Amineko craft challenge!!

I'm so excited!  I've joined the Amineko challenge on Ravelry.  The challenge is to crochet 12 amineko in 2012.  I'm a couple months behind so I need to get cracking!  I love the Amineko book, and since I just found my copy so I can start crocheting!  I'm so excited!  Any excuse to crochet!  :)  I really want to make a giant amineko.  I'm excited!  Plus, this is going to be an awesome stash buster!!!  Now to decide what colors I want to make all my aminekos in!! :D

Happy New Year!!

I can't believe we're already 3 weeks into the new year!!  I'm so excited!  It's starting to look like this year is going to be a fantastic year!  I'm in 2 swaps already, one is the 80s cartoon swap which I'm almost done with and the other is an anime/manga swap.  You can never have to many anime goodies! :)  Not to mention, I've already got my first few crafts underway!  It's been a little on the rainy side the last week (and snow too) so I haven't been able to work on the big projects I have for myself.  I bought some furniture with the goal of up-cycling it.  I have managed to get 1 piece almost all sanded down.  It's a small side table.  It was black to start off with, but when I'm done, I'm going to find a comic book, not sure which one yet, and cut it up and glue the papers to the top of the table.  Then I will seal it all with something.  I have to do more research into that part of it.  I thought doing resin would be good because it would seal the and protect the paper.  My first thought was to get the comic where superman died, and use the big pull out with Lois Lane holding superman in her arms.  that would be awesome!!  I still may do that.  I even thought about drawing some pictures to paste to the top of it, making it a more one of a kind piece.  But I'm still thinking.  There's not much I can do with it right now anyway with the weather the way it is.  I have some other pieces that I bought that also need to be refinished, so as soon as it warms up, and I don't freeze my fingers off outside, I can start working on those things next :)

I have also gotten my first few pendants made.  I did some jars and an altoid tin as well.  I decoden'd them.  Here's the pics.

altoid tin

jar, you can't see it in this pic, but I also used brown hot glue on this to make it look like dripping chocolate

Kawaii baby food jar

used to be a toothbrush holder, is now a decoden pencil/pen holder

so you can see the pink and brown glue I used to give it a kind of chocolate/strawberry feel :)

the kawaii/lolita pendants I made

a closeup of the pink kawaii/lolita pendant

  I also made some other jewelry.  I finished my first ever piece of steampunk jewelry!  A pin.  I really like the way it turned out.  I'd like to add more to it, but I'm having a hard time finding parts, and I'm not very good with clay to make my own.

I also made some Twilight inspired cell phone straps/zipper pulls and a bookmark.

closeup, kind of an alternate version of Bella's bracelet.  With a red glass bead as a drop of blood.

And the colorful bracelet I made.  I love how bright and vibrant the colors are!  I'm not sure what the beads are, but I love them!  I also used fresh water pearls.

Hopefully this year will be the year I get a camera that will take pcitures that will do some justice to the pieces I make.  We'll see after tax season!  Plus, I'm also building up an inventory because I plan on doing my first craft fair this year.    I know it was one of my resolutions last year, but this year, I'm even closer than I was last year!  Going to get some jewelry made up, then probably some sewn toys, then some crocheted dolls.  So, my plan is to not do anymore swaps, except for the next one I plan on organizing, which is another anime/manga swap, but that will be sometime in the spring. :)  I've got my iPad, I've got my square (portable card reader) so once it gets closer to fair time, I will activate a data plan on my iPad so I can use my square! :)
Happy Crafting!!

Gem & Bead Faire!!

So excited!!  The Gem & Bead Faire is here this weekend!!!!  I wonder what kind of goodies they're going to have??  I wonder what kind of goodies I can make with what I buy??  This is gonna be so awesome!!  Taking my daughter and she's super excited to go too!! :D  Speaking of which, I had better go and wake her up so we can get ready to go!!  I don't want to deal with weekend traffic.
Oh, I almost forgot, our Halloween costumes were a hit!!  I'll have to post pics of them later!  Time to go wake up the munchkin and go to the Faire!!!! YAY!!!!! :D

Being sick is the worst!

Now that I'm all better, I am back to working on the monkey and working on Halloween costumes as well.  I'm not sure how, but with the halloween costumes my math seems to be off and the tops of both are way to big.  But that's an easy fix!  I really love the way my daughter's is turning out!  But oh, the ruffles!!  Her petticoat is finally done, and it wasn't too difficult to make either.  A little time consuming, but not as bad as I had originally thought.  I think the worst part was cutting the tule.  I had a hard time keeping it even.  But once it was all cut out, I just rolled it up, and used my rotary cutter to make it even.  Sewing was the easiest!  It looks like a little tutu!  I found a video tut on youtube done by threadbanger.  It helped out A LOT!!!!
And crazy me has joined ANOTHER swap!  I wasn't going to, but I couldn't help it.  It's a Magic Yarn Ball swap (MYB)  And they're so much fun!!  For those of you who don't know what one is, you basically take a skein of yarn, unravel it, the re-ravel it into a b all shape, but inside you put little knick-knackey things that you make or buy.  You can put just about anything inside of it.  I had a lot of fun the last time I did one, and I'm super excited to get to do this one as well!  My partner likes a lot of the same stuff I do, and she likes all kinds of neat things too, I have to be careful not to go overboard!  But it will definately be easy with this one! lol

Off to go work on the monkey, then take a break from that and work on halloween costumes, then take a break from that and work on monkey again!

