mark is the author of Closing Doors, a graphic novel about the decline of a record store. He publishes Thrills From Space, a series of short-form sci-fi stories through his CV Comics imprint, as well as illustrates for magazines, record albums and music-related merchandise. Kevin has his hand in illustration, cartooning, and animation. He is the creator of the Monkey Mod webcomic. Anne Drozd is part of Tiny Astronaut Press, along with Jerzy Drozd and Mark Rudolph, and collaborated with her husband on mini-comics such as Rocketosaurus, Dino Love and Tiny Hamilton. She also collaborated with Mark on the mini-comic Dino West.

Last year, Jerzy co-organized the Kids Read Comics Convention which Sara, Mark and Anne also attended. They were so jazzed by the honest feel of the convention, the turnout, and the camaraderie between fellow artists, creators and independent publishers that they all decided to create their own convention. By combining the best aspects of a comic convention with the heart and soul of an art fair and throwing in those extra touches that only their minds and outlooks can provide, UP! Fair was born. It's going to be a great place to celebrate creativity, find new people and works to enjoy, and just be a wonderful way to spend your weekend. I hope some of you will come join us in the fun!

Some of the organizers of the UP! Fair used their creative talents to make our website visually appealing and fun. It is, after all, what they do! I truly enjoyed looking at the different drawings everyone did. (Above are just a few.) It was a showcase of various styles and subject matter, all carried out with the simple idea of going up. I couldn’t help but be inspired by all that inventiveness and started wondering what I could think up in the same vein. One idea I considered was a huge vine going up into the clouds with tools of the comic book trade as well as comic books themselves sprouting from it like leaves or branches. However, my lack of any true drawing skills hampered me in making that any kind of a reality……..at least one I would be happy about. I realize how much hard work has to go into learning how to draw. As much as I hope to one day learn how and gain some skills in that particular endeavor, the thought of producing something right now that in no way would live up to what was in my head hurts me.

So, I ditched that idea and thought some more about it. I can’t tell you what made me think of a spaceship (I wonder if that happens a lot to creators), but as soon as it popped into my head I could see it. A blanket of snow covers the ground, making the landscape hushed and peaceful. A small cluster of trees stands off to the left, bare, lower trunks reaching high and filling out with bristling needles of green. Out of this stillness, in the woods where nothing stirs and no one is aware of what happens in this little part of the world, a small spaceship rises into the nighttime sky with only the tiniest of sounds. My mind was captured by the picture, enjoying the idea of spectacular things happening not with a bang but simply and quietly. I felt that image would be what you would only see if you were there at the right moment, if you turned your head at just the right time. It was exciting and I wanted to do it!

Again though, lack of drawing skills get in the way of executing it so I decided to “crop” the drawing and focus that inner lens in so it would be more on the sky than the whole scene. It was harder than I thought it would be to draw cartoonish trees! It took me awhile to decide on one I liked, and then that much longer to enlarge it and do it for keeps. I sketched out the spaceship until I had something that I was happy with and then had to struggle through doing it again and larger. That messes me up every time! However, I do have to say I’m extraordinarily pleased with my little spaceship. I think it is so utterly cute, and it feels like me in a way if that makes any sense. It’s something that would appeal to me if I saw it somewhere, and it feels like it belongs in a cartoon.

At one point, I traced over it in ink and then decided that I would really like to continue with the whole process by coloring it. I adore black and white images, the stark contrast between the two colors, the dynamic between light and dark, but I wanted to do more with this one. So, finally one weekend I asked Shawn to show me the basics of Photoshop. I had used it long ago in college, but it had been years so it was like learning it all over again. Once he set me up with those basics, I worked on it that same day and completed it. My drawing wasn’t that complicated so that’s no great feat, but I was proud that I had done it myself and made the color choices on my own.

It somehow seemed anticlimactic though, like now that it was finished it should be more, should be better than what it is. But, having said that, I’m still glad I did it and pretty happy with the results. Hopefully, I can come up with another drawing idea so I can try my hand at coloring again.

One Small Step for Demonals.....

2010-06-07T16:47:00.002-04:00

At the end of March, my grandmother turned 90 years old. There isn't much that a granddaughter can buy for someone who has lived that many years, so to celebrate her birthday I decided to make her a version of my sun demonal. She’s an avid knitter and has been for as long as I’ve been alive, so I figured she would appreciate something not only homemade but made by me. The colors and the shape of this particular creation keep drawing me to it, so I keep going back to it for one reason or another. However since she doesn't quite have the same sensibilities as I do, I did not include the wings and I used matching thread instead of the dark and stark black thread of my original version. This was not a problem at all, since I don't mind making non-demonal versions and enjoy the differences between the two.

It turned out rather well, as much as it can anyway since I cannot pull off a perfect piece of sewing. There were flaws that my eye immediately honed in on, and I, of course, worried they detracted from what I want anything that I create to be. But, overall, I still think it's a great little sun! This time I decided to attach some ribbon to it so it could easily be hung. She already has knickknacks of various kinds, and I didn't want her to have to figure out where to lay this thing I was giving her. Plus, I rather liked the idea of it being a piece of art to a certain extent, displayed on a wall or hung from a ceiling. Not really in a vain sense mind you, though certainly that is part of it, but rather as another way of viewing and doing my own pieces. (With these projects, I work one thing out and get used to it before my brain thinks of other options or doing it differently.) Shoot, they could even be ornaments on a Christmas tree if someone wanted that!

Unfortunately, I didn't think to do the ribbon thing until after I had sewed it up completely so I couldn't attach the ribbon on the inside where the stitches wouldn't show. I did my best with it, especially considering that when you put needle and thread through ribbon it immediately starts to fray! A lesson to be learned there if there ever was one. I'll have to figure something out to make sure the ribbon stays intact as well as securely attached to the sewn pieces in the future while maintaining a neat appearance.

Ducktopus in the Plush!

2009-12-06T15:31:00.004-05:00

So, Ducktopus is finished and I just heard today that he arrived at his new home with BubbaShelby! I guess I’ll be kind of informal with this one and just give some final thoughts now that he is completed.

Unfortunately, I appear to have a highly developed artistic dislike for my own creations because I’m not wholly satisfied with how Ducktopus turned out. It’s not that I don’t like him, it’s just that I think he could be better and it hurts in a way to see those flaws when I wanted him to be perfect. However, I have received more than one message from BubbaShelby saying he absolutely loves him, so maybe I should stop worrying and obsessing over it. Call me crazy!!

Anyway, I might have mentioned this in the other blog post but I decided to sew this one on the outside rather than hiding the stitches. I actually could have done it the other way around if I had made the two unattached tentacles bigger. If I had, I wouldn’t have dreaded trying to turn them outside in. I also would have been able to stuff them. As it was, after sewing the front and back pieces together the hole wasn’t large enough for me to poke any polyfil into those little arms so they’re just flat. I’m pretty disappointed by that actually. I wanted them to have more dimension and depth, but at least they remain stretching out rather than drooping so that’s a plus.

I also feel like I needed to stuff the duck body more so it looked squatter and more rounded. As it is, given the fact that you can see more white between the tentacles on the right side, the duck body looks slightly lopsided to me. I always worry about overstuffing though, so I used my own judgment (backed up with Shawn’s opinion) and quit with the polyfil after a certain point. However, it just doesn’t seem to pop enough on its own, and I really wanted each creature section to stand out by themselves as well as a whole.

I did try to do add a couple of interesting touches to this piece. I cut out a front and back piece for each eye in order to make it thicker. When it's just one piece, the stitches tend to make tiny holes given the thinness of the felt. However, I ended up stuffing the eyes as well so they would stand out a bit from the head. You can't easily see that from the pictures and it certainly isn't a huge effect, but I was glad that I had done it. Also, I wanted the duck feet to be stiff so the body could kind of stand/be propped up and the feet would bend without losing their shape. So I bought some foam-type material and cut a piece out for the foot itself as well as the leg. I sewed the front and back orange fabric pieces together with the foam pieces inside then sewed the whole thing to the body. I wish Ducktopus could have stood on his own, but I'm pretty happy with how those feet turned out.

When I look at Ducktopus in the pictures BubbaShelby took, I'm extremely proud of of him. Seeing him surrounded by so much appreciation and affection, I don't see the flaws as much and I'm just happy he exists as a plush. Please check out BubbaShelby's post about Ducktopus............it's an awesome read and it shows Ducktopus off in a much better light than I could ever do. All my thanks go to Eric for coming up with this extraordinary creature in the first place and for allowing me to create a toy of one of his creations! You and Ducktopus rock, Eric!! : )

The Making of a Stuffed Ducktopus

2009-11-21T19:13:00.007-05:00

During this year's Halloween Countdown, I was introduced to the inspired and slightly demented mind of BubbaShelby of Art by BubbaShelby. He created unique and weird monsters for his Halloween countdown, but not just any monsters. They were a menagerie of mythical beasts complete with fabricated backstory that were “taken” from newspaper and eye witness accounts. Not only were his drawings great to look at, but the stories behind them were a fabulous read showcasing both his talent and humor.

I was immediately enthralled by the monster he put up on Day 2 of the Halloween Countdown......Ducktopus! I fell head over heels in love with a cross between an octopus and a duck, and given my recent hobby of making stuffed animals I could completely see this as an awesome plush. I commented on his creation, and low and behold that same day I received an e-mail from him giving his permission to make one if I wanted. I couldn't believe it and was unbelievably excited by the prospect! What a great project to tackle, and he was as enthusiastic about seeing it happen as I was. So, I told him I would love to make Ducktopus into a plush animal (or perhaps a plushimal) once I finished with my own Halloween Countdown projects. Now, here we are at that moment in time.

I haven't made a ton of progress on him, mainly out of sheer laziness. I first drew my own sketch from BubbaShelby's, so I could start breaking him down into parts for a pattern. Plus, it creates him in my own style (such as there is) so I could work off of that simplified version. Then I drew the separate parts: octopus body, duck body, eyes, feet, and duck tail. However, I decided to ditch the tail and go with a design where the octopus and duck body have kind of melded together into one rather than the octopus being attached somehow to a fully-formed duck body. It seemed like it would be easier to sew together, especially with my still limited talent.

As it is, I'm still having to sew everything on the outside rather than turning it inside out so the stitches don't show as much. If you have the separate pieces, it’s much harder to try to sew them together after they've been turned outside in. You're dealing with a smallish hole to sew through and it can lead to much frustration, as I've already learned by making mistakes of that kind. Not to mention the headache of trying to turn all those tentacles inside out. Sheesh!! Plus, once I hit upon this idea and started doing it, I liked the idea of having most of the tentacles sewn to the duck body. It kind of gives that impression of the two creatures being formed together through some freak of nature, mad scientist or blast of radiation. Of course, if it was the latter he would immediately become Ductopus, the octopus/duck superhero that fights crimes against nature and all of Earth’s creatures! : )

So, here is what I have so far. I spoke with BubbaShelby about the colors he envisioned, and he chose green for the octopus, and normal colors for the duck....i.e. white for the body and yellow or orange for the feet. He also said red for the eyes, but I'm taking a bit of creative license by changing it to black. I tried the red, and it looked too garish against the green. The black, however, seems to bring out more of the menace or danger that I see in his Ducktopus sketch. I'll post another blog entry once I have it finished. Hope you like what you see so far!

