Instant Replay: Lol Cats Charms

Okay folks, I know I haven't been updating as much as usual. I've been making stuff here and there, but it's mostly secret swap stuff. These have been posted before (last year, has it been so long?) But I loves them, and I want you to enjoy a few of my favorite old lolcats shrinky dink charms. Do enjoy and have a beautiful weekend, friends!

Wire fish

I saw this a little bit ago on Etsy and was inspired by it. I thought I'd attempt my own version and this wire fishy is what I came up with. I want to try again and this time use some beads to add a little pizzazz! Wire is fun to work with, but it is also very fickle and pokey.

Take 2: Cat Head & Springtime Postcards

I hate it when Blogger goes nutso and screws up my posts!!! Anyways, for your enjoyment, a cat head postcard!

And a springtime postcard! The stem of the flower is made from green foil of an Easter peanutbutter cup :) Happy Wednesday!

Baby chick

Just a quick little watercolor today. I felt the need to draw a baby chick because of this little guy who was born (hatched?) today:

Went out to a friend's farm today and this sweet chippy was the first hatchling :) Today is his birthday.

I can't wait to go back next week and see how big he is! Chances are everyone else will have already hatched too and I won't be able to pick him out from the bunch. Oh well, I'm sure I'll squee over each and every subsequent chick anyways... Happy Monday!

Fishtank

Much to my grumpiness, I could not get this to photograph properly. The colors are indeed vibrant like this in real life, BUT the background is white, not grayish blue! Used the canned air again with my watercolors. Inspired by the very talented king of canned air (or maybe he uses an air compressor, or a straw, or something else! I don't know! Either way, his stuff is awesome!) Lawrence Yang!

Anyways, I started out just making some watercolor background for (what else?) some inchies, then went nuts with the canned air. Looks like a fishtank, right? With the colorful little pebbles? :)

Hoo-Dazzled Owl ATC

Made it today (triumph!!!) after much moping around in my craft room unable to think of what to do. Yesterday I carved a few stamps, one of which was a bubble texture stamp (pictured below), so I thought I'd try and make a Kathryn Wheel-esque background with lots of layers and whatnot. This is what I came up with in ATC form! You can kiiinda see where I used the bubble stamp on this with a platinum metallic stamp pad. Then I drew the owl, cut him out and slapped him on there with gluestick. Oh! Then a guinea fowl feather for good measure.

Here's the ol' handcarved stamperoo! Not my best work, but it's functional enough. The other two stamps I carved are much better, but they're for a swap, so you can't see them until later. Happy Weekend, friends!

Another Teeny Inchies Book

And here we have another teeny tiny inchies book! I bound them together at the top this time, so it's like a little page-a-day type calendar thingie and you can pick which inchie you want showing depending on how you feel. If I still had a desk job, I'd want to make several of these to correspond with the month and day that you could flip to change every day. Maybe I'll just make one for the heck of it.

Is it just me, or does this picture make it look bigger than 1''x1''? Mehhhh. Man, I'm still in kind of a creativity slump! And it's really chapping my caboose. Seems like the only thing I can concentrate on lately is inchies, and I feel like I should just give in and make millions of inchies. Anyways, have a fantastic weekend, everyone!

Hippo Embellished Journal

As I've probably mentioned before, I work with the youth at my church! The young women have Personal Progress goals that they complete, and some of them are not very motivated. I decided to work on the goals myself to try and be a good example, and I needed a journal for it. Tada! Embellished this with a cut & paste hippo, punches and various other miscellaney. I happy with it, and since it's cute I'll probably want to write in it more often. Happy Wednesday!

Imminent Fish Nom ATC

Hey everybody! Been making a few things here and there... Still not crafting at 100% capacity, but when the pressure's off things seem to be flowing a bit more freely, which is good. Thanks to those who left sweet comments wishing me better creativity vibes!
I started a personal blog this week and it feels good to have a place to ramble on about whatever the heck I want! Plus, I don't have to bore you guys with my ramblings. ANYWAYS, I made this watercolor and ink fish ATC. The original fish drawing had lots of pointy teeth, but I just didn't want to cut them all out.

If anyone cares to read my blah-blah-blahs you can find my personal blog at http://seriousmanateebusiness.blogspot.com

Happy Tuesday!

A wee blogging break

Not sure why, but the last couple of days have been *blahrgh* crafting-wise with a lot of false starts and unfinished sacrifices to the garbage can. I've decided to take a week (or two, we'll see how I feel) from posting and spend some time out in the beautiful weather! I'm hoping that'll get me a little more inspired. Until next time, dear readers! I'll be back making fun crud before you know it.

Have a wonderful day!!! If you've got any inspiring links, definitely comment them here... Need 'em! :)

Crocheted Silly Bird

Today was seriously an amazingly beautiful day. I can't tell you enough how muc I love springtime!

