Dolls and things

I still exist! I've just been lacking in inspiration in general all year. I have tried to do a handful of crafty things, though, so I thought I'd share.

First off I started a random tangent into hand-painting and customizing dolls. I saw some pictures of repainted Monster High dolls and thought they were really pretty, so I gave that a shot. The next phase of that was painting a couple of Asian resin ball-jointed dolls; I'd seen those online ten years ago or so but now I could afford them, so I explored that a bit too.

Monster High "Draculaura" doll, repainted and with her hair rerooted (replaced)


Dollstown "Soyu" doll. Handpainted and I made/dyed the wig as well.


Starting in the spring, I thought I'd try to resume doing pottery at the local arts center, but the extremely overcrowded studio once again proved to be just too much for me. I still love ceramics but I need to at least have a table to myself and a wheel and some space to put my pots as I work; unfortunately that is too much to ask, until I someday have my own garage or somewhere I can have a studio. I have no pictures of any of my work because I honestly didn't make much, and it wasn't too much different from what I did last time around a few years back :)

Lately I don't seem to have the attention span to do much, or I try something and mess up and just get upset with myself, so... trying to get over that. We'll see!

Felted teacup pig

I drew my cousin Laura in this year's family gift exchange. Since my cousin Lisa's felted beagle had gone over well, I thought Laura might like a wool critter too. Enquiries indicated that she likes teacup piglets and unicorns, and I prefer piggies to horsies, so I made a piglet... most of it on Christmas Eve, since my supplies were delayed in transit for almost four days (argh, Air Canada)

Anyway, I think I do pretty good work for my cousins. My almost-four-year-old nephew also seemed enamored :)

Purple dog mat

Purple dog mat, a photo by Angstcrafted on Flickr.

I made another mat for my dog out of fabrics left over from my (still unquilted) purpley lap quilt. I think it's pretty! And I needed to learn/practice free motion quilting. It's messy but it's not terrible. The dog doesn't mind.
The cats like it too.

Felted Krogan

Felted Krogan view 1, a photo by Angstcrafted on Flickr.

I wanted a Krogan of my own, so I made one!

Log cabin cushion

Log cabin cushion, a photo by Angstcrafted on Flickr.

So, over a year after making a first patchwork cushion cover, I finally got around to making the second one. I used a log cabin sort of block this time, but realized after cutting out the pieces that I'd set out the pattern wrong and had made things harder on myself (you're not supposed to have to sew in any corners in a real log cabin block). I had no extra fabric so I just made it work. Turned out fine, though the cover fits a bit snugger than the other cushion's.

Secret Hyena

Geez, I just realized ages after posting this that I had already posted about this same thing earlier in January. I'm just absent-minded, not self-important, I swear... anyway...

The Something Awful forums are a wonderful place full of intelligent, funny and creative people. (I can say that without sarcasm because I don't visit the more horrible sub-forums that exist there). There's even a needle-felting thread, and we had a Secret Santa for Orthodox Christmas! My secret giftee was the shockingly talented creturfetur who had requested "something hyena-related", so I made a hyena. I sorta neglected to give it a mane, but it's a baby so that's OK.







I think this is my cutest li'l dude so far, though I still have a soft spot for the staring white kitty.

Edward's hat

I made my not-quite-one-year-old nephew a hat for Christmas, partly because what does a baby like anyway? and partly because his parents would certainly not have the room to shuttle toys or bulky things around.

The pattern is basically the "Flower" hat from the book "Itty-Bitty Nursery" by Susan B. Anderson, but I made it stripey and skipped the whole flower part because my sister has an antiquated view of gender roles. I put little leaves on top instead and a chain-stitched stem up the side. I have never increased before so I guess the leaves were kind of a success? They do curl up though.

Anyway, baby Edward does not like having his head covered right now and refuses to keep any hat on his head.

These pictures are terrible, but I had only my phone on hand, and the baby kept moving.

Baby Hyena

One of the best things I've ever spent ten bucks on was a membership to the Something Awful forums. Some of my web-savvy friends think they are a hive of scum and villainy, but that's only a couple of the sub-forums. Instead of looking at goatse, I read creative edits of comic strips, get new recipes, talk about video games, and get all crafty with people. There's even a needle-felting thread!

Someone proposed a Secret Santa for the needlefelters and I signed up. My recipient was the intimidatingly talented person who started the thread, and she wanted something hyena-related... so I sized up my efforts a bit and made this little pup. She got it now so I can post about it. Woof!







