New Cute Things

I finally got around to listing more things in my shop:

Tiny yellow flower earrings...


Pretty moon and star earrings....


And Ipu Heke, in necklace and earrings!


Enjoy!

Aloha,
~Su

{this moment} 2

Adopted from SouleMama's weekly ritual:

{this moment} – "A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you’re inspired to do the same, leave a link to your ‘moment’ in the comments for all to find and see."

Ko`olau Mountain Range, Kane`ohe, O`ahu, Hawai`i

Enjoy! ~Su

Poppet Hair Makeover

Here, for your viewing pleasure, in it's entire process, is Poppet #3's hair selection.

A fuzzy hair-do?:


Maybe a Marge Simpson in gold, or purple? Or feathers? Or shiny?



Couple more...


Top 4 runners-up:


And the final outcome:


Fun!
Aloha, ~Su

A bit of everything!

<-a nightclub wedding, sans children Labor Day Weekend started early for us - I started work earlier than usual so I was home before the sun set on Friday. Did a lot and did nothing; it was wonderful! We also got another Lost: Season 6 disc from Netflix! Here's a quick pictorial of what I did. Enjoy! Aloha, Su

<-earring marathon <-beach break! <-poppet #2 revisited, ready for jointing <-eyes for poppet #2!

The Sketchbook Project begins...

I've been nervous about this project - I've always had a rough time getting my ideas and thoughts from my mind's eye to the page or whatever medium I'm working in. *Sigh* this time is no different.

I tried to start early, even before the book came.... so I started with some storyboarding, which I promptly lost. So I started with some more storyboarding, which I finally worked out the beginnings of what can only mean I will need to be removing pages or gluing many together because each spread seems like it will be a lot of work! Especially considering the holidays, the extra work I've picked up and the holidays around the corner. My deadline is January 15th I believe.

Well anyway, here is my efforts towards my first page spread. This was inspired by a peacock we saw, wandering around like just another chicken, over at the rec center one day when we were waiting to pick up Grandma.



Enjoy!
~Su

4am, work work work

<- gratuitous Dorothy tail shot Up early today, eking out some craft time. Here's a shoppe update, and a sneak peek! Just sold the Ipu Heke earrings, and as I sorted out my remaining large pearls, decided to set aside pairs for future work. I ended up with a bunch of unmatched pearls, so I decided that they would become the matching Ipu Heke necklace. That's right, just like that! HA! ....must be too early, I'm a little punchy this morning. Oops sorry folks.

Here are the earrings, mailed out on Friday morn. Thanks Kristen!


And the poor unmatched pearl given glory as a Pendant, and a shot of the set:


Enjoy! Aloha,
~Su

{this moment}

Playing along with y'all... Have a great weekend!

From FiveGreenAcres:

"Playing along with SouleMama this week:

{this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you’re inspired to do the same, leave a link to your ‘moment’ in the comments for all to find and see."

Calypso's Eyes - a Pic-tutorial

My latest poppet, inspired by Calypso of The Pirates of the Carribbean, really had some great eyes. I love to paint eyes with nailpolish. Nowadays there are so many great choices. Here's a short pictorial on how her eyes came about.

First, I went thru the entire box of nailpolish, and did up some samples on a sheet of clear plastic.
<--shades of blue
<--golds for accents

Prep your eye. If you like, buy clear ones. If you found a heck-load of spray-painted ones for super cheap like I did, sand those buggers off! Here I am using an emery board for shaping nails. I've also used a rotary tool with a sanding disc attached.


You can lay down a translucent layer of color first if you like. For Calypso's, I put down a teal blue. Forgot to take a pic, too excited.

With a toothpick, I add details like dots and lines. Note how the dots look tiny from the back but much larger from the front. I put down varying sizes of gold and teal green dots.


Then it seemed lacking so I put in black lines with acrylic paint. I like how they are a tad bit subtle because they are the last layer. I usually do gold lines as the first layer so they stand out more. Notice that although the black is fairly thick on the edge, it shows up as only lines from the front. Somehow the edge gets lost. The third pic below shows the two teals I used, the background more bluish, the dots more greenish.


love how it turned out. looks very oceany here, and different depending on the light:


This was how she may have looked with brown hair or blue. I ended up using the blue with streaks of the brown and an additional third wool variegated yarn with pinks and purples in it. BTW if you're wondering how I do the eye/hair/skin test, the eye is stuck into the hole of the head meant for the neck. I then drape a bunch of the yarn over to see how everything will go together.


And that folks is how Calypso got her hair and eyes.
Thanks for visiting!
Aloha, ~Su

The Sketchbook Project 2011

I've been wanting to join The Sketchbook Project put on by the Arthouse Coop but wasn't sure if I'd have the funds. My wonderful craft world Craftster.com put on a scholarship drawing sponsored by the Arthouse Coop and although I wasn't one of the 3 winners, an anonymous Craftster member became my Fairy Sketchbook Godmother and gifted me a book! So I've picked up a book, and forked over $20 for digitizing (since it's a good chance I may not make any of the tour stops - yes my book will go on tour!) and joined the Sketchbook-Along here.

I've decided this is a great way to 1)spark my journaling and sketchbooking again, 2)work off the energy of some awesome artists in the Sketchbook-Along, and 3)solve the problem of not crafting during the school semester. I didn't want to take on any major projects what with work bumping up to a possible 40 hours a week from my usual 20, and with me taking the dreaded Anatomy and Physiology class AND lab this semester.

My theme that I chose is "If you lived here..." So the plan (so that I wouldn't have anxiety and stress about this sketchbook thing) is to sit down every night (if I'm not exhausted) and sketch a little, or glue a bit of something down and journal a little blurb about one thing that was interesting that day. Just whip out a double page spread and be done with it, call it a night. Then I can always go back to it. Or not. It'll be like a running train of thought, kinda like I used to do daily on FaceBook, until I run out of pages.

Speaking of pages, I hear everyone talking about how the pages are thin, so I'm planning on gluing 2 pages together as I go along. I just bought a whole bunch of glue sticks that were on sale for back-to-school, so I think I'm prepared. I think I'll do pen/ink drawings with color pencil or pastel crayon accents, and the blurb for the day in black ink. That should make it a little less intimidating.

This is really exciting for me, to have an artistic outlet to balance home, work and school, and also to have it go on tour across the continental US and reside permanently in New York! Wow! They have it worked out that each book has a barcode and you can see how many people pick up your book to browse through. I also chose to digitize it so I can share it with friends and family, since New York is so far away. I'm also gifting a sketchbook to my nephew who I started on sketchbooks when he was little. We used to glue leaves and draw with crayons in them. I hope he will fill his sketchbook with wonderful things and send it back in time to join the tour.

You should think about joining in too! It doesn't matter if you can draw or not - a lot of people just glue in pictures and write, and some write and draw nothing at all. In one of the books that really struck me as too cool the artist simply made cut-0uts on every page. It was beautiful! At the very least, visit The Sketchbook Project to see what others have done, and be inspired!

Thanks for visiting! Aloha, ~Su