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!

Doodle Dice: Fun with inchies!

 I can't believe how slow the rest of this week is going! It's only Thursday?! Bah, I'm sure it'll be August before I know it. Anyway, I made a set of six inchies this afternoon for a kind of dice cube thingie. I made the inchies first, and then glued them onto a wooden 1 inch cube that I painted purple.
 
 Here are the doodle inchies! I wanted to put a corresponding number of doodles for each piece, but when it came to five and six, I said forget it. The five is a couple of robots high-fiving, and the six is a jellyfish with six legs. Hey, it works :) Happy Thursday, everyone!



Altered Puzzle Pieces

My crafty pal Audio asked me if I wanted to do a couple of pieces for an altered puzzle, and I said heck yeah! I've wanted to do a whole puzzle for a while now, but just never got around to it. Anyhoo, here are the 2 pieces I did for her.
The top one is a silly owl wearing a hat, saying "Hoo-ya!" instead of "Boo-ya!" which is one of my favorite phrases.
For this one, I used an art print of mine, along with that rad foil stuff along the border, and then some purple jaquard pigment powder and gum arabic to add a little bit of shimmer and fun :) Anyway, I hope everyone is having a good weekend! Mine's going pretty good, and it's my birthday tomorrow! Probably gonna go on a picnic or something. Happy Sunday, friends.
Posted by Picasa

Inchies... Teeny squares of yay

It's been a long time since I've made any inchies, and they're always a fun, tiny, and quick way to feel like you've accomplished something. (Just in case somebody reading doesn't know, an inchie is just a little 1" by 1" sqaure piece of artwork. Silly, right? But cool.) Anyway, I made this set last night. A bunny, a piggy, and a cat.
Then I finished up this set this morning. Birds inchies, woot.
I used some AWESOME crafting foil to border this one. I had been looking for crafting foil for a few months after a case of envy over discovering a friend's "I don't know what this is, can you show me?" stash of foiling supplies that her mother in law gave her. It's seriously so shiny and wonderful. If you are curious and want to play (I highly recommend it!) it's Lisa Pavelka crafting foil. I found it at Michaels near the polyclay supplies. I guess you can use it on polyclay, but I'll probably mostly use it for papercrafting. The adhesive I used was Alene's flexible stretchable fabric glue applied with a paint brush. When it dries, it's still tacky, so that's why it works :) If you wanna know more, just comment on my facebook.
I think I'm going through a piggy-drawing phase. Maybe koalas next. Happy Thursday!

Oh and I can't gush enough about how nice and lovely you guys are, Thank you for the FB comments and the ones on here, too :)
Posted by Picasa

Catch a piggy...

I've been wanting to experiment a little with making semi-dimensional birdcages with wire for a while now, and this is my first attempt. It's not the best, but hey, I think it turned out pretty cute. I drew and painted this little bat-winged pig to keep inside the cage.
He doesn't look real amused, does he?
The construction of the cage is simple enough.... I just cut out two half-circles from cereal box, then sandwiched several "spokes" of wire between them using the hot glue gun. Then I just bent them down and shaped the cage using my fingers. Voila. It looks a little bit sloppy, but I figure I'll work on the technique. If I get it down, I might just have to do a tutorial, or something :) I know by now, you're all dying to get out the hot glue gun and some wire to start making birdcages, pigcages, yeticages, monstercages, etc.
And finally, the valentine I made for my Bobby, us as pointy pigs. He said, "Is that you wearing a sexy outfit?" and I said, "What?! No, that's an apron!" and he said, "No, look. That's a sexy outfit, and I'm naked, just wearing a tie." It was pretty funny... I hope you all had a lovely Valentines day.

*Le sigh* Monday is my birthday, and it makes me miss my family... Sometimes I wish we lived within 1000 miles of at least one of my family members. I miss get-togethers. Ah well, Bobby has the day off on my birthday, so I'm sure I'll have a good day... But dang, I miss everybody.
Posted by Picasa

Altered Heart Mini-Book!

Okay, okay, I'll admit it, just in case this looks familiar. This is a re-run from last year, but I thought it appropriate to share again for Valentine's day weekend. It's a little heart-shaped book, and the pages are punched cereal box by a Marvy-Uchida jumbo punch (but not a punch brand I recommend, BTW! In my experience, they break pretty consistently. Go with Paper Shapers!!!)
This pic is clickable to enlarge and see more details of the pages. This little book remains one of my favorite little things that I have around. So I hope you don't mind it's a re-run!

Sadly, I've got nothing new to post... I've been in a pretty ridiculous funk for the last couple weeks. Just been feeling crazy-anxious, and I'm not 100% certain why. I'm trying really hard to push past it, but sometimes it's just tough. I'm tapering off my painkillers, so maybe I'm feeling a touch of withdrawals? No idea. Anyway, maybe I aughta join a swap or something to get inspired. Or catch up on my blogroll, since I'm totally behind. At any rate, life is generally good, just not as crafty as I want. Happy weekend, and have a good Valentine's Day. Go eat some fancy chocolates, I know I will :)
Posted by Picasa

Kokopelli Book Shrine

Here's what I've been working on!!! It's a book shrine featuring kokopelli. I have a friend who was an enormous help during my early recovery, bringing me all sorts of things, doing Christmas shopping for me, etc. She has a liking for the little kokopelli dude, so I wanted to make her something unique to say thank you.
You know those books with hiding places cut into them? It's the same idea, but after I cut a big hole in the middle of the book, I glued the page edges together to make a solid compartment. Then I just painted and glued in what you see. The kokopelli is cut from sandpaper :)
I got the old book on the library sale shelf... It was a book about some people in China, but the color is kinda sandy, terra-cotta-ish and kinda Southwestern, right? I painted another little kokopelli to put on the front of the book.
Here's an in progress shot before I had all of the dry grasses and things glued in. I was tempted to stop here, because the night scene was just so serene.... But that wasn't the plan. Anyhoo, I hope you're all having a great weekend. Good night!
Posted by Picasa

Sketchbook Scans

Well shoot, I thought I'd be posting more than once per week by now! Here I am, fiiiiinally posting some sketchbook project scans. Towards the end, I had to resort to using a lot of cut out art prints. I felt like I was cheating a little bit, but afterall, it IS my artwork, and I needed to meet the deadline. Meh. Oh well. So this first one is my seafood page, fish, octopus, etc.

This one was fast and simple, flower doodles and watercolor. The sleeping dog that looks like a pink poo is a doodle with color pencil.
I ran out of canned air, and had to make that red tree with a straw and my own breath. About passed out. but it turned out acceptable :) Then I doodled all those animals on the right, including a guinea pig, owl, giraffe, and bonus if you spot the moogle.
As hard as I tried, I wasn't able to finish EVERY spread, but the right side of this one was a favorite. The couch is cut out of an IKEA catalog (Oh, to have an IKEA nearby). Anyhoo, I hope you enjoyed these pages! No word yet if my sketchbook has made it safely to New York, but they have a lot of books to process....

I've been feeling good, then bad, then good. The trouble is doing much too much when I feel good, then feeling bad the next day. Like my dad reminded me over the phone, no one said surgery recovery would be easy. The key is BALANCE!!! Thank you again to everybody's nice encouraging words! And oh hey, some NEW followers?! (Hello to you!) That made my week.

Soon to come, a book shrine and a giveaway soon! I found some rad brand NEW papercrafting supplies at the Goodwill this week, and I thought I'd share the wealth. Til next time, HAPPY WEDNESDAY!
Posted by Picasa