There are probably only a couple of drops of human blood felted into this particular item :P
I have a few more requests for dogs, but I think I might want to make myself a possum to hang from my monitor. The only felty thing I have myself is the little white cat I made!

Why are my posts so devoid of humour? I'm funny, dammit.

Embroidery attempts

So, embroidery is another thing I am trying. I have long intended to teach myself... it... oh god my grammar... anyway, so of course I already have a big stash of embroidery thread and have had it for years. In my defense, I acquired most of it probably almost 20 years ago, so I could make friendship bracelets and cross-stitch at Girl Guide camp, and I used some of it when I did hair-wrapping back when I was 19... oh god, I'm a hoarder. I swear it's restricted to craft supplies, and they are all in tidy boxes or, uh, bags. I think. Um, where was I? (The embroidery floss still looks great after 15-20 years in a plastic bag! it's in a nice kit box now though)

So, I figured I should make some sort of sampler. Here are some stitch practice things.



Satin stitch is always what I sort of wanted to do, like painting with thread, but I never bothered trying to do it properly. This time I did and it's coming out a bit better.



I thought that for subject matter, I could try to embroider my own doodles. They're kind of patterny and I thought they'd be cool done in just black on white. I thought it would be original. I have this perfectionism-related problem doing anything I think has been "done before". I feel like it's some kind of art failure on my part and that someone would also accuse me of theft and unoriginality.



I started embroidering this:


A little while later I was browsing around some embroidery blogs and found this post on Mary Corbet's Needle and Thread (which is a cool site, lots of tutorial videos): Blackwork Fish

She doodled a patterny fish and embroidered it in blackwork... It's stunningly intricate and beautiful.
I now feel guilty of psychic unoriginality :(
maybe I should embroider it in just BLUE on white... that's totally different, right? And it keeps the feel of the pen doodle :)

Sewing

When my crafty sister started doing some quilting last winter, I was reminded of how interested I'd been in it back in college. I even "made" a "quilt" for a pattern and surface class (it was a knotted quilt, and the binding was attached with, uh, masking tape). I had pieced the whole thing by hand, which at the time I thought was admirable but now I have no patience. Anyway, I copied her again and took a "my first quilt" class. It turned out pretty nice!



I bought myself a sewing machine and made a few more things. I like bags. I have to learn to put in zippers though.





For years I had intended to make myself some cushion covers. I finally got around to making one.



Bonus picture of my cat enjoying the quilt.

Adventures in cute

My sister Andrea taught me to needle-felt last year. I made a few woolen balls for the cats to play with and a couple of "pom-poms" for baby hats but left it at that. After finding Softies Central I wanted to make more cute things, so I ordered a book on making needle-felted adorable animals.

Once the book arrived I flipped through it and proceeded to ignore basically everything it said and all the projects inside and made this cat. It was unexpectedly popular on my Facebook page so it gets its own post!

Ceramics revisited

After I finished college, I realized that I wasn't really cut out for life as a professional artist at the time. I had no entrepreneurial spirit or confidence and didn't want to teach. I rerouted myself into the computer graphics field and am now quite happy helping to make art for video games. I miss making pots, though. Any time I go to a craft show I go glare at the typical pots and tell myself I could do better, or at least not make such boring stuff.

Anyway, after failing to find a home here that would allow for any sort of studio space, I looked around and signed up at the Irvine Fine Arts center for a pottery class. I was impressed with the facility, the teacher and the level of work being done by a lot of the people there... but the studio hours were terrible. Open studio time was only on weekdays before 5 pm, Saturdays from 9:30 to 3:30, and nothing Sundays. So... for me, basically only Saturday. It is highly difficult to try to make production pottery with one day a week in which to do it. I'd go in, throw a bunch of pots, wrap them up carefully in plastic, and return a week later to find them either too moist (so I had to sit around and wait for them to harden before I could attach handles or whatnot without squashing them) or too dry (ruined...). And, though the studio hours were probably aimed at O.C. housewives who have nothing to do before 5 pm on weekdays, somehow it was pretty busy on Saturdays so half the time I'd show up and literally not find any space on a work table or at a wheel and I'd just have to go home. I couldn't handle that so I didn't sign up again.

