Pupae Twins

Tim Tom and Kevin, the Murderous Moppets of Dr. Girlfriend don new costumes in the Venture Brothers and become the Pupae Twins!





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This is Handmade

My latest contribution to the This is Handmade project. It's 5 minutes of me painting. It's not meant to be a how-to or in any way instructional (there's not even any audio). Just a real-time depiction on what it takes to create one of my dot paintings.

Fleeting Immersion

Friday night was the Fleeting Immersion show, which was great! The opening was pretty busy (below is an early photo) and there were lots of folks that I recognized (TV, comedians, etc.) so that was exciting. But the best people that I recognized were people who came to see ME! Lori and her friend came by (and found some must-have items).



Miss Bliss and Kate (the photographer) also came. They're the best!

Ryan and Bliss are as excited as I am to see my art installed (next to Mr Toast!)

And then Giggly Mama and the Family! Her husband and brother-in-law came along too -- a 6 hour drive! I couldn't believe it! So exciting to see them!

I even had the opportunity to meet Chris Hardwick (aka: the Nerdist) who was super warm and charming and pretty much exactly what you'd expect. I think I even cajoled him into letting me make him something so that both members of Hard n'Phirm have a piece of my artwork.
After the show, the group went over to the French Market for a late dinner. Kate and Bliss brought me birthday gifts (!!). Miss Bliss stitched this adorable piece that says "I craft so no one has to die" - so perfect!

And Kate brought me these adorable breakfast keychains! One is French Toast and one is a Happy Waffle - seriously, could these be any cuter??

Me and Shannon after eating our late night breakfast.

The whole group was laughing and chatting. It was so much fun to see everyone!
A HUGE thank you to everyone who came out to the gallery opening! And don't forget that all of the pieces will be available for sale online after the show closes -- go take a peek at the Tinklark Gallery and sign up for the mailing list to be informed when everything is available to buy!

The Monarch plus Henchmen 21 & 24

The Monarch and his henchmen are back in the shop! Dr. Mrs. The Monarch sold separately!



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This one time at band camp...

Like most people, I fell hook line and sinker for the running gag in the American Pie movie where the sweetly geeky redhead repeatedly tells (otherwise uninteresting) stories from band camp, always prefaced by "this one time, at band camp..." Of course, the big punchline for this joke (video link, 25 sec. - NSFW) comes much later in the film and led me to design this sweet little redhead flautist.

The stitchery itself is on bright lime green aida cloth that has been cut and framed. The cloth piece is approx. 2.5x3.5" and comes inside this scrollwork aqua blue frame. The lettering is done in a rich purple color which really stands off the green fabric. (Click the image to view larger on Flickr)



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Interested in owning a piece like this? Check out my Etsy shopor email me for a custom order!. : * ~ * : . _ . : * ~ * : . _ . : * ~ * : .

Kick-Ass peg people

Last weekend, we went to see the movie Kick-Ass, and it was so much fun that I came home and immediately whipped up a tiny army of Kick-Ass inspired peg people. (Click any of the images to view larger on Flickr)



First up, Hit Girl. She's only 11, but she's got more skill and bloodlust in her pinky than you do in your entire body. Her purple leather ensemble is accented with a girlie pink utility belt, all custom crafted by her daddy - Big Daddy.



Big Daddy is a rogue militiaman with a bone to pick. He's been training his daughter for the day that they will exact their revenge on those who have wronged them. In addition to extensive weapons training, he has also created himself a "hero" outfit, modeled after Batman, which is called only "Big Daddy."

Sweet little Kick-Ass. Just a high schooler in a wetsuit, he sets out to rid the city of crime, only he can't do it alone!

Red Mist is a fickle hero, more concerned about wealth and power than protecting the citizens. But he does have some awesome gadgets. And that hair!


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Interested in owning a piece like this? Check out my Etsy shopor email me for a custom order!. : * ~ * : . _ . : * ~ * : . _ . : * ~ * : .

