olivia's birthday present

our friend olivia turned 6 on tuesday. i forgot (as i usually do with birthdays/anniversaries/name that holiday), until i talked to her mom on wednesday and she invited us to olivia's birthday party on saturday.

so i thought i'd make her something and i thought she'd like this.

amanda beach, sorry for the spoiler. i couldn't wait to post. (ps. i added the glitter just for you. now it's EVERYWHERE).

olivia's birthday ©2009 sh

we spent a lazy weekend at my friend lise's house, and while i was there, i made her a scarf and a hat, and i finished this scarf i'd started last week for another friend of mine.

it's a variation on the charcoal scarf i posted about a while ago, only this time, with moda dea "tweedle dee" in i forget what colorway. some kinda purple, anyway.

is anyone interested in a pattern? i could probably work out what i did - i did write it down, sort of, somewhere.

in other news, i'm working on a "how to tie a pretty bow" tutorial, possibly for tomorrow. it seems i possess a skill that a lot of people haven't picked up, so i'd like to share it here.

introducing PIGLET!

here's what i did this weekend!

his skin is a paton's mohair blend, and his jumper is acrylic and cotton.

head and body are all one piece, stuffed as i went. the arms are as simple as they look. the ears are a variation on some bamboo leaves that i came up with a few weeks ago. the bamboo leaves do NOT look like pigs' ears, for the record. it helps that they're green.

his nose and face were made separately, and when i'd just about finished attaching them to his head, i stuffed some stuffing in so it would have some definition.

his little feet, i gave up on figuring out this morning at about 1:00, and went to bed to dream up possible solutions. literally. i got up at 9 this morning to finish him, and THAT'S when inspiration struck.

the feet, i have a pattern for. i couldn't risk getting one done, and then forgetting how i'd done it.

so. piglet is up in my etsy shop, in case you feel like he needs to come live with you.

and heads up: the wizard of oz characters in crochet are coming down the pipe. i just got the yarn for the ruby slippers. and if i'm thinking, i'll write down what i do so that maybe i can provide patterns for them.

as promised...

so, over at craftster, i mentioned that nintendo heroscape pieces are not the only game pieces i've made, and diane from glassattic (SUCH a great polymer clay resource - she's got the answers for everything!) asked me to link to them.

so here's a pic of my version of "settlers of catan".

as usual, there are a bunch more pics over at my flickr, in the "catan" set.

and hey, don't be afraid to comment - i LOVE those!

ps. i also made "carcassonne", which we play on the xbox, but i sort of half-assed it, so i don't want to post pics yet. fixing it up is definitely on my to-do list, complete with the river expansion.

pumpkin carving - with tutorial!

here's what i did yesterday:
it's (obviously?) a poster for a show that friends of friends of mine have coming up. i was asked to come up with "something", so i did. and here's how i did it.

step 1 (we can have lots of fun):
i printed out the names i needed to carve in cool fonts and whatnot. there is no pic of how i had all the names taped on the pumpkin at the same time, but i did, to make sure everything would fit and look good.
i googled "pumpkin carving" and found this site, where i picked up a great tip*: using a pin (or an awl, or - carefully, as i did - the tip of your craft knife), poke little holes around your design, through the paper, into your pumpkin. then, when you take the stencil off, there's a really faint outline in the pumpkin skin that you can follow for carving.
that's what i did for "laurelle" and "low flying planes", and then i went back over the words with a grease pencil, because i thought it would help me see the swirls in the L and R better, but it kind of made the lines even more unclear. maybe save the grease pencil for freehand designs, as the website suggests.
here's step 1 in progress (i've already started carving "laurelle", and you can see the grease pencil outline (sort of) on "low flying planes".):


step 2 (there's so much... never mind - i think one new kids on the block reference is enough for one day):
start carving. and don't go all the way through. my letters are only about 1/8" - 1/4" deep. i carved "laurelle" with my little x-acto knife. then, i made an emergency trip to alberta art and drafting to buy a (speedball) lino cutter. WAY easier. and faster. and more fool-proof for shallow lines. and looks better too.
"laurelle" was done pretty much by trial and error. "low flying planes" looked a bit better (i had the lino cutter by then), and for "mandy mckee", i used a whole different approach.
i didn't poke holes around "mandy mckee". i just used my x-acto knife again and cut out all the letters right through my stencil (and the pumpkin), so that when i took the paper away, all i had to do was sort of scoop out the inside bits of the letters with my lino cutter. that seemed to work the best. also, this was in a really skinny font, so i used the smallest blade that my cutter came with.
in this pic, you can see about how deep my carving was:
step 3:
i scooped the guts out of the pumpkin once i was done carving (big fat lie. i got bored mid-carving and decided i felt like scooping instead).
and then i stuck big bright lights inside, set it up (with fall leaves and berries surrounding it) it and took some pics. i found that the candlelight setting on my camera worked the best for capturing the glow, and the candlelight pics are the ones i used for the poster itself.
is anyone really interested in how i got from pumpkin to poster? i can expand on that part if you want to hear about it, but right now, i'll just say that i used paint.net, which is AWESOME. and FREE.

so. did i miss anything? i don't think so. but let me know if you think there's more detail needed or anything.

and if you're in edmonton on the 23rd of october, be sure to [dress up and] stop by the haven to check out this awesome show.

*this tip would probably work better for less intricate designs - the holes all but disappear in the pumpkin skin, making it tricky to determine (for the swirly bits in "laurelle", at least) where the positive/negative borders are..

3 posts in one day!

so, we play a lot of board games around here, and one of those games is heroscape, which jesse-next-door got for christmas last year. we also all like to make stuff from time to time, and heroscape is the perfect game to customize. i just finished a set of nintendo themed figurines for jesse, and got some (fake) action shots for you.

i made bowser, the koopas, mario, luigi, peach, toad, and daisy.

jesse made the hammer bros and the goombas, and sarah helped him with bob-omb and chain chomp.

i'll post one here, but if you want to see the rest, go check out my flickr page.