Spooky Eyes!!

2009-11-17T18:29:00.003-05:00

Though it’s no longer the Halloween season, I had an idea for a pillow that I still wanted to do. I started it before the 31st, but our Internet connection was kaput that final day so I didn’t push to finish it. I figured why be hampered by the stringent rule of November marking the end of the Halloween celebration, so I’m posting my ninth pillow regardless. Convention be damned!!

One of my all-time favorite shows when I was younger was Scooby Doo. I realize others think it’s goofy and silly and kind of lame, but I’m an animal person who has been around dogs my entire life. How could I not absolutely fall in love with that huge Great Dane who not only communicates with his family but also solves mysteries in spite of being a coward!? (Besides, he always comes through for them because he’s Scooby Dooby Doo!!) It was a fun show for me with great music, a spooky atmosphere and some pretty creepy villains. Watching the episodes now as an adult, I still adore it and cannot help smiling and feeling wonderful as I sit back and watch Scooby and the Gang solve yet another mystery.

One of the things that automatically comes to mind when I think of the show, besides the characters and the music, are those eyes in the theme songs on a couple of the incarnations. You know, the disembodied ones that are all larger than life and slanted with menace? For me they are an indelible symbol of that show, so I wanted to sew a homage to something that I dearly cherished.

I took the different shows we have off our shelf and watched the theme song on each one, looking for those eyes. I found one in particular that I liked the most and sat in front of the television to sketch it, wanting to make it the best representation I could. I created something I was happy with, so then moved to the bigger sketchbook to redo it on a larger scale. (Side note here – I don’t know if other artists [not that I consider myself an artist, mind you!] have this problem but I end up having such a hard time with making my sketches bigger. I’ll draw it in my small sketch book and think it looks great. Then when I create it again only magnified, I have such a difficult time drawing it to match. It never seems to be as good!)

Anyway, once I was happy with my results I started deciding what colors I wanted to do. I knew I had to have two colors for the eyes with the pupils and the background black. Why? Because I thought it would look neat!! Shawn and I went back and forth a bit on what we thought might make a nice combination when he suggested that I do eyes on both sides of the pillow. That way, like with the pumpkin pillow, I could make the most use out of the project by doing two different color combos! So, that’s what I did. I thought yellow and red would make a nice duo, and Shawn recommended purple and green. I didn’t have enough felt for the purple/green one so I made a quick trip to JoAnn’s one day, and ended up buying a bunch of new colors besides the ones I needed. Ah, the siren call of colors!!

Once again, the end product doesn’t look as spectacular as the cut fabric does when it’s lying flat on the table. I think I need to train my eye and my mind to accept the inherent differences between 2-D and 3-D. Regardless, my spooky eyes pillow is a pretty decent rendition of an aspect of one of my favorite memories from childhood. It was also a lot of fun to make considering while I was sewing I got to see those eyes staring back at me! I think the whole thing may need to be a bigger size, however, and I definitely need more black around the eyes so they look like they’re coming out of darkness. I messed up on that part of it, unfortunately! But, hopefully they evoke enough of that Scooby Doo feel to do him proud.

He'll Come For You Next!!

2009-10-29T15:21:00.009-04:00

Vampires. Nosferatu. Dracula. Blood suckers. Whatever name you want to give to them, I’m not sure in what capacity they can really be considered a part of the Halloween tradition. Nevertheless, they have certainly become part of the imagery and celebration of the spooky season. So, I’ve included my own version in the form of my coffin pillow……with a bloody touch!

I did this pillow a little differently than the others in that there are several pieces to it rather than a front and back sewn together. I made a pattern for the front and back, as well as the top and bottom and two separate pieces for each side. As always, I lost a bit of the straight-edged appearance when I turned it inside out, so it’s not exactly coffin-like but it is a pillow so think soft with round edges! It also looks a bit too poofy, but it’s a decently-sized piece so you have to fill it enough so it feels like a pillow.

There was quite a bit of sewing with this one given all the different pieces to have to attach to each other. Plus, I made stitches along all but the back to try and paint the picture of wood. I didn’t worry too much about making that black thread stay even down the length of each piece, given the fact that wood grain is rarely uniform.

My original idea was to have the coffin lid up a little and a hand coming out, but it would have taken more work than I was prepared to do in the amount of time I had. So instead, I just went with the hand out of the coffin and along one side of it. Shawn came up with the idea of a pool of blood beneath it, and I thought that would make a very nice touch. You can kind of surmise that the vampire has just returned from feeding, the coffin lid has closed and all you see is one hand with blood dripping beneath it as it slowly recedes into the dark sleeping chamber! That whole piece came out pretty well, and the white against red stands out against the brown of the coffin. We had also talked about putting bloody handprints on the lid, but I can’t remember if I decided against that, just didn’t do it, or forgot.

At any rate, once I was finally done I was basically happy with the result but it felt so empty somehow. The small hand on the side of the coffin seemed to get lost in the large surface area of the brown coffin, almost as an afterthought rather than a highlight. I wasn’t sure what to do about it given the fact that I had already stuffed the pillow and sewn it up completely. Shawn and I talked about it, and we both agreed it needed something. I had considered doing some sort of decoration on the coffin lid when I began this project, so I figured I’d go that route and thought it wouldn’t be too hard to sew on to an already stuffed pillow. We came up with the idea of doing the initials for Vlad Tepes, and I sketched out a couple ways to go. Shawn came up with one that I liked better. I intended to put it inside a crest, but when I finished with the pattern for the initials I decided I liked the look of them alone more. I think it helps the overall appearance of the pillow by filling up that empty space. Shawn and I also talked about doing hinges on the one side of the coffin, but I forgot about that too once I added the felt initials to the lid.

I do think I like this pillow overall. I can definitely see problems and I think the hinges might have been a good way to go, but it’s kind of a fun one if simple.

Bat Pillow

2009-10-26T17:16:00.002-04:00

I don’t have bats in the belfry, but I do have a new bat pillow. I love bats and find them fascinating creatures. They can be cute until you see footage of them walking using the hands at the ends of their wings! Creepy indeed!! But they make such a spooky image whether at Halloween or another time of the year, what with their dark bodies and the way they hang upside down with wings outstretched or wrapped around their small forms.

The crux of my idea for a bat pillow was inspired by a stuffed animal that I own. The wings flop back and forth and can cover the stuffed bat. I thought it was a neat way to go, rather than making them stiff all the time. However, I think theirs is much better than mine. I’m not really happy with this pillow at all.

My bat body is okay, but I don’t really like the purple accents to the ears and feet. I do like having those areas outlined with another color, but I just don’t like the combination of these two colors in particular. Purple was Shawn’s suggestion as counterpoint to the red I had chosen for its eyes and mouth. I had thought about using a more realistic color, but he pointed out that I’m going kind of cartoony with my pillows so being practical with the color scheme might seem out of place. Since he knows colors and color combos better than I do I took his advice, but all in all I’m not happy with the look. I just don’t enjoy red and purple together.

I’m also not terribly happy with the face. I originally had larger eyes and correctly scaled them down, but they just don’t look beady enough. Maybe I should have made them even smaller or gone with another color besides red. The mouth is only okay as well. I’m not sure what it should be instead, but the overall appearance of the face just doesn’t appeal to me much.

I changed the feet on this one which I think is actually an improvement. I had pointy toes originally, and cut them out as part of the body pattern. However, when I stuffed them I ran into a problem. I created holes in the one foot trying to poke the polyfil into it, and I just couldn’t get the toes to fully turn inside out. I got so frustrated with it that I cut the feet off completely and decided to make new ones. I’m happy with the ones I created, and they were certainly easier to stuff. However, they are not part of the body which is what I intended and they were a little difficult to attach since I had already sewn the body up when I removed the original feet. I think I did a passable job, but they definitely don’t look as good as when the feet were part of the pattern.

As for the wings, I made a separate pattern for them because I wanted to be sure I could control the amount of stuffing in them so I could “close” them in on the body. I’m thinking now that it might have worked better to have everything as one pattern. I left two holes on the body, and stuck the wings inside them after I turned the body inside out and attached them that way. However, it was kind of a pain going that route and led to some frustrating moments making sure the entire end of the wing was inside the bat body. I made the wings puffier than the bat stuffed animal that I have to maintain the aesthetic of a pillow, but I’m not crazy with the end result. It’s too floppy, and they end up looking way too big despite the fact that I wanted them large in order to cover the bat body.

All in all, I really don’t like this pillow and feel I failed in its execution.

Schiz-O'-Lantern!!

2009-10-22T06:00:00.000-04:00

Pumpkins! How do you have Halloween or a Halloween project without pumpkins being represented? Not just any pumpkin either, but one that’s been personalized with your own choice of leering, smiling or growling face. For my pillow, I decided it would be neat to make a face on both sides since it wasn’t going to be a scene really and there wasn’t much to the general concept. However I figured if I’m going to put a face on both sides, I might as well have tons of fun with it and use two different faces. What better way to celebrate the Halloween season than creating a pumpkin pillow with a split personality!!

I’m really kind of surprised I didn’t do this one first since, when you break it down, it’s probably one of the easiest pillows to do. In fact, I think it might have been one of the quickest ones too. I didn’t spend as much time on this one perfecting or messing around with the different elements. I had my idea down and the two faces sketched. I showed them to Shawn to see if he wanted to give me some input, and thankfully he did because he suggested I make the mouth on the scary side even bigger and wider. He drew what he had in mind, and I liked his version a lot better than my tame one (he’s a lot more demented and horror-minded than I am!). So when I sat down to actually draw the patterns for each part, it took me no time at all. I actually liked the idea of essentially going with the first thing that I sketched since it had that feel of when I was young. We would sit in the middle of the kitchen floor, newspapers spread around us, pumpkin in our lap and pen in hand. We’d draw a face onto its surface and never doubt that it was exactly what we wanted.

Once I had all my patterns, another thought came to me. Do I render the pumpkin with curved lines from top to bottom to give it that pumpkiny feel? If I do, what would be the best way? If I cut the pumpkin shape I had into three sections, then I could work with each to stitch it together and create those grooves. However, I didn’t think it would make those lines look indented enough. Shawn to the rescue again! He suggested I sew the sections inside out since that usually does make that effect, so that’s what I did. I drew my pumpkin shape a second time and cut that into the pieces in case it didn’t work or I didn’t like the results. However, once I was finished with it I absolutely loved the way it looked!! It evoked the image of a pumpkin so well.

After that, it was a pretty straightforward piece of sewing. I ended up screwing up when I did the stem though. I planned to sew the stem on the inside because I thought it looked a bit better than doing it on the outside. I think I was thrown by the idea of how I was going to stuff the stem because I failed to sew the bottom of each side of the stem to the pumpkin. I was close to completing the pillow so I could turn it inside out when I noticed this problem. Now, I had to either take apart some of my stitching or try to sew the rest of the stem through a smallish hole. This time, I opted for powering through and sewing through that hole. I didn’t want to have to undo what I had done for something that wasn’t very big. After I finished, I also ended up with a bit of orange fleece around the stem that didn’t quite look right so I cut that off.

