The Greatest Idea in the Universe

Many months ago, I was lying in bed trying to fall asleep. It was late at night and I had to get up early the next morning and I really, really needed to get to sleep, when suddenly I was struck by a glorious idea.  It was astounding!  Astonishing!  Amazing!  And I knew that any chance of sleep had fled in light of this idea, and I felt a powerful urge to leap from bed and get started on implementing this most grandious idea--except that I knew I hadn't all the materials for it and anyway I seriously needed to sleep.

Sleep was long in coming since I couldn't get the idea out of my head.  But soon enough, soon enough I managed to get everything together to get my plan in action and see this idea come to fruition.

Banana fruition.

Meet Bananatee.

He is yellow fleece on top and white fleece on the bottom, with a happy winking eye and a totally peel-able zipper-lined banana skin in which he hides.  The banan is the same yellow fleece on the outside, and lined with white fleece on the inside.

Bananatee was a gift for a friend and the easiest wrap job ever: I put a Del Monte sticker on the banana and threw the banana in a plastic grocery bag.  Here's to Bananatee, winking his way into the hearts of people everywhere!

Tweedatee

So it's been, er, five months.  But I return with a post!  A post of manatees!  I have made copious amounts of them and the backlog is staggering, so I'll be starting small and posting a few at a time, which shouldn't be hard considering that I've yet to take pictures of most of them.

For starters, here's Tweedatee.

Tweedatee likes to drink tea out of a porcelain teacup while reading the newspaper.

He appreciates art.  He just doesn't appreciate people telling him what they think it is.

His favorite foods are frosted animal crackers, cheese rolls, and crumpets--because tea goes with all of those things.

His top is tweedy material and his bottom is gray fleece, sewn with three black buttons exactly as Tweedatees prefer.

Goldatee

He's already made his star-studded debut elsewhere, so it's not like he's never seen the light of the internet before--nevertheless, we shall now present none other than the illustrious Goldatee!

Basically, I want this diamond-studded 24k Gold History Edition iPad 2 by Stuart Hughes, which has to be one of the most ridiculously embellished luxury items evarrrrr.  But since I lack the $8 million necessary to buy one, I made myself a gold manatee in consolation.


He's super blingin' in the sunlight.  But what his exterior doesn't show is that his interior looks like a pair of jeans.
 
Like so:
 

Humble beginnings.

The wrong side of the cloth has this blue denim appearance, although the material is much thinner and the texture much smoother.  Thanks to the gold-yellow thread that I used, the pair-of-jeans illusion is complete.

I turned him rightside-out, stuffed him, sewed him up, and beheld a sadly eyeless manatee.

"There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

With the help of some embellishment glue and a pair of acrylic rhinestones, he became sighted!

In retrospect, I think I should have glued his eyes on before stuffing him--possibly even before he was completely sewn together.  The glue holds fairly well to the material since it's textured, but because the material is stiffer, it doesn't quite lie smooth around his face and the wrinkles prevented the eyes from lying completely flush.  I rigged them with some ribbon and books as weights to hold the eyes flat while drying, but it wasn't quite wholly successful.  But for the nonce his eyes seem pretty well attached. 

When it rains, it pours.

I've been kicking around an idea for a raincloud pendant for a while and finally got around to implementing my vision several weeks ago.  I found this fantastic glitter-and-black-flecked gray Fimo and voila!

This was also my first serious go at wire-wrapping top-drilled beads.  It was, uh, an interesting experience.  I ended up making it harder on myself because I was a doofus and not thinking about how, you know, these are tiny glass beads and glass can break, especially if you're forcing it along stress points with wire and pliers.  But!  I persevered and finally got the hang of it.  I only broke a few beads.

plink-plink-plink-plink 

It fastens with a lobster-claw clasp with a hammered silver-tone circle, and a small blue crystal dangle.

Penny for size reference. 

I sculpted two pendants as test runs to see if a bigger cloud with four raindrops or a slightly smaller one with three raindrops looked better.  Both look pretty good, thank goodness.

Since the wire-wrapping proved finickier and more time-consuming than I had initially assumed, I tried something different with the second pendant.  I like the results (particularly the overlapping circles), though the overall effect is more stylized than the first pendant.

 I wish I had something clever to say here.

I still have a decent chunk of Fimo left, so expect more pendants like these (and variations thereof) in the future!

Manatee MADNESS! Starratee, Klingonatee, Giant Sadatee, Doctoratee & Sparkletee

For Christmas last year, I made a herd of manatees as Christmas gifts.  Or at least that's what it felt like.  Each hand-sewn with care and love and stuffed with polyfil and the desire to conquer the universe.  What could make a manatee better?

