www.spoonflower.com recently did a free swatch day where you could order two swatches of any weight fabric at no cost! A swatch works out to be 8 x 8 inches, not very big but there's still a lot you can do with a piece of fabric that size!

I got a swatch of the upholstery weight fabric to test how it would hold up as a book  cover. So here are the two tiny books I made for jotting down notes. They are just over 3 x 2.75 inches big, and they have 40 pages of mixed papers in them. I always like to have some kind of book in my bag to jot down little notes and stuff on and that is exactly what I plan to use these things for!

My friend Mike and I have been getting together to do some tag team crafting to make this Coraline doll (inspired by the recent stop motion movie) for our friend's birthday! Since we gave it to her today I can finally post some pictures of it! I won't lie it's been pretty hard sitting on these photos to not ruin the surprise.

More info and photos at my blog

And at Mike's blog!

[EDIT:]

I bought a few cubes of Sculpey III a couple weeks ago when it happened to be on sale and yesterday I finally tried fooling around with it. I've never made any kind of model before so this was definitely a learning experience. I was trying to emulate my drawing style to make a 3d version of one of my characters and I'm pretty pleased with the results. There is a piece of wood dowel inside the neck to support the weight of the head. I think on my next go I will pick up some super sculpey and some actual modeling tools though, as I did this one with nothing but an exacto knife and a mechanical pencil. You can tell I left it in the oven a bit too long because it burned a little bit, but I'm going to try painting it so hopefully that will cover up those imperfections!

Here's a page from my sketchbook to compare my drawing style. I was basing this off the blue haired guy on the right mostly.

EDIT: Here's the painted version!

[EDIT:]

I just made this little pin out of felt that I sewed and glued together. It's just over two inches tall


EDIT:


In between making some more Blue Beard pins I made this guy. When I was finished I thought he looked a bit like a Musketeer.

Someone pointed out to me that these quick paintings I have been doing on card scraps are pretty much ATC's (although the size is off on a few I'm sure).

So anyways, I thought I would share what I have done in this series so far. Thanks for looking!

[Materials used:]

I have a big light table my dad built for me that I use pretty often to transfer sketches onto other paper and stuff. Since I am going to be away from home all summer, I needed to think of something that I could use instead to work with. This is what I came up with! I'm posting the probably not so stellar instructions on how I did it in case anyone wants to attempt to make one of their own.

(Also I have no idea if this actually qualifies as a light fixture or not, but I figured it was worth post it up and giving it a shot)

Materials used:

Wood shadow box
2 LED night light things like these ones http://www.goodmart.com/products/830447.htm
some tin foil
large bulldog clip
piece of grooved plastic
glue
small screwdriver
scissors
knife
sandpaper

I got the box and LED lights at the dollar store for a buck each, everything else was stuff I had laying around, and the plastic was salvaged from the trash. Bringing the cost of this project to a grand total of $3


The Shadow box came with a piece of glass that slid into it, but I didn't want that so just took it out. I cut a piece of tin foil to fit inside the box and glued it into place. The LED things came with a shield over them so you sort of press down on the top of it for the lights to come on and it has a sticky plate on he back that the whole thing clicks into so you can open it to change the batteries. I took the shields off using a screw driver so the light would be less focused and then used the sticky plate thing on the back to affix it to the bottom of the tin foil covered inside of the box.



I measured the box and then scored the plastic with a knife to size. Then I snapped the plastic and sent some shards flying, but pretty much got a nice rectangle sized piece. Then I sanded the edges around so it wouldn't be sharp and annoying. Then I just turned on the LEDs by pressing the button in the middle of the three lights, placed the piece of plastic onto of the box, and held it in place with a big bulldog clip.





And there you go! It actually works really well and shines through stuff like thick watercolour paper. It's a bit hard to take a picture of it in action though.



Thanks for looking!

A collab between my boyfriend Craig and myself. He came up with the idea for a mempo inspired scarf and sketched out some design ideas, which I later re interpreted and then silkscreened onto these fleece scarves! A friend was kind enough to model it for me.



The Japanese Mempo is a traditional armoured face mask found on a Samurai Kabuto helmet. These fearsome masks not only protected their faces, but were used to intimidate foes on the battlefield. Interesting stuff!

I made these today! Each are 3.25 x 3.25 inches, hand bound with 60 pages of mixed papers and screen printed covers! It's my second time silk screening and I am really pleased with the results!

I made this little book over the weekend. It's roughly 4 x 5 inches, is filled with 50 pages of mixed paper types, and has a soft vinyl wrap around cover! It's going to be a late birthday present for a friend. I hope she likes it!



I just put together a tutorial about how this was made over at my blog.
You can check it out here!

[stop being sad, and start being RAD!]

Sometimes I get really down about my art work. It can be hard to stay  positive sometimes! But I recently came to the conclusion that getting sad and discouraged is really counter productive. So this year I have made a vow to stop being sad, and start being RAD! I designed this little inspirational image and then made some gocco prints.

I framed one in an Ikea frame I spray painted matte white and put it on my desk so it can remind me to keep being rad!