Black Friday/Cyber Monday Sale! Plus my b-day and those secret projects...

Yes, I know, I just had a birthday sale of sorts...but now it's Black Friday (and soon to be Cyber Monday), which means an even bigger sale!

I made a brand new HOLIDAY SALE section - more than half of the items in my shop have migrated over into it and they are all 25% off! And the rest of the items in my shop now have FREE shipping =D I rarely have sales throughout the year and this is an especially big one for me, so take advantage of it while you can - the sale ends Monday night at midnight (or, well, Tuesday morning if you want to be technical).

Black Friday/Cyber Monday Sale!

11/26 -- 11/30

In other news, last Friday was my 21st birthday and it was AWESOME. I went to Disneyland with Joshua, my friend Cat, who I share my birthday with (I'm older by 2 years and 1 hour ^^), her sister, and our friends  Nick, Jen, and Hayden. We had far more fun than people our age should there...haha. Here's a picture!

See my hooded-cat friend there at the front? I totally made that ^^

Joshua stayed to visit for a few days besides that and we had a lot of fun running around with all of our friends, seeing two concerts (The Features and Say Anything) and Boondock Saints 2 (so good), and just getting to spend time together again. All and all a good time.

Now! Secret projects! Haha, I haven't been able to tell you guys about the past two things I've made because they were both birthday presents - one for Joshua (Nov. 15) and one for Cat! Cat really liked the bat I made back in October and I decided to make her one similar - I don't have a picture of her and her new friend together just yet, but here he is right after I finished him:

Cat was very pleased with her bat...haha.

And as for Joshua...Joshua is very hard to get things for. Even harder to make things for...but I decided to risk it and try something new. I ended up asking him to tell me a design of some sort that he really liked that I could put onto something and that he wouldn't mind seeing a lot...because I wanted to try making him a new wallet =) He told me to use the Pixies "P-wing" logo and I went to work. I used fabric markers and hand-cut stencils to get the design onto some fabric, sewed up the edges and attached some backing fabric, and then sewed vinyl pockets to the inside (and, being the cheesy person I am, I stitched "I love you" into the inside...haha). I gave it to him on the bus shortly after he arrived and...he really liked it =) I was super excited and I got this really cute picture of him holding it before he left:

He rarely smiles or looks at the camera in pictures, so this is just AMAZING =D

And here's a look at the inside...and my cheesiness...haha.

He said he really liked it and immediately switched out his old wallet (and proceeded to show it off during the rest of the visit to everyone he could), so YAY! I think I may attempt more wallets in the future now.

Alllright...I considered writing about two other recent projects here as well, but I think I'll save those for another blog soon. Good night and please do check out my Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale!

<3

BIRTHDAY! Free shipping in the shop through the weekend =D

SO! Tomorrow is my birthday! Woooo! This is going to be a pretty brief update, but I just wanted to let you guys know that I am offering FREE SHIPPING on everything in my shop starting now as my gift to you =)

FREE SHIPPING!

on everything in the shop =D

11/19 - 11/23

 

I've been working on a few different secret projects that I don't want to post about just yet because they are birthday presents for two friends - Joshua's birthday was on November 15 and my friend Cat and I share the same birthday (we are exactly two years and one hour apart). Hopefully I'll get some pictures of both of them with what I made and I'll be able to show off then. One will look a bit familiar and the other is something I've never attempted before...we'll see how that goes over...haha.

Alright, next time I promise you will be getting a super exciting, picture-filled entry! For now, I have one more class to get through for today and then I am heading to the airport to pick up Joshua - we're going to Disneyland tomorrow with a bunch of friends and then spending a few days just hanging out together and I am super excited =D Hope things are going well for you too!

<3

HALLOWEEN! + She's BATTY + Custom Order Excitement

Ahhhh, Halloween! My favorite holiday!

Furry green monster costume = SUCCESS!

Haha, so I was totally working on my costume right up until the very last second. I don't know what happened, I was being pretty consistent about getting things done for a little bit there... School perhaps? Ugh, school. Also more frequent hang-out time with my friends. Oh! And I've been visiting my friend Mike (you know, the one who is in A City Serene? you read that entry right?) in the hospital! He's got a long way to go before things approach normal again, but he's talking and joking and being a jerk, so we're all pretty hopeful =)

Here's a slightly better picture of my costume:

I hand-sewed the hood, the gloves, the fur on the shirt, and legwarmers that you obviously can't see in this picture. The blazer was a $4 thrift store find and I found the scarf abandoned on the floor after a concert a few years back...haha. Besides that, I wore purple pants and pink shoes. I've got some picture from the party I went to here where you can see things a little better - don't mind my weird friends and I =)

Yay, Halloween party! And yes, I got my monstery-blood sucked by a vampire...haha

NOW TELL ME HOW YOUR HALLOWEEN WAS! I seriously want to know, I'm still kind of hyped up about it even though it's over...haha. And in that spirit, I'd like to feature someone who seems to be even more into Halloween than me - She's Batty Designs =)

She makes some really awesome cards, as you can see - I really really like the owl one on the right. Go check out her shop - in her own words, Jamie "specializes in greeting cards, invitations and other paper products such as gift tags" and she, like me, is up for custom orders!