Dr. Mrs. The Monarch

Holy smokes - check out this sassy costume! Back before she was Dr. Girlfriend - or even Queen Etherea or Lady Au Pair - this lovely lady (aka: Sheila) had an eye for design. She gave the Monarch the concept for his costume on their first date, so it was only appropriate that after the wedding, she would design a sexy costume for her new role as Dr. Mrs. The Monarch!

This tiny homage to her loveliness can now be yours! To keep! Forever! She makes a great traveling companion or cake topper - what more could you ask for?













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Interested in owning a piece like this? Check out my Etsy shopor email me for a custom order!. : * ~ * : . _ . : * ~ * : . _ . : * ~ * : .

Triana Orpheus

Sweet Triana Orpheus is one of my favorite minor characters from the Venture Brothers. She can't help it that her dad is a powerful necromancer who is a bit of a ninny and drove her mom away! She just wants to be herself, ya know? She came up with this groovy outfit going for a kind of Adam and the Ants retro-thing, but now she's stuck wearing it every day because her closet is the gateway to the Necropolis and smells like burning band-aids (brimstone). *sigh*

I can totally see why Deanie V. has a major crush on her and why she kind of likes him too. I mean, he's sweet and dresses like Buddy Holly but not really on purpose. Plus, he's got hover boots!







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Interested in owning a piece like this? Check out my Etsy shopor email me for a custom order!. : * ~ * : . _ . : * ~ * : . _ . : * ~ * : .

Phat Quarter Swap - Comics & Cartoons

If you're into stitchery, I highly recommend that you join/follow the Phat Quarter group on Flickr. There are some amazing artists that will melt your brains over there! Plus, if you participate in the message boards, you might be able to get yourself in on a litle swappy goodness!

The latest PQ swap was themed around Comics and Cartoons. The swappers were randomly assigned for a 'forward swap' meaning that I made a piece for one person and received a piece from someone else. Which is a fun way to do it, in my opinion!

SO! I asked my recipient if she had any preferences or characters that she particularly liked. She gave me a few and said that Wonder Woman and Snoopy were near the top of her list. So I thought about it for a while and then came up with this: Wonder Woman as a stitcher, embroidering Snoopy!

In her right hand, Wonder Woman holds a silver needle (hard to see in pictures) that is threaded with red thread which leads to the "embroidery hoop" that she is working on and stitching a heart above Snoopy. The "embroidery hoop" is an applique, as is the chair fabric. I was torn on how to handle the chair fabric -- I thought outlining the chair with stitches would muddy the print of the fabric or just make it 'too much' but now that it's gone (to New Zealand!) the rough edges of the fabric stand out to me and I wish I could outline it!!

I also wish I hadn't pulled so hard on her hair. I decided to try a stem stitch for the hair to give it a slight 'curl' although, it puckered the fabric a little around her face. *sigh* Can I have a do-over?!





I received this FABULOUS embroidery piece of The Tick from Pam -- who is clearly a master! I had to ask about the color tinting and she says that it's a standard crayon tint, but that she'd had a piece of stabilizer behind the fabric when she ironed it (which lifts some of the crayon wax) and it caused this dotted texture. I LOVE IT! It makes me think of the old dot printing on comic books -- or Lichtenstein! This is definitely something that I will have to learn how to do!

Until then, behold: the Tick!








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Merry X-stitchmas everyone!

For our holiday cards this year, I cross stitched Ryan and myself (plus our grey kitty, Ruckus) and a holiday greeting. I meant to make it bigger but didn't pay attention (as per usual) to the size of the weave and ended up choosing the smallest aida cloth they make. The total height of the piece is less than 3 inches. I had originally intended on covering the entire piece with holiday flotsam - candy canes, wreaths, trees, etc. but I was running out of time so there's just the one piece of mistletoe. Oh well!

Happy holidays everyone!


