The Art Every Day Month Challenge

I decided to participate in the Art Every Day Month challenge from Leah @ Creative Every Day While I've been creavtive a little bit each day, it's only been a little wee bit. Since my mother in law has been in the hospital it's been a bit of a whirlwind. I don't even know which end is up currently. I work all day, go to the hospital afterwork, and come home to cook dinner at about 7:00. It's been tough, but to keep myself a wee bit of sane, I need to create. I need to create daily anyway, but the stressful, awful times are when I need it most.

Yesterday I completed a little octopus amigurumi to send off to a swap partner. I'd already sent off what should have been the complete swap of two amigurumi ornaments, but for some reason my little ami bird flew the coop! I found her days afterward on my desk...long after the package had left my hands and started the trip to Mexico. So I figured I'd get her packed up and sent off, but she needed a traveling companion to keep her company and make sure she stays in the envelope this time! So, of course an octopus came to mind! What other creature could hold a little bird in place, one with 8 legs should be able to do it! Here's the octopus:

This is Ollie...at least that's the name I've given him...his new owner might have a different name for him though :)

Today, November 6th, is when I'm going to buckle down and really start posting about my jaunts through Art Everyday Month. I really look forward to making a dent in some creative time, and getting my creative things back in order. Can I consider "creating an organized crafting space" part of Art Every Day Month?

I've been a crazy busy girl!

Things around here haven't been too agreeable on the creative front! Unfortunately that means less time to spend on creating things, which means way less time spent on updating my blogs! However in the last couple of days I've been on some kind of neat freak, clean up, clean out mode! It's been great so far, but I've got a long way to go! Here are a few things I'd left unfinished and completed in the last couple of days.

A cupcake pin cushion:


A fun funky strawberry cupcake with chocolate icing! LOOK MA NO CALORIES AND FAT FREE TOO!
OOOOOPS! I just realized I don't have an image of that one yet! My darn camera is on the fritz (i hope it's just the battery!) and I could only squeeze out the image of the top cupcake!

And some ribbon pins I've been working on. I did the first two in the hotel while we were at the comic convention for the dear hubby! and the Blue one is from tonight!

PALCHEMY #1

I'm participating in a project through etsy.com called palchemy. On etsy they have something they call alchemy. You can post what you are looking for and people make bids on the cost of making said thing. Someone then took the idea and decided to pair people up as pals. Either one person sends to a maker, or both are makers and senders, or some are just senders. I decided to do all three since I'm a packrat and have things to share. So I got paired with a lovely girl who's shop you can view here: http://ashabee05.etsy.com . She's got amazing yarns and beautiful knitting and crocheted items as well as jewelry. Check her out!

So this is a picture of the items she sent me. She sent some beautiful satin fabric (still not sure what I'm making with this... I think a doll will come from some of it, and then I don't know what will happen to the rest. Some nice faux pearls and a great skein of lion brand chunky yarn. So here is what I've come up with so far from the yarn she sent me. Meet Baasil Lamb. Isn't he cute! Another random amigurumi thing where I just crocheted along until a form came out. I think he turned out rather well. It took me a few tries to get his legs to match up properly. I never count as I go (which I should really learn to do) and that makes it a bit difficult. I should really start writing patterns down as I go so I can make things again when I want to.

I've got the amigurumi bug though. I absolutely adore Beth Doherty from GourmetAmigurumi. I think this is my favorite so far, but all of her stuff is absolutely adorable! My favorite:http://www.flickr.com/photos/38635695@N00/134858635/in/photostream/

Well I think that's all I have to say for now. I'm exhausted and work has been kicking my butt as of late. I'm hoping that things will calm down in the next week and I can actually get some art done!

birds in process

My little crochet birds. Only about two inches long and two and a half high. So cute and small. I don't like the beak though. I think I'm going to do a felt beak on the other bird. I think I like the crocheted feet though.

Some Current Projects

Well it's been a very busy month for me. Life has been taking over. Here are a few things to brighten up my long over due blog. This is Ima Karot. He's my fourth try at amigurumi. It's hard to see in this picture but he has the cutest little carrot nose and I just love his blank, big eyed expressionless face. He looks so cute and scrumptious. Well ok, since he's filled with stuffing I doubt he'd be very scrumptious. I've been doing a lot of knitting and crochet. Many prayer shawls and baby/kid afghans for relatives. It's been keeping me busy when I have nothing better to do while watching tv at night. Ima is available on my ETSY shop listed in the side bar ~~~~>OVER THERE :)



Also at my ETSY shop is TONIO BUTTONS! I love Tonio, he's the cuttest little ragamuffin doggie you've ever seen. Once you set eyes on him you just want to take him home with you. The button is just a head shot. If you like him you can also head over to my cafepress store and see what else he's on. A lot of the things in my cafe press shop have him full body, not just a head shot. So if you like him check him out. These buttons are 2.5 inches large! :)

Delli the Duck

I've seen a lot of talk on this amigurumi and had to try it out. This is the first of my trials. I've got a head for a brown bunny in the works, but really haven't figured out how I"m going to go about getting a face onto him. Delli's pretty small as you can see with the shot of him in my hand. He's only about four inches high. He's got a little bit of a 'tude with the way his wings turned out. I tend not to work from patterns for two reasons. A) I can't read the ones that I find because they're in Japanese. B) I've never been good at being satisfied with the way something has turned out when working from patterns. So I wing it almost every single time. So this is how he turned out! :)

Lion Complete and some snow..just a little

Well here's the completed lion. He's all done stitched together and ready for loving from my little two year old nephew! He'll be so excited! At least I hope he will! This lion started out as a scarf, and once I saw the gold and orange together it begged to be turned into a lion. I'm now getting into amigurumi. That's just now come into my radar though so it'll probably be awhile before I post anything with it. So here he is Ra-Ka the lion. Oh and the snow from yesterday's snow fall. I wasn't home to catch today which was even more close to blizzard conditions. These pictures are shortly after I noticed the fist sized snowflakes coming down. By the time I had grabbed my camera they had already turned smaller.