Congratulations, Our Crafty Chameleons!

[MistressJennie (Moderator - Jennie - she/her)]

We have another Crafty Chaeleon! Well done @Lothruin

ART

Snakes doing ballet?

So I was bored and started sketching little hognose snakes doing ballet poses, and then decided I wanted to try to design a fabric using watercolor-style motifs of many little sneks doing ballet. I asked my sister if she was ever bothered that her sister’s brain was all nonsense all the time and she said no. So I embarked on a full on snek sketching bonanza, and ordered a nice travel set of sennelier paints and a few nice brushes, got some watercolor paper, and started doing some test sketches l…

Having Some Feelings

I am having some real feelings this weekend. I used them to do some more practice with the watercolors. Painting #4. I still feel like I have no idea what I am doing, and I used a masking pen for the first time and boy do I regret some of THOSE choices. I am totally incapable of judging my own work, but I feel like I had to put something out into the world, and this was it, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. </3 [20200920_130702~2]

Little Bee Fairy

Still learning about watercolor. I have too many hobbies, and I cycle through them, so I might set one aside for months at a time. Not a great idea for a beginner, but it’s ok. So this is the next installment in Loth Learns To Paint. [IMG_20220402_002346]

HOME & GARDEN

Puppy Portrait Whiskey Glasses

[IMG_20221217_224600~2] For Christmas this year, I am giving my brother in law a set of whiskey glasses with portraits of their three dogs, plus Eddie, who has passed. [IMG_20221217_225340~2] [IMG_20221217_224742~2] [IMG_20221217_224801~2] [IMG_20221217_224845~2] The glasses are Anchor Hocking, but I got them at a thrift store for a buck each, so that was good. Making the stencils was a lot of trial and error. First I had to actually work up the portraits, distilling their features to o…

80s Table Lamp to Chic Pendant Lamp w/ Tute

After: [20210306_210528~2] Before: [20210306_130518~2] I am so happy with how this turned out! I saw a pair of these not exactly beautiful reverse-painted 80s table lamps at a thrift shop. As soon as I saw them I envisioned a Japanese paper lantern. I bought one to see if my vision could even be realized, as I wasn’t sure how easy the blue would be to take off, but once I got it home, it took a total of 45 minutes to disassemble the lamp and clean the blue paint from the inside. So of cour…

Snowflake Advent Calendar: Illustrative pics coming soon

I decided last minute to make an advent calendar for my niece and grand niece. My birthday is at the beginning of December, and every year of my life my parents have given me an advent calendar. I have kept almost all of them, from the 80s Suzie’s Zoo when I was 6 or 7 to the German antiques I was given as an adult. I pick a couple to put out each year. I love them. They are one of my favorite things about the Christmas season. I even have one from a C-ster swap wayyy back in the day. But I ha…

FASHION & WEARABLES

Wire Rainbow Earrings

[IMG_20230101_130627~2] Long ago and far away, I was a professional goldsmith. But it has been a really long time since I worked with metal at all, with or without a torch. But I found some wire on clearance, and decided to finally do some wire weaving after my long hiatus. I was practicing a weave, and just playing with the wire afterwards, and wound up with something I liked. So I refined the idea and worked up these crazy shiny, large, cartoonish but maybe somehow also sort of chic earrings…

Irid the Iris Fairy, New Duds

[IMG_20220507_000721~2] Just put the final touches on my kid’s new fairy costume, in the nick of time for Faire tomorrow. The petals are from the original costume, and still in remarkably good shape for having gone through multiple faire seasons. I took them off their original satin sash and attached the to a belt instead, for comfort and ease of wear. The new wings I posted about already, but the look great with the petals, and my bracing works a treat. (Most fairy cast members are female a…

Sculptural Safety Pins

When my husband’s grandma passed away, I was given almost all of her craft supplies. This was mostly sewing stuff, including two old Singers of HER mother’s, one of which uses the same attachments as my Featherweight, and now I have almost ALL of them. But also included was an old parts chest, the kind with tons of tiny plastic drawers, full of thousands of tiny safety pins of all sorts of colors. She made jewelry and ornaments in the 70s. It’s just been hanging around and I needed to either use…