I hadn't crocheted anything in a while and this is what materialized today! I couldn't bring myself to try to crochet wings, so I just made em from various flannel and felt, then added feathery accents.

The wings are a bit washed out in the other pics, so here's what they realllly look like! My sewing machine was zig-zagging wonky and I have no idea how to fix that.... Anybody know whats wrong?

Striped Kitty Monster Guy

Sorry for the lack of posting! Enjoy this cat monster watercolory guy. I've been working on some swap projects that are pretty exciting, and doing lots in my garden, so not too much to post the last couple days. It's getting nice and warn out and my plants are doing well! Woo hoo! I hope everyone had a swell weekend... Here's to a good week ahead!

Zendoodles...zentangle...zenwhatevah!

Find 3 large bird shapes, a snake and a turtle! This is an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper doodled all to heck in zentangle style! My favorite parts are the ones with the leaves... Happy Saturday everyone! Enjoy the lovely spring weather if you've got it.

Owl & Sealife ATCs

These two ATCs are a couple I did for a personal swap! Again, this one was done with ink & canned air, then watercolor. The branching effect is done with the canned air being blasted at acrylic ink. I'm actually TERRIFIED at canned air when it's in the hands of someone else... You know how when you hold the can upside-down and spray it, it shoots frozen crap at you? Yeah I really, REALLY hate that. My husband thinks that's hilarious, so I keep the canned air very hidden...

Speaking of being frozen, I don't know if I've mentioned, but my husband and I are doing Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover plan thing, (it's steps to get out of debt, save up an emergency fund, eventually invest, and basically WIN at finances, all common sense). ANYWAYS, we're pretty much crazily cutting back our expenses to pay off student loans as fast as possible. There isn't much more we can trim off the spending, so we had the insane idea of shutting off the water heater and trying not to use the AC this summer to see if it'll make a difference in our electric bill. No hot water = stupid-cold shower! I know it'll feel better once the hot Alabama summer rolls around, but right now it's on the edge of ridiculous. At least it's fun to listen to Bobby making hilarious "it's-so-so-c-c-c-cold" noises during his showers. Oh well. Dave's mantra: Live like no one else, so that later on, you can live like no one else!

Enough ramblings. Everyone have a fantastic weekend!!!

2'' x 2'' Mini Birdy Book

I made this little book for a personal swap with the very talented Sarah (she does art AND music, and rocks at BOTH!) and was pretty happy with it! I have a ton of twinchie bases cut out from a while ago and I want to start using them up and making little books galore. I kind of wish I had a corner rounder, because that would be really cute.

Here are the various pages. Happy Thursday everyone! I'm off to tidy up the house... I totally neglected it this week because of the garden. (Thanks to AlwaysInspired for the tips on yellow squash! I decided on zucchini and I'm going to plant it on the "down low" in an overgrown weedy area that I'm not sure is mine to plant in. If my plan gets ruined and I can't grow there, oh well. It'll have lots of room to spread out if all goes well! SECRET PLANTS! SQUEE!)

Audio's Postcard

This is a postcard I made for my crafty pal Audrey, because it looks just like her! The background was done with acrylic inks, canned air, bubble wrap and a bird stamp. The girl was cut & pasted from a children's encyclopedia, then I drew on the trademark glasses.

Poppy Embroidery into a Pincushion

Tada! More springtime-inspired goodness. Stitched this little guy up on a 3'' hoop, then just had to make it into a pincushion because of all the neat pincushions I've been seeing around the interwebs...

I machine sewed the top edge (using about 10 million pins to keep it aligned) then had to hand-stitch the bottom because there's a little circle of cardboard at the bottom to keep pins from going all the way through and pricking unsuspecting fingers.

Here she is on the hoop!

So springtime is amazing, did I tell you? I bought a cherry tomato plant last week (was it last week? or the week before? I dunno) and it's growing at an INSANE rate, so I decided that I simply need more vegetable plants. I don't have a yard or anything, so I have to grow in pots on my patio, but still! I got onion starts, plants for roma tomatoes, poblano peppers and red bell peppers today (sounds like a fajita garden) and I'm very pleased and excited! Plus, I stuck a little acorn squash seed from dinner a few weeks ago into the soil and to my surprise, it's growing. BONUS! We'll see if it turns into anything productive... That would be FANTASTIC. I lub me some squash.

Does anyone has experience growing yellow crookneck squash? Do I need lots of space for it? I'm contemplating growing some...

Springtime Tree Embroidery

It's a happy little tree! Embroidered this yesterday and Saturday during conference (beautiful Easter message here). Springtime in Alabama is just so amazingly lovely! All the trees are blooming, birds are singing, it's not humid yet, and life is just plain good and nature so inspiring! Been doing a lot more planty crafting, less animals...

French knot flowers galore. I used acrylic paint to fill in the color because I contemplated filling that in with stitches and totally decided against it because of how flippin' long it would take.... Happy Monday!