The Kira Nichols Etsy Shop

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Happy New Year!

Only a few more minutes until 2012! This year was a pretty good year. I've got some crafty resolutions for the New Year. The first is to participate in the 50 projects in 2012 craftalong over at Craftster.org, the second is to learn pottery, and the third is to art-calendar-along with Kate over at the Kathryn Wheel. She does some amazing art journal spreads and among my favorites are her art calendar pages. So this year, I plan to make an art calendar page for each month and journal a square a day as I go. At the end of the year, I'll bind them all together into a year-book :) This one is the first! I might change the size, though. Kate's are so roomy and delightful with lots of space for embellishments around the edges.

So how about you? Any crafty resolutions?!

PS. Funny: A squirrel fell down my chimney into my fireplace a few days ago, I actually called the police because I kept hearing sounds and thought there was someone in my house when I was home alone. Tink kept sniffing the fireplace today, so Bobby opened it up and there was a squirrel in there. We let it escape out the back door, and I'm sure he was glad to be OUT!

Kitty Tiny Book

 I made this wee book for my best craft buddy Audio. We kinda have an ongoing swappage, and this summer she sent me an awesome package with 2 excellent tiny books she made. I had been planning on sending her a tiny book, and we share a love of lolcats, thus this tiny book came to be.
 The shapes were cut using my Cricut and Make-the-Cut software and this shape bundle (which I definitely recommend if you've got cutting software).
 I cut out the words and cats from a children's poem book.
 This is my favorite spread of the whole book. There's just something about cut-out cat heads that I like....
 Second favorite. See the phonebook page on the left (free paper!) and the gems on the right.
I hope everyone had the most wonderful Christmas! Mine was spent here in Alabama with Bobby while the rest of my family was over at my sister's in Texas (Boo hoo!). I was sad I couldn't be there with everybody, but Bobby and I had a good day. We spent a lot of this weekend building Peanut a new birdcage which will probably get finished today. It's looking very, very cool! I'll post pics once it's done. I finally got a new computer for Christmas and a new printer :D I'm SO excited about it. Now I get to use better software to make my blog posts cooler. I actually pulled out my tablet that I haven't been able to use for my lack of a fast enough computer, only to find that I most likely threw out the software CD (that included Photoshop Elements, doh!) But it looks like I can download it if I call customer service, AND I found $90 hidden in my tablet case. SCORE! Happy Monday!

Pink Koala and Peanut Glamour Shots

 "My head is not a party," grumbled Koala.

I've been feeling a bit of a creativity dry-spell over the last few weeks. Dunno if anyone has noticed that my posts have dwindled down to about once a week... I feel lazy! But honestly, I sit down at my table with glitter and paper and paint and stuff galore and nothing cool comes out. I'm going to chock it up to winter doldrums and that I was sick this week. Anyhoo, I painted this grumpy pink koala this afternoon after sketching and erasing about 10 different creatures that were all hideous to me and not in a good-hideous way. Koala reflects my sourpuss mood :)

 I also used my new-fangled-light-tent-majig to take some shots of Peanut Button, who just had a bath.
 He didn't really enjoy sitting in that box and was hooting and walking around... These were the best three shots.
Tiny Mr. Crustybeak looks very macaw-esque in this one, I think. Well, I wish you all lots of crafty mojo and good ideas this week! Hopefully mine return to me soon.

Goldfish ornament

 It seems like I've only been making ornaments lately! Not a bad thing, though. Anyway, I saw a giant glittery fuchsia goldfish ornament the size of a taco at TJ Maxx the other week that had super long (like 15") sparkly ribbons for a tail and it was mesmerizing, even though it was ridiculous and way too enormous for any reasonable Christmas tree. I was inspired to make smaller one :)
 The body is sculpted from white polyclay, then I drilled holes for the fins and the tail and then painted the body first with acrylic craft paint, and then iridescent pigment powder. After it was all dry, I glued in the fins and tail that are made out of sheer 1" wide ribbon. Then I glued beads in for the eyes. The loop for hanging on the tree is attached with a eyehole screw (I think that's what it's called!)

Anyhoo, I hope everybody is having a lovely week so far. Until next time.