The Kira Nichols Etsy Shop

Plenty more to see at kiranichols.etsy.com! Bookmarks, planner clips, digital stamps, ornaments, and many more unique gifts. Thanks for supporting this artist!

SNR Featured Artist Spot: INCHIES!

How could I have forgotten?!! A few months ago, I was asked to be a featured artist over at Scrapbook News and Review. I decided to write an article about the different ways you can use or display inchies. I sent it off a few weeks ago, and what, with all the loco that's been going on, I about forgot that my article was scheduled to run yesterday. So for your viewing pleasure, here are the photos of my inchie projects! For the full article and several mini-tutorials on these projects, visit the SNR Website.
Inchie Cubes: Dice or Ornaments
Tiny Books
Wire Stands
Garlands
Embellishments
Bracelets

Enjoy! Have a wonderful week! I'll be...packing....blergh....

Skeleton Bird Art Doll

 Can I call this a doll if it's not a person? Meh, I'll call it what I want. This is another project for the Dia de los Muertos Swap!
Check out his crazy skeleton! The body is sewn out of plain canvas using the wren pattern from "The Artful Bird" by Abigail Patner Glassenberg. Then I used a ton of black craft acrylic paint to kinda stiffen the body and wings up. Then white paint for the details.
  The crest is just a guineafowl feather dyed with alcohol inks. To attach it, I cut a little hole in the crown with an exacto, which wasn't too hard because the fabric was so stiff from all the paint. Before I stuck the feather in, I had to reinforce its shaft with a little rolled up aluminum from a popcan. After that, I just stuck the feather in the hole with a little glue.
The beak is polyclay... I figured it would give it a much more hard, skeletal attitude :)

I hope everyone is having a good holiday weekend! I'm buying blinds for my new house today... Then packing like CRAZY. I might not blog for a week or so. Moving kind of sucks, but I'm going to be SO GLAD when we're settled in.

Hand-carved Fish Stamps


Had a fish stamp request, and I needed a break from being a tiny leg factory, so VOILA! I made a set like this a while back, if it happens to look familiar to anyone.

The set also has bubbles... So, you know, the fish can breathe :) Happy Thursday... I get the keys to our new place tomorrow! SO excited!

Also: EIGHT Wicked Witch of the East Ruby Slippers Bookmarks will hit my Etsy Shop tomorrow (Friday May 27) at 5 PM Central Time. Price is $19 plus shipping.
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FIESTA! Dia De Los Muertos Art Quilt

Sooooo, between furious bouts of witch leg-crafting, I've been working on stuff for the Dia De Los Muertos/Mexican Folk Art swap over on Craftster. I was paired with the very talented Lanikins, so I wanted to make some good stuff. I decided on a mini art quilt for one of the projects (expect some more DOTD coolstuff posted later). This here is a detail shot of the embroidery and beading on the sugar skull.

The whole thing! It's aboooout 20"x12" roughly. Check out the little puffballs at the bottom. I thought they added a nice Mexi-touch :)

I used my Cricut to make a stencil to cut out the letter appliques, but first I stiffened up that red fabric with some Heat-N-Bond. It made them SOOO much easier to cut out and later stitch on once the letters were adhered.

Here you can see details of the quilting. Did this on my regular sized sewing machine and it was kind of a pain in the rear, but I liked how it turned out. I hope Lani likes it!

Update on the Wicked Witch of the East Bookmarks: The first batch shipped out this morning! WHEW! Another slightly smaller batch will be hitting my Etsy very soon. If you're not on the mailing list to be notifed when more bookmarks are available and would like to be, send an e-mail to kira (at symbol) oopsicraftmypants.com. Due to high demand, I'm not taking reservations, so if you want one, look out for my e-mail (I'll notify a day in advance) and be quick!

