Etsy Shop Grand Opening: Wishes & Wool!

Hey everyone!

I’m excited to announce the opening of my Etsy shop today! Since this nasty tendinitis in my wrist has slowed me down on making items for the art market… I’ve instead shifted my plan to focus on getting my Etsy shop – Wishes & Wool – up and running these past few weeks. Woohoo! I spent last week doing a TON of test photography of all the felted critters that I’ve already made – on just about every sort of background imaginable. Here’s a bit about the whole process and what I learned:

Photographing Felties
The first step was a trip to the fabric store! I bought a half yard each of about 8-10 different fabrics. Several came from the remnants bin – great way to save some money! Once I got them all home, I ironed each one carefully, getting ALL the wrinkles out.

Once wrinkle-free, I set up a simple sweep on my bedroom desk using an old canvas propped against the desk to hold the fabric up about 2 feet high so it would have a seamless sweep across the desk. I’ve got a nice bay window in the bedroom that my desk sits in, so it makes a great place to get lots of natural light! Soft, natural light, as I have learned from testing and reading a lot online, is absolutely KEY to good shots.

In the shot above you can see layers of fabric in the background – i basically just laid them all on top of each other and would roll each one up or down as needed for different backgrounds. Made things nice and simple, and kept the fabric winkle-free! Below are a few other test shots both on fabric and with a vintage wood set.

I built the vintage wood set out on my patio using some old wood I’d had lying around – stuff you can find at the salvage yard – and a vintage wooden crate I picked up at an estate sale last summer. Just laid a board over a small table, put the box on top, and propped up a few old boards on top of the box – and viola! the perfect rustic vintage setting for Barnaby Fox!

After a lot of different backgrounds and options, I narrowed it to one feature shot – something different for every critter – one detail shot and a few shots on a plain background to show alternate angles and scale. I’m hoping this will give all the information someone might want in order to decide to take one of these guys home!

Helping Empower Others Thru Creativity
One of my goals with Wishes & Wool is to use my own creativity to donate to creative causes that are helping to fulfill needs and wishes of those less fortunate than I. And so, I’ve decided to donate 10% of all purchases to a wonderful charity that I’ve been a supporter of for about a year now, called 100 Cameras. This charity is dear to my heart because it makes such beautiful use of one of my other passions; photography. They empower children in underdeveloped parts of the world to document their lives through photography. By helping them to gain exposure and sell their photography, they enable these children to create positive change in their own lives and communities through their unique creative visions. Check out their website to see some of the kids’ photos and learn more!

Come by The Shop!
I invite you to come and check out all of my creations at Wishes & Wool, and let me know what you think of the shop! Any feedback or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I’m bursting with excitement about this whole new adventure! Having my own Etsy shop is something that I’ve been dreaming of for several years now – and really putting my stuff out there for sale has been a dream of mine since I was a little girl. And even though I’ve yet to sell anything, I truly believe people will fall in love with these little guys as much as I have! Thanks everyone for stopping by!

Weeks 5 & 6: Dapper Foxes and Renewed Energy

I can’t believe it’s been 2 whole weeks since I’ve posted anything up! It’s been busy down here in Texas. The boyfriend has been away on flying adventures across the lone star state – doing helicopter rides at air shows and festivals. We took a road trip down to the hill country to get out of the big city weekend before last. A wrist sprain from pilates class has slowed me down with the felting… I’m now wearing this horribly stiff brace to keep from moving it. About 2 weeks ago, I cut a huge chunk out of my thumb while cutting ribbon with my fabulous pink pocket knife (*sigh* always cut AWAY from you, when will I learn?) which put me out of commission from doing much for a few days. But still I am felting!

The newest additions to my little feltie family are a dapper fox, a happy little dinosaur, an even tinier fox and the whale I posted last week – now complete with sleepy eyes. I also just finished up a little mushroom in a bottle tonight – having a lot of fun experimenting with adding other media like wire and glass.  I’m positively in LOVE with the fox in the hat… so much so that I’m not sure I could bare to put him up for sale!

