Check me out at the new shop!

I'm still on etsy under
Chelmorning/Viridian Muse Designs and also
The Altered Art Queens but I was introduced to a cute little new marketplace. So I'm giving it a try and hoping to make the best of it. You can see my new shop
Viridian Muse Designs on winkelf.com. I hope you'll come see me. I've got a few things listed already.

the carnation pink ribbon rosette pin:

The Grey Queen felted floral brooch:

and last but not least, another mini sprout!

Getting Ready for Christmas

"WHAT?!?! Christmas you say?? That's crazy, Christmas is a full three months away, nearly four if you take into consideration what's left of August."

Yes, but I'm actually late in planning for Christmas. Christmas shopping starts soon, and to have a fully stocked shop and things on hand for a holiday show or two, I should have started two months ago! I'm terrible for being on top of the holidays. I'm usually the one listing holiday things the week of the holiday. I'm trying very hard not to do that this year. I'm hoping that in the next few weekends I'll be able to put together a small bank of items to put on etsy, and a bunch of fairies to get listed. My fairies have been suffering since I took my current job a year ago. I haven't much time to create like I used to. Sure I like the money I make at my current job....but being able to craft on my down time would be nice.

So what's my goal this weekend? Well I've got a bunch of ornaments I'd like to get sew up, a few plush toys, and perhaps even an amigurumi or two. Now, that's a bit over the top, but if I get at least two of those ideas into play, I'll be quite happy!

Oh and here's some eye candy for you! :)

My newest Fairy Dotee!

I love the way this one turned out! It was so hard to send it out, but I did. Thankfully it was well recieved by my swap partner and her 3 year old daughter! I originally didn't inten to use these wings and was going to hand form a wire crown, but I absolutely love the way this all came together. I have to say she's one of my best dotees yet!

mm-checka mmmchecka mmm check it out!

Above you will see a lovely etsy mini of the wonderous talent of FAE and their Atlantis exhibition! SO much lovely art and craft, so little money to buy it all ;)


To see other fine FAE (Fantasy Art of ETSY) just search the tag FAETEAM in the search bar at ETSY

WOW! Check out the FAE Visions of Atlantis Exhibition!

The amazing artists of FAE (the fantasy artists of etsy) have submitted beautiful Atlantian beauties for your perusal! Check it out and perhaps you might find that perfect something for someone special!!!! Visions of Atlantis

wowza! too long between posts!

Well it's been far too long between posts again. I've been kind of under a creative funk, and kind of (well ok, reallllllly)overly busy. It's been a little sad and depressing to be honest.

I've been dabbling in projects that take under an hour or there about to make as that's about all the down time I have before going to bed to prepare for the new day to dawn. The Sprout series of Amigurumi have been keeping me pretty happy. Their constantly popping up and making things happy. They're also something I can do a bit "mindlessly" as they're pattern free. They're like my flower fairies, they come out with their own personalities as I crochet along.



I'm thinking of doing rain drops/water droplets and little flame characters too. I've got a bird or two to do and a request for a Kangaroo. I've sold two of my little Sheepies, and need to finish a third. Things are slowly picking up.

I need to prepare more fairies. My site is looking thin at the moment. I've got a bunch of bodies prepared, but getting them wrapped and dressed and decked out in their fairy finest takes a bit more time than I've had lately.

So my last creative offering for this post, is my two lovely little blue birds. It's a 5x7 watercolor piece that I've put into the The Altered Art Queens

That's all for now!

HOLY MOLEY! I'm winning!!!!

A lovely member of the FAE group is going through some really rough times medically. Numerous surgerys, and terrible pain. Some of the members have been doing some wonderful charity pieces of which the funds will be donated to Nora and her family to help defray costs.