I’m not exactly happy with the stem. …..I’m not sure why. I don’t know if it looks too skinny at the top or it’s too long or what exactly. I always cut the fabric or felt a little bigger than the pattern to allow for my stitches, but I think I might need to do a bit more. Of course, maybe it’s a case by case basis. Who knows!! I sure don’t. : )

All in all though, I’m really happy with my Schiz-O’-Lantern pillow! Right after I finished, I wasn’t so sure because of the stem and it didn’t seem to look as awesome as when I was creating it. However, the idea is a fantastic and creepy one so I’m extremely pleased with that. Plus, for some reason the color combination of orange and gold seems to strike a chord with me. It attracts me and makes me feel satisfied and content in some way. So, I think this is a great pillow and I hope you do as well!

Inky, Quill and Blot

2009-10-18T21:57:00.010-04:00

Who doesn’t get creeped out by the sound of a cat yowling in the night? If you’ve ever been outside and heard a cat fight in the distance, their screams and protests coming out of the dark, you’ll know why cats, black ones in particular, make such an effective symbol for the Halloween season. Aside from their associations with bad luck, stealing the breath from babies when they sleep, and being familiars to the witch population, the way they look, move, stare, and blink as well as meow, cry, yowl and growl, they are spooky characters all on their own.

When I saw the sketch that Shawn drew for a cat pillow (shown above), I was blown away. It was so visually appealing with its simple lines and cartoony style, that I thought he and the drawing were brilliant. However, in my neurotic need to not cannibalize his ideas I changed it somewhat. I really loved the three different cats, particularly the tall, skinny one, so I wanted to keep that. I also liked the setting of a nighttime sky with a full moon, so I kept that too. Rather than have buildings in the background, I decided to have the focus be on the cats so I put them on a fence instead. I mirrored in the fence the curve that Shawn put to the buildings, or at least I tried to do that. I’m still such a babe in the woods when it comes to design and art. I added some stars in the sky to fill that section out more since it wasn’t taken up with buildings, and my alterations were done.

After I drew the skinny and fat cat patterns, I was having a hard time visualizing a cat somewhere in between the two. I thought about mixing it up a bit and showing that other cat standing on the fence rather than sitting like the other two. I imagined it might be a nice contrast and add a bit more to the scene. However, my designs for that third cat sucked and ended up looking freakish so I ditched that and just powered through, hammering out a pattern for the average one that looked like its own distinct form. Hopefully, I did that. I do know that I like what I did with the head, giving it a kind of puffy appearance but then angling the cheeks to points.

Once I cut those out in felt and sewed their pieces together (head, body and tail), I had the once again difficult task of trying to sew something very small…..i.e. their eyes. I decided against doing mouths for the cats because I didn’t want to have to deal with the same problem all over again with their teeth. Luckily, I think the effect is much spookier when you just see yellow eyes coming out of a pool of blackness! I’m going to have to start considering the possibility of using glue because when you deal with felt that tiny, you lose a bit of the look and effect once the thread starts going through the thin material. It feels like my mind isn’t open to other options or ways of thinking just yet. I’m too much on a straight path with these projects…..doing specific things in order to create what I want. I need to try to loosen up some, relax with the whole thing.

Let me just say, I now understand what freelance artists mean when they say they’re tired of drawing a particular thing for a client. By the time I was halfway done sewing the individual planks of wood together for the fence, I was ready to move on to something else, something different!! Even though when you sew you’re doing the same thing over and over, it doesn’t seem that bad because you’re dealing with different materials and various patterns. The repetition was amped up so much with this fence though, that I just didn’t want to see it anymore. I wasn’t even finished with it once I sewed it together because then I had to position it just right on the pillow base and sew that! By the time I had completed that part, I was actually relieved that I didn’t have to worry about it anymore. I think I was being too particular with the fence without even fully realizing it. I’m not exactly sure how happy I am with the outcome. I think it conveys the look of a fence just fine, but I feel like something is off or that I could have done better on it.

One final detail on my cat pillow before I put this thing to bed (ha! bad pun fully intended and relished!) When I started to draw the stars, I was having problems getting them to come out right. Shawn suggested I just draw it like every person learns how to draw a star and then erase the inside lines. I never even thought to do that!! It’s a reason I need to keep Shawn around. It also points out that no matter what creativity you could say I have as a person, my mind is very literal in its scope and thinking. Anyway, I started drawing a couple different shapes for the stars and was thinking about drawing a third when I realized I was unintentionally mimicking the shape of the cats! I had done a fat one and a skinny one, so I went with it and drew an average one. I ended up doing the same thing with the holes in the three fence planks, though I don’t think you can see it as much given their small size.

Overall, I would have to say I’m happy with this pillow. I love cats, and animals in general, so there’s a certain appeal just in that alone. I love the effect of these black silhouette-type shapes sitting together in the night, watching everything silently. If you have ever stared into the eyes of a cat, you get this feeling that they definitely know more than you do and are totally aware of that fact. It’s an aspect to the feline species that I utterly enjoy!

Even Witches Have Bad Pillows

2009-10-15T04:30:00.001-04:00

What is Halloween without some witch flying on her broomstick or cackling with bony hands outstretched to grab you? It just wouldn’t be the same without the old hag, so I had to include her as one of my projects. Shawn had sketched out a scene with three witches around a bubbling cauldron which looked so spectacularly creepy that it had to be done. However, I’m still fighting with that neurotic sense of self-worth and hated to take yet another one of his ideas verbatim. So, I reworked the witch idea into something of my own that I was incredibly excited about. (The sketch is below so you can take a look for yourselves!) It was simple yet spooky, and I thought it was a little inspired when I added the test tube and flask of ingredients for her to add to her witchy brew. I now had an idea that was my own to do.

I drew the elements involved for this pillow before I did the demon one, so the fire is actually mine. I’m not crazy about it, but because it was on a smaller scale I thought it represented flames well enough so didn’t have Shawn do this bit over. I originally planned to do one color inside the test tube and another in the flask, but after Shawn suggested using green in the cauldron I knew it would be overkill and end up making the scene look too busy. The green absolutely had to stay so it ended up the color in both the test tube and the flask for more continuity. He also helped me with the bubbles as well. He suggested doing two different sizes, but that is almost impossible to do when you’re dealing with pieces of fabric that small so instead we used fewer bubbles. I think it came out looking pretty cool!

When I had sewn together everything for my scene, I laid them on the fleece rectangle that I had cut out for the pillow base. I chose purple because I wanted something dark for her face to be appearing out of, but I didn’t go with black because I used that for the cauldron and her hat. The size I chose for the pillow itself dwarfed the actual scene and made too much empty space around it. The feeling that I wanted and had from the sketch just wasn’t there, but it didn’t look right to me either if I just made the pillow smaller. I thought I could possibly do a border around the pillow edges, something I have yet to do, or maybe even put one around the scene itself to close it in more without cutting down the size of the pillow itself. I could use the same green in the cauldron to keep the color scheme tight.

On the way to work one morning, I talked my concerns over with Shawn. He suggested I could do a border of green slime dripping down to fill some of that empty space. I liked the general idea, but not the slime part. It didn’t quite fit with the scene I had developed. However, it made me think of the witch being in a cave so I could do stalactites dropping down from above and stalagmites rising from the cave floor. I decided to go with that, and he said I could get a darker gray felt to try some shading on the stalactites and ‘mites. We stopped at Hobby Lobby after work that day, and I picked out a gray as well as one that was called charcoal. It was nicely textured with gray and black, and I thought I might be able to just use that for the rock formations. Shawn agreed, so I drew my new pillow border. I had the top section on the sides coming down to below mid-level to give the impression of cave walls, but when I cut it out I screwed up and ended up with just the stalactite section and not enough felt to redo it. I could either cut those sections out separately and sew them to the top piece or just use what I had. Given that I needed the sides to sew the pillow together, simply using the top piece worked after all.

My last bit of trouble with this pesky witch was her mouth. I had done a couple versions of her eyes as I was working on the whole thing, and finally found two I liked but I just wasn’t happy with her mouth. I couldn’t make something so tiny look creepy enough, and once again Shawn was there. He tried two or three versions before I found one that I liked. It has a Scooby Doo kind of feel to it, which works for me since that is one of my all-time favorite shows. I now had everything I needed to sew the scene to the pillow and then sew that up as well.

All in all, I think the sketch works better than the eventual outcome in pillow form. I’m thinking I should have done a black background, and then made the cauldron as well as the witch’s hat purple. Maybe that way only her hat, eyes and mouth materializing out of the gloom would have come across better. However, I didn’t feel like the flames would have looked as good against a purple cauldron. I also think that charcoal felt makes the whole thing look a little drab and dirty. In the end, I’m not very pleased with this one which is a double disappointment since I loved the idea and sketch so much.

A Little Demon Will Do!

2009-10-12T04:30:00.000-04:00

As much as a vampire, a Frankenstein monster and a mummy are entrenched as the ultimate symbols of Halloween, a devil or a demon is usually used to fill out the seasonal lineup of characters. I wanted to use one of the little, red, horned guys because I thought it would be relatively easy to make (right now I’m all about easy to do!!!) and because I always enjoy a good story or movie with them as the villains. Of course, once I saw Shawn’s design for the pillow I definitely wanted to do it!

This pillow is pretty much all Shawn’s idea from design to color choices. The concept was sketched out in that Starbucks café, and after thinking about it I decided to change it a little by doing a skull and crossbones with the face only use pitchforks underneath the devil’s head. I sketched out the idea in a small sketchbook and thought it would work. My devil ended up looking more like a regular ole demon, but I figured that would fit in just as well so I started drawing all the separate pieces. I did the head, the horn, the eyes, the mouth, the ears and the pitchfork. Before I cut them out, I moved onto the two different flame drawings and got completely and utterly stuck!! I couldn’t for the life of me draw anything that looked like fire….even with a smaller, second version to add depth. I tried and erased and tried again and erased again, but to no avail. I got so frustrated with it that when I started to work on it Saturday morning to begin sewing, I had Shawn draw the fire for me!! First drawing out was absolutely fantastic, so I knew I made the right decision. One day, I’ll have to do it for myself but I needed to get going on this pillow so I could get another one finished. Perfecting it on my own will have to come later.I now had everything I needed, so on to the pattern and fabric cutting. I started work on the demon’s face first and assembled all my parts together. I ended up doing the beard without a pattern and had to do it a couple of times before I liked the result. I then sewed everything for it together except the mouth. I wasn’t crazy about the way it looked, and I was sitting at the table staring at it when Shawn came over. He helped me pare it down a bit to make it smaller and a tad thinner. The result was definitely more menacing than the one I had done. The last touch was the little teeth which were a pain to work with for sure!