 

15 Creative, Clever, Inspiring Blogs!

So I just learned there is this wonderful little award floating around the blogosphere (first time I’ve used that word, yep, I feel nerdy)… it’s called The Versatile Blogger award and is a really lovely thing I happen to think. Basically, the rules are; Thank the person who nominated you and share their site, share 7 personal things about yourself, and nominate 15  other bloggers who will then repeat the process. I happen to think it’s a pretty cool way to help get attention for your own blog as well as share and support some great blogs out there that people might otherwise not find… blogs building upon blogs… everybody wins!

I’d Like to Thank…
So first I’d like to give a shout out Munchow and Brenda Stonehouse for nominating me for this award via their blogs. Munchow’s Creative Photo Blog is a great blog about creativity and photography and is – from just the little I have seen – a very talented professional photographer. Brenda has a wonderfully gutsy project called Pencils, Paint and Pixels in which she is doing some form of art every single day for a year! Very inspiring stuff… Thank you both!

15 Creative & Inspiring Blogs!
Here are 15 of my favorite bloggers doing some really awesome creative things!

1. Skeptycal — Random creativity, inspiration, and bits of widsom from my brother’s life! (by Michael Treanor)

2. Middle of Nowhere — Home of Gretel Parker, the creator of ‘Puddletown Tales’, children’s illustrator, needle felter and toymaker living in a tiny cottage in the Cotswolds countryside, England. She was the first to inspire me to take up needle felting – one of my current obsessions!

3. FabFiftyFive — The (Mis)Adventures of a Junior-Senior. Speed skating, rock climbing, circus school… Julie Wise is celebrating turning 55 in a totally fab way!

4. Blissbombed — Living a divinely-inspired, kick-ass life (that rocks the world), Stephanie writes about relationships, love, life, and spirit in a refreshingly balls-out way – (By Stephanie St. Claire)

5. MusicalChairs — Adventures of Katharina Hoehendinger, who recently quit her well-paying job to focus on all the creative things she’s always wanted to do (and moving to China while doing it!)

6. FromSonika – Lovely and genuine poetry, inspiration and tidbits of life from a wonderful writer. (By Sonika)

7. Daily Walks — This is where I go when I want to feel incredibly jealous of someone’s daily walks. Just go there, you will agree. Seriously gorgeous photography. (By Diane Varner)

8. 12 Books in 12 Months — …Need I say more? (By Ali George)

9. Miriam’s Well — Poetry, Land Art, and Beyond (by Miriam Sagan)

10. Talin Orfali – Wonderfully inspiring writer sharing her wisdom, positivity and perspective with the world! (By Talin Orfali)

11. Burrard-Lucas Photography Blog — Two brothers from the UK, doing some incredible wildlife photography, much of which helps to raise awareness for preserving endangered species. I am a big fan. (By Will & Matthew Burrard-Lucas)

12. The Shine Project — A very passionate and vibrant woman with a wonderful mission to spread joy and helps others to find theirs through charity projects, scholarships for children, etc. Wonderful! (By Ashley)

13. Lightstalking — Awesome photo blog & community with tutorials, tips, themed photo collections weekly, and more.

14. The Pioneer Woman — So help me, I can get lost for endless amounts of time on Ree Drummond’s site about a city girl who became a country girl and now blogs voraciously about recipes, photography, country living, homeschooling and more.

15. Looking At The West — Beautiful photography blog exploring the landscape and culture of the American West. (By Andrew McAllister)

7 things about me you didn’t know:

1. I don’t like shoes. And I don’t like winter because I am forced to have to wear shoes. I like my toes to be able to roam free!

2. My favorite ice cream is mint chocolate chip. (my favorite anything really is mint + chocolate) I used to eat a bowl with my dad many nights as a little girl while we watched Disney’s Fantasia.

3. I have a skull collection I started back in early college.. sparked by digging up the skull of my childhood cat when we moved out of our old house. Yes… I’m aware this is creepy.

4. My favorite color was once described as “baby poo green” by my design professor in college.

5. Both of my parents have passed on, my mom 20+ years ago, and my dad just a few years ago. Although I’m a pretty together person, I still have those days where I just want to be able to call up my parents and fall apart a bit over it. You never stop missing them.

6. I went hot air ballooning, para-sailing, sky diving, firewalking and met the man in my life in 2009.. yeah it was an adventurous year!

7. “Part of Your World” from the Little Mermaid and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” are my shower songs. They are the only two songs I sing in the shower, and I never sing them outside of the shower.

Read more about the Versatile Blogger Award.

