just one quicky photo - I haven't had a chance to take photos of everything else yet.



Someone's looking quite spiffy in his new bowtie

First rule of pet ownership:

Thou shalt not craft

Would you accept a video? Here's my cat and I going for a walk.
http://youtu.be/1h5HM4CMUDE

And, just for the fun of it...

oh, dammit. Looks like I'm gonna do this swap.

Look! My kitty!! His name is Gillespie (Gill)


Wearing one of my necklaces, and looking like a doofus.


Outside, chillaxing on the balcony.


Inside, keeping an eye on things from my bedroom window sill.

ZombriNation probably thinks by now that I have no intention of putting up pics. BUT I AM! Right now, in fact!!

Zombri's journal was very much a wordy-journal - which is great. I like peeping into other people's lives via what they write. It's why I always read my friend's blog...

First up - a couple of extras. We had to keep things small and light because postage was going to kill us otherwise.



Mmmm. Bacon scented. That's why my cat keeps on chewing the mail envelope the package arrived in. It smells like bacon.



Words! Words! And something was passed. Congratulations! (I just opened to a random page for photos. I'm waiting for a spare evening and a hot chocolate to sit down and start reading cover to cover.


The cat (Gillespie) showing his opinion of dogs and men who dress in dog suits. I LURVE the show Wilfred - the US version is pretty cool, but the Australian version was downright crude and filthy. Oh, and Zombri - what you wrote here is exactly how I see myself and Gill.


Ah. Colours and cut and paste! EXACTLY my journalling style as well.


I find insomnia a regular pain in the butt too... But I love this sort of thing - I can't let myself be loose and free like this when I draw and be creative. My crafting impulses are usually regimented in some way or another...

Once again, Zombri, thank you!! Thank you for putting up with my tardiness, thank you for being willing to ship to Australia, and thank you for sending me something so full of splendid words.

And here we are! 

Let's start with my hoopla and extras from TroubleT:

SOCKS!! I NEEDED SOCKS! It's gotten so cold so quickly here, I was so pleased to have them. One pair is already in the laundry basket, another is keeping my calves warm right now.



AND - this sweet-ass hoopla. It's the chemical symbol for theobromine...aka the stimulant found in chocolate. Straight to the hoopla wall with this one


Sorry - the cat kept leaning in to see what I was doing.

Then, from Puzzler:
Hoops and inkpads. Hoops are perfect for an idea I want to work on, inkpads are perfect for the journal swap I'm doing right now.


And finally - awesome t-shirt from my Wists!

ooh, crap. Blurry. Sorry. I'd take an action shot, but the cat can't operate a camera. Yet. It's a lovely thick t-shirt which works well for a Melbourne winter AND is guaranteed to make mah peeps jealous

Thank you so much both of you! I am guaranteed to get tons of fun out of all of this

[Details of swap:]

GALLERY!!

Okay, we are on again.

I LOVED doing this swap the first time around, and have decided to reinvigorate it And the fact that I am usually a non-journaller and a non-paperworker, and I'm dying for a round 2 on this swap should tell you something about how much fun it is.

I am blatantly stealing most of the words below, and probably the swap idea itself from Dizzerspinninround.



Swap name: Journal for a month Round 2
Craftster member who is organizing this swap: Kitten Wrangler
Craftster who is co-organizing: No-one, yet.
Sign-up date range: April 11 - April 30
Date to send item by: June 14th

Limited to a certain number of people? Nope
Restricted to people who all live in the same country? NO

Swap Organizer himself/herself meets these conditions:
- Has fully read the Swap Info Guide: YES
- Has successfully completed two swaps as a participant: YES
- Is not organizing more than three swaps right now: NO
- Will recruit a co-organizer or give all details to a Swap Moderator if this swap has more than 25 participants: YES
- Is at least 18 years old: YES

Swap Organizer will check each participant to make sure they meet these conditions:
- Has been a member for at least one month: YES
- Has posted at least 15 times: YES
- Has completed one swap successfully before signing up for multiple swaps at a time: YES
- Is not currently signed up for more than five swaps: YES
- Does not have any negative feedback: YES
- Participant has agreed that he/she is at least 16 years old: YES
- If within the US, understands that Delivery Confirmation number is required for this swap: YES
- If outside the US, understands that a mailing receipt copy is required for this swap: YES


Details of swap:


In this swap you will be writing in a journal for one month and sending the journal to your partner. You will be journalling the month of May, natch.

You are encouraged to make your own journal, but it is definitely not necessary, you can recreate a pre-existing journal if you so desire.

This journal should really express who you are, and not just in words, feel free to include photos, ticket stubs, crafty projects, drawings, poetry, short stories, jokes, whatever!

You MUST write something for each day, even if it's just a few sentences. Your entries don't have to be novel length, but they do need to be of substance. You can even include drawings and poetry (make it a mini zine about you if you want!).