I'm still sad about that. I'm sure there are places in L.A. where I could rent space or something but I don't have the level of motivation that would inspire me to be able to drive at least an hour back and forth on a weeknight to make some pots. I would just be too tired. My current plan is to somehow get rich then buy a house with a studio :P

While I was at the Irvine Fine Arts center I decided to focus on mugs because I had never made more than a couple in art school and never felt like they were successful. A good mug is not a simple thing, but it has to look simple. To me, it has to be comfortable and friendly and look like it wants to be held. It has to fit well in the hand. It can't be too narrow or too wide The handle can't be too thin or too small. It has to relate to the shape of the mug and it can't hurt your fingers. Anyway, here are some of the mugs I made during my little study of form. (Gas-fired stoneware isn't my usual thing, but I had to use studio clay and glazes)

don't worry, I ground the little kiln shelf bits there off the foot after taking this picture

Knitting roundup

I think I learned some basic knitting at summer camp when I was a wee Girl Guide. I know I knitted a few cat toys when I first got my Lucy-cat in college, but didn't move beyond that until my sister Andrea started knitting cooler stuff and I thought I should copy her or something. I am a very slow knitter, and I now live in southern California where I have no need for warm  hats or scarves, so I don't do much knitting. I can whip up a nice baby hat now and then though.

Jewelry roundup

After my post-college decision to learn computer graphics, I didn't really do anything crafty, aside from an intro to jewelry class I took at a Toronto college. For a few years I guess I restricted myself to trying to learn to draw/use Photoshop/use Maya.

Once I was comfortably employed in game development, at some point I decided that my wardrobe needed to start including accessories, and I went to the mall to look for jewelry. Everything was crap and I hated it. I decided I'd just make my own because I had a stash of hoarded beads from my youth. And so I did.

I haven't made much jewelry in a year or two, aside from a few pairs of earrings. I seem to lack inspiration, I want to move beyond wirework, and I'm quite happy to buy other people's handmade jewelry from Etsy (while I would probably not buy someone else's cushion or handsewn bag, figuring I should make those myself). Still I might go to the local bead show next weekend because most of my beads are too small and I want chunkier jewelry ;)

The Early Years: Ceramics

I did a lot of crafting before college - probably more than I have since - but I don't think I have any pictures of that stuff, or any of the stuff. Actually, that's not true. I've got a heap of marbled paper somewhere and I'm sure I kept a painted silk scarf or two. Nevertheless, I  have no photos so I'll talk about my first love: pottery.

When I was about 8 years old, I remember visiting some arts center with my mom and seeing someone making pottery on a wheel. I was completely taken with the idea and from then on, every single summer I took ceramics classes in the hope that I would be taught how to use a pottery wheel. I never was; we'd make coil pots or little sculptures or whatever, and I was endlessly disappointed.

In high school, the art class had pottery wheels, and I signed up for after-school ceramics because the brochure SAID we'd learn to use the wheel. On the first day the teacher said he wasn't going to teach us how to use the wheel because it was too hard. We made coil pots and mugs out of slabs.

In CEGEP (this is a Quebec post-secondary school thing, see here for an explanation) I enrolled in the Fine Arts program and knew that my school had a ceramics program. When the time came to choose classes, I found out that ceramics was qualified as a "creative art" whereas I was in "fine arts" so I couldn't take ceramics as one of my focus classes, nor could I take it as a complementary because it wasn't "opposite" enough. I was not allowed to take it at all. This was getting ridiculous.

Fortunately at this point I was 16 years old so was no longer restricted to kids' arts programs, and my mother signed me up for an adult community education ceramics program. WHEELTHROWING, specifically. I finally learned to use the dang wheel, and back at school I talked to the ceramics teacher who allowed me to use the facilities even though I wasn't in any of the classes. I liked making pots. It never got any more complex than that, so when I went on to actual real art school for college, I didn't do so well in my ceramics classes because I just liked making stuff, but wasn't really motivated to become a super production potter, or to make some artistic statement, or to put in as many hours as my teacher would have liked... He never liked me very much, and I never did very well.

We got a new teacher in my last semester and she was awesome, and enthusiastic and supportive about everyone's work. Strangely this caused me to enjoy my work more and put more effort into it, and I made some pretty nice stuff, if I do say so myself. I still have some of it. I also made a lot of crap, because I was still kind of lazy and preferred to spend my free time playing video games, but... now I work in video game development, so everything turned out well, I guess?

Anyway, here are some pictures of my older ceramic pieces... all from my last semester in college. They're all earthenware with maiolica glaze.

My favourite piece. It's got a bit of fake ash glaze on it as well as the maiolica.

One of the first successful pieces, and the first with these patterns.

I think I'd read that it was never acceptable to paint stars on pottery.

I made this cream and sugar set during a guest artist workshop. I still use the sugarbowl.