Speaking of custom orders...I worked on one for the lovely Poison Ivy you can see in the collage up there =) She requested two bracelets and these:

BOB-OMB EARRINGS!

I am pretty proud of them and she seemed excited, so woo! As usual, please do take these kinds of things as encouragement to request custom work from me - I'm definitely up for it =)

Alright, this took me a lot longer to put together than I meant for it to...so many pictures! Haha...I'll be writing again soon.

Random Late Night Entry: Halloween, Custom Things, ACEOs, and Me

Just feeling the need to update this...

Hmm, well, I finished the hood to my Halloween costume! I would normally post a picture, but I think I'd like to wait until it's all done to show off =) It came out a lot better than I expected - haha, I was really nervous about it, I've never attempted something like this before. The fur is glorious, the horns stay up and stick out perfectly, and the clasp I used works great. I'm really proud of it!

I have also been commissioned by a friend once again to make some things - jewelry this time. Haven't started yet, but I may tomorrow (er, later today...oh midnight, how confusing you are - personally, I have trouble considering it the next day til I've actually slept). Ordered some supplies for the project off of Etsy (of course), but I think I already have most of what I need. We'll see if I'm missing anything else... I'm excited about this! As scary and challenging as custom orders are, they're fun. I do things I wouldn't normally attempt and so far, the results have been good. I seriously encourage you to frighten me with your ideas anytime =)

I'm also slowly starting to work on the ACEOs I started drawing forever ago - I think I explained this before (with links even!) but if you don't know, they're basically just trading card sized art. I cut out the ones I finished and signed them and started to work on a couple more. Perhaps another project for tomorrow will be taking good pictures of the ones that are done and getting some of them listed. Ugh, it's going to be hard for me to part with them...I rarely give away things I draw (well, unless you count the birthday cards I make) because I get so attached to them...haha, sigh. What can I tell you, I am ridiculous. Anyway, here's a horrible tease of the finished cards:

The first eight of fifteen cards I plan to draw...just doing random things and hoping for the best =)

Besides that, I made some sales this week and I was SUPER EXCITED! It's been a while...haha. I've been more consistent about working on my shop though (and I have awesome friends), so that was pretty sweet. The only problem is now I'm itching to spend the money I just got...sigh, terrible. So far I'm resisting the urge. I'd be much better off saving for my birthday, for a Comic-Con ticket (ugh, they're $100 now, so lame), for getting my tattoo already, etc...but since when has being responsible been fun? Haha, just wish me luck.

 In other random news, today(/yesterday), I got my real live driver's license in the mail! Woo! I took my test last Wednesday and it showed up in the mail today. Pretty exciting. My dad also brought me to pick out some new glasses, which should be ready in about 5 days - this is really really REALLY awesome because my current glasses are SUPER scratched up and it's been getting harder and harder to see out of them...haha. I have no idea if this picture truly does the damage justice, but it's worth a shot:

I absolutely insist you click on this to see it bigger and truly witness the horror! You know, if you want to...

 

The new glasses really aren't the different from the ones I have now (similarly shaped plastic frame, etc - we were on a tight budget or else I might have been a bit more experimental in my choice) except that they're a nice dark red. I promise you that there will be pictures when they arrive even if you do not want them!

 

It's funny how I always think I have nothing to say in this blog, and yet when I try, I always write so much.

 

Alright, I will leave you with one final note: GO SEE WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE! As a maker of monsters and a lover of unconventional movies (who happened to catch an early screening ^^), I must insist you see it now that it's out!

 

This was all probably just an excuse to show off my awesome crown from the free screening...and my green hair! =D

GOOD NIGHT, BLOGGERS! <3

 

Winning a Giveaway Pt. 2, New Polymer Clay Things, and Fabric!

Okay! Back to posting! Seriously!

As a brief update on my friends in A City Serene, all but two of the members are out of the hospital - my friend Marc is out, but Mike is still in there. Haven't gotten any specific updates on him lately so I can't say much besides that, really. Donations are still needed to help their families out, and I am still sending 40% from all Etsy purchases in my shop to them.

Now, for one of the things I meant to post before all that happened: I won a giveaway! 5erg had a giveaway on her blog a few weeks ago and I left a comment and WON! Haha...I got to spend $20 in her shop and I got an opalite bracelet, opalite earrings, and an ACEO. Look at how happy I am!

The opalite bracelet! I wear this almost everyday now...