Next were the two different flames. Shawn had done the drawing for both on the same piece of paper, so I traced the big one onto another one and cut the small one out of the original. These were difficult to deal with too, both in the pattern and the fabric, because of all the twists and turns in the shape. It was particularly hard to cut those curves in the fleece since it stretches and shifts so much more than the felt. But, I got them done and they looked awesome! (It was around here that I cut the pitchfork out and realized that it just wasn’t going to work, so I ditched it and went with Shawn’s original idea.) I was a little concerned that maybe the colors on those flames should have been reversed so the darker was on the outside. Given that red was going to be used for the demon, Shawn had gone with as much contrast as possible in using the two other colors associated with fire. However, I usually think of red first when I picture fire so I was wondering if the darker orange would have worked better on the outside. I have to say though that the progression of light to dark or vice versa is rather striking. It definitely catches the eye, and with the way he drew the flames the whole thing gives the impression that this column of fire has just gone WHOOSH!! with the demon’s head popping out. So, I stopped worrying about it…..for the most part. : )

Let me tell you, and I’ll be quite blunt, stuffing this thing was a real bitch. Trying to get into the individual flame peaks was so freaking hard! My thought was to stuff those first, so I got my handy-dandy chopstick tool and started pushing the polyfil in. After that, I began stuffing the main part of the pillow but found that I couldn’t get the two parts to combine. I ended up with flame peaks that had a depression in the pillow where it met the rest of it and were a bit floppy. I didn’t like that at all, so I took the polyfil back out, and ripped it apart since it had gotten mashed together by the chopstick into these kind of tightly-packed pieces. In pushing at the fabric when I turned it inside out and during the first stuffing run, I had poked the really small peak on the right so much that a small hole had developed. I had to sew that up before I could start all over. Once I did that, I began again only this time pushing the stuffing into the center of the pillow first. I took the chopstick tool as well as my finger and worked some of it into the flame peaks, shifting everything around so there would be polyfil right behind each part to puff those areas where the peaks and rest of the pillow met. This worked out much better. I couldn’t get any stuffing into the very tips of some of those flame peaks and not at all for a couple, but it didn’t seem to be a problem. Everything kept its shape well enough and I was happy with the end result. I still have to work on closing up the hole though, but luckily I planned ahead and kept it at the bottom so the puckering isn’t as noticeable.

OOOOOoooooooooooooo......Ghost Pillow!

2009-10-08T04:30:00.000-04:00

Ghosts……they’re creepy and spooky. They’re intangible, they can pop up anywhere, and unless you’ve got one of those awesome proton packs it’s awfully hard to get rid of one of them. They may be one of the more cliché elements of Halloween, but who doesn’t like a good, old-fashioned ghost?! I know I do. Some of the horror movies that I actually like feature a spirit or a ghost.

So, I most certainly had a ghost listed for one of the plushes I had originally planned to make. As Shawn and I were talking about them, he ended up sketching four different looks for me to consider and work from. I ended up liking parts of two of them, so planned to combine them into my own creation. However, once I changed to the pillow idea another way of thinking was in order.

Shawn had sketched out a scene for another item on my list, but I had something else in mind for that. But, I liked the general look of it and said it would work well for the ghost pillow. It was yet another Halloween cliché……ghosts in a graveyard. Not only ghosts in a graveyard, but ghosts coming out of said graves!! However, as we were talking about it we came across a way to do it that made it at least a step up from the norm. Possibly not and it might actually be a hack piece, but I enjoyed the way it played out.
To be quite honest, I don’t remember exactly how it all came about for this particular scene. I have to fight against the urge to basically shout out on my site, “I came up with ideas too on these projects!! It wasn’t just my husband!!” In truth, Shawn is extremely creative and talented as well as being much more visual than I am. During the course of him drawing things out and my throwing out comments on what he showed me, this ghost pillow is the result. So, rather than talk more about the process, I’m just going to point out what I specifically like about this one. (I decided to speak to this here and open up a bit of my own neuroses because I was having a tough time writing this particular blog entry. It wasn’t flowing like the others, and I think I was getting too hung up on trying to delineate between what were his ideas and what were mine. Rather than continuing to struggle with this, I thought I’d alleviate that stress and at the same time give some content that perhaps other people might relate to and be happy to hear.)

In my opinion, the true appeal of this pillow is all of the visual elements that the eye can focus on. There isn’t just one ghost but three! You’ve got one that is much bigger than the others, so your attention can zero in on him right away. Plus, he’s starting to fly up from the grave, he’s fully formed and it’s just a really neat image.

After him, not only do you have two different ghosts to look at but you have different gravestones, different poses, and even different personalities to a certain extent. I’m quite fond of the second largest because as he’s coming out of his grave he’s kind of curled around it, possibly even hugging it. In a way, it almost gives him a shy appearance, as if he’s half-hiding. I’m not saying that is definitely how it is though. He could just be coming through the gravestone and that’s how his “hands” were positioned. But it’s an interesting design concept that is open to interpretation, even more so because there was no intentionality behind it.

The last ghost is a fun one too because you get to see him just beginning to rise, and I just love the look of part of a head and then on each side, separated by grass, two little round parts for the arms coming out. Plus, he looks kind of unhappy so…..is he an unhappy ghost?....is it uncomfortable rising from the grave?....is he grumpy when he first “gets up”? There are a lot of connotations there with no one concept being correct. The whole pillow scene kind of invites you to wonder about what is going on, where are they going, who are these ghosts, how did they die, etc.

The one sheer stroke of luck that I have to mention is the fabric for the pillow. I had gone to JoAnn’s at one point, and thanks to Puppatoons' tutelage I checked the remnant bin to see what was there. I saw this rolled up blue fabric with bits of white in it like clouds. I had no upcoming plan that required this kind of fabric, but I couldn’t pass it up! I came home, tossed it into the chair with the rest of my fabric and went about with whatever project I was working on at the time. When I was deciding what color to use for the Ghost pillow, Shawn suggested I use that blue fabric. I was thinking something darker since I was imagining night sky, and I didn’t think this would work. However, when I looked at it again it wasn’t as light as I had remembered and there were areas that had an even darker blue. It was perfect!! The fabric had this awesome textured look to it so it evoked this wonderful imagery of the beginning of a nighttime sky.

The whole process went pretty smoothly. I drew out all the individual pieces at work which was a big help. Then it was a matter of sewing the different parts together where needed, assembling the scene and sewing it all onto the pillow, and then doing the pillow itself. I think I did a little bit better with closing up the hole this time. I did it a different way from before and it didn’t pucker nearly as much. Hopefully, I can continue to improve on that in the future and get it to a point where you can’t tell any difference. I’m not sure how exactly, but I’ll give it a try!

BOO!!

2009-10-05T04:30:00.001-04:00

In keeping with the idea of quick and easy, one of the items on my Halloween pillow list was the word Boo. It is most definitely iconic! You see it everywhere when the creepy season begins…..on T-shirts, on treat bags, on paper towels. So why not create a pillow with it? Plus, I like the word and figured it would be fun to do.

When Shawn and I were talking about the list in that Starbucks café, he asked what I thought about making the word out of candy corn. He sketched it out, but I wasn’t crazy about how the “B” looked. I didn’t think it would convey the letter enough and was afraid people would struggle with what the pillow was supposed to represent. So, I changed it to having a normal “B” and the two “O”s would be the candy corn. Plus, I thought it would make those candy corn “O”s stand out more.

I sketched the “B” and the candy corn pretty quickly at work one day. So quickly in fact, that it made me apprehensive that they weren’t very good since I hadn’t spent any time refining them. That thought messed with my mind enough that I actually ended up changing what I had a bit!! : ) It worked out better though because I ended up with a “B” which had a little more personality than what I originally drew. I made the bottom loop a little bigger and coming out at an angle so it would kind of point to the “O”s. I did the same for the cut out part of the bottom loop to maintain that aesthetic. After a quick call to Shawn, I also ended up making the candy corn pattern a little more rounded to be sure they were less like the sweet treat and more representational of a letter. As I was looking at the final results, I thought it would make a nice touch if one of the “O”s was regular candy corn and the other was Indian corn. I cut the two patterns out at work to see if I had enough room in the sketch book to do the pillow pattern. Unfortunately, the “B” and the candy corn were a bit too big so we would need to get larger paper.

On the way to work one morning, Shawn and I talked about what colors to make the “B” and the pillow. We decided black would be best for the pillow and white would be a good match for the “B”, since it would be a stark contrast against the pillow and it would pick up a color in the candy corn. After work, we went to JoAnn’s for the fabric that I would need in order to begin. We figured it would be cheaper to do the scenes in felt rather than get fleece for everything, so we started looking around the store to see if we could get all that I needed there. We did indeed find the rectangular pieces of felt that I had used for my demonals and demon hearts, so we picked up what I required for this first pillow as well as ones for some of the others. We also got a couple sheets of larger paper, so we were able to one-stop shop!!

Shawn had suggested that I make the candy corns crooked so it would better give the impression of an “O”. It also made it more fun-looking that way! I planned to trace around the BOO so the pillow would kind of look like the word too. Not only would it make the shape of the pillow more interesting, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to hedge my bets and really drive home what this was supposed to be.

So, now I had my pillow pattern and my letter patterns. Rather than cutting the candy corn into its three sections, I just drew them on the pattern itself, pinned it to the felt, and cut along each line. (I found out afterward that it would have been a little easier when sewing the pieces to each other if I had cut each one bigger than the pattern dictated.) Once I did this, I used the felt as a pattern for the second “O”. After that, I sewed the pieces together and now I had all my letters.

It was at this point that I really screwed up. I went straight to the pillow and sewed the two fabric pieces together. I didn’t realize my mistake until I was through and found I hadn’t sewn the letters on first! I had two options now: try to sew them on through the small hole I had left for stuffing or undo some of my stitches so I could sew the letters on without struggling to do so. I chose the second option, so immediately went to work on removing some of what I had just done. So very frustrating!!! I’m going to need to use a checklist from now on to make sure I do things in the right order.

Once I had the stitches removed, I was able to sew the “B” and the candy corns on pretty smoothly. I finished up the pillow, stuffed it and then stitched up the hole I had left. My first Halloween pillow was complete! I showed it to Shawn and he liked it, but I could only see the puckering where I sewed the pillow on the outside to close the hole. I haven’t quite got the hang of that part yet. I also made the mistake of picking the top of the pillow as the place to stuff it rather than the bottom. It’s more noticeable that way, unfortunately.

So, as much as I do like the pillow…..the great colors, its simplicity, the fun shape of the candy corn……it’s a little bittersweet. But, everything is a learning experience and I need to not see it as a flaw but as a means to grow. Besides, if I don’t look at that one negative aspect, it’s a pretty cool pillow!

Happy Halloween Project!!

2009-10-01T04:30:00.001-04:00

Halloween in our household usually starts earlier than October. My husband, Shawn, starts thinking about what he’ll blog about for the Halloween month as well as scoping out the stores to see when they put out their seasonal displays. This year, he ended up working in August to write the entire month’s worth of blog entries ahead of time so he’d be prepared and less stressed. In the past, there has been a list posted of people who are celebrating Halloween during the month of October. This year, though, Shawn set up a site called Countdown to Halloween to act as a portal for all of them.

So, anyway, Halloween has been in the air and on my mind lately. I had finished the Secret Project, and was wondering what I should work on next. There is the task of recreating in fabric what I’ve already done in felt, but I was more taken with the idea of doing something new. I tossed out a comment to Shawn that it would be fun to participate in the Countdown to Halloween, but I didn’t think I could do 31 posts. He suggested I don’t worry about trying to do it for the entire month, but do a smaller amount of plushes and spread them out. He figured I could post about the process and idea for each one and then make another post when I completed it. (That's not likely to happen, but at least I will be posting throughout the month.....just not as frequently as I would have liked.)

