Hey there.  I just finished painting this and i think it turned out pretty well.  Its underglaze on greenware, but since it's unlikely i'll get it fired and glazed until next week, I thought I'd post it now.  The clay body used is whitestone, which is a cone 6 stoneware, and its got a lot more grog than I'm used to, so the clay has somewhat of a rough texture.  The painting is done in Amaco Semi-Moist Underglazes, which i adore.  Seriously these things are awesome.  Anyways I was really pleased with how this turned out.  Let me know what you think.




I like to paint on greenware because you can correct mistakes easily by scraping off the glaze, and you can do some minor sgraffito for things like the shine on her tail.  That's just where i scraped the glaze off for a highlight.

I embellished these tops for my daughter and her best friend.  
The faeries are partially stenciled but mostly freehand, with black speedball ink.  The wings are sparkly sequined material out of the remnants bin, but then I had to paint over them with black puffy paint to hide the horrid stitching after the needle got gummed up from the iron on stuff.





I messed up a lot, but i think they came out all right.  Also now I know not to sew over that iron on applique stuff.  Ugh.  Anyways what do you all think?  



I

So, my 5 year old daughter has severe amblyopia and its exacerbated by very bad nearsightedness and astigmatism.  Her vision is something like +7, +4 and she is essentially almost blind in her left eye.  SO!  We are patching her right eye daily.  I saw a post up here about this recently but the patches were made to go over glasses, and it will be another week before her glasses are ready so I started making up some patches to get her used to it.  The first one was a bunny, but as it was felt it was too scratchy, so then i made her a kitty.  She LOVES the kitty!







We went shopping on Sunday and there was a bounce house set up outside the store, and there were a bunch of kids bouncing.  When my daughter got in the kids asked her "are you a pirate?" and she was like "YES!  I AM CAPTAIN KITTY!!"  which was pretty gratifying in thet it means she's getting used to the idea.


What do you think?

My good friend asked me if I could make her a set of saddlebags, so I gave it a shot.  I prefer the term "utility belt", myself.  Sounds more super-heroic!  I spent about 3 weeks working this out but actually I probably only worked on it four days out of that time    Its for my much, much thinner friend, so for her it would fit on the hips.  She provided the skulls and the patches, everything else was left up to me to design.  I think I did all right, but I definitely learned a LOT about order of construction! Bags aren't really my bag, usually I make clothes- but this is kind of both!  Please tell me what you think!













all laid out

detail shots!







secret penguin!


All done!  Man am I ever glad to be done with that though.  Also I will never, ever again wait to sew velcro onto small pockets when they're already sewn up...its miserable!

So, in 2008 I bought a BUNCH of white faded glory shoes when they were on clearance for $3 a pair.  My daughter liked the deck style shoes and so i bought five pairs of deck shoes, in graduated sizes, and a couple sets of high tops.  Well i painted some and let her paint others, and theres just one pair of deck shoes that she never wore.  But there has been an extra pair of high tops floating around since she never really cared for that style of shoe.  Well a friend's daughter was in need of a pair of shoes and they fit her perfectly, so I asked her if she wanted me to paint them and she said YES, "brown with koalas!"  Well, here they are.  I have never drawn or painted a koala before so bear with me.







She really liked them.  What do you think?  I'm sorry the pictures are so bad, the camera was stuck on some weird filter and i can't take a decent picture to save my life, it seems.  Thank you for looking!

I made this for one of my friends, as he was wanting a padded strap to carry his guitar.  I copied a leather and brocade strap that belonged to a housemate for the ends, although in retrospect I wouldn't make another one just like this unless I had a larger amount of leather.








 
and details of the brocade



little deer!

It was very hard to photograph, but pretty simple to make, and it is super soft and cushioney with 4 layers of batting.  The brocade was from a kimono i bought in a thrift store years ago; it had a wrap tie that was the same material.  About a month ago i found a second, extra tie folded and sewn into a pocket in the sleeve.  So basically the strap is made of that extra tie.

So, we aren't religious.  However, I do enjoy giving gifts, for my birthday especially, which falls on Dec. 17th.  Everyone gets presents for my birthday.  We got invited, however, to spend Christmas with some friends so I held my gifts until then.  Here are some of the presents i made.


four kitty scarves for 4 little girls



3 scoodies that I didn't photograph beforehand



A unicorn hat for Jezebel that she refused to take off


  We had a sleepover party and in the morning:


TREASURE HUNT!

I made the map and our host wrote couplets (meant to evoke the riddle contest in the Hobbit) as clues for the two girls to find treasure (presents).

it was pretty great, although now the girls are convinced that Christmas is all about pirates.

So, Basically, all the stuff I made for presents came from Craftster inspiration.  Thank you Craftster! <3

here are our costumes this year:





I made the Three Musketeers blouses, tabards, capes and hats, and the entirety of the Pocoyo costume.   No one recognized Pocoyo, but many people liked our Musketeer costumes.  Except one 3 year old Spider-Man- he HATED our costumes, and screamed at us all the way down the road.  All like "I HATE THEM!!!!!!!!!!!!" So now we know that Spiderman is in the employ of Cardinal Richileu.  Seriously it was not our intent to menace any children this year.  Just sort of happened that way.

Hello Craftsters- I have a question.  I'm going to be making Conchinita Pibil tomorrow, and I was wondering if I could use bamboo leaves instead of banana leaves?  I couldn't find banana leaves.  Does anyone have any experience with this?

I made a new dress.  Its another part of my sister's birthday present.  She sent me this material a few years ago but I was always afraid to cut into it for fear it would be wasted.  Well I finally just shirred up a simple tube dress so there it is.  Tell me what you think.





There were three coordinating fabrics that she had sent- the plain violet, the blue almost sheer that makes up the body of the dress, and the beaded and sequined violet and blue.  I used the sequined stuff to make a wrap.


me, not at all photogenic


the back


the hem



In progress shots:






I started it on Tuesday, and finished it up today (saturday)  The beading took a very long time because I have poor manual dexterity and dropped/spilled/broke more beads than I sewed on.  The lotus itself is detachable and has snaps, and I guess it could be worn as an insanely large necklace.  Anyhow, tell me what you think.  After all of the work, my favourite part is the wrap, which took about 20 minutes to make.