 

Opalite earrings! So pretty!

In case you didn't notice, I really really like opalite...haha. The plugs I've got in my ears with the earrings are also opalite. It's just so damn pretty! Thank you again, 5erg!


Hmm, what else...well, I finally made some more polymer clay stuff on Monday. I decided to try making some slightly different kinds of horns and I also made some plugs for myself that I can fit through my silicone earskins (since polymer clay is porous, it's really not ideal for putting straight into your ears) after looking around at the kinds of things other people are making. Lately I've been getting all kinds of cool ideas from other Etsian's shops and various websites and so on - there's so much I want to make and try that it's kind of ridiculous...but that's the usual state of things with me. Anyways, here's a look at what I did:

Wooo, new polymer clay stuff! Just uh, hanging out on my messy desk...

I meant to start getting proper pictures taken of the horns yesterday, but ended up going to the thrift and fabric stores with my friend Hayden, so I didn't accomplish much on that front...hopefully tomorrow! What I did accomplish was getting black corduroy pants for $1.75 and some fabric, woo. Got fabric because 1) I love fabric, 2) I'm trying to build up a good collection of different kinds of fabric for the random projects I think up, and 3) I AM GOING TO TRY MAKING MY OWN HALLOWEEN COSTUME THIS YEAR!

Haha...I've definitely worn handmade costumes before as a kid - I had a glorious velvety vampire cape that used to choke me but I still loved it, I was once the pink Power Ranger (all felt outfit, if I recall), etc - but I've never made one on my own, so I'm pretty excited and really hoping I get it right. My plan is to be a monster! I'm thinking I'll use some awesome green fur I bought a while back to make a hood/hat/type thing with horns, armwarmers, and legwarmers. Not positive what I'll be wearing with them just yet though...might make something or might just look through my clothes/thrift stores to find something that will match it. I will keep you updated on my progress =) Here's the fabric I have so far:

Here's the green I bought a while back...

And this is what I got yesterday! I'm thinking the green and white spot cotton will be the lining for the hood and the pink fleece will be the underside of the armwarmers and maybe the horns. And uh, then there's some awesome pink fur =)

Alright, well I think that's it for today...I'll be posting again soon =)

Help Me Help My Friends from A City Serene

Hey everyone...well, I was planning to write another post a lot sooner than this, but in addition to being busy with school and, well, my usual state of tiredness (haha, seriously), this weekend I found out that two of my friends got into a really serious car accident while three days into their band's first big tour. There's lots of news articles floating around, but I think this is a pretty good one: http://tinyurl.com/acityserene

They have tons of AWESOME quality photos on MySpace, but I had to post this one because it's classic Mike (big arms) and Marc (huge smile and pointing) to me...sigh.

Basically what happened is that the tour bus they were driving got hit head on. All six of them were seriously hurt - they each have at least one broken bone - and even the best of them is still in the hospital five days later and is going to need months of rehabilitation to recover. Two of them are friends of mine from high school - one's actually my ex of two years who I'm still friends with, though I wish we had talked more often. Hearing what happened shook me up a lot more than expected, and I feel like I've spent most of my free time lately trying to see if there's any updates on their conditions from a friend of ours who's basically camping out at the hospital and re-posting news articles about what happened as more information comes out. I actually got a bit upset today about a post MySpace Music made on the accident because of some people posting unnecessary negative comments...ah, will I ever learn not to read comments on articles online? I mean, I do understand it's the nature of the internet, and I understand that it's easy to be desensitized to news and things that affect people you don't even know, but it's still amazing how insensitive people can be. I guess that's something I always knew, but it's become very personal now. But enough about that.

What I want to do right now is just to ask you to help them out, whether that be through donating money to them through a PayPal account set up on their MySpace page, buying their new EP or a shirt, or sending some encouraging words to them. I am going to be donating a percentage from any sales I make in my Etsy shop to them, so that's another way that you can help out if you have the money to spare, or have been waiting for a good time to get something from me. Honestly, I'm pretty broke myself right now (I actually don't have textbooks for most of my classes yet and we're three weeks into the semester - thank you internet for having a good chunk of my readings so far), and sales on Etsy are about the only way I'm going to get together any money to send them myself, so they would be doubly appreciated.

I promise to get back on track with this blog soon, but for now, please send my friends and the rest of A City Serene some positive vibes - they really need them right now. Thank you <3

Adventures with Fabric Markers and My Day of Fame!

Hello again. See, I really am going to try to write more often! Haha...now, what to talk about...

There's a few different projects I've worked on over the past months, but I think today we'll talk about my fabric marker shirts. I've actually been messing around with fabric markers for a few years (I think I first got some in 2006), but I didn't start attempting to sell anything I did until the summer of 2008. I made four Elliott Smith shirts - he was an amazing musician, check him out - and sold three of them on eBay (the fourth went to the always awesome Joshua).