We began talking about what I could do, and I said it would be so cool and cute to make plushes out of iconic Halloween items. At this point we were talking about my possibly doing enough to fill out the month, so I would need to keep all of them simple so they’d be quick to create and sew. I could work on them through September, build up an amount to begin posting about in October, and then continue to work throughout the rest of that month. I started making a list the next day at work, and e-mailed him what I had at one point. He called with his own idea which ended up on the list as well. This was at the end of the week, so that Saturday we went out to breakfast to think up more possibilities. While we ate, we decided since his idea had a theme to it we would take it off the list and wait to do it next year. We ended up narrowing down the rest of the list to 13 choices, which worked out well as a spooky Halloween number!

After that, we headed over to a nearby Barnes & Noble to sit in the comfy chairs and start sketching out what I could do with each item on the list. The four fun chairs were already occupied, so we set ourselves up at a table in the Starbucks café instead. I, of course, wanted a coffee and he wanted something to drink so I went up to stand in line for our refreshments. It was storming outside, so there was a long line and I ended up waiting for awhile before I could return to our table. In the meantime, Shawn had been busy and had sketched Halloween scenes of a few of the ideas on my list as possible ways I might consider going. He thought I could do plushes of some and then pillows with the scenes for others. I was so taken with them that I wondered if I should just do pillows for all 13 of them.

So, that’s what I’m doing! (Actually, I don't think I'll be able to get 13 done by the end of October, so I'm going to shoot for as many as I can. Life, laziness and a lack of total commitment where I spend every minute after work and on the weekends on my project. Maybe one day.) There are going to be a couple different ones that won’t quite be a pillow with a scene on it. The ideas just lent themselves to going in another direction with them, but it will serve to mix things up a bit. I ended up reworking some of the scenes he came up with so I could make them a little more my own. As awesome as they were as is, I kind of feared that I would just be piggybacking off of his tremendous creativity rather than having mine be the force behind my own project.

Be sure to come back periodically through the month of October, so you can see each new pillow! They’ll be fun, they’ll be cute, and most importantly they’ll be Halloweeny!!

Secret Project Part Three - The Bibliosaurus

2009-09-05T19:59:00.012-04:00

I wasn’t sure what to make for Anne that would be specific to her likes and interests. I was hesitant to go with what seemed like obvious ones such as her love of dinosaurs or books/the library because I wanted it to be a little different and maybe unexpected. However, I ended up not doing that at all and went with BOTH of those ideas instead! : ) Am I a cop out? Perhaps, but the result was so incredibly adorable that I don’t really care!!
In coming up with the sketch for my dinosaur, I intended to use a stuffed animal that I purchased earlier this year as a model. I figured if I could render it well enough, I could possibly use that drawing as the basis for how I wanted his character to look in a children’s story I wrote. But, when I sketched him without the stuffed animal in front of me, it came out looking nothing like him. It actually ended up looking like a water dinosaur, and I liked the result so I decided to go with it. He’s no longer a water dinosaur, however, because when I actually cut out the pattern for his flippers and attached them to his body they ended up looking like feet. So the water dinosaur came onto land!I made the pattern small because Anne is crazy over tiny things. I knew I’d never be able to pull off making him incredibly tiny, so I used the sketch I drew as the pattern since it was definitely smaller than most plushes but big enough that it seemed doable. This one required a little bit of thought on my part given the fact that there was a head, a body which was curved, and a tail. I wasn’t sure exactly how to do the pattern. Do I do it all as one shape or do I do it in sections? If I did the former, it seemed like an incredible undertaking to try to make it all one piece to then work with and turn inside out. However, if I did the latter I’d have to mentally cut each part of him down the middle and then lay that flat to use as my pattern. That is something I’m not at all good at doing!! In the interest of making things less complicated for myself as well as not creating more work, I decided to give the one-piece pattern a try. I inked my original sketch to keep and then traced over it. I then cut that out and laid it on another piece of paper to outline the outside shape. I flipped it over and laid the reverse one a little space apart from the first and outlined that shape . I now had a possible pattern to use for the entire dinosaur as one piece! I tried it out in felt first to see if it would work, and it actually came out spectacularly.

Let me tell you, stuffing something as small as his feet and tail was definitely not easy. When I purchased another bag of stuffing, it came with a “stuffing tool” which was essentially a wooden chopstick. Believe me, I used the heck out of that thing!!! I worked on the feet first and then sewed them to the body. (I wouldn’t notice until after I finished him that they were a little too low on the body to splay out separately from each other.) I then turned it inside out and sewed him up, leaving a section open to stuff. I reversed him, stuffed him and sewed him up. That was where I made my second mistake. I forgot to do the eyes and mouth before I sewed him up, so the knots would now be on the outside rather than nicely hidden. I finished him by putting the needle for the eyes and the mouth on one side and pushing them through to the other side, lining it up the best I could to match. I also pulled the thread tight when I did the eyes to give an indented look to them.

Once I was done, I wasn’t completely happy with him but I thought she’d probably like him and quite frankly I was tired and couldn’t bear the notion of starting all over again. One morning on the way to work, I told Shawn I was trying to come up with a clever name for my dinosaur. We went back and forth on it, working off each other’s ideas, until finally Shawn came up with using biblio and thus Bibliosaurus was born. It was sheer genius and I loved it immediately!! It was the perfect name for Anne’s gift. With that name, I then wondered how we could find or make tiny glasses to perch on his nose. Luckily, I found some on Etsy that looked like they would work. (My dinosaur’s head is considerably smaller than most dolls, so I didn’t find any that seemed to fit on doll/miniature sites.) I thought I was finished with the whole thing, and just had to wait for those glasses to come in the mail. However, that nagging feeling of dissatisfaction with him kept haunting me. The glasses came, and it was then that I decided to do the Bibliosaurus over again from the start.

This time, I changed the pattern a bit so I could have one side of the legs as part of the body pattern. I pinned the leg pattern to the part of the body one where I thought a leg looked best, cut out the body and leg then did that over again for the remaining three. I then cut out four more legs to place on top of those and sew together. I hoped this might make the process easier as well as creating a less cramped look to the legs. I also drew dots to outline the eyes and mouth on both sides of the head and sewed those before I even stuffed it. I wanted to make sure I didn’t repeat that mistake again.

By this time, it was a Friday and I determined to finish the whole thing that night because I really wanted to mail them out the next day. (Unfortunately, that didn’t happen so I had to wait until this past Monday after work.). Around midnight or so I completed him by sewing the little glasses onto his nose, placing them down far enough so he’d have that stereotypical librarian look.

I’m not sure I pulled off the less cramped look to his feet, but it did give it a slightly different appearance. The first one though could actually stand without being propped up. By doing the eyes and mouth the way that I did on the second one, I wasn’t able to achieve the indented look of the first one and they ended up being bigger which I’m not sure I liked. However, the mouth synced up perfectly on the second one. I also ended up liking the tail better on the first one but the stomach on the second was more rounded. All in all, I’m not sure I improved upon it but instead just made two different versions. I definitely wasn’t going to try it again, so sent the second one to Anne and kept the first sans glasses for myself.

Secret Project Part Two - Zorch!

2009-09-05T19:20:00.016-04:00

I came up with a general idea for Jerzy relatively quickly. If you’re an Art & Story listener, this won’t be news to you but he has a particular passion for sound effects. Jerzy spends a good deal of time and thought into figuring out what kind of sound effects to use for his comics, how the sound would be spelled out, what kind of color it would be and whether there would be any other effect necessary (like gradients, waviness to the lines, if a certain part of the sound has more emphasis, etc.) He jokes that this makes him a nerd, and it does : ), but it also makes for a more interesting experience when you read his comics. (Below is the original Zorch!.)

Given this passion, I thought I would make a pillow-like plush with various sound effects from his graphic novel, The Front, sewn on top of it. I could use different colors and sizes, picking out ones that were specific to his characters so it could be a cacophony of sounds at a glance. I started making a list, but when I discussed it with Shawn he suggested I concentrate on Zorch! for his main character, Thirsty. This was a better idea because it was much more focused and possibly more personal. I thought I could do a lightning bolt of sorts on top of the pillow since Thirsty expends energy as his super power and then sew the letters on top of that. However, I wasn’t thinking visually enough because Shawn suggested I do the pillow in that type of shape to begin with. I loved this idea since it would be another facet to represent the sound effect, which I figured would appeal to Jerzy that much more. We ended up tweaking the idea a bit by changing the lightning bolt-type shape to something more symbolic of an energy burst. Now the question became…..what color(s)?

Shawn suggested green because he had heard Jerzy say that was his favorite color, but I told him that I was thinking more blue and white since that’s what he had done in his graphic novel. Shawn looked at me for a second and then pointed out that The Front was in black and white. I told him nuh-uh and immediately went to get our copy to show him. I opened it up to discover that he was indeed right! Where had I come up with blue and white then? It’s possible that I was influenced by the fact that the front and back cover of the graphic novel are in color, and it shows that Thirsty’s skin is light blue. However, I prefer to think that I was inspired by Jerzy’s sound effect and grafted my own idea onto his image of Thirsty’s power and the corresponding Zorch!. It would only serve to add another layer to his sound effect pillow. The final nuance to the whole project was drawing the letters as close as I could to how Jerzy had them in his comic.

Once I started working with the fabric, I cut out my letters first which went much quicker this time because I only needed one layer of fabric and I didn’t have to stuff them. I cut out the base of the pillow and then arranged the letters on top to see how it would basically look in the end. There seemed to be something missing, so I showed it to Shawn and asked if there needed to be another color between the letters and the base to give it depth. He agreed. I already had the lighter blue from Mark’s project, so I cut out a smaller version of the base and that made it pop more.

I’m not sure the shape really gives the impression of an energy wave. I actually think it looks like something else, but I won’t say what because then anyone that sees it will only be able to view it in those terms. I also think I should have stuffed it a little less than I did to make it squishier, but I was afraid if I didn’t then the whole shape and the letters wouldn’t stand out as much. Of course, it’s not meant to be a pillow but……dare I say it…..a piece of art *cringes with self-consciousness* so it probably worked out okay after all. Once again, when it comes right down to it, uniqueness goes a long way and it’s most likely the only plush sound effect out there!!

Secret Project Part One - CV Comics

2009-09-05T19:07:00.006-04:00

In trying to figure out what to send to everyone, I wasn’t exactly sure what to do for Mark. One of the things that I love about his work is, of course, his monsters. Who wouldn’t!! But, I do not have the skill to do them justice nor do I have the skill to try and render any of his characters. So, what to do? Aside from his love of metal music and Lee Majors, comics certainly have helped define who he is so I hit upon an idea that I thought might work. What if I made a plush of his website name, CV Comics? Each comic that he does is important to him, but his website as a whole is just as vital and representative of what he values. So, I decided to go for it and that’s what I did.

I wanted to try to bring something from his comics to the project, even if it was just the tiniest nuance, so I attempted to use his 60s style as an influence. Rather than copying a free font that might look the part, I drew each of the letters in a simplistic fashion but tried to make it more interesting than regular block letters. I’m not saying I achieved this, but that was my intent! Some of that intent may have gotten lost in the sewing process, and it could be something I get better at in the future. I also decided to go two-tone with his website name and make the CV part in a warm, somewhat muted blue and the Comics in a warm, golden color. They were somewhat reminiscent of the kind of palette he enjoys using at times, and the two stood out nicely against each other.