I'm currently the highest bidder on this gorgeous piece from Battlemaide Studios! Check it out and maybe make a bid! Too lovely a piece to let it slip by, and an original no less! Seriously, I'm getting it at a steal if no-one outbids me!
here's the link! Go check it out!
http://battlemaidenart.blogspot.com/

New Dotee Doll

As I've been taking small breaks from work I've been working on this dotee. I think she turned out pretty amazing. I'm kind of getting bored with the dotees. While they're cute, and really easy to make, they're also a little boring to make. This one however piqued my interest. It was a "fairy" dotee. So I thought that would make it fun and give it an interesting twist. I tried something new with this one and used a rub on transfer in a few spots on her body. I wasn't sure how it was going to hold up and was pleasantly surprise that it stuck pretty well. To help in keeping it attached I glossed over it with gel medium. I'm come to the decision that it will work as long as you don't have any additional fabric scraps attached as I did on this one. As you can see in some of the images the bird transfer split right on the division of the green patch and where it's attached to the brown material. While most people would have found that incredibly frustrating I find it lends a kind of aged look to her. Like she's beena bit weathered. The wings are hand formed and wired by me. I found the wire loops in some jewelry findings and worked them into shape last night . They're not exactly perfect mates, one is slightly rounder than the other, but again I think it lends to her charm and just makes the hand crafted beauty of her that much more appealing. I did her in earth toned colors as that's what my swap partner likes. So I hope she likes this one! :)

I really like the way her face came out. I usually either paint the face, or embroider flat simplistic faces. This one took on a life of her own though! She really came out with a neat personality and grace. I did her nose in a build up trying to give it a bit of dimension. It looks pretty good, I'm not 100% happy with it, but it looks ok. Her "hair" of course is a manner of free form embroidery to help hold her face on it turned out pretty neat.

Over all I'm realitively happy with her! I'm going to work on some more in kind of the same fashion but with shaped bodies. I have been obsessed sketching out fairy dolls, in notebooks on breaks at work. Hopefully as soon as I get these Dia de Los Muertos books out of here I can get back into making my little flower fairies and fairy dolls.

My newest creations

Another Fairy

I did this for a swap on swap-bot. I love the way she turned out. I think I might start making little matchbox "suitcases" for the ones I sell on etsy. I think it's a fun little collection of goodies to go with the fairies.

NEW FAIRIES FOR 2008!!!

Yay my sencond Fairy for the new year. My first one went to a very special person! :) This is Antheia Queen of the Flowers. I love the way she turned out. She's so very purple and beautiful. I try to come up with a little blub story for each of my fairys. Most of the time they come to me while I'm creating the fairies themselves. As each fairy presents it's personality to me, a story usually emerges. I'm working on improving my photos of them to create more "wow" factor. I think this image is pretty, but I feel the background takes away from the fairy.

Her little story "She's the Queen and there's no doubting it. She loves to make sure all the flowers come up in time for the first spring blooming. Her favorites are the purple flowers of course, but she likes the other colors too. On her head she wears her little leaf crown and golden flower."


Another image of Antheia:

2008! It's here!

I'm hoping very much to spend a great part of 2008 creating things for my etsy shop. I had a pretty nice pace going there for awhile, and with my new job it kind of took a back seat. I'd love to take it back to full swing and really start pumping out wonderful handmade crafts.

FAE is top priority at the moment. The lovely people there at FAE are growing in leaps and bounds membership wise, and we're hoping to take the group to all kinds of new professional highs. We're looking to get into specialty magazines and publications geared toward our general buyer base.

In that respect there are tons of new ideas floating about from a brainstorming session with some of the lovely gals from FAE. They filled my head with all kinds of new package plans for my fairies, and ideas for new items! So if you like my fairies, keep your eyes peeled! They'll be arriving soooooon!

In the meantime, here's an old one to give some eye candy to the blog. It's sad it's been so bare lately.

I'm gearing up for the holidays!

I've been working like crazy getting stuff ready for a local Christmas shop. I'm hoping to have a bit of a stash made up in the next few days so I can get my product out to the lovely lady running the shop! I can't wait to see all the stuff she's got. I'm going to be dragging my sister along as we go to look.

Hopefully with all I've been working on I'll still have things to add to my etsy shop. It's been a little stale in there as of late as my "day" job has been taking up a lot of my time and energy. I'm quite exhausted when I come home and find it hard to sit down and do much artwork.

I've been participating in Swap-bot a bit, and doing a few other random swaps and charity donations, but other than that, not much else. My house is a mess and my crafting space is even worse. Hopefully I can get up the get up and go attitude in the coming week and really whip this place into shape. With the holidays fast approaching it seems I'm quickly running out of time!!!

