Birthday/Holiday Headband

Project about half finished.

Mask

Here is the mask I made for Halloween. It's embroidered felt, with a ribbon tie. The embroidery is completely random. It was fun to make, but a little hard to see out of.

Holiday Tags Candy Cane

Holiday Tags Candy Cane
Originally uploaded by seeshells.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, I did a little eraser carving. I wanted to do something very angle-ly to start with, so I did a holiday tree, with star. All angles, no curvy parts. Then I tried a little bit of curve with the candy cane stamp, which actually is backwards from how I meant to do it. Gotta remember to think backwards! And lastly, that day, was the To/From stamp, which was going to have little colons after each word to be grammatically correct, but those little buggers were way too curvy for my skill level, and by that point I was getting a little tired.
I think they turned out pretty good for my first attempt at carving in 20 years! We did lino block carving in college, and boy, erasers are sooo much softer than a lino block!
I actually wanted to clean up more of the lines, but Extreeme Artist wouldn't let me, they have been carving in Arts&Humanities High School, and he said I needed to leave some excess lines because that's what that art medium is about. I understand what he means, but I think some of my extra lines are just sloppy not artistic.
I made all our holiday gift tags with the stamps, even though it turned out, my brush markers were mostly dried up, so I had to use the colors I had.
I have some other carving medium that I had purchased a while back, a pink block and a white block that I'm thinking is the same basic material as the white erasers that people say are the best to use. Having those big blocks I think kinda blocked me. ;p They are so big, I didn't want to ruin them with my practicing, so the small erasers were the perfect trial and error medium.

Happy Holidays!

I hope you had, or are having, or will have a wonderful holiday time!
And I hope it was/is/will be crafty, too!
I didn't do the 'handmade challenge' this year, but I was definately thinking handmade or creative for gifts. And so were others!
I gave a couple flickr pro accounts, a Make magazine subscription, and a couple kits, (one artsy, one craftsy). Promoting Creativity At Every Turn! I didn't actually give anything handmade by me, but it's easier for me to give handmade whenever, not pressuring myself for a specific holiday or birthday. My mom gave some knifty knitted hats, and my DAD(!) gave a scarf he 'real' knitted. I'm so impressed, my dad can really knit better than I can (and see, Honey, guys really can knit)!
Rawk Star got guitar strings and drumsticks for his creative outlet, and the Extreeme Artist got some paper and canvasses for his (note in the photo, a couple packages with cartoon character Ziggy painting--my mom's cool wrapping job).
I got a f'awesome set of knives that I both wanted and needed, to bolster the creative cook inside, and from Johan (My Guy's son) I got some great painting supplies; small brushes (that would be great for painting miniatures or small paintings), palettes, acrylic paints.

Ten on Tuesday

10 Things You Want for Christmas

I figured it's a little late for a wish list for someone to go rush out and purchase something for me, and it's more fun to dream big, and creatively, so here's what I want for Christmas if money and some degree of magic were no object.

The power to magically know how to knit. And do it well.

And crochet.

And understand that knitting/crocheting language that alludes me, but I love listening to. Color-way, tracking (Trekking?), roving, koligu (?), fingerings (or is it fingerLings?), kashmina, stuff like that. It's all Klingon to me.

A studio!

A Czech bead vacation. I remember seeing an ad several years ago in the back of a beading magazine for a special vacation to the Czech Republic where you got to tour some of the bead factories. I don't know if there is still such a thing, I searched and came up empty. If they don't still offer this vacation, I would substitute a Crafty Chica Cruise.

A maid to keep my house picked up, so I would not have to do chores before I create.

A kiln.

A serger.

To never run out of creative podcasts to listen to!

For all my artsy/craftsy supplies to already be organized.