Catching up: Custom dog, self-portrait, and a skirt

Oh blog, you are so neglected...To be fair, school has had me in a bit of a bind. It's not as if I don't have some free time, but I'm usually just tired and meh or else distracting myself from such things by talking to Joshua. Haven't been extremely crafty this month, but I do indeed have some things to show you! Things I should have shown you a while ago!

First things first: I believe I told you about the custom dog I was working on...it came out pretty nifty, though I do wish I had made the legs longer =/ Here are some pictures:

Shortly after completion...

Labeled ear!

With collar ^^

WITH THE ORIGINAL WINNY!

Woo, so that was exciting =) Glad that the real Winny seems to like her stuffed version...haha. 

So shortly after that project was done, I got an assignment in a class to make a self-portrait. I immediately decided to make a stuffed version of myself because, uh, that's the kind of thing I like to do. Now, I wasn't going to be in class on the actual day that it was due, so I got it done early...only to find out that it was supposed to be non-representational (or non-literal) because it is an Avant Garde history class and she wanted us to try imitating the people we learned about -_- Ah well, my teacher still really liked it and uh, now I have a tiny stuffed version of myself that I don't know what to do with...haha. I do sort of wish I had known/realized ahead of time though because it would have been fun to make some really weird abstract mess of fabric...maybe some other time!

 TWINS! KIND OF! NOT REALLY!

It was made with brown, blue, and purple fleece, black felt for the vest and wristband, little jewelry jump rings for the piercings, colored tooth pick ends for the gauges (with real tiny o-rings!), and black plastic safety eyes from 6060. Entirely hand-sewn since it was so small...and I decided not to give myself green bangs because 1) I was planning on dyeing them (the very next day in fact) and 2) because I change my hair so often that even the cut would be outdated soon enough and I thought it'd be best to just stick with my natural hair color...haha. And I just want you all to know that I really do have a shirt and pants in almost those exact colors. Cos I'm cool like that.

So on the subject of vanity...this is what I look like now with my new bangs!
 

I also did a bleached under-layer in the back, how exciting. And uh, yeah, as you can see I tried wearing a weird scarf the other day. I never wear scarves like that...usually only for actual neck-warmth, not just like HEY GUYS I'M WEARING THIS SCARF TODAY. I am making a bigger deal of the damn scarf than I should...haha. In any case WHY YES I am wearing the Amanda Palmer shirt I made all by myself in that picture! How neat! I keep meaning to make some AFP-themed pillowcases but I haven't done it yet. Sigh.

Okay, back to the craftiness at hand!

I have been trying to make a skirt based on an Urban Threads tutorial (which you can find HERE), but that came to a standstill after I realized that I made it too wide and also when I realized I for some reason could not make any sense out of how they say to make the waistband...keep meaning to ask someone else to read it and see if I'm just really dumb...haha. In any case, here's a progress picture of it a bit before I got stuck:

It will be pretty awesome...once I figure out how to finish it...

Alright...I've got more things to show you, but I am going to wait on it in the hopes that it will encourage me to blog again soon! PESTER ME IF IT TAKES TOO LONG! And remember, if you have any questions for me, craft-related or otherwise, you can ask them here: http://www.formspring.me/EmoSeal and, if they're relevant, I'll post the answers here as well. Hope you have an awesome day =)

<3

New pictures coming soon for my listings!

This morning when I threw out the box for the Frosted Flakes, I hesistated - "I could do something with this cardboard, seriously...paint on it, make something out of it...something...nooo, just throw the damn thing away, it'll sit in your room forever and nothing will happen." So into the trash it went.

Then, later in my room, I came across these neat little tutorials for taking better pictures and editing them on KMC designs blog: How to take great photos and How to create knockout photos for Etsy using Photoshop. And suddenly, I felt inspired - I dug the cereal box out of the trash, pulled it apart, taped two pieces of white paper to the inside, and placed near the window - voila! Natural light box!

Not pretty by any means, but it does the job =) Put that together with the second tutorial (though I played around with the instructions a little) and next thing you know I have the most professional looking pictures I have ever taken in my life. Here's the original first picture for my Glittery Green Frosted Polymer Clay Cupcake Earrings :

And here's the new one:

HUGE improvement if you ask me! Unfortunately, this means I have a lottttttttt of new pictures to take and edit...which has the potential to take over my life...sigh.

Speaking of my life - my fiancé started the drive back to Wisconsin yesterday morning and he'll most likely be back there sometime tomorrow. I miss him more than I could tell you...and not to say that California winter nights are much to complain about, but my bed was freezing last night without him! I thought I was joking about losing my own personal human heater, but it was serious business - I'm going to have to get another blanket on my bed (haha, yes, I am a wuss, I get cold super easy). In all seriousness though, it sucks very much to not have him here anymore and to not be sure when he'll be able to come back. I've got to take my month off of school as an opportunity to get myself together and start doing all of the adult things I've been putting off - job, license, etc - and to get rid of all of the excess stuff I have to do my part in getting him back here as soon as possible.

My fiancé Joshua eating at a Chinese buffet on Christmas...haha

In other crafty news: I am going to try to take up crocheting! Woot. I bought some yarn and a hook about a week or so ago and didn't do so well on my first attempt, but I have a friend who crochets and he promised to help get me started the next time we hang out, so that is exciting. I really can't wait to be able to make hats and scarves and all kinds of crazy stuff. If any of you out there crochet and have some tips or good websites to check out, let me know!

Alright, that's it for now...<3