And I'm in the middle of moving to our dreamhouse, so that's pretty crazy, too. Happy Wednesday, friends!
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Welcome, New Followers :D

I'm still in shock over how much traffic those Wicked Witch Bookmarks have generated. I'm humbled that so many folks here on the internet have taken such a liking to one of my thingies! Anyhoo, this little blog has gotten almost SIXTY new followers in the past week! (New followers, THANK YOU for hitting that "follow" button! You are the coolest!) I thought I'd do a little welcome post to kinda show what kinds of stuff I like to craft, and link below so you can see more like it.
I'm a big fan of inchies! This is a tiny 1" by 1" art book made with watercolor paper scraps and doodles of robots. (For more like this, check out posts labeled inchies)


Here's an embroidery I made of a sea monster! I love cryptid animals like the yeti, seamonsters, bigfoot, etc, so sometimes they end up in my crafts. For more embroidery, check out posts with the embroidery label.


This wee house was made for a craft swap on Craftster.org! I'm a huge fan of the Craftster community and am fairly active in the forums there. My username over there is Noooitaremybirthday! (for more papercrafts like this house, go to misc papercrafts label)

I'm known to dabble in art journaling and altering books... Collaging can be pretty dang fun. Check out the art books label.

More on my monster fascination! A plush yeti and a woven monster made from fabric scraps. More plush here!


And now watercolor painting and illustration! This is probably tied with papercrafting as my #1 favorite thing to do :) Someday I want to write a kids book and illustrate it, too. For more of my paintings, check out the paintings/illustration tag.

So that's just a sample of the crafts I do. If you want to see more of the other tags, you can find the "Categories" box in the right hand bar below the pic of the red lady saying "Shhh." I hope you deem the time you spend browsing my blog as moments well spent!

In other news, I'm going to be a BUSY woman. We're moving at the beginning of June to a beautiful house about 15 miles away!!! So between that and Wicked Witch Bookmark orders, my days will be full. I'm waiting on supplies to arrive to make the legs, and they should get here today. Yesterday I spent a good amount of time making teeny tiny red shoe bows.

And hey, if you want to be on the e-mail list to be notified when the next batch of pre-orders will hit my Etsy Shop, you can either comment your e-mail address here or shoot me an e-mail to kira (at symbol) oopsicraftmypants.com! It'll be as soon as I finish making the first batch of ten, most likely in the next 2 weeks.

Well, have a splendid weekend! And happy Thursday!
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Holy whoa! Wicked Witch Ruby Slippers bookmarks update

UPDATE 5/16/2011: I'll be listing TEN of these bookmarks for pre-order in my Etsy Shop (http://kiranichols.etsy.com) this afternoon at 3 PM Central Time! SOLD OUT for today! But if you were dreaming of snagging one and didn't have fast enough fingers, don't be sad! I'll list more pre-orders soon. Keep watching here and on facebook for updates.

The bookmark bodies will look very similar to this. Of course, since I'm handmaking them, they'll vary slightly, but they will all have that lovely Witchy-Leg goodness and ruby slippers. Check back soon!

Hey Friends! It just came to my attention that these little legs are getting reasonably popular around the internet, WAY more than I would have ever expected. I've gotten TONS of requests asking if I'm selling them! So due to popular demand, I'm planning on making some in the next two weeks or sooner. I'll announce when they'll hit my Etsy shop. They do take a good amount of time to make and get the details done nicely, since they're totally handformed and handpainted, so I'm not sure precisely how many I'll be able to churn out right away. Anyhoo, thanks for all the love, folks! Definitely a pleasant surprise to see all those new Facebook fans and followers today! I'll keep you all posted.

Phoenix Mirror Piece

So here it is, the piece I made in my first stained glass class! It's not stained glass, but hey, same techniques :) I added some loops at the tail, planning on hanging beads there, but nothing I tried out looked good. Plain looks fine, right?
It looks a little... I'll say rustic. While grinding the glass, a lot of mirror edges became scratched and ceased to be mirror. Then the patina (the chemical that turns the silver-colored solder copper-colored) reacted strangely with some more mirror edges and again, made them into non-mirrors. Ah well, I like how it looks anyway.

The process was simpler than I had expected. You cut out all of the glass pieces using a pattern, grind them on a grinder to perfect the shape, copper tape the edges, solder it all together, and finish with patina. I'm pretty stoked about having learned this new skill! I've already got some ideas brewing to make some pieces with agate slices...

Also, (here comes the obligatory apology for not blogging enough that I MUST give or else I won't feel better!) Sorry I haven't blogged in a bit. I've been busy, and mostly working on swap projects that I can't share yet. Anyway, I hope you're all having a great weekend!
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