First off is Starratee!

Starratee was made of some kind of cloth that had all those little stars painted all over it (I didn't paint them).  I don't remember what type of cloth except that it frayed a lot and I had to keep on turning him inside out again to repair busted seams.  Yeesh.  But he came out pretty cute.

Next is Klingonatee.  Yes, he is a Klingon manatee.

Yes, those are black bushy eyebrows. They were supposed to make him look fierce and scowly, but instead they made him look like a slightly puzzled old man.  It's hard to see because the fabric is soft, furry, and silky, but he actually has a ridged forehead too.

Sadly, I can't seem to find the pictures I took of him once he was completed--he had a TOS-style Klingon uniform like the one on the right:

Source: Wikipedia

It was a marvelous costume, from tunic to undershirt to gold-fringed bandolier with beaded insignia, bubble-wrap-buckle belt, and even a little black pleather boot for his tailfin. And I made him a craft foam bat'leth too! I'll have to do another post when I finally find those pictures because he came out pretty amazing, if I do say so myself.  And I do.

Next up is Giant Sadatee.

He is a giant version of the original Sadatee, who has long since dispensed with the token name Sebastian and just become Sadatee.

He even has the same broken heart. And a HUGE teardrop.  Unfortunately I had forgotten that I gave the first Sadatee applique felt eyes, so the Giant Sadatee has plastic safety eyes instead. 

The teardrop is entirely what inspired me to draft a bigger manatee pattern and make Giant Sadatee.  I found a grab-bag of random glass beads at Joann's and was like, LOL A GIANT TEARDROP I SHOULD MAKE A GIANT SADATEE.  Sadly harebrained ideas like this are what induce most of my creative ventures.  The teardrop actually had a more matte, frosted texture, but I took jewelry-grade polishing paper and spent half an hour gently polishing the glass until it was a little glossier.

Fourthly, there is Doctoratee:

Mwah!

Doctoratee looks more like Nurseatee what with being white and having a red cross on the bottom and all.  Doctoratee was a Christmas present for my medical student friend, who requested him long ago and finally got him--although I've yet to make him the small stethoscope that she requested and he deserves.  I haven't yet figured out exactly how I'm going to make one, but maybe I'll find a correctly-sized toy one for some doll that I can steal.

Lastly (for this post, anyway), there is Sparkletee!

This stretchy fuzzy fabric shed all over me while cutting and sewing. I looked down at myself and found I was covered in a fine silvery-blue mist of fibers.

His laternate names were Discoballatee and Holographatee.  Because of the type of fabric, he came out rounder than the other manatees and with a slightly more mooshed-in face.

Yes, I was a manatee-making machine monster last year.  Then it went out of my system for a while, kicked in a bit early this year, died down again, and then suddenly these past few weeks I've been cranking out more manatees again.  So there will be more manatee posts in the future!

La Moustache

I made a mustache.  Because I could.  And, like Aperture Science, I do what I must because I can.

Bonjour, messieurs et mesdames.

The frame is black coated copper wire, hammered to maintain shape, with black felt sewn to it with black thread.

Je suis une moustache.

The felt gives it nice texture, although next time I may try it with fleece instead. It was quite hard to try to get the mustache symmetrical.  It probably would have been better if I'd drawn it out first and then used that as a template instead of freehanding it.

Nous sommes belles, oui? Très magnifiques!

I then made a second mustache pendant out of black Fimo.  Again I freehanded this effort and again ran into difficulties producing symmetry.  I had to settle for passable instead of perfect.

Je suis un morse avec une moustache.



Paul the Walrus doesn't have a mustache of his own, so he was happy to model this one for me.

Silver Curly Shiny Stretchy

A catch-all post for miscellaneous bits of jewelry!  Including my first attempt at a set of stacking rings.

The middle band is 12 gauge Argentium sterling silver, fused and hammered for sparkliness and durability. The top and bottom bands are 16 gauge Argentium, fused and hammered, with fine silver bezels soldered on. The top holds a 4mm garnet cabochon while the bottom has a 4mm chalcedony.

Then there's this purple stretch bracelet that's just like the one I made before.

And finally, here's a pair of curly earrings.  Sterling-plated earhooks, coated copper wire, star bead frames, and wee sparkly crystals.

I do so love me some danglies just as much as I love me some curlies.  Really, it's too bad that I don't have pierced ears myself--for, you see, I am deathly allergic to pain and highly paranoid of infection.  Plus I like being able to see the jewelry I wear, which is why I pretty much only wear rings. The upside of all this though is that I can deck out people I know in jewelry and stare at it all I please.