The Valentine's Day Card

Yeah, I got it done! The kids will be putting stuff inside during their party on Friday. You know, my large nib wasn't really good for gothic capitals but oh well. I hope their teacher likes it, since it's for her. It's about 28" by 20" poster board. The red is paint and the black and gold are calligraphy ink. The smaller nib is a C-1 and the larger nib is about 2/3" wide. Well, here it is...

Valentine's Day!

Yep, it's coming up and soon! My daughter's class is having a party on Friday. I have to design the front of the Valentine's Day card for the teacher of her class. The card is being made with two pieces of poster board, they're put together with holes punched through on one side and ribbon tied through that and I'll be drawing/doing calligraphy on the front. They gave me two days to do it- woo!! I'll post a pic of it when I get it done. The kids will be putting some art they did in art class inside it, as well as signing it or writing a short phrase for their teacher. They really love her, so I'm sure they'll love doing this!

Entertainment!

In case you haven't noticed, I put my weather on the right and a puzzle towards the bottom. I tried putting the puzzle on the right but it just doesn't look good. Well, it does if it covers stuff in the middle... Anyway, I'm looking forward to adding more entertainment- even stuff to get your brains moving! :o Oh noes! For now, enjoy the puzzle and notice that I have a tornado in my weather thing. Yeah, it's tornado season... Luckily, they mostly pass us up by about ten or so miles...

Claw Covers

Yeah, the kitty keeps wanting to lay waste to the furniture and nothing seems to stop her. Sooo... what do you think? I'm thinking orange would be nice because of her orange patches. I'm thinking about buying a set of claw covers to put on her. They're the good alternative to declawing. I'll only put them on her front paws. She never goes outside (she likes to look out the window but she's afraid of the outdoors) and only really climbs the furniture. These are easy to take off. I called them and they said all you do is clip the tips off of them and they slide right off. One order lasts for six months, so it's not too bad on cost, either. She likes her harness well enough (we couldn't get her to wear a collar)... she might like these well enough, as well.

Insano-Kitten!

Last summer, we decided to grab ourselves a kitten. She turned six months in January and I celebrated by taking her to the vet and having her fixed! Oh wait, she wasn't too happy about that... lol. Anyway, she's crazy. I felt sorry for all the kitties there. The lady had them sequestered in a little bedroom that contained their bed, water/food bowl, litter box, themselves and sometimes, their mommy. She almost never touched them. The poor things! Well, we got the only female- bwahahahaha! She's also the only soft kitty... My mom called her Macie (I spell it with ie because I don't want her to be a department store) and she looks a lot like the mommy kitty. The four boys were: black, two cream/white tabbies with blue eyes (I was barely able to resist them, mostly because I knew we couldn't get two) and one silver tabby. All four of the boys were wire-hair coated and Macie was kind of- just really soft instead of the stiffer fur. Well, this kitten loves paper. I swear, it's a fetish. We do our snail mail and she's right there, waiting for "handouts". It's like the commercials that show the cat or dog assailing the human who is running the electric can opener... really something to watch. She'll do anything to get at a piece of paper, too. I have proof... Btw, that's the recycling bin, not a garbage can...

More Past Projects!

There's nothing better than receiving a hand-made gift for a birthday or Christmas or what-not, isn't there? Really, present-giving isn't about spending as much or as little money as you possibly can but getting the person something they'd actually like or use. Well, I've made several presents and here's one. My brother's wife loves Winnie the Pooh.. and is also a huge Harry Potter fan. You know, I think the next thing I make for her will be off the Harry Potter line of things. Maybe a Gryffindor scarf? I don't know... Anyway, I made her a Winnie the Pooh bookmark as a present. I found this Winnie the Pooh bookmark cross stitch kit somewhere and just had to do it for her. However, they didn't have any backing for it. I did the bookmark and personalized it, so she could always look at it and know who sent it to her. I also changed the text at the bottom because what they had in the pattern really wasn't Pooh-ish or book-ish. Luckily, they had the whole alphabet in the script used (Pooh's chicken-scratchings) and I didn't have to guess. Next, I got out my deer skin leather (that stuff is sooooo soft... dreamily soft...) and cut it to the size the bookmark would be, then folded the edges of the aida to the back of the work and hand-sewed the leather to the back so all the ugly stuff wouldn't show. I'm pretty sure half of my fingers fell off from trying to sew through the leather but it had to have the hand-stitched look. She has the nicest bookmark anyone could ask for, really. I almost wanted it and I'm not a huge fan of Pooh. I'm pretty sure she was happy with it, though...