I drew the letters during my work breaks. Mark helped me out a lot by choosing a name for his site that had three C’s in it! So, that certainly cut down on the sketching part of it as well as the cutting out of the letters. Once I had that completed, the sewing began. I cut and stitched each letter and when that was finished, it made me realize that a plush alphabet would be a great teaching aide for kids. They came out so soft and fun that I bet kids would like to play/learn with them. Of course, I’m sure someone else has thought of this idea as well and there are probably countless sites out there to find such items. It’s definitely something for me to keep in mind because you just never know what people might want and from where.

Since I didn’t want to send a jumble of plush letters in a box for little Mark to spell out his website, I sewed the letters together so it would make one giant plush website name. I sewed them together in pairs first, and then sewed each pair to another with the CV going on last atop Comics. It was actually a good thing that I planned to do this because the first “C” I did was for Comics so it was golden, and it ended up looking kind of like a banana. But when you sew it to another letter, you can squish it down and anchor it to hold its shape. Voila, no mistake!! The “V” kind of slants to the right though and I couldn’t fix that as easily, but overall it came out pretty well. At the very least, it’s probably the only plush website name in existence!!

Secret Project Revealed!

2009-09-05T19:05:00.002-04:00

Earlier I mentioned that I was working on a Secret Project, but beyond a couple of vague posts I haven’t written about it again. Well, I finished it maybe a couple weeks ago but ordered an accessory for one of them so had to wait before I could do anything with them. That accessory came, but then I decided I wasn’t completely happy with the last part of it. So I used a couple of work breaks last week and then spent all evening last Friday to finish it.

The Secret Project was three separate gifts for our friends in Ann Arbor: Jerzy Drozd, Anne Drozd and Mark Rudolph. I just wanted to send something homemade their way and did so after work this past Monday. They received it, so now I can blog about the whole thing.

Shower Curtain Comic Strip

2009-08-19T21:38:00.003-04:00

Here it is…..my very own comic strip!! I moved forward with my plan to draw during my breaks at work, and spent this week creating The Shower Curtain. It was a great experience, and I can’t wait to work on more.

This one stemmed from our annoying shower curtains…..annoying, that is, until we realized we needed to raise the bar. Stupid us! Anyway, our shower curtains kept billowing in all the time so that every time you moved, every time you turned, every time you shifted, it clung to you. It was sooooo irritating! We even did what I showed in the first panel, and bought a shower curtain specifically with weights thinking that would help to keep it in place. Well, it certainly kept the bottom part in place but did nothing to keep the rest of it from creeping in toward us. Our bathtub is by NO means large, so it became very claustrophobic!

I came up with the brilliant idea of pushing it back so it would stick to the top of the tub and then spraying water into the small crevice that formed. That worked wonderfully, but the best solution goes to Shawn when he did the very simple thing of raising the bar. After that, we didn’t have a problem anymore and the shower curtain stayed in place…..as much as it can when there is only so much room to maneuver in the tub.

One day when I was getting pissed off at the curtain, I was thinking about being clingy as a person and I placed that personality trait onto the curtain as well. I ended up making the joke to Shawn, “It’s clingy! Nobody likes a needy shower curtain!” I jotted that down as a strip, and intended to do it exactly as I had written but as I was nearing the end of drawing it I wondered if the end was actually funny. It might be to me, but it could fall flat with everyone else. (Of course, you can say that about everything.) I brought this up after work with Shawn, and we continued the discussion once we got home. I’m not setting out to definitely create funny strips, each one having that rhythmic punch line, but I don’t want to make duds either. I felt I needed something better, and Shawn thought I could go with one that was stronger and shorter, one that would deliver the intent more directly. So, I nixed the one I had come up with and we went back and forth trying to hit on that right one. We came up with the shower curtain trying for second base, but during lunch today that particular wording didn’t feel right coming from me so I changed it to something a little cuter…..I guess you’d say.

I’m pretty happy with the result. I know it is crude, and there are problems with its delivery and look. I’m not crazy about the word balloons or text, but they are hand drawn so automatically kind of rough. The comic might have been improved if I hadn’t gone with what I drew for the first panel, or maybe I should have gone with just three panels instead of four and left that first one out entirely. But, it is my first strip (or second if you count the one I did for the Art & Story contest), so I can only get better from here, right? Hopefully anyway! Either way, I’m having fun and feeling great about myself with the help of these strips and my sewing, so I’ll just keep at it and enjoy it all.

Comic Strips

2009-08-15T23:24:00.006-04:00

In the past couple weeks or so, I haven’t been forging ahead on my sewing projects during my morning breaks and my lunches at work. I got to a point where there wasn’t anything to do but sew, and I didn’t feel comfortable bringing everything to work. There were too many things to keep track of and not enough time to get much accomplished in those 45 minutes per day. So, I went back to reading at work and here and there writing a blog entry. Something occurred as a result that I never imagined would happen…..I suddenly felt like reading was a waste of time!! I had so thoroughly enjoyed spending what small time I had during the work day creating something, that I found as the days went by I wished for something else to do besides read. After years of adoring the very act of reading itself in addition to the stories, I felt myself getting restless and feeling unproductive with just a book in my hand.

I realize, of course, this is insane!! However, as I said I’ve spent years and years and years reading, so right now I need to continue to pursue other creative outlets to keep the juices flowing and my mind from drying up. I’ve decided to draw out a few comic strips which I came up with a little while ago. They aren’t related to each other in any way, but are just thoughts I’ve had or an idea that popped into my head. I have no idea where this will go, if anywhere, but I need to draw them so I can complete them rather than keep them half-finished as words in a journal.

On Friday, I printed out a template Shawn and I found online which has four panels at the top of the page and two bigger ones at the bottom. I just needed something that already had the panels, so I wouldn’t have to worry about that step and could just draw the strips. However, I started Thursday night by drawing a bathroom in a small sketchbook I’ve been using for various things. I sat on the floor in front of ours and intended on trying to duplicate it, only it didn’t quite work out that way. I didn’t feel I would have enough room for a shower, toilet and sink so I used my creative license and made it “any” bathroom.

I was shocked and excited to find how quickly I accomplished it and how good it looked. I was actually happy with the outcome and thought it was pretty spiffy for someone as green as I am to drawing. Now, this isn’t bragging, AT ALL, and here’s why! When I set out on Friday to start drawing in the pre-printed panels, the other thing I discovered was that my fear was gone!! I drew a comic strip for an Art & Story contest some time back (see below), and when I set out to do it I was so scared and nervous with each step….the writing, the drawing, and the inking……that I was uncomfortable the entire time. But when I sat down to do another comic strip, I just jumped right in without a worry or a concern. I had gained confidence simply by drawing by hand the patterns for my sewing projects, working on each part that wasn’t quite right, erasing and perfecting until as a whole it was how I wanted it. This small amount of experience banished my fear and anxiety over drawing to such a degree, that I had no more qualms. Now, I’m not saying I’m super confident and I’ll be wowing anyone with what I draw, but it was a thrilling feeling to put pencil to paper to draw something and feel comfortable and at ease with it.

My plan is to do these strips at work during my breaks and then go back and forth between my sewing projects and drawing at home. I’ll put everything up here, morphing my demonals site into much more than what I originally thought it would be. Who knew I’d have this much stuff to put up on the web!!

Part One Complete!

2009-08-10T15:00:00.002-04:00

Whew! I finished the first of my three current projects. I was off on vacation this past Friday, so I worked nearly all that day and Saturday as well. For sitting in my living room and sewing while listening to television, it was surprisingly grueling work. By the end of both days, I was extremely tired and slightly sore. I don’t know if I could keep that up day after day, but it was tremendously rewarding work. It was fun, mentally engaging and you can see your own progress before your eyes as you are doing it. Hours passed without my realizing it while at the same time not flying by so that I felt like my day was over in a flash. To put it quite simply, it was great!

I kind of hit a wall on Sunday though due to lack of sleep, having only gotten six hours that night. I think, too, I was just a bit tired of sitting up in the same position, hunched over my sewing. I worked sporadically that day, fitting in watching television and a nap in between pulling my little TV tray in front of me to start sewing once more. I considered stopping all together sometime around 7 p.m., but I was so close to finishing the one part that I kept going.

All in all, I’m pretty happy with the results. It’s a simple design, nothing that complicated or detailed. I’m sure someone with more skill than I currently possess would have produced something much better, and I said this to Shawn while I was looking at it and feeling like it was a little flawed. He said, “You could always do it over again,” and then laughed at me as I emphatically shook my head no. This will be my curse, I fear. I spent so much time and effort to create what I had before me, that I couldn’t bear the idea of doing it all over again. I’m sure our friends, Jerzy Drozd and Mark Rudolph, would agree that this is something everyone who embarks on a creative endeavor must face. Hopefully, they wouldn’t shake a finger at me for copping out and deciding to settle for what I have. It’s a gift for someone, so I’m consoling myself with the idea that the person will most likely enjoy it for what it is as well as relishing the homemade feel with all its flaws.

In all honesty, I’m not really sure how much I could improve on it given the idea that I wanted to do. I’m sure with more skill I could finesse it to a point where it would look more professional. But, I did accomplish what I set out to do. The real question would be is there a better way to get the same result? For now, I will settle for what I have and say it is good enough.

Secret Project

2009-07-31T14:39:00.002-04:00

I’ve decided to work on a secret non-demonals project which seems crazy since I just started my site a few weeks ago. What would possess me to not only spend my time creating something that is not even related to my line of stuffed animals, but to also make it secret?? I guess I caught the craft bug!.....Hmm, I wonder what a craft bug would look like or be called?

Anyway, back to what I was talking about. The idea of doing projects that would be non-demonals came to me after I created my sun demonal. It came out so wonderfully, with the two different colors and it looked so pretty and cheery, that I felt sure some people might want it without the wings. So, I considered doing other stuffed crafts and I'm taking that plunge now. Plus, I figured I may have ideas that would be better suited as a non-demonal and it would keep my mind flexed, interested, and unlimited.

I’m currently working on things that will be gifts for people which is why they have to be secret. However, it will be an extreme step forward because I will be moving from a kind of 2-D design to a more 3-D design. Not only that but I will be using fleece instead of felt, so I’ve made that next commitment into making my crafts with material that is in line with the texture and feel that I want. After all, if they’re stuffed animals they need to be soft and plushy. You might not really be able to snuggle up with them because of their size, but you should want to nonetheless!! That is one of the absolute joys of stuffed animals, you know. : )

So, yesterday I met up with Puppatoons whose enthusiasm for crafts and fabrics and creativity and fun little things to use is just so endearing that she made me want to be more skilled than I currently am just so I could do more!! We went to Hobby Lobby and she showed me various parts of the store, pointing things out that I could think of using and giving me tips on what to consider with my own crafts. I bought a yard of fleece material and hope to start using it this weekend. I have patterns for some of the things cut out already, so once I cut them out in the fleece I can start sewing and figuring out how to make stuffed crafts with more contours. One of the gifts is more complicated than the other in this regard, so I believe I’ll have to look for more tutorials. I’m having a hard time visualizing how to take a drawing, puff it up in my mind so it’s 3-D, turn it around so I’m cutting it down the middle and then flatten it back out again so I have the shape I'll need. I don’t want to limit myself to only sewing pieces together the way I’ve been doing. I won’t necessarily move away from that type of stuffed animal, ones with a front and back but no real sides, top and bottom, but I want to have options.

