Thursday, January 31, 2013

Grrrrr!!!!

I spent Christmas with my brother and his family containing a 4 year old butt shower little girl and a 6 year old lego manic boy.  Both of them wanted to color and draw with me nonstop and it was a lot of fun. When drawing I'd get asked how to draw something the entire time. So I ordered some 'How to Draw' books from Amazon and awaited their surprise.

How to Draw Monsters
Learn to Draw Disney Phineas and Ferb
Learn to Draw Your Favorite Disney/Pixar Characters


They both drew me some monsters and they are adorable!







I've seen some amazing redo's of kid art and thought they would look cool on a tshirt I could send them. I ironed some freezer paper the size of the images, about 5x5ish, onto the inside of the front part of the shirts. Then I sharpied them onto the shirts and painted. I mixed textile medium with the paint, I want these washable, and colored them in. I honestly think the originals are better because you can't, as an adult, draw these monsters in the same way. 

 



I'm not used to buying shirts for little kids so I got the sizes and then was confronted with s/m/l. I hope they fit! I also added a copy of the original drawings in case they forgot drawing these.

 




How to Paint a Comic


I started off with one of my favorite comics, Calvin and Hobbes. I've done this one before and it takes a long time but is always worth it. I have a larger copy of the comic and I pinned it to the fabric using as many pins as I could. I didn't want the transfer to be off.


 


This is on my light table. Go slow and take your time because screwing it up and then trying to fix it is so much worse. And yes I have one of these I messed up and can't give away.



Tape it down to a flat surface. I use an mdf art board for painting.





I used the same colors as in the original comic and a tiny brush, size 0ish. Because I painted this with acrylic it dries fast and waterproof. So letting each area dry I saved a lot of messes.


 
 The fabric used was tea-dyed for another project but I had enough and thought it would look good.



Next up, the sewing machine. I quilted all of the words and the black border and yes it took a long time. After I cut all all the threads in between with some dull scissors so it made a huge mess.




Calvin and Hobbes

Calvin and Hobbes


And finished!
Calvin and Hobbes

Calvin and Hobbes

Monday, January 28, 2013

Smaller is never easier

I bought a wire pear from Tai Pan Trading for $10 saturday. It's pretty small but the plan is taking almost a whole weekend of watching Mythbusters episodes on Netflix to work on. On the up-side I now have a list of blurry things I want to try out.





Monday, January 21, 2013

I Always Do More Than I Planned

Almost done. It's going to take an hour and small scissors to snip all the thread between letters. I love this comic so much I have a large version on some heavy art paper that I use as a pattern all the time.
I've been commissioned to do others (of this comic) more than anything else I've made.

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Playing cards

They were $1 and I knew there was something crafty I could do. I glued the number side to scrapbook paper and cut them out. Oh it was beautiful. Right up until I fanned the cards and the glue cracked and the scrapbook paper fell off.

This is where getting info before starting would have been helpful.
The surface of the card is too smooth to glue anything to. I pulled them all apart and am sanding the side for the scrapbook paper.


Tuesday, January 8, 2013

The Star Wars Bag

I came home from a Christmas trip with no idea of what I needed to work on, I'd been coloring and drawing with kids the whole time. But I did remember I wanted to replace my super awesome Darth Vader bag that was stolen out of my car over the summer.




I didn't want to spend the money on another one (which I never needed in the first place), so I bought this for $6:





I took the tote bag completely apart and cut it into nice bag sized pieces. Using some remanent duck cloth I glued all of the pieces to the vinyl fabric. This was tricky, vinyl is mostly plastic and the duck cloth is heavy, I ironed on a test scrap of the bag and then got enough wrinkles out whilst melting the fusible web. After each piece I had to place it on a flat surface under a weight or they all curled up.




Then the sewing. The vinyl isn't forgiving at all and if you have to take out thread or pull too hard you will leave marks. Lots of them. 





 Eventually I got the bag shape I wanted though. The tote bag fabric was almost too small with the images so I used the top half for one side and the bottom for another. The Vader side wasn't quite enough and you can see marks from the original bag.





It's getting there. I was about at this point when I discovered a problem with how I was going to attach the zipper so I had to take the whole thing apart. Then the brain kicked in and I remembered to add the handles before going on in the process. 



The bottom is a bit uneven but it works for me.



 I was buying the zipper and saw Star Wars fabric and bought a yard.





The finished product:

Star Wars Bag




Star Wars Bag 


I need to fix this, there was a lot of material to sew and then turn right side out. I got most of it though.
 
Star Wars Bag




Tote bag: $6
Zipper: $3
Handles: $5
Total: $14












Monday, January 7, 2013

Stories

There was a lot that I made as Christmas gifts for the kids in and outside of the family. The younger ones got felt books and the next age group got a small handbound story that was added to the Kindle Store. I couldn't figure out how to make the books free but I was able to do a free 5 days around the 25th. I also emailed the links out and attached pdf's of the stories telling people to send it around.

I did 12 books and made sure siblings didn't get the same story and I also changed hair and clothing to match the kids. Overall there was 3 different stories and during the free 5 days I got 487 downloads.


This one cracked me up because it got a one star review.


"Now I see why people dislike self-publishing. Sadly, the little boy could have probably produced better work with a bit of effort."

I'll have you know this kid has ALREADY made a better work with less effort! And then I slap her across the face with my glove.
 

and then the yearly weird Christmas story I send out to the adults:



 
 


All of this was done in Photoshop (6) and InDesign. Then printed at a nearby Staples -which looked like this when I got it home and got to work cutting, binding and gluing.

Books 

The yearly Christmas story comes from the heart. Last year I offended at least 1 coworker.

 

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Christmas Goodies!!!

I can finally post pictures, and there are a hell of a lot. I made 6 felt baby books -only 4 of which you can see until the last one is given and I find pictures of the other one.


Each got something geeky for a letter: 


Charlotte
Charlotte


Nellie
Nellie

 
Lily

 
Liam
Liam