Happy Crafting everyone!

L from Death Note is finally done!!!

It's taken me awhile to get this adorable little guy done, but here he is!  L or Ryuuzaki, my favorite character!  And he's soooo cute too!  He's only about 7".  His eyes are made of felt as is his mouth.  I'm not 100% happy with the way the eyes turned out, but they don't look too bad.  Now I just need to get him so mini sweets so he can indulge is sweet tooth.  I think my fav part is his toes!!  I love making little ami toes!  They're so cute!!!

Aren't they cute!!!

Here's a little close-up of his face too.

I think I need to make him a little friend too, and since his only friend seemed to be Light, I guess I'm going to make Light Yagami.  I don't really care for him to much, but L has requested a friend to keep him company when I'm not around to do so.  I've already started on Light, and it shouldn't take me to long to finish him.  I think his hair will take me the longest since I'm going to be embroidering the 'ol Justin Beiber 'do on him.  I've got his torso done and I'm working on the arms, then all I'll have to do is add the legs and hair.
Since I've been sick the last couple of days I decided to put off working on the monkey for the contest winner, but as soon as my cold is better (which means as soon as my nose stops dripping), I'll be back to working on it.

And just because he's so cute, here's another picture of L!

I think I'll write up a basic pattern for this little guy as well to share with everyone.  It's really easy and really quick.  I've made 2 other dolls using this pattern!

Happy Crafting!!

Working on Halloween costumes....... I better finish in time!!

So, last night my daughter and I were trying to decide what we wanted to be for Halloween.  At first she wanted to be an anime character, then she wanted to wear a Japanese school uniform (like the ones you see in anime and manga).  Now she has decided to be a lolita.  After showing her some pictures of dresses online, she has decided that's what she wants to be.  She wanted a pink and black dress, but I'm trying to stick with what I have and not buy anymore fabric.  I have this blue cupcake fabric and she decided that's what she wants her dress to be.  And she wants me to wear pink cupcakes.  I'm going to work on her's first, and if I have time, I'll make me one, but if not, I have a costume I made from a couple years ago that's I'll wear.  But I would still like to make one for me too. 
The thing that's going to be really difficult, is I've never really done a dress from scratch before.  Sure I've taken parts of patterns and made a dress that way, but I've never actually drafted a pattern.  I have an idea of what I want, and I've drawn it up, so I've got the first steps out of the way.  So now all I have to do, is cut out some peices.  I may have to go and get some fabric anyway, because I need some kind of white or cream colored fabric to go with it.  If I just did it all the cupcake fabric, I think it would be way to overwhelming!
I spent a lot of time on the internet last night looking at various dresses and tutorials, so I think I have a rough idea of what I need to do.  I will definitely be posting some in progress shots.  I can't wait to make these dresses!  Now, my question is, should I make the both exactly the same, or make the m different??  I'm not sure, but so far, I'm leaning towards the same.

Well, wish me luck, I'm off to start drafting my patterns!

State Fair crafty winners

So, a few weeks ago, the munchkin and I ventured to our state fair.  Rides, games and carni food, what more could you ask for?  Other than the prize winners for all the contests!  There were some AMAZING crafts!  We have a few favs, but they were all equally amazing!  I wanted to enter in the crochet toys category, but sadly didn't have time to finish the doll I was working on. :( and sorry for the poor picture quality on some of these

my personal fav

a section of afgahns

more afgahns

my daughter's fav

There was this amazing Amigurumi doll made by a 14 year old.  I think this is just the cutest doll!  She did such an amazing job on it too.  She won 1st place for it.  I told my daughter that if she gets to practicing she could make something like that and enter it in the state fair as well.










The next 3 are my fav costumes that were there.  I think I like the mad hatter costume the best, but the final fantasy cosplay costume is also pretty cool.  The winner of the final fantasy hand painted all the flowers on it.  It looked fantastic!  I just hope the pictures do it some kind of justice!

The mad hatter costume.  I love this one!  I especially love the jacket!!

Everything is hand painted, and it looked fantastic!
















Finally, there were the cakes.  These were all blue ribbon cakes, and they were just amazing!  I'm not sure which one I like the best  Here they are!

The detail these people put into these just amazes me!!  They all look great!!  I can't wait for next year's fair to see what's made and to enter my own creation! :)
Hope you all enjoyed the photos!