I just finished with 2 hours to spare!  I present to you Albert (pronounced the French way) the Owlbear. (click images for larger versions)









Albert is a gift for my husband who loves owlbears.

I used 1.75 skeins of Paton's Allure, felt for the face and assorted feathers.  I might do some embroidery to his face a little later to make black outlines but I'm not sure yet.  The pattern is a jumble of things-  I started out using the directions for Kate from Knitty only backwards to start with the head and then I did basic raglan increases like I was making a top down sweater to get the arms and then did like for a glove for the legs.  He is completely seamless with the exception of his little tail which I had to sew on.

He's not quite as ferocious as a real owlbear but he is loved just the same I wish my pictures of him where better but it's late and the sun had gone to bed.  I think I might too now that my little buddy is done.

I've had this idea kicking around in my head for a while and this challenge finally got me off my duff.

I started with an Ikea clock I had hanging in the bathroom.  I never liked the yellow but my mom bought it for me and it worked, so meh.  I took it apart, painted it black, made a new face in Photoshop using fonts from dafont.com, added some polymer clay and viola!  A Time Bomb!



I had to add a counterbalance to the back of the clock because the bomb top made it crooked.  If I had thought about that before I glued the face on I would have adjusted the face instead.  The fuse is i-cord with wire stuck up the center and a little pink pompom I had lying around tied to it.  I think in the future I'm going to have to repaint it with some of that spray paint made for plastic but for now I'm happy with it.  I thought about painting the hands to make them stand out but I decided that in the theme of the clock, the only really important hand was the second hand - ticking away the time until the bomb goes off!  Hehe.

Here's what it looked like when it started it's life:

Last year I got Martha Stewart Kids magazine at Halloween time and they had these great cupcakes that I just had to try.  I made them again this year and I think these turned out much cooler.  The homemade frosting is the bomb as well.

Here's an example:


Go here to see the rest: http://static.flickr.com/118/287989761_f14df4cc84.jpg?v=0

I used Red Velvet for the cupcakes, dark chocolate M&M's, gumdrops, gummy worms, Good & Plentys, strawberry whips, marshmallows, chocolate chips (whole and melted), black sprinkles and gel frosting.  I halved the frosting recipe and still ended up with way too much frosting for 24 cupcakes- when I made it last year I had 3 tupperware tubs full of frosting and had to throw most of it away!  I didn't eat any of these but my husband's co-workers tell me they were delicious! 

I just finished getting all my stuff from my parent's house this weekend (I officially haven't lived there for 3 years, you know, not like when I was in college and lived there sometimes) and I found this awesome thing I made about 6 years ago which I thought I would share!  They are wings for a fallen angel costume I made for a Masquerade when I was in the SCA.




So, first I made a framework out of two old wire coat hangers.  Then I covered them in old pantyhose.  Then I dyed some feathers with black Rit dye- this didn't quite work like I was hoping but turned out pretty cool in the end.  The marabou feathers were black though so they were nice and dark. There were several types of feathers and some of them were red, yellow and blue because I couldn't find white ones in that size and they didn't take the dye as well.  You can see the red ones.  The white feathers turned out more purple.  I think this gives the feathers a pretty tonal value though.  I glued the feathers down in layers trying to approximate a real bird wing as much as I could.  Not sure how well that turned out but I still think they are nifty. They look much cooler in person then in these photos (harsh flash does nothing for blacks).

Here's a picture of them in action from 3 years ago.  This wasn't the costume I made them for either but I hate the pictures of my masquerade outfit so you're getting the pseudo Sora costume instead.

Those of you that know Kingdom Hearts will recognize the mask- I made that from cardboard, construction paper, paint and permanent markers.  I love Halloween Town Sora! I don't have much better pictures of the wings so I hope you can see what they look like ok.  Thanks for checking this out.

Greetings fellow Halloween nuts.  This year I was inspired by Simplicity 4015 to be the Mad Hatter, however, that pattern is for the sexy version and I'm not about being the sexy version of anything so I just used the hat and bow tie from that pattern and I made a vest from Simplicity 4079.  It was tons of fun finding fabric for my girly Hatter!


Here's the whole outfit.  I made the hat, vest, tie and mouse.


Here's a detail of the cute buttons I picked out.  They're white rabbits!  Get it!


Here's another picture of the hat a bit closer.  I didn't use the foam suggested in the pattern because I couldn't get it through the sewing machine.  Instead I used heavy interfacing and it worked like a charm.  I couldn't find thick enough ribbon for the hat band so I glued together two pieces of ribbon I had lying around.  The sign is card stock that I wrote on with permanent marker.


Here's my buddy the Dormouse whom I sewed to my vest.  I used the Stitch & Bitch Nation Cat Warming Set mouse on bigger needles using Red Heart.  I made the stripe a little bigger too so it looked like he was also wearing a vest.

It was a big hit with the parents at the Haunted House I worked at, most of the kids were too young to understand ^_^ Thanks for looking, I hope you guys like it.

Hi! I made Tulips from the Fall Knitscene in Elann Sonata Coffee Bean.  Sorry about how yucky the pictures turned out- it must have been the lighting.





It's very comfy.  At first I wasn't sure about the shortness but I kinda like how it looks now.  It was very easy.  I'm not sure I recommend cotton for it though- it feels a bit bulky in some places because of it.  However, over all, I'm happy with it.  Yay!

Here we have Sanosuke Bear (ursa japanimeus)  in his natural habitat wearing one of my most recent finished objects: A hybrid of the kittyville hat from book one and the bunny hat from book two.  I wanted to use up some TLC Cotton Plus (pink, cream and black) I had left from other projects but I wanted to make a more adult size bunny hat.  And thus it was born.  It still doesn't fit my head but I have a recepient in mind so I am not bummed.  Yay!

I was really into J-Rock in college and still love some of it.  One of my favorite bands is Malice Mizer, so I was inspired by the "rockin'" part of the challenge and picked one of my favorite members of the band- Mana.



One thing you should know is that Mana is a man.  That's right.  I have to have some respect for a person who is willing to go against established gender roles and do what he feels more comfortable with.  Mana is a great clothing designer and he is the main song writer for the band (if I'm not mistaken) so he is full of creativity as well as bravery.  Without further ado, here is my Mana-key:









*hopes that her website stays up so the pictures show up*

Larger versions of these pictures can be seen on my website.  I might put some more of the pictures I took up on there after I get home from work today.  Thanks for looking!