Unfortunately, I won’t have any pictures to show for a little bit so I hope that won’t hinder anyone’s enjoyment of my site. I plan to still blog with information about what I’m doing since I don’t want the site to lack content while I’m working on this. If I’m lucky, these projects won’t take forever and I can post pics of my efforts in the near future.

The Demon Hearts

2009-07-26T18:16:00.001-04:00

I had all of the demon hearts on our dining room table to keep them out of the way of possible destruction. They looked so colorful, cute and inviting all together that I just couldn't resist taking a picture of them. Their existence has been short, both individually and as a group, but I'm already in love with entire bunch. I mean just look at them!! Don't you just want to hug them?! They have such personality and life that I can see them flying off this page and around my head. Wow, what a twisted mobile over a baby's crib they'd all make! Sorry, that's neither here nor there in terms of my demonals site but the thought just came to me. That would actually make a pretty neat decoration in anybody's home, whether it was some sort of mobile hanging in a room or displayed all together on a shelf. *happy sigh* Please don't mistake that for self-congratulation! I'm a sucker for stuffed animals, no matter who has made them.

Last of the 7 Demon Hearts!

2009-07-26T14:01:00.007-04:00

Here they are......the last three hearts!! Let's count them off.....Neurotic (pink), Surly (purple) and Lazy (brown). I finished both Surly and Lazy this weekend, and it feels like these last hearts went faster than when I first started out. Hopefully, I'm getting better at the whole process, and I don't need to linger over each part because I feel more confident.

Neurotic needs a bit more work, I think. When I was positioning the eyes, I decided I liked the aesthetic of placing one eye higher than the other. It made her look a little off balance, squirrelly, unstable. I enjoyed the possibility of that so much that I did the same with the wings. However, the execution failed a bit once the demon heart was stuffed. The difference doesn't seem to show up as much, at least to me, so when I do this one again in better material I'm going to have to offset the eyes and wings a bit more.

Surly is pretty straightforward. He's just a grumpy guy that's going to take offense to most anything you say and do. I thought the sharp indent at the top of the heart helped to separate him from Argumentative, as well as having eyes that look narrowed. Both make him look annoyed rather than ready to pick a fight. Hopefully that is. I picked purple because it's a bit darker and more muted than some of the other colors, yet at the same time it's a strong one so I felt it might match his personality.

Lazy is probably the least distinctive of the demon hearts, at least in terms of its shape. I didn't want to go with fat because I did that for Gloomy, but more importantly I didn't want the connotation of lazy = fat. So I made it a bit taller than a normal heart shape, yet plump enough so it's not very angular. The eyes too are essentially basic in their regular old rectangular shape, but by tilting them up they make Lazy look a little sleepy. I decided to droop the wings down to hammer home that lackadaisical attitude. I'm a little afraid though it's just going to make him look depressed, but we'll see. Now that I think about it, I probably should have down that to a lesser extent with Gloomy. Something to keep in mind! I originally assigned yellow as Lazy’s color, but it’s such a cheery color that I decided it just wouldn’t work. There weren’t many other color choices at Hobby Lobby without going with a shade of one I was already using. So, I’ll have to live with cocoa to see if I like it.

Say Hello to Argumentative and Mischievous!

2009-07-25T17:09:00.007-04:00

My family of demon hearts just got bigger by two. I'd like to introduce all of you to.......Argumentative (green) and Mischievous (orange)! I'm quite happy with them. In fact, I think they came out spectacularly! To my mind they have so much personality and verve, what with the vibrant colors and those expressive eyes. I'm still amazed at how well those scraps worked out as eyes from all the wing pairs I did first. Seeing the different shapes the scraps made helped me realize I could have eyes that weren't just your normal round ones or even half circles.

The thickness of Argumentative's eyes just help to make him look that much more confrontational and miffed. I love the thin shape to the heart too. You can just imagine him standing straight and tall, eyes narrowed and in your face! I stuffed him a little tighter than the others to add to his nature, making him that much stiffer.

Then there's cute little Mischievous! With those sassy, upturned eyes, the tilt to the wings and the slant to the shape of the heart, she's out to cause trouble and loving every minute of it! I'm quite excited about the design of this one too. The slant to the wings was a wonderful coincidence. When I pinned them on the back piece, I happened to have the top of the heart straight rather than positioned in its natural slant. So when I flipped it around, those wings added this great character beat that seemed to perfectly match the trait of the heart! Plus, I love orange so she's got that going for her as well. : )

Meet Gloomy and Megalomaniacal!!

2009-07-21T17:35:00.007-04:00

I didn't get much done this past week. I had a headache a couple of the days, was really tired another, and was essentially lazy for the rest or just wasn't into working on my demonals. In my own defense, however, I did do something at work during my lunch and breaks. Rather than come up with another demonal, I thought I'd concentrate on nailing down the 7 demon hearts. I already had the colors for them, and I decided I would try to make each one a different shape with eyes to "match" the personality. So during the week, though I didn't do much at home, I drew the 7 hearts at work. It doesn't sound like much, but I had to erase and erase and erase trying to get both sides of a heart to match as well as make sure each heart looked how I wanted. One night later in the week, I did feel guilty as I was lying in bed getting ready to read or watch television, so I ended up working on a couple of designs for a new banner on the demonals site. (Ha, I wasn't as lazy as I thought!! I just didn't sew anything until Friday and the weekend.)

Shawn and I were off this past Friday, and we ended up cleaning the apartment, so I didn't start on the demon hearts until Friday evening. Over the weekend, I cut out the heart patterns as well as the wing pattern I drew to use for all of them. I looked at the felt that I had and realized that I wouldn't be able to do every one just yet. But, I ended up changing the color for one of the demon hearts because I had this really great blue that I wanted to use and thought it would be a good match in terms of one of the demon heart traits. So, all in all, I was ready to work on 5 of the 7 hearts.

First I cut out the felt and sewed all the wing pairs I would need. That way I could get that out of the way and completed. Then I did the same for the 5 demon hearts I could do. After that, it was time to pick out the eyes. I spent a decent amount of time doing this, searching through some of the black scraps I had to find shapes that could help convey the trait of each one. With those chosen, I was ready to start sewing!! By Sunday night, I had two of my hearts finished.....Gloomy (blue) and Megalomaniacal (red).

Looking at both of them, I'm not sure the wings are going to work. I think they may need to be shorter and less pointy. I wasn't sure if the position of the wings worked either, and mentioned to Shawn that they might look better coming out from the back like the sun demonal. But he said he liked them the way I had them, and thought it made a better aesthetical design for the demon hearts. So, I guess I'll keep them coming off the sides, but just smaller. I'll work that out later with a quick test heart to be sure.

Demonals is a Go!

2009-07-13T18:06:00.002-04:00

Shawn and I worked on setting up my site at Blogger yesterday. By early evening, my demonals site was launched!! I picked a template that I liked and then we fiddled with the colors to make it more representative of me, added a couple of things to the sidebar, and uploaded all my posts and pictures. I started writing blog entries prior to this because I wanted to get a little bit of a buffer going. That way I wouldn’t have just one post and one demonal when I started out online. Once everything was in place, I scrolled down to view it all and thought it looked great! It was pretty, to me anyway since I’m crazy about purple and orange, and it was simplistic in design so not too busy. At some point I’ll be working on changing the header and putting up something more interesting, but for now what is there will do.

I’ve been tweeting to a certain extent about what I’ve been doing, but I don’t think it felt fully real until I announced my site. I was both excited and nervous as soon as I pressed the update button on Twitter!! The longer I sat there the more nervous I got, so I went into the living room and started thinking about what demonal I would make next. My mind was empty of ideas, the knowledge that my site was out there now swirling around in my head! It’s kind of stupid in a way to be so anxious about the whole thing. It’s not like there would suddenly be this influx of people as soon as I made the announcement. In fact, most likely demonals will be yet another site on the internet that is being visited only by the person who created it. But it’s still nerve-wracking to me because I’ve officially put myself and my idea out there for all to see. What will anyone that sees it think? Will they like it? Will my lack of skill make them wonder why I’m humiliating myself by showing it to anyone that comes by my site?

Whatever people may think, I need to focus on doing this for myself. Other people digging your idea, your imagination, and your creations would be great, but even if no one comes to my site and my demonals are only ever displayed in my own home this is my project and something I’m enjoying. Bottom line, it’s all about whether I’m happy with making them and blogging about them. As long as I have that, I can’t place too much importance on the rest. For my own sake.

The Demonal Duo Becomes a Solo Act

2009-07-12T16:06:00.000-04:00

Still going with simple shapes, I decided I’d do my fourth and fifth test projects in tandem as a sun and moon. It’s actually caused a strange thing to happen so soon in the start of my new hobby. I’ve started thinking outside the demonals before I’ve even truly begun with them. I drew wings on the moon and they ended up looking cloud-like which I thought would be a nice compliment to both pieces. I ended up drawing a different design for them, something a little more wing-like, but I still went rounded so softer and perhaps a little cloud-like. But it made me think that a moon with clouds attached to it would be a great piece and the sun would be decorative with the rays in a different color. I’ve already considered doing a couple of things separate for the demonals to give to some people, so I’m keeping that in the back of my mind. Perhaps I’ll end up having the demonals as my main line of stuffed animals and supplement it with certain pieces that I just want to be stuffed crafts by themselves. But that will be fodder for the future. I need to keep myself focused and headed in one direction not to mention run with that for awhile before I even consider branching out into anything else. It’s fun to think about it though! I’ve even thought the demonals would make a really cute cartoon given that we’re very cartoon centric in our house, but that’s just me being all fancy-free with my musings.

I completed the sun this weekend and I’m pretty happy with the result. I think the rays will look better with different colored thread, but for now I’m not worrying about it because I intend to do all the designs that I like over again. At this point, I’m just seeing what works and trying different things. This time I attached the wings to the sun on the back so they’re more realistic as far as wings go. Not bad all in all. This piece was a bitch to work with given the wings coming out of the back and all the rays! The thread kept getting caught in something, but I’ll either figure out a better way of doing it or that will just be what I’ll have to deal with when making the sun.

I started on the moon late last night, but after stuffing it I called it quits on the design. It’s too thin and just doesn’t work as a stuffed animal. If I made it bigger, I’m afraid I would need to make it too big in order for it to look and feel right. Either that or do a different design for the moon, more like a three-quarters moon, and I didn’t really want to use that particular aesthetic. I may go back to it one day, but for now I’ll move onto another one. Not sure what yet.

