Oh, BTW

The Cthulhu Sushi turned out neat!

Unicorn Horns

I happened to run out of black thread the other day and had to make a quick trip to the store for more to finish a project in time.  Yes they had huge sales going on at JoAnn Fabrics, so I did not get out of there with only the thread.  I spent maybe $40 and saved $45 - didn't even need to use my coupons.  The remnants were 50% off AFTER the sale price was taken off, so that's how I saved more than half on the receipt.

 

Their red tag section was also 50% off today and there was a nice flocked upholstery cream colored fabric with embossed swirls on it that was $3.  Good for a pillow, or making seat cushions with, but the first thing I thought of was Unicorn Horns.  I cut out a pattern for it that was 12" long and yes, they do make nice Unicorn Horns.  Looks like I have a new item for the Ren Fairs!

 

New Cthulhu Toy Idea

Ok, I’ve done sushi before as a cat toy. Both the shrimp style and others. The kind with the rice patty with seaweed strip wrapped around it type.  And also the rolled sushi. 

 

AND the sushi wrap type as well -- yes I did those too for a bit but they were time intensive so I fell back to doing just the other two. 

 

Karen has made mouse and goldfish sushi in the past so I didn’t do those (no competition needed, I’m fine with my own).  However after coming across a cartoon squid sushi piece pictured on a t-shirt and seeing it there in green with the X’d out eyes, it hit me. 

 

WHY haven’t I made Cthulhu sushi?  Argh!  So simple.

 

I've got some mottled green polar fleece and will be doing up little octopod type of bodies with small felt bat wings and will give it a try.  You can never have too many Cthulhu variations.  I've got small 'spawnette' heads, Cthulhu on a stick, Cthulhu hand puppet and the 'baby' Cthulhu. Why not sushi?

Well The Christmas Rush Started

I've had to go resupply myself with fuzzy fabric, felt, cottons and several shades of polar fleece to keep up with what's being asked for.  My 'stash' is getting higher and higher in the craft room, and it was horribly bloated before. But you never seem to have the right color, print or amount when needed.  I think there's still a bag of fabric in the trunk of the car yet, too.

 

The problem with Christmas ideas is trying to do something new and exciting after all these years. It was bad enough trying to come up with 15 new things every year for Pennsic War (after 15 years there that's a LOT of new ideas). Last year the felt ornaments went really nicely.  Cat toys too.  This year I've been scanning Google Images and the crafting books at the library for visuals I can use as idea starters.  Ugh.  Not much that triggered anything exciting.  I'd hate to fall back on the old standby of red birds and penguins. 

 

Do you think bats would be appropriate Christmas ornament material?  If they had little red ribbons and holly leaves on them?  LOL

 

 

 

New Design! Halloween Bats & Spiders

Ok, thanks to Purrtosa's camera phone (Hi Amy!) she put a picture up on her Facebook with the new stuff I just dropped off today at the store.  Indian corn in the background - yes that is a printed cotton fabric, and I used cream color polar fleece 'leaves'.  On the right are the small pumpkins with stems, and down in the right hand bottom corner are the faces of two zombie mice.

 

In the center are the little witch hats, I think I described making these earlier, they're two circles of felt for the brim sewn together and trimmed, and a quarter of a circle as the cone top.

 

Next to them are white eyed fake fur spiders with polar fleece legs.  The body is a 6 inch circle gather stitched around the edge and pulled tight. Once that was tacked closed I added two 'sections' of 4 legs per side. 

 

And there on the left is a white eyed bat.  The bats were done as flat cutouts, VERY similar to the Batman logo, with black polar fleece on the front and black felt on the back.  I did them all on the machine, except for adding the eyes, so the bottom closure was left open till after the body was stuffed.  The wings have counter sewn finger veining so they bend forward.  I thought about doing red eyes, but they didn't show up enough so I stuck with white.

Christmas Toy Tip With Feathers

Ok, time for starting in on the Christmas bird ornaments for the Country Cellar event.  They did well last year and I want to make more  for this year, and use up my feather stash in the process.  The picture here is off the internet, but it gives an idea of how they generally look.

Sewing with feathers isn't all that hard.  You get a package of marabou fluffs from the craft store, sit somewhere that you don't mind getting feather pieces over everything, and put four or five fluffs together at their base, with your fingers.  Holding them in place, take a needle and thread (any color thread) and take one stitch through the bottom. Then wind the thread tightly around the bottom 1/4" about ten times. Take another stitch through the wound part and cut your thread.  Then trim the uneven bottoms of the feather veins so the bottom is flat.  Now dip the end into Elmer's Glue and set aside to dry.

 

You can then insert the feather bunch into anything you sew and sew over/through it and your feathers will not pull out.  I've used this technique on feathers I put into cat toys, and the feather decorations on the soft sculpture falcon's hoods.  It works great. 

Time For Focusing On Christmas Stock

One store ordered 108 mice in Christmas colors.  Another is into Halloween first, then Thanksgiving, then will want Christmas stuff, but they only order 2 dozen items for each holiday.  And then there's the Country Cellar, a small antique shop that fills their three room basement store to the brim with Christmas stuff starting Halloween weekend.  It's Oct. 1, time to get to work.

 

The catnip picking is slowing down.  Yes I can still find it, but no it's not tall stuff, just second growth at this point and not growing very fast now that the weather turned cold.  I've still got one pile that needs to dry completely before I can box it up. 

 

On a sad note, the Etsy account I wanted to open probably won't happen, thanks to plummeting sales on the site now that they opened it up to China mass merchandise.  Everyone is complaining about drastic (75% and worse) drops in sales and many are leaving for Zibbet or one of the other handmade craft websites.  Saw a news story yesterday about Zibbet getting 1,000 former Etsy people requesting an account on just one day, and over 40,000 pictures waiting to upload.  It's a shame that Etsy did that, but they're going for the money, they threw the crafters under the bus, so to speak.