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Hatbox Ghost embroidery

If you're as big of a fan of Disney's Haunted Mansion as I am, then you're probably already familiar with the Hatbox Ghost. If not, you can read the entire backstory here on wikipedia. In a nutshell: it was an animatronic figure that was developed for the Haunted Mansion but never used. This grim grinning ghost holds a spooky hatbox in his left hand and as riders pass by, his head disappears from his body and into the box. Very cool! Bonus for us Disney geeks: the Hatbox Ghost is supposed to make a grand appearance in 2010! Back to the mansion attic where he belongs!

Mr. Hatbox Ghost (or HBG, as he's sometimes known) is a fan favorite (as witnessed by the auction of a replica figure crafted by Kevin Kidney and Jody Daily - seen below - at the D23 convention where it sold for nearly $10,000!) and he has been lurking for decades and been brought back to life via Twitter!




I love HBG's snarky sense of humor (and indignation!) and have struck up something of a friendship - if you can call electronic exchanges with a corpse a friendship - and so on my vacation, I decided to whip up an embroidery piece of dear old Hattie.


Me, stitching by the pool

He stands about 2.5" tall and is embroidered in satin stitch. The white features (face, hands, hatbox) are glow-in-the-dark thread to give him an otherworldly glow.

Once I got home, I sent it off to the Hatbox Ghost himself, care of his dusty old attic.

I haven't decided if I'll make more of these or not, but if I do, they'll be listed in my etsy shop for all you Mansion Fans to find!



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Interested in owning a piece like this? Check out my Etsy shopor email me for a custom order!. : * ~ * : . _ . : * ~ * : . _ . : * ~ * : .

hand-stitched quilt project

Calling all stitchers! If you haven't already, there is still time to submit a piece for Moster8me's hand-stitched quilt project. She's requested that everyone send in a 4x6" fabric piece with your name and city on it -- sort of a stitched postcard quilt. Below is an update posted in September of the pieces she's received so far:

click the image to see the details on who each piece is from
For my piece, I decided to embroider the girlie from my logo onto a purple floral fat quarter piece. I used DMC Light Effects thread for the dress, for a shimmery look, which turned out nifty (even if my photography is kinda poopy). I also didn't use the same font for the "Giddy Girlie" parts mainly because it was a little too challenging to sketch the letters on to the fabric (I don't use iron-on transfers, so I have to pencil in my lines) and instead swapped it for a more open and readable font.



The girlie is done in all satin stitch, the Giddy Girlie lettering is in a seed stitch, and the city name is a chain stitch.



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Not bees, beads!

(title courtesy of Arrested Development)


Anyway, this post is, in fact, NOT about bees but instead about beads! Specifically, some of the odd things that I have made from them!

I don't know when or why I had the inspiration, but sometime in the mid 1990's, I started gluing seed beads to things. I made a lot of things and who knows what still exists and what is on a thrift store clearance table by now... I didn't photograph everything back then, but I do have pictures of a few things (even though most are crummy pictures).

I'd usually start with thick watercolor paper, because it warped the least, and trace a light pencil outline of my design and then I'd fill in a tiny section with tacky glue and hand-place seed beads "face up" (what I call it when the hole is facing up) onto the glue, one by one. Tedious? Yes! But it is a lot of fun too.

My former boss collects Alice in Wonderland stuff and she commissioned me to make her an Alice piece, which I did. It's on 8x10 watercolor paper and I have a few progress shots to go with it.



detail of the face, work-in-progress:


Final product:


One of my first "internet crushes" was/is Sara who had a fantastic sewing and crafting site (which is now defunct, but all her creativity can still be found on her new site). She had started a new job at "Saint Flanders Church" as she called it, and needed some holy artwork for her new desk. This was right about the time that Maude Flanders died on the Simpsons, so I beaded up a version of Maude for her.


This is a TERRIBLE picture, but I also made some of these beaded trinket boxes for my fellow Tinker Bell collector pals, who were the first ones that drew me to the internet (for which I thank them).