Past Projects!

I figure that for the start of my blog, there's never a better punch than blogging about a few past projects of mine! Actually, mostly, I want to show off my daughter's last Halloween costume because she was so cute in it. She shouldn't take all the spotlight, though, so I'll add some other projects, as well.

For a few Halloweens now, I've taken notice of how expensive the good costumes are and how much like a garbage bag the cheap costumes look like. This last Halloween, she wanted to be The Little Mermaid. Soooo, one trip to the local Walmart (at the moment, I'm literally in the birthplace of Walmart but am soon moving to WA state) showed me no Little Mermaid costumes and several cheap costumes, as well as a few really cool, nifty, light-up or whatever costumes. A trip across town to the Halloween costume store and I find a few Little Mermaid costumes.

1. Cheap, no wig
2. $60, no wig
3. $30 wig

You bet my mouth dropped in shock! $60 for a little kid's costume? o.O While I'm there, I look at hair dying options. My daughter has medium/dark brown hair, so it'll have to be a RED dye to look at all red. They have no red in the spray can stuff that washes off easily but do have a dye that's redder than red. The problem with the dye is that it's kind of permanent. Sooooo back to Walmart! I think about doing the non-permanent dyes for women that they have (I really think I should have... seriously) that last seven days but decide to check the Halloween section for spray can stuff that's red. I do find some and decide to buy it. I also buy a light pink leotard so my daughter doesn't have to be half-naked in her costume (it was going to be a little chilly and the leotard has long sleeves). When we get home, my daughter sees what little remaining scraps of this blue/silver rose stretch knit fabric I have and decides she wants to be a BLUE mermaid with RED hair so that her costume can have that in it. I'm fine with that, since I figured I'd have to make the thing anyway to avoid spending a small fortune on it. I start thinking what mermaids have. They have the cute little seashell cups on their chest, a shiny fish tail and fins- which are usually see-through on a fish. I get the rose stretch knit fabric to use on the seashell bra, find some elastic and get some taffeta out that matches the colors in the stretch knit (dark and light blue). Luckily, I have the fine-weave taffeta that looks more like a gauzy fabric. One major problem, though.... no useable fabric for the main part of the tail. Another trip out, this time to one of the few remaining fabric stores, nets me this wonderful, blaringly shiny swimsuit fabric in a dark blue. I couldn't have aske for anything more perfect in my life! $5 later and I have it all together but no pattern. No worries... I take measurements and decide the tail will just be a long, straight skirt with some shaping to make it taper at the bottom half, with a v shape at the bottom in front and back. The seashells... well, I figure out a good size for them so they'd "cover the mermaid" correctly and of course make the strap that goes around to the back. I did decide to add a seashell in front with a blue, glass heart bead and some blue coral in the back for the "button" to close the straps together. I also realize while fitting this on her that she has absolutely nothing to keep the thing up... even if I put snaps on the inside to attach to the leotard (which I do) it still sags somewhere. To fix this, I put straps on it to go over her shoulders, using the blue swimsuit material. It worked well, too. For the long back fin that goes down the middle back of a mermaid tail, I sew in a rectangle of three thicknesses of the taffeta (both dark/light blue together and pre-gathered for a slight ruffling effect) and sew it into the seam back there. (The skirt is one piece, sewn together in the back.) The end of the tail was fairly easy. I cut the v shape so that I could still put taffeta on the bottom and not have her trip over it. I gathered the bottom taffeta as well and also blended the two tones together. She got to wear mommy's make-up (which she loved) and I bought a new bottle of fingernail polish for her to wear. Her lips, eyelids and fingernails were all blue. I put skin color foundation on her face and neck (to the neck on the leotard) and sprayed that evil red stuff in the can. Little did I know how evil it was then... Now, I regret using it and wish I just dyed her hair... seven days of red hair would have been better than the mess that stuff left!! She was really cute, though, as you can see in the photo. I will put up more photos of the costume to show her face better and the back of the costume.