I'll be posting some photos in the next few days of randon assortments of things that I've been making for swaps and to sell. Well, some of the things from swaps. I've been terrible at recording what I've been making and sending out as of late. My favorite swaps so far have been the goddess doll (see the post below) and the BATSTRAVAGANZA swap. I had to make bat things for the swap and made two lovely stuffed brown felt bats. It was great fun. I've also made a black bat, but I don't like him as well as I liked the brown ones. He's still cool though :)

Alright, it's getting late and I've got a KILLLLLER headache, so I'd best be on my way!

Goddess Doll

Felt doll, hand embroidered,hand wrapped acorn. Made for a swap on swap bot. I had a great time doing this doll. She turned out much better than I had planned. I'm not sure I like the hair but without tearing a lot of the stuff off her head including her little "fire from her head" I can't remove it. I hope the girl I'm sending her to loves her.

Green Postcard Swap on SwapBot

Here are two of the three postcards I did for a green postcard swap on Swap-Bot. Swap-Bot, I could get into a lot of trouble over there. Right now I'm sticking to a few things at a time. I just sent out my first two swaps. A doodle page (which is SUPER easy for me since I doodle all the time) and these postcards.

I had a blast doing them. Trying to come up with ideas that kept pretty much to the greens. I of course had to throw in a little pink and blue to highlight the greens.:)

Playing with the pad and stylus

The guy I work with let me borrow his tablet to try. I've been thinking of getting one for awhile. This is the results of just a few hours of familiarizing myself with the thing. I'm sure there's tons more to learn, but I was pretty happy with the results.

Been away too long

Things around here have been NUTS. I started a new job, which basically took over my life. It's good in a way, but I am just now starting to get the hang of the whole balance thing again. Finding time to do things I used to have all the time in the world to do has been a little dicey.

I'm getting pretty excited with some of the new projects I have coming up in the next few months. I'll be participating in a gigantic chunky book project run by Chrysti at the Altered Abbey This should be fun, but incredibly challenging for me. I've been finding it so hard to find time to fit in home life, let alone art life as well, that I might be setting myself up for a giant downfall. However I LOOOOOVE chunky books and this is just my kind! All original! I highly recommend the Altered Abbey for great supplies.I've ordered a few things in the past and they're always wonderful in quality and speed of delivery!

I'm also getting ready for another great chunky book through the
Absolutely Everything Swap Central Group. I can't wait, this is truly an amazing group of ladies and we've been having a great time together for awhile now. It's going to be a Halloween/Dia de los Muertos book. I just loved the last Halloween book I did. It'll be fun to see what everyone comes up with. I hope we have a lot of participants. It'll be hard getting things put together, but well worth it in the end I'm sure. The Alice Book we did a few months ago turned out really super awesome.

On the art front I really haven't been doing a whole lot of anything. A few random pen scratchings in the ancient sketch book (holy crap I've almost filled it finally!) or random scribbles here and there on any scraps of paper I can find. Typical me, stick a pen in my hand and I'll doodle on almost anything.

My poor sharpies have been trapped in their box for far too long. They're just SCREAMING to get out. Thankfully I'll be doing some atcs soon. I've fallen out of that for the time being as well. Hopefully not for long though! I like my atcs and sharpies far too much to let myself be separated much longer. Gosh that makes me sound like an addict!

Well I'm off to do some cleaning so that I don't feel so guilty when I sit down to do some art! Cheery creative messes everyone!

Meet Oskar

Meet Oskar! Number one in a new plushie series that I'm going to do. He's going to be the very first Eeppy Creepy Cuddlies. What do ya think? I've got a little story to go with him, but I haven't yet figured it all out. Hand and Machine embroidered with saftey eyes and hand cut felt teeth.

I'm back on a creation kick....

I'm finally feeling almost back to normal. Things have been a little nutty around here and it's caused me to slip into an uninspired mode. However, the veil is lifting! I worked on magnets a few days ago. I've got two of the sets photographed and the other I hope to have done tomorrow.