FIBER & TEXTILES

Scandinavian Textile Inspired Wrap

[20210722_001006~2] I love 60s and 70s Scandinavian textiles, especially the bold, colorful stripes and swirls. Taking inspiration from a particular Verner Panton palette, I modified the weird scalloped scarf I posted a while back into this crazy wrap. The yarn is Malabrigo Worsted. I haven’t blocked it yet because I was too impatient to get pics. [20210722_001345] It can be worn a number of different ways, depending on how you pin and twist it. I just love how it came out. [20210722_0011…

Lydia the Battooed Lady

It only took me two and a half months… But I finally finished this little embroidered lady bat! I’m really pleased with her embroidery, though in sewing her all together I’m afraid she turned out a bit wonky. But I have decided it is in a cute, hand-made kind of way. I have not embroidered like this for… Well, ever. My stitch repertoire is small ad I was freehanding it, but I think it turned out pretty cool. [20210213_114257~2] [20210213_114314~3] [20210213_114323~2]

Retro Christmas Tree Skirt

So, as a rule, I gather things rather than collecting them. I only have a couple of true collections; things I am really passionate about. The first is vintage and antique needlework patterns, tools, and yarn. The second is Christmas ornaments. I sometimes feel bad because I have a lot of beautiful handmade ornaments, and nostalgic ornaments from both my and my (just turned 18) child’s younger years, but while I love and treasure these, they don’t go on my Christmas tree. Everything except the l…

FOOD & DRINK

Violet Jelly

I am not always an adventurous eater, but I do like to try historical foodstuffs, especially florals and plants that have gone from crop to weed. I have been known to pick dandelion greens and purslane from my yard for salads. At my old house, a bird planted a couple of random mulberry trees and I chose two and let them grow, because I love them, and I had a very old climbing rose with beautiful fragrant blossoms. Every year I would wait delightedly for May and June so I could make rose liqueur …

Glorious Tomatos

For about 10 years now, I have become increasingly allergic to onion. Garlic is the only allium I can still eat. For a long time, I couldn’t eat raw onion, but if it was cooked enough, say dehydrated and used as powder, or stewed, I could still eat it, but now, raw onion gives me blisters in the mouth, and any other form of onion makes it feel like I have been eating hot peppers. And as it is a contact allergy, it also, um, causes a lot of GI symptoms, let’s say. But onion is in EVERYTHING. Eve…

Onion-Free Dill Relish

[IMG_20220807_194404~2] Another entry in things I have to make myself because store-bought has onion. I think it came out beautifully. I had NO idea that the slightly unnerving neon-green of dill relish was a natural reaction from including peppers! Almost all hotdogs have onion in them. Only a small number of brat-like sausages can be found without. Yellow mustard and regular ketchup, too. So a simple hot dog becomes a problem. But plain Grey Poupon, a specialty FODMAP ketchup, Wimmers Chedd…

PAPER & VINYL

Scherenschnitte: Large-scale Paper Ornaments

[20211116_215934~2] I usually don’t decorate for Christmas until the day after Thanksgiving, but I wanted to make a paper ornament display for above our split entryway, and had to put them up as I went to gauge how many I needed and of what size. I still have more to add. I designed the ornament shapes and cut them out in various rainbow cardstock. Each of the larger ornaments is cut out of 6 colors of cardstock, folded in half, then glued together on the back sides in a stack, so when they ar…

Batdog, Gotham Calls

So, I have made a lot of art and designs over the years that I really liked but could 't really do much with except say I did the thing. Sometimes it was a doodle, sometimes to learn a technique, sometimes as a joke but I never throw anything away so it all just waits out there. But now my kid (who is EIGHTEEN yikes) has been talking about art, including stickers, and I set about pricing sticker making places and ended up buying a Silhouette Cameo 4 bundle. Lol So I present to you the first “ser…

Memorial Shadowbox

I’m still new to the things my machine can do, and my typical crafting MO is finding stuff second hand and seeing how I can use it, but I finally bit the bullet and bought (retail! gasp) a shadowbox for my Mina’s collar and pawprint, which have been sitting ingloriously with her ashes on a bookshelf. It needed something extra, and I came up with with this: [20210818_223600~2] I did NOT enjoy weeding the tiny letters. But I love how it turned out. Simple, but informative. When I showed the tex…