 

These are the first four shirts I made to sell - Joshua got the one at the bottom, which was my favorite.

I didn't make any shirts again until about a year later, a.k.a. earlier this summer, and I decided to put those ones on Etsy. Here's my favorite one:

Click on it to see it better, or check out the official Etsy listing.

Joshua actually gave me the idea for this one, but I came up with using the balloon string to write out Elliott's name. If you want to see the rest of the newer shirts, check out the Stenciled and Shaded Shirts section in my Etsy shop!

The original reason for making Elliott shirts came about after I made one for myself from a stencil I cut out from a picture. I posted it in an Elliott Smith community and got lots of positive responses and offers to buy any if I made more. Since Elliott is gone, there aren't exactly a ton of shirt options for fans, and I thought it would be something cool to do for the community.

The basic process for these shirts starts with finding a picture I like and then messing with it on the computer to make a grayscale stencil. From there, I print it out and then start cutting out small sections at a time to fill in with fabric marker on a shirt. I started experimenting with shading in the first batch of shirts when one of my markers started to go dead and it's been a pretty effective technique ever since =) Of course, dying markers only last for so long though...I'm thinking when I get the chance, I might try to just get a lightish gray fabric marker (I used Marvy fabric markers, by the way - they dry pretty quickly and hold up well and I love them).

Elliott Smith isn't the only person who's face I've put on a shirt though...I actually made an Amanda Palmer shirt in between the two sets of Elliott ones. If you don't know who Amanda is, please do yourself a favor and listen to her music and read her blogs - she's pretty fantastic =) Anyways, I made an AFP shirt and tried to submit it to be sold on her independent merch site, Post War Trade, but they felt like they had too many t-shirts as it was, so I ended up keeping it for myself. And, one day she announced that she would be in Hermosa Beach hosting a meet-up/photo shoot and after somehow miraculously convincing my friend Hayden to give me a ride the night before, we were off on an adventure! I even got to be in an impromptu music video with a ton of other fans, as you can see here!:

 

I'm the one holding up a giant yellow rubber duck =D

After the shoot, Amanda said she would hang out until everyone she met everyone who wanted to talk and have her sign things and take pictures and so on had gotten their chance.  Because she's just that awesome. I had decided to bring along the shirt I made and I asked her if she would write something on the back for me..:

The shirt, me holding the shirt as Amanda wrote, and her mysterious addition to the back. 

It is probably now one of my favorite shirts ever...I also got a hug and a kiss on the cheek and a fabric marker stolen by Amanda Effing Palmer. It was a pretty good day...=)

And uh, that's my awesome fabric marker shirt story! To think it all started one depressing summer when I decided to write lyrics all over a blank white shirt with a stain on it! And shortly after learned that Sharpie doesn't hold up well on shirts! Haha...

I'm hoping in the future to make more, different sorts of shirts, as well as some patches to put into my Etsy shop, but for now, there is Elliott. And who knows, maybe one day one of your custom requests?

<3

I'M NOT DEAD! And I've made new things!

Oh my...it has been a long time...haha.

I'm really sorry I started failing at this blog. My whole Etsy shop went into a lull for a while, really, so the blog went down with it. I've been getting better with my shop though, and I'm FINALLY going to do the same here!

So! Where to start? Uh, I've started making stuffed things, that's pretty exciting. So far, it's mostly monsters, but I've also made a whale and a bunny. I've done two custom stuffed things for friends as well - both came out pretty well and they've gotten lots of compliments, which is awesome. The first was a doll version of my friend Chris for his girlfriend...yeah...haha... He's got a handmade brown corduroy shirt with a pin that says "I Am Loved" in French attached to it and pants made from an old pair of jeans!

The Chris doll, shortly after I finished him...

 

And attending his first party with his namesake =)

The other was a character from an old computer game called Day of the Tentacle for Tien. She found a picture of a stuffed version the purple tentacle someone had made online, and after seeing the Chris doll, asked if I might be able to make her one that fit her specifications a little better.

Here he is! (click the picture to see him better)

Tien and the tentacle, being evil together.

Both were 100% hand sewn...which was horribly difficult...haha, but it makes me that much more proud of them. I actually hand sew pretty much everything I do because the only sewing machine I've got came from a bargain store and cost less than $10. It is as horrible as it sounds, but better than nothing. One day!

To see more of the stuffed things I've made, you can go to the Punk Rock Plush section in my shop and/or check out the photo albums on my Facebook fan page!

Alright, well! I have a few things in mind for future blog entries, so hopefully I'll stay on track here. One last thing though - I want to say thanks to 5erg! I won her giveaway and now I pick out $20 worth of stuff from her shop =D Still haven't decided on what I want, but it definitely made my day.

Talk to you later!