Quarterly Project: Welding Is Definitely NOT Sexy

This past Sunday was my second welding class – and we got to do a bit of welding finally! I’m definitely not having the same awesome “fish in water” experience with this as I typically do with most artsy things. A little frustrating to not feel like comfortable as quickly as with drawing or photography – but we’ve all got things that don’t come naturally for us! So I’m having fun realizing that my vision of being this sexy welding chick is not exactly fitting into reality…

Yup. That is me. And I look like man. Lord almighty, welding is definitely not very flattering, particularly when it’s cold outside and you have no choice but to wear a 3XL leather welding jacket in which you can barely bend your arms enough to do the welding. I went to buy some leather work boots yesterday -  an area of women’s clothing that could really use some help. They make my feet look so immense that I look like Meg from Family Guy. Despite my disappointments in being able to retain a ladylike appearance in any form, I did grow up a tomboy – so really I quickly forget about all that and am suddenly lost in learning this cool new process!

Oh yes, and that helmet? You can’t see anything (and I mean anything) through those things until you make a few sparks – so it’s pretty impossible to actually weld where you planned on.

In the shot above I’m doing some MIG (Metal Inert Gas) welding – which is essentially like a big hot glue gun. There is a piece of steel wire that runs through it, and when you hit a button on the nozzle it comes out and uses an electrical current or arc to melt the steel onto your metal surface. Pretty neat stuff! It took me some practice to figure out how to comfortably hold the nozzle and all, but after a short bit I started to get the hang of it.

(Instructor and one of the other classmates doing some stick welding)

We were introduced to stick welding too – which made me a little nervous. You use two giant positive/negative clamps like you’d use to jump your car. One clamp attaches to the metal table you’re working on and the other will hold a stick of steel that you weld with. Yeah… this just sounded like a bad idea to me. Alas, I did try it – and sucked pretty bad at it – but proud of myself anyway! Really hoping I can do most of my welding with the MIG welder though!

We’ll be starting our first projects in the next week or two. Right now, I’m thinking of making a truck bed extension for Andrew’s truck, so that we can more securely transport both of our kayaks this summer! It’s a pretty basic construction, just an L-shaped piece that fits into the trailor hitch with a bracket or bar on the other end to hold the kayaks. I’m a little nervous about making something functional – but going to give it a shot! Very excited!!

Inspiration: Brown Dog Welding!

My welding class starts in just a few DAYS!!! Weeeeeee! The last few times I’ve started to make a post about a whole slew of different welding/metalwork artists… I come across one that captures me so much that I am compelled to make an entire post about them! Today it is Brown Dog Welding, a one-man shop run by Josh Welton up in Michigan. (Anyone grinning at that last name? Love when people’s names resemble their art!)

He began on this path by working as a millwright apprentice for Chrystler in the early 2000′s. What began as a job quickly turned into a passion for him, and he was soon welding his own clever creations into reality. He holds several certificates for welding and is constantly improving his craft. And to top it off, he’s donating 10% of all company profits to Home Fur-Ever, where he and his wife adopted their dog Woodson (who is the inspiration for the company name!) as well as a non-profit in Detroit called Lifebuilders. Kudos to you guys – you are definitely doing things right! And now let us see the work!

Oh my word, how awesome is this Samurai warrior?!

Tractor (above) and detail shot (below) – love the texture he added to the body to roughen it up.

So impressed with all the deail on this fire truck!

Berzerker. Based on a character from Max Grundy’s “Out of Order“

Thank you Josh for filling my little about-to-be-beginning mind with grand visions and possibilities!!

Resources:
http://www.browndogwelding.com

http://www.flickr.com/photos/browndogwelding/

Sooo… what have I been up to this month?

I realize I have posted virtually NOTHING this month so far – yipes! Its true, the end of the month (and year!) are sneaking up fast! Have I finished a poster yet? Nnnnope… have I even started? Not at all! But I HAVE been thinking about it! (I definitely count that as productive). Even though I manage to do a lot of creative stuff I do procrastinate quite well still.

