Plush Artist, Illustrator, Designer, Artist, Crafty Chick

Daughter’s costume is complete and she is SUPER excited. She couldn’t wait to try it on last night and kept looking in the mirror.

Costume was made from Simplicity pattern 2561. The hat I made from a floppy hat pattern I had found on line. I just tacked up the sides.

You can see better pics of that here.

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I am officially done with my husbands pirate costume. I don’t have a dress form in his size so it looks a little funny on my size 4 dress form. The shoulders are a bit droopy.

The shirt is made of muslin that I tea dyed, coat is made of black velvet and the pants are made of a brown micro fiber polyester. I was in such a hurry to get this done that I forget to take pictures of the costume before I distressed the material.

This pattern calls for 24 buttons. Buttons are expensive. The larger they are and the more ornate they are the more expensive they get. So, because it is just a costume, I decided to make the buttons. They are made out a a 1″ dowel rod. I used a miter saw to cut slivers of dowel rod. I must have cut about 40 of them to get 24 decent looking ones. I sanded them, painted them, sanded them again and then drilled holes in the center. I think they turned out great, perfect for a pirate. $2.00 spent plus my time of making them was totally worth it since it would have cost over $30 to buy buttons.

Coat closed without pistols and sword.

I went to Hobby Lobby last night to pick up some vinyl and red cotton. I decided to search for stuff that I could add to the costume to plus it up a bit. I looked all over the store. I came across these metal keys in the home decor area. PERFECT! I bought them, brought them home and added a leather loop to them so they can slide onto the belt. Looks pretty cool.

While at the Renaissance Festival a couple of weeks ago we noticed a lot of the actors had metal tankards, beer steins, whatever you want to call them, tied to dresses, belts and satchels. No where were they selling these. Bummer. It would have created a nice sound with the keys and a cup clanging around. I did find some nice corked bottles at Hobby Lobby but didn’t get any. I was afraid of something like that getting broken.

Used Simplicity pattern 4923.

Plush You! 2011 opens tomorrow night at Schmancy in Seattle. I highly recommend you check it out. The big opening begins at 5:00pm and runs till 9:00pm. Schmancy is located at 1932 2nd Ave. Seattle, WA 98101.

Who doesn’t need a monster covered tissue box. With the cold and flu season fast approaching, this would making grabbing for a tissue and blowing your nose a lot more enjoyable.

This guy is not a tissue box cover, but would still look great on your shelf.

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I finished up the pirate costume last night. When I finished the initial sewing the other day I decided it looked to pristine. Pirates aren’t clean looking. So I decided to distress the fabric and make it look a little old. I was kind of nervous about messing it up, but it turned out pretty good. I didn’t go crazy with rips and tears because I don’t want it to fall apart. I used sandpaper, acrylic paint and dusted it with a little black spray paint.

Once I added all the “extras” the costume really came to life. The sword, though it looks like metal, is in fact plastic.

“extras”: pistol, sword, leather belt, long black scarf, coin pouch, and 3 necklaces. I will also be wearing a red scarf around me head and earring.

I bought three of these plastic flintstock pirate pistols as props for our Halloween costumes. They were SUPER ugly and cheap looking. Plus they had the orange caps on the front of them. Don’t tell anyone, I ripped those off.

I paid $3.99 for each gun. I decided to repaint them. I figured they couldn’t look any worse.

I managed to get most of the gun apart. It has tiny little screws holding most of it together. What I couldn’t get apart I taped off with blue painters tape. I just used brown, gold and black spray paint. Nothing fancy. It was whatever I had in the garage. I think they were each a different brand. I also used a little bit of black shoe polish and a black sharpie to get into some of those grooves.

Doesn’t it look AWESOME!! It almost looks real. I sprayed a bit more black spray paint at the end of the barrel. Figured it would be more black from the firing and gunpowdery smoke.

The gold turned out great. Really looks like brass.

I was at our local Renaissance Festival this weekend and saw a vendor selling replica weaponry. They happened to have some Flintstock pistols. The cheapest was $45. Now I REALLY like my $3.99 ones.

The Halloween costume making is in full swing. This year we are all going as pirates.

This is Simplicity pattern 3677. I tea stained the fabric for the shirt. Kind of hard to see that in the picture. My next job is to distress the material so that it looks old. I’ll post those pics when I finish that.

I recently had to make some puppets for work. That was four days of fun.

My daughter saw them as I was boxing them up to take to work and had a fit when I wouldn’t let her play with them. Of course this led to me making one for.  I had specific instructions, from a three year old, that she had to have yellow hair like her, had to be pink and had to wear a pretty dress.

These aren’t the greatest photos. But when your three year old is modeling the puppet you shoot what you can and hope it turns out.

Project Puppet is a great website if you are interested in making puppets.

Who doesn’t love Muppets?

Betty Lou Muppet

Prairie Dawn muppet

A small article in Ink Magazine (a KC culture & entertainment mag) about what I do all day. If you’re dying to see what an office cubicle at Hallmark looks like take a look ; )

Pink kitty is finished. She measures 13″tall, head is 9 1/2″wide.

I’m getting ready to drop this off for Art Unleashed 2011. This is the art auction that benefits the Kansas City Humane Society. The event is being held Friday August 26, 7-10pm, @ Hale Arena.

Lots of great art to bid on for a good cause.

Doodle of kitty plush for the KC Humane Society’s Art Unleashed art auction.