Then yesterday a creature appeared while I was visiting with my friend Lois. I took my box of felt to play around with thinking I was going to do more of the tropical felt pins, but couldn't get my head into them. I randomly cut out a felt shape after stithing up a small art doll I had waiting....and today Oscar came out! I'll be posting pictures of him tomorrow as he isn't quite finished. I think he turned out really cute!

Friday before my nephew comes for the day I'll be working on aprons for someone special! ;) The material is here and I have a pattern worked up..I just have to make sure the sizing is ok. I cannot wait to get into it. I'm in a sewing mood as of late!

So here are the magnets!

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!

Sock Florals

Flower Pins made from socks. I loved this pattern on this sock and it just screamed to be made into a flower.

Adisyn and Elise Blocked Letters

Up for sale on EBAY

LOOK! It's LEELA THE LITTLE LOVE FAIRY! She's just waiting for a new home.

Leela loves to wander among the leaves and shower each tiny flower with love. In her hand she carries a little heart wand. Being a brand new love fairy she's still learning to wield her wand as a proper fairy would. This adorable little fairy clip is a great gift for any fairy lover! She is approximately 2 and 1/2 inches long from the top of her head to her little beaded feet. She is made of floral bits wooden bead, seed beads,florist wire and embroidery floss. She holds a beautiful silver heart wand in her hands.This little bitty beauty would be great as a package attachment, a gift for the fairy collector in your life, or a unique conversation piece.This piece is a CLIP! That's right, now you can clip the Flower Fairies ANYWHERE! She is hung by a closed wired loop and a lanyard clip.So easy to clip on and off of anything! She is hand made by me and comes bagged and carded signed by the artist (me) and numbered in the series numbers. She is unique and one of a kind! MANY MORE FAIRIES TO COME!

See my ebay link to the right ~~~>

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!

New Fairies in the NEW YEAR!

Fairies are already starting to appear for the new year. Check out Ryuusei. Ryuusei (pronounced du-say) is the little shooting star fairy. She dresses the stars in their shiny, sparkling best to flit through the sky to grant people's wishes. In her hands she holds a little shooting star all dressed up and awaiting it's debut in the sky. In her hair she wears a flower with little beads.

Older Mother Earth Cards

my cards from September October. My best one is missing from here as I sent it out this afternoon without scanning it. DUH! But I hope to get a scan from the girl I sent it to. The pink on the cheeks isn't as garrish in person as it looks in the scan. My computer really skews pinks and purples. I love the way her hair turned out though. It's so not my typical hair. I stink at doing hair to make it look realistic.

Gaia/Mother Earth cards from today

Mother Earth cards I was working on today. I was sorting my cards for a swap and it sparked more ideas. So I sat down with my sharpies for the first time in almost three months. It was nice for a change. It's been so long and I was missing them something fierce. The Kuan Yin Gaia isn't done yet, still a work in progress. I think I'm going to try to translate some of these into paint at some point. I mailed off one of my older mother earth pieces, so I hope to get a scan of that from the person I sent it to. It was my favorite.

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.

DUE TO AN UNBELIEVEABLE AMOUNT OF SPAM....

This blog is now set for word verification and comment moderation. I hope you all understand. :) Thanks for all the nice REAL comments! I really appreciate it!

Tried Something New!

Well ok, technically it wasn't NEW, it was just a new take on things I've been doing. I took the crochet flower I do and put a little spin to it. I found a giant spool of curling ribbon floating around here and wondered what the heck I was thinking when I bought a roll with so much yardage. Then it hit me, why not try making a flower from the ribbon! Eureka, it turned out really cool! Check it out. I listed it on etsy, but I doubt anyone will take it, but it was a fun try.

Crocheting the night away

I've made more flower pins for ETSY. I also had some spare crocheted flowers floating around so I thought I'd offer them up as a pay it forward on ETSY. It'll be my second one offered. I'm going to do more, but i want to figure out what else would be nice to do. So here are some images of my new flower pins and the extra flowers. These floral pins aren't felted and are made from acrylic yarn. Just bits of things I had laying about. I love to do these because they don't take me hours upon end and I can move on to something new faster than other projects. My little mind doesn't like to dwell on things for very long. They're things I can do while watching TV.