So what HAVE I been up to all month?
Well aside from the usual holiday chaos of hanging lights, putting out decorations and gift-wrapping… I’ve been working on a new project that is likely to become another year-long project on TOP of my 12 months project next year. (Sometimes I ask myself “what on earth have you gotten into now?!”). Yes, it came to me quite randomly a few weeks ago… I’d been trying to figure out how to open up my 12 Months of Creativity to other people. I wrestled with some different ideas, one of them being to have membership to a 12 Months blog where I would post about your project once a month. That felt off to me though… it still felt too much like me controlling/running a thing (taking precious creative time away from me) and plus, i didn’t much like the idea of making people pay for it. So I kept thinking and visiting various websites and online communities… until ONE day…

Something just hit me!
You know those moments people describe where something just hits them over the head? They’re going about their business or doing nothing particularly significant and then out of nowhere BAM!!! something just slams right into your head, decides to curl up inside your brain there and purr magnificence to you. Yes, we have all heard people talk of those moments.. they make us nauseous. Well, I’m here to say… sorry for the nausea! Indeed it did – just hit me like a ton of bricks (brightly colored ones!). Of course, it happened after spending many many hours and days and weeks and months thinking and talking to people about various ideas for how to expand my project to others. So I guess really, it wasn’t so much an “Aha!” moment as it just was finally the solution that seems to fill all the needs I was looking for.

So what IS this big idea?
I know… I’m rambling and really making quite a build-up to this idea of mine. (My boyfriend can tell you this is one of my many annoying talents). So the idea is to make an online creative community where people from all over the world can share their projects together… all kinds of projects! Art projects, cooking projects, craft projects, projects with kids, community service projects, science projects, anything creative! I knew it was perfect right away… because I love WAY to many things in life to ever just focus on one – and I know many other people are the same way too. I figure if I use the mantra I did during this entire 12 months project (Does it excite me? Then I’m DOIN IT!) then I could have a shot to really create this thing!

Soooo there you have it. BIG idea. Lots of possibility. We don’t know where it will go. It could crash halfway through the year, it could never really get off the ground to begin with, OR it could fly around the freakin’ world and touch million’s of people’s lives and get creative juices flowing all over the place! Haha, who is this person? I swear I NEVER used to dream this big… what is going ooon!

We Will Create
With that I will leave you with the link to the community page… wewillcreate.ning.com
I’ve got it up and running on a cheap and not-so-fancy community platform just to get things started. A) Because I’m cheap and B) Because I’m impatient and don’t want to wait to have some massive custom site built out. It’s all one big learning process right now, there’s still plenty of quirks and kinks to work out, but would love for you to stop by and join in the creativity! Starting first of the year there should already be several people beginning projects on there! Woohoo!! Thanks for reading!

Announcing the November Project!

My apologies – a week late posting up the new cards! I think I’m getting a bit of senioritis as I near the end of the year. ;)

I will say, I’ve picked some killer card combos throughout the year, and this is just another one! I’ve been waiting all year to pick Vintage Aviation as a theme! I’ve already been scouring the internet for old aircraft parts, images of old war planes, gages, rivets, and more. I’ve also been wanting to make jewelry for years… another of my many “someday projects”. I’m very grateful that my 12 Month project is now helping me to finally get my hands into this! More to come soon including gobs of research & inspiration!

 

October: A Beginning’s End

I apologize for October’s final project being a little late! It took me longer to get all the materials than I’d expected. To refresh you, the cards for this month were “Found Object Art” and “Things That Blow Up”.. oh and what a marvelous combo this has been! I have enjoyed brainstorming so much that it has left me with a plethora of other ideas that I will have to return back to and finish down the road… including more elaborate, large-scale versions of a few of the bullet tests I did earlier this month. I was really enjoying creating with bullets, but then the egg theme took me another direction that I really got excited out…

And here you have a deadly nest indeed… a dangerous beginning that is surely to lead to an end. I didn’t really have anything in particular I wanted to say with this – I don’t usually create things with the motive of sending a message. I have always been the type that falls in love with something visually and just wants to see it created – particularly if it involves throwing extreme contrasts together in some strange harmony. It’s been a long time since I’ve actually made anything like this – oooh say, 5 or 6 years since I was taking sculpture classes at community college? Gosh, I didn’t realize how much I missed it… and how much it gets me back in touch with a part of my creativity that I had forgotten.

I suppose some will like it, others will think its dark, or weird, but whatever the case – I enjoyed making this one a great deal!

P.S. A BIG Thank you to Claudia for sending me the fabulously well-rusted barbed & bailing wire! =]