The Thing

2009-07-07T16:05:00.000-04:00

My third test project was quite nearly a bust! I started it before we went to Florida over the July 4th weekend, and then packed up all my stuff so I could not only keep working but also have something to do while we sat around with Shawn’s parents. I did indeed work on it and from start to first finish, I kept making mistakes. It just didn’t seem to be fitting together the way the others had, not physically but aesthetically. I began with the idea of making a demonal 8-ball, but I hadn’t purchased any white felt since I don’t tend to like the color white. I decided to make it Halloweeny and replace the white with orange. I wanted to try sewing the wings on so they stuck out the back of the piece rather than off the sides. I ended up also making the wings orange as well since I thought the wings might get lost in the black of the main part of it. That was one of the mistakes I made……I forgot to leave the ends unsewn so I could do that! Well, after sewing the last stitch I looked at the end product and thought……meh. I didn’t really like it at all. There just wasn’t anything about it that appealed to me. I told Shawn that it kind of looked better when I flipped it a quarter turn, but then of course the wings weren’t right. In disappointment, I set it aside and started watching an episode of the TV show I had on in the background while sewing. After it ended, I picked the 8-ball back up and snipped the threads that attached the wings to it. I had almost ditched the whole thing a couple of times, but since I had powered through instead I thought I’d at least improve upon a bad design. So, I turned it so the 8 looked like eyes and then re-attached the wings. Now, it’s just this…..thing, but at least I consider it to be better than it was. Sew and learn!

My Beautiful Green Balloon

2009-07-01T16:04:00.000-04:00

For my second test project, I decided I could use the balloon doodle I had already drawn since it was an easy shape to do. So I picked the green felt because I liked the neon color and it always looks great with black. I did the same steps with this one as I had done with the heart with one small exception. I wanted to see how you could create a stuffed animal without the stitches showing, so I sewed the balloon pieces of felt together and using the small hole I had left for stuffing it I turned it inside out. It worked pretty well, though I’m going to have to get different colored thread if I want to hide the stitches. That will be easier to do with a matching color than with black. Doing it this way also gave it a different shape and feel to the stuffed animal overall, so it was a new technique I could use for the demonals based on type or even just whim. However, I still need to figure out what I can do with the hole that’s left for stuffing. I had to sew that on the outside, so I’d like to change that to make sure the stitches are at least nearly invisible. I believe that will call for some research on my part!

One neat thing that happened with this project was due to a mistake I made. If you’re going to make a mistake, a happy accident is the best outcome! I stuffed the balloon before I added the eyes. On the one hand, I was afraid that polyfil would end up all around the eyes having been pulled through by the needle. Luckily that didn’t happen. What did occur, however, was that I wasn’t as adept at keeping the stitches close to the black felt of the eyes. It resulted in some of the stitches being slightly away from the black felt and much more visible against the green felt of the balloon. The great thing about it though is with the thin, long shape of the eyes those stitches ended up looking like eyelashes in a way! Hey, who says the balloon demonal wasn’t a girl all along?

Even a Demon has a Heart

2009-06-28T16:01:00.000-04:00

First though, I needed some test projects. The frog demonal will be one of the first stuffed animals for realsies, but for now I needed to try things out. See what I wanted to do and see how they look since I don’t really know how to sew. Since I can’t draw, I started out with a simple shape…..a heart. I drew out the shape I wanted on the sketch paper and cut out the pattern. Then I drew a wing that I thought I could live with and cut that one out. I doubled up the purple felt we bought and pinned the pattern to it, then did the same with the black felt for the wings. After I cut everything out, I was ready to sew! From the tutorial I learned how to create a good and easy knot to start out, how to hide the knot, and then how to end it when you’re finished or need more thread. This new knowledge, which was so simple to do, really jazzed me about the whole project.

I pinned the front and back pieces for both sets of wings together and then sewed them up. I wasn’t going to stuff them, so it was a relatively quick and straight-forward task. Once I did that, I decided where I wanted the wings to be placed on the heart and pinned them to the back piece of purple felt. Once those were sewn on, I pinned the two heart pieces together and started sewing on the outside edge a little above the heart point at the bottom. I employed the same simple stitch that I had used for everything else, not really worrying about making sure each stitch looked identical to the other and was perfect placed. Once I reached roughly the same spot on the other side, I stopped and was now ready to stuff it with polyfil. I had a relatively small hole so I only took little bits at a time, pushing it in with my finger and scrunching up the material to reach all the way in. I wanted it squishy because that’s one of the things I love about stuffed animals, so I made sure to not push as much polyfil as would fit into the little heart. Once I was finished, I sewed up the remaining portion and looked at what I had done. It was then that I realized I needed to add eyes. Because of the wing pattern that I had cut out of the black felt, I had some great small pieces that could make excellent eyes. I culled through them and found shapes that I liked and sewed those on. I would have done that before stuffing it if I had thought of it at the time, but that’s one of the things you learn as you go!!

After I did that, I had my first completed stuffed animal!!! We posted a picture of the finished heart on Twitter, and Shawn ended up retweeting as well as posting a quick blog entry on his site. I received a tweet from a new Twitter pal asking about the back story on the heart. I realized then that I had no idea what the back story was for the demonals at all. Shawn and I ended up going out for some salad, garlic rolls and a couple of appetizers at a nearby Italian restaurant the night I finished the heart. Over dinner, we discussed it and once again Shawn’s creativity came out in spades. In going back and forth while we ate, by the time we were done we had the whole story for the demonals and a special place in that story for the heart:

Snarg is a demon who really isn't much of a demon. His problem is that he's.....well......nice. He doesn't want to hurt anyone and he certainly doesn't want to create demons that will hurt others. It all goes back to his name. The demon that created him unfortunately kind of coughed/sneezed during his naming. Other demons have menacing names like Astaroth or Baphomet, but when you have a demon name like Snarg things just aren't starting out on the best note. So, after years of being a failure as a demon he was banished to the world above. He set himself up in a farm out in the country, away from everyone and his own faults. It wasn't long though before Snarg started getting lonely. He may not have been liked in the demon world, but at least there were other demons around!! Every demon has the knowledge and power to make other demons, so Snarg started making his own so he wouldn't have to be alone. He used anything that was around from the local wildlife to inanimate objects. It didn't matter since all he had to do was put a demon heart into it and POOF....a new demon was born. But, true to his demon nature, the demons he made were basically nice and good. Some might be mischievous, some might be a little surly, but all in all none of them were evil.

During dinner, Shawn also went further with the idea of my selling these and said that I could make each heart have a personality trait and be a different color. I figured each heart would have a different shape, and if I could do it, a different set to the eyes that would reflect that trait. I’m not sure if I’ll change the wing design on all of them or just keep them the same. But anyway, people could buy the hearts by themselves, buy only the demonals, buy a combo heart and demonal that matched in color and trait, or mix and match a heart and demon based on color or what trait/demonal they liked. We also talked about starting a blog so I could track my progress and give more content to the demonals website.

It’s a definite plan and one I’m more than anxious to not only work on but follow through on as well as create something for myself based on an idea of mine. Sounds a little selfish and egotistical, but if I ever felt like I had something of my own I certainly don’t feel that way now. These stuffed animals are shaping up to becoming a purpose, a creative activity to get my mushy brain working again, and a legacy in a way. I’m trying not to put too much pressure on the whole thing so I won’t be disappointed if anything falls through or doesn’t go the way I had hoped. But that last word, hope, is what I have with this project and I’m going to ride the awesome feeling of accomplishment and of itching to do something at home while I’m stuck at work for as long as I can. My main problem is the frustration of waiting……..only being able to do what I can at home during the work week before I have to go to bed and wanting to be a lot further along than I am right now. I’m just ready to launch the whole thing and yell out “Ta Da!!” but that’s not very realistic when there isn’t much done just yet. Patience, patience and more patience is what I have to remember. That and thinking everything through and deciding on exactly what I want to do and how I want each part of the project to look before I just leap ahead. Perhaps most of all, I need to enjoy the different aspects and processes in and of themselves rather than treating them as a means to an end. Otherwise, I’ll miss out on some of the fun if I’m only looking toward the final product.

A Project is Born

2009-06-28T15:57:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, I got off my ass and we bought a needle and thread so I could sew up a hole in my living room pillow which had been slowly getting bigger. After I did it, without any real skill, I felt great! For one, I accomplished something that I should have done awhile ago, but also because it had been fun to do. I told Shawn about it and he suggested I make my own stuffed animals. If I had fun sewing, then not only would I still be doing that but I have a lifelong love of stuffed animals so it seemed like it could be a good fit. Then the doodles resurfaced. I could make my own line of stuffed animals based on them!! It was a very exciting idea, but the only thing is…..my sewing skills are quite rudimentary. Shawn suggested I find some tutorials online and see if that could get me started, so I took yet more of his advice and Googled it. I found a site on how to make a simple stuffed animal at http://www.ehow.com/video_4433441_materials-stuffed-animal.html. It was perfect, and after watching each step I was ready to do it.

Over one weekend we went to Hobby Lobby and bought some cheap pieces of felt, some polyfil, thread, pins, and a sketch pad. After that, we went to Whole Foods to eat a snack and draw out the frog design I had done at Wizard World. Shawn is an artist, even if he doesn’t consider himself to be one, so he drew it and we labeled all the different parts that would need to be their own patterns. Then we got distracted by what these stuffed animals would be called. We started throwing out suggestions, although he came up with most of them, until we finally hit on one that I liked the best. Demonals, as in demons that are stuffed animals. I fell in love with it! It was cute, catchy, and fun to say. So now I could begin.

Hello World!!

2009-06-28T14:38:00.000-04:00

My name is Carrie, I’m 34 years old and I don’t have a hobby. In fact, I don’t believe I’ve ever had a hobby unless you count reading as one. That’s what I did for most of my life, besides watching television, doing schoolwork and playing outside when I was younger. That unfortunate fact has led me to be pretty bored and probably pretty boring now that I’m fully into my adulthood. My husband and his friend think this is a girl thing. Before any of you might start calling them sexist, I tend to agree with them. They say young girls tend to play with things that are more geared toward an emotional aesthetic or activities that are leading us toward being a wife and mother. Certainly not everyone, of course, but it makes sense, especially in my case. I played with a cardboard kitchen, used a blackboard to teach imaginary people or my stuffed animals, and “cooked” with an Easy Bake oven to make tasty treats. As an adult, I’m a wife but I’m not a mother and I don’t plan to be one. So, I need to find ways to fill my time since it won’t be taken up with everything and anything related to children.

Anyway, I’ve been searching awhile now for something to grab my attention and become a passion, something that I burn to do when I get home and can spend hours doing rather than just lying slug-like on the living room furniture watching DVDs until it’s time to go to bed. I’ve been hopping from thing to thing, not really delving into anything and certainly not sticking with any of them. At times, it has felt like I’ve had the attention span of a 5 year old, and it’s been extremely frustrating since I had no idea what I might want to do. At this point, everything seemed interesting but I wanted to be in the middle of it, already have some of the skills I would have learned and developed if I had started 5 or 10 years ago, so I could be one of the creative people, one of the “important” people, part of that special, enviable group.

Lucky for me, and hopefully lucky for some of you, I may have finally found it. Last year, my husband and I went to Wizard World Chicago where he was offering a print version of his website, Branded in the 80s, for the first time ever. We met up with some friends we’ve gotten to know online, Jerzy Drozd, Anne Drozd and Mark Rudolph (all three of Tiny Astronaut), and as always happens if you’re not selling a lot of things you get bored. Me in particular since this was my husband’s project, so even if a sale was made the people were talking to him not that chick standing next to him. So, at one point I started doodling these creatures with bat wings….a frog, an ice cream cone with fangs, a balloon, etc. I do not draw nor do I know how, but it was something to pass the time for at least a few minutes. I drew a few more after we got back home, but then I moved onto the next “thing” and didn’t think of them again. Until recently that is, but more on that in the next entry.