My mother volunteers some time with a group called Ponies with a Purpose and they've decided to host a quick craft event on the 10th of Dec! Mom and I are going to share a booth and so I've been on the hunt for fun quick crafty gifts to make.

I decided to wander the goodwill around the corner as my craft room is giving me an eye twitch. I've gotten to the point where I want to go in and just start shipping things out! It's gotten a little crazy. I've been helping the boys do a craft swap with some other kids, so just about everything has been pulled and moved as of late.

I came upon some very cute white tea cups in from various sets and the wheels started spinning. I've been dying to make a couple of tea cup pin cushions with the squares of fabric I was given in a swap...so now I'm all sprawled out at my dining room table creating.   I promise to share the finals!

Tutorial: Interchangeable Headband Designs!

When I received an interchangeable headband in a swap recently it got me in the mood to make some more fun things for my quite useful headband. 

 So I decided I'd share this simple and yet great for kids who wear headbands idea! Of course this isn't just for those with kids, but any of us who love to add a little something extra to our outfits. 

First thing grab some printed fabric {or felt which I have here} that inspires you. 

After that you can just start playing with design themes or if one of your prints has a certain shape you like, go with that.  I had a piece of felt with hearts on it, so I wanted to play off that. 

Originally I had wanted to use the polka dot felt underneath the heart, but the print was too large. So back to the stash I went! 

 Deciding on something a little more wild, I cut out three heart shapes. 

Play around with your layering. My first thought had been to stack the three as they ascended in size slightly. However after stacking, I decided I didn't like that enough and went with something more off kilter. 

Next I grabbed my button jar. It's always full of goodies and I love adding them to projects. 

I thought about metal studs, or even rhinestones but decided to keep this one a little less glitz. 

After deciding how I wanted the buttons to sit on the hearts, I stitched them down. I also stitched the hearts together so that they wouldn't be too floppy but would still lay softly. 

The last step is to snip a hole/line just big enough for your headband of choice to go through. Mine is very slim and slick so I used my smallest scissors to cut a slit. 

After that, just slide it on the headband and wear! 

You can do this in any shape or size. Adding feathers, using fun foam, ribbon bows anything you can create a small space for the headband to slip through will work. 

A Grrrreat find.

Ok, so I love to thrift shop. And I'm usually one to pass by the frames/art section as I like finding little old illustrations for my bathroom which is dog themed. {It was the only place I could find that matched my golden retriever portrait when we moved in. It's just kind of grown since then.....}

I've been avoiding the thrift shops and the only shopping I've been doing lately is grocery, but today I had a donation built up so I of course went in afterwards ^_~

To my surprise I spotted a well drawn tiger cub illustration. Not dogs, so I passed it up at first. Something about it kept drawing me back though. I noticed that the signature on it was done in pencil first and since it was fairly nicely albiet old style framed, I googled the artist.

When I didn't even have to finish typing the artists name {read, got the first letter of the last name in and it found it....} I grabbed it. Scanned the google finds and decided it was mine.

Come to find out, at least from what I know so far, the artist{William Timym} was well known for his bronze sculptures in the UK. He even has one at the St. Louis zoo here in the US. A well known cartoonist in the UK during the 50's through the 70's his work even spun off toys.

Basically it's an awesome find for me. ^_^ I don't care if it's worth less than the $1.99 I paid for it. {Which I really doubt as it doesn't seem to be a print, I can see the pencil lines underneath the ink lines on the tigers not just the signature!} It's a piece of a varied artists history. And I love it.

Now I'm just trying to hunt down more about it. {skitters back to google}

Things around our house have been busy. So this is about what I feel like. *laughs* 

* 

I've been sketching more and more straight from my tablet rather than starting with my sketcbook. Which is good as it's taking me less time to do what I'd like to.

My goal is to be able to whip up an illustration in around an hour. 

* 

We've been working on our newspaper so we can get it up and running. If you'd like to stop by and check it out it's...www.centralarkansasfreepress.com 

Sign up and join in! 

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But enough shameless advertising. 

