Shazam!

My little plush babies Eva and Mika find themselves watching an amazing fireworks display created by the fabulous Mo Fine.

I love this photo because it represents a collaboration of three of the most important people in my life: Me, who made Eva and Mika (hey, being important to myself was hard earned), Rico, the love of my life and photographer extraordinaire who so lovingly photographs so much of my work, and Mo, little pixie genius of Seattle, who worked her Photoshop magic to put my babies in is sea of fireworks.

Eva is my first ever handmade plush creature.  When I look at her, my heart breaks. I remember how excited I was when I saw her coming together.  I couldn't believe I was making a creature with my own hands that so captured my love and sense of play. The possibilities seemed endless.

Here she is without her head.

You know that you love your creatures when, even without their heads, they are beautiful to you.

The Evolution of Christmas Aliens!!

Been playing around with wool/rayon felt, making a new set of holiday ornaments. These Christmas Aliens make me oddly happy.

Here is a little about their design...

It started as a very rough, random sketch in my sketchbook.

I made the first one with very similar proportions to the drawing, but I didn't like it. It looked too misshapen to me somehow.

So I redesigned the head and eyes to make them much larger and cuter.  I added a bow for the girl alien. I liked the way that these turned out.  Very cutesy and sweet aliens.

Although I really like these sweet aliens, my original intention was something more sinister and creepy, so I made the eyes a little smaller and less cute, embroidered humorless mouths and made them silver collars with red buttons.

Now these guys are the menacing aliens I'd originally intended!  I will continue to make sweet aliens and explore threatening aliens and various colors of wool/rayon felt and with various collars and accessories. I'm thinking purple and blue aliens, among others.

Next up: Create a radiation sign felt ornament!  My obsession with the radiation sign will not allow me to work on anything else until I at least make an attempt.

What the heck is "stitch, stab & scrawl?"

I know... Stitch, stab and scrawl... a little odd sounding...

Thought I'd create a simple blog to collect my adventures in toy making and other creative endeavors! And to make my toys and other objects, I do a lot of stitching (sewing, embroidery, knitting), stabbing (needle felting) and scrawling (sketching designs, doodling, writing about the creatures I make).  See, not as fearsome as it first sounded, huh?

Here is an example of two creatures who I made with lots of stitching, stabbing and scrawling.

Meet Shabadoo & Shabadee, the demented bunnies of 2009.  They are sisters living on separate coasts.  Shabadoo lives with my friend Lisa in Portland and Shabadee lives with me in Durham.  Huge fans of The Beastie Boys "Hey F*ck You!" from which they got their names.

Shabadoo & Shabadee have knitted and felted bodies. Their heads are needle felted and ears are wet felted. They have various embroidery on their matching frocks and paws. And they sport art shrink paper images of their own skulls.  They are tough girls.

Two of my girls!