I even attempted a beaded tank top. I used my true love, Henry Rollins, as an inspiration. The beading turned out ok, but tacky glue isn't meant for laundering, so I have only worn this shirt once and never washed it. I've recently invested in some glue that is intended for gluing things on cloth, so I'm going to try my hand at something like this again soon.



detail:


The one piece that I know remains is a Harley Quinn image that I made in 1999. My mom has it and it's been hanging in her office for the past 10 years. I made this before this whole "internet" thing really came on strong and back in those days when someone had a funny image or joke to send around, they'd blast it via fax machine. My stepdad was remodeling a Kinko's at the time and had to work in the wee hours of the night and he was always amused by the tons of funny drawings that the employees would send one another. This was part of a series of "manga" style comic book characters in risque poses. The others were X-rated, but this Harley Quinn was relavtively "cheesecake." She is nude, except her mask, gloves, and some tall socks. Her breasts are exposed, but they're not as "in your face" in the beaded version. She is covered all over in Batman tattoos, including the Bat Signal, the Batmobile (right butt cheek), and Batman himself (right thigh).

This is also an 8x10 that has been in a frame for 10 years, so it's held up really well. I recently took it out to scan it, but wasn't able to get a high-res scan of it -- although I probably should, just for posterity.



detail: My challenge with the 'flesh' colored beads was that the package that I had was a mixed assortment that had some standard seed beads as well as some longer ones and I had to use them both to get enough coverage, so this particular image doesn't have the same solid "top-up" look as some of my other pieces do. I also used to work in poor light (shame!) and I realize now that some of the black beads are actually navy blue - oops! I used to have a giant Tupperware container full of mixed seed beads that someone gave me, so I'd be picking out several of the same color as I went along... which, clearly, lead to a few mistakes along the way.

I've always particularly liked the building with the single beads representing windows. I don't know why that strikes me as "neat-o" but it does.



Maybe sometime during the 'downtime' of the holidays, I might start a new beading project -- any suggestions?


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Interested in owning a piece like this? Check out my Etsy shopor email me for a custom order!. : * ~ * : . _ . : * ~ * : . _ . : * ~ * : .

Devo peg people & Mark Mothersbaugh

A while back, I made a set of DEVO peg people just for funsies and they came to the attention of James Sime, who owns Isotope Comics in San Francisco. He liked them, so I sent them up his way and he was very kind about the whole exchange (even offered to trade comics!). So I was even more amazed when I got a message from James recently that he had backstage passes to the DEVO show in SF and he asked if I'd like to pass on a set to DEVO themselves. Um, YES! Of course!

So then I saw this picture on Flickr a few days later -- it's James backstage with Mark Mothersbaugh!! Oh, and Mark is holding my Devo peg people! I nearly fainted from happiness.

According to James:

"He absolutely *loved* them. Clutching them in his hands, his eyes bugging out, exclaiming 'These are SO CUTE!' I told him your website address and he said 'AAAA! PERFECT! EVERYTHING IS SO CUTE!'"

I have died and gone to Devo heaven.

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Ursula Octopus Costume Tutorial - Part 3

The final part of the tutorial is actually about the make-up. I used children's watercolors to achieve the effect, because my skin won't tolerate grease paints and I didn't want to spend a lot of crazy colors of eyeshadow that I will never wear again.

To use, add just a few drops of water into the color pallette and swirl to create a thick paint, then just brush on. Make a mistake? No problem! Watercolors rinse right off so it's easy to fix -- and easy to remove at the end of the night!

For the hair, I used a blonde "rocker" wig that I found on clearance. I couldn't find white hair and didn't have time to spray paint this white, but I think the light blonde kind of works. This particular wig had long pieces (sort of mullet-ish) in the back which I pinned up to give more volume to the back of the hair, although by the time we got to these pictures, the bobby pins were losing their grip!



The skirt under the tentacles covered by legs and also created a "water" effect, as if the octopus is swimming along.


I found some false eyelashes at Wal-Mart for $3 that had fantastic little sparkles on them and purple lashes. They added a little pizzazz to my eyes.


Here is my original make-up test: I opted to use the thinner eyebrow and the bolder paint color (to soften the color, add water and dilute).