I've got a new shirt design sketched up and while it's based on a theme you don't have to know the theme to understand it. Hubb and I decided not to enter it in this round of voting at the site I normally do. Rather, were going to see if we can get it printed somewhere else. ^_^ 

It's really a kids design, and if I can find a way to get it printed I'll share it! 

A new design up for Voting!

As you can tell I've not done my illustrations for the past few days, I've been working on other things.

One of those things being something you can vote for, so I figured I'd pander for some votes ^_~

http://shirt.woot.com/Derby/Entry.aspx?id=49725

This weeks theme was the letter T so it was wide open. I went with the obvious sound, Tea.

Being a procrastinator

Means that when big events come up, you tend to rush around. 

Which I don't mind on average. 

Which is why I'm a pro at procrastinating. 

Take for instance, Madd's boy scout uniform. He's a cub scout so they are really just introducing them to the boy scout way. The pack were in is fairly laid back as well so the boys usually just wear their cub scout tee's. Not their blues. 

Yeah, tonight is derby race night. So guess what I spent today doing. 

Yep.

Thankfully the site has an awesome guide to help parent's put it all in the right spots.

It reminds me, I need to sew some more robots, or monster hats, or robots in monster hats. 

Wait no. Strike that. That's just silly.   

Glee and no I do not mean the show.

This was me this morning. 

I've been waiting for this day all week, as even though I wasn't going to get to throw a vase of my own...I was so ready to just be in a clay studio! 

Yes, I'm a dork. 

I'm like a kid in a candy store when it comes to new craft fun. I always enjoy learning new ways to create. 

The ArEtsy meet and greet was fun, we had a few people there which was fine as it's a a small space. Hoping to have quite a few people more at the next event. I'll be sure to give plenty of notice! 

I enjoyed making new friends and meeting those who came. ^_^ 

My mom "Retro Momma's" got to come and afterwards we enjoyed a light and delish lunch at the Starving Artist Cafe. 

The other crafty fun going on in my house today was boy related. Maddman is a scout and so had to get his pinewood derby racer ready. As we are pretty big Speed Racer fans it was easily decided what the car would be named. 

Thus, 

The Mach 7. Now it looks  in no way as bad as my illustration, it's awesome. The back fin is actually a 7.

So do any of you have derby racers you've just finished? Or did you do anything awesomely crafty today?

* I promise to never try to draw a derby car again, lol. Oh and whoot for two illo's! My tablet and I are starting to get along. ^_~  

Yard rolling

= bath time at my house.

As it was so nice here yesterday the dogs got to spend a good bit of the afternoon outdoors. Apparently the cold had been hiding something in the yard that Ben had not found before.

Guess what he found yesterday. Yep, something stinky.
So he rolled in it.

So guess who got a bath. 

Thankfully he doesn't seem to hate me this morning and is super soft. 

*By the way, I'm trying to be a good blogger and blog more often. 

Not all my illustrations will be dog related, but I'm going to try to illustrate one thing each day. 

A what?

A friend posted on FB that she knew someone who was trying to rehome an angora bunny.

As a yarn enthusiast {That's a nice word for obsessed} I was immediately interested. 

One email pop to Hubb later and his response was. " The dog's will eat it." 

Which could be true....

I doubt they'd actually eat the sweet little thing, but they would most likely terrorize it a good bit for the first 8000 times they saw it. 

You see we have Newfoundland mixes. One old, one young. Lilly the older girl would probably see it as she does the cats " one of her babies." However. Ben would most likely think of it as a toy. 

A bouncing moving on it's own, interesting smelling toy. 

Which would be bad. So the bun.....yeah, it's a no go.

Snow Day

I wish I could have gotten out that first morning and gotten so many pictures of all the ice and snow about the area. But I was dressing two adorkable boys for a snow day. ^_~

And yes, we hitched up the team and went for a sleigh ride. 

The boys reminded me that I needed to make them monster hats. And that monster hats needed to be shared!
On the craft front, if your an ArEtsy member and havent' seen our new blog requests on the aretsy page, or the blog itself {and don't forget to look us up on Facebook and Twitter!} we've got a lot going right now!

On my craft front: Obviously monster hats, robots galore, and perhaps some painting time.
What's on your craft front?