You and your partner will discuss how personal you wish to be, if you didn't already specify in the questionnaire.

You are ALSO required to send a small crafted item along with the journal. Make it a craft you are super good at, to display your skills, or try your hand at a new craft, so long as you make sure you keep it a small (unless you and your partner discuss otherwise). A small is an item that takes you 2 hours or less to craft. Items such as earrings, stickers, wallets, pouches, bookmarks are considered smalls for different people of different skill levels.


Just to prevent any hand-wringing and angsting....
I'm in Australia - I'll be in a different timezone to most of the rest of you. A reply to a question might seem to take longer than you might expect - especially if you send a PM while I'm asleep or working. I WILL endeavour to respond to every PM sent/question asked within 48 hrs of it being sent. 'Kay??


QUESTIONNAIRE TO ANSWER:
Name of swap: Journal for a month swap Round 2
Craftster username:
Email address:
Name and address in mailing format:

Would you be willing to ship to an address outside your own country?
Confirm that are at least 16 years old or, if not, that you have moderator approval(YES/NO)

Are you allergic to anything?
Any allergens in your house?
Are you okay with receiving extras?
Have any subjects you don't wish to discuss?
Have any subjects you don't want your partner to discuss?

For reference to the small item that will be crafted for you:
What colors do you like?
What colors do you not like?
What can you craft?
What would you like to receive?
What would you not like to receive?

Are you okay with receiving "extras" (these are purchased items or supplies)?
-If yes, name some things you would be okay with receiving:



Do you have a wist or a pinterest? Tumblr, Flickr, Twitter, Instagram yada yada...?
Anything else you would like your partner to know?

IF YOU WANT TO PARTICIPATE, REMEMBER TO SEND YOUR INFO TO ORGANIZER VIA PRIVATE MESSAGE AND NOT TO REPLY WITH IT HERE.

Also, remember to read the Swap Info Guide to find other rules about participating in a swap.

Righto! Time to show you all the lovely things I received from Mod35tBabe!

First up, this lovely bag:

Amy's shout of "Of course I'm a princess, I have a tiara!!" is one of my most favourite parts of BBT. Considering that my other favourite quote is Penny's pitch-perfect "Good morning, slut!" to Leonard, I'm glad that this was the quote that MBabe chose to use And by the power of magic and coincidence, it seems to be the perfect size to carry around my brand-new iPad.

And here are the other goodies:

Over on the left there is a highlighter set that looks like a floppy disc. (Yes, kids. I'm so old I wrote my Undergraduate Thesis on a floppy disc. We didn't have any of this newfangled Bluetooth or USB drive stuff back then....) and a robot eraser. YAY ROBOT!! There's also a spankingly cute calender with another Amy (Oh, Amy, light of my life...) quote. And last, but not least - a BBT drinking game. I have all the episodes on DVD, plus some beer, wine and Kahlua in the house. This could get dangerous.

Thank you so much, Mod35tBabe - It's all wonderfully made, and I'm well pleased to have received it!!

So, apparently I've garnered a reputation in my league for being all handy with the craft-type-things. Sooooo..... some of my derby girls organised a bout that featured the Vagine Regime NSW vs Vagine Regime VIC - possibly and probably the first queer bout held in Australia. They asked me if I would make the trophy for the winners. Hellz yeah, I would!! The request was to make the trophy look like the image on the flyer, and to make it a perpetual trophy if possible. I also realised that if (quelle horreur) NSW were to win, it would need to be something that they could take away immediately, and not have to wait for stuff to be engraved/whatever.

I had such fun making this - and it was sooo cheap as well - I think I only paid for the Barbies and their skate wheels - everything else was from my stash. Unfortunately, it also reaffirmed my hoarder tendencies, as a lot of the materials used were things I was on the brink of throwing out, because they were 'useless'.

I've marked it as 'mature image', coz I know what the logo is of... but I don't think it's offensive or 'mature' at all. And I know a bunch of girls who took quite a while to twig to it...  

Anyhows, here goes. This is the completed trophy, sitting on the MC's table:
 
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YAY! And here's the in progress shots.


Take two Barbies, and amputate them at the knees. Scalded myself over a pot of boiling water, trying to make the feet fold back in the way I needed them to.


Just like a real skater - knee reconstructions all around!!! They needed to bend at a 90 degree angle... so I stuck a straw into each leg to act as support, then sticky-taped the lower limbs into place, and filled the gap with glue, hoping that something - anything - would hold. Which it did. Not successfully, but enough for my purposes at this point in time.


Haircut and paint job. Blonde Barbie had glue combed through her hair, and it was left to dry sticking up on her head. I then shaved/cut the hair into this sticky-up flick-back quiff. The gold pain is actually fabric paint - I've had bad bad experiences before with plastics and spray paints, but this seemed to work just fine - and i just wanted a gold base... there was something else to add later to make it really shine.


Starting to come together....


Starting to fashion some clothing for our lovely skaters. I handstitched all the clothing - I did contemplate using the machine, but decided that was more trouble than it was worth. Brunette has a nice crinkly tank top, Blonde is displaying her knee-high socks. The socks were actually made from narrow strapping tape I had from when I severely fucked my thumb up at training one night. Two lengths, sewn up the edges, and voila! Serviceable Barbie-sized socks.


I am SO proud of these skates, it's ridiculous. I traced Barbie's foot onto a piece of card, and then stuck the card to vinyl and cut out four soles. Four rectangles of vinyl, and each rectangle was hand-stitched to a sole to form the boot. I then cut two slits to form the tongue, and folded over the other edges to form the eyelet/laced up part of the boot. Each boot was then stitched onto Barbie's foot, with the stitches forming the 'laces'. The wheels are, quite simply, awesome. I bought a few of those finger-board toys - you know, skateboards for your fingers?? Removed the wheels from them and made new axles by whittling down toothpicks. Yes, whittled. The toothpicks were too thick. Yikes. The silver colouring of the axles is actually the security foil from a packet of pills. It's not as fragile as aluminium foil. The wheels + axles were glued directly onto the boot.


Blonde wears a cream leotard (with a daring neckline) and a super short pink skirt. You can see the laces well in this photo.


Blonde also has a tattoo. The fingerboards came with stickers, a couple of which looked enough like tattoos, so... I stuck them on! Look at that minx - kicking out her heels and showing off her skates!


Here's Brunette with her rather wicked dragon tatt. The OTT glitz came from glitter. BLOODY GLITTER! Painstakingly glued and daubed onto all the visible body bits. Brunette's hair is also cut now, into a lovely little asymmetrical bob with some trailing rattails.


Brunette is wearing fishnets - just an old knee-high fishnet I didn't really have much use for anymore. HAND STITCHED (eep) onto each leg, so there's a stylish seam running up the back of each of her legs. I also fashioned her a tight little pair of black stretch shorts to wear.

 
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And one last time, the final trophy. The base that they're glued to is actually 8 CDs, glued into two stacks and covered in gold stretch fabric, and then glued together. Where they met wasn't too stable, so I just used an old public transport ticket folded into three and glued across the bottom to help strengthen it.
I'm also really proud of the map of Australia they're holding up. It's the Vagine Regime Australia logo, and is made from some foamcore board scrap I had been contemplating tossing, covered on the back and around the side with this nice rough packing paper that myrobotnation uses when they mail me a robot. Sealed, of course, with mod podge. The front is just normal computer paper, with the black lines painted on. The idea is that each year, each team can just grab a sharpie and write the winner on the map - no need to bother with anything fancier.

OH! And yeah - I used electricians tape and a bit of stuffing to fashion their kneepads - which also covered up their surgery scars. BRILLIANT!

The trophy was apparently well appreciated - my mates kept on telling me how awesome it was, and I kept on getting unexpected hugs from the organisers. YAY!  I love it when the stuff I make is a success. Now, if only I could make a career out of derby trophy creation.... sigh.

Last Saturday we had our workplace Christmas party.


Oh, nelly.

I'm not normally one for loud bars and get-togethers and socialising... but after discovering that by ordering a particular cocktail at the tiki-themed bar we were at, I would receive a monkey finger puppet in my drink, well... I convinced a few people to help me collect monkeys, and commenced drinking.

This is the haul by the end of the night:


By this point, I'd been running around for hours, calling myself KW Monkey-fingers, and loudly proclaiming that was going to make a necklace out of all my monkey heads.

Last night, after recovering from the all-day hangover, I set to work.


These are the monkeys that made it home with me.  I put on 'Day the World Ended' (1955) and started seeing what I could make with my monkey heads and whatever random jewellery bits my rather dozy self could find.

By the end of the first movie, I had this:


The orangutan and chimp hands are joined with jump rings, and a thin green tube thing I had lying around was pressed into service as a jungle vine. I'd knotted the gorilla arms to the vine, and threaded the baboon and some beads between them. But after a moment's reflection, I decided I didn't like it.

By the end of the second movie ('Atomic Man', also 1955)  I had this:


That was a bit better. Added in more vines, and attached gorillas and proboscis monkeys using headpins.

By 4:00am, and the end of the third movie ('This Island Earth' 1955) I had my final product:


It did take a bit of time to work out where the baboon head should go. Eventually I decided to restrain him using some jungle rope (er, twine), added my clasp and jump rings, and had a monkey head necklace all ready to show off at work.


And here's a terrible shot of me in the elevator, proudly wearing my monkey-head necklace.

Total cost to me - a bit of jewellery stash and an all-day headache.
Total cost to the workplace bar tab - $192.