Remember the faery for my niece? Well it’s finished and I’m quite pleased with how it turned out. Just like I had hoped it would. Book pages, water colors, ink, colored pencils, sequins, button brads, and glitter make up this red headed faery for a precious red headed little girl.
Lately I’ve been doing more coughing and sneezing than art of any kind (I will be so glad when this cold is gone). This weekend was a flurry of activity with a soccer game and a hockey game in the same day.
But I have managed to start something for my best friend’s daughter. To her kids, I am Aunt Karebear and that’s how it’s always going to be. My “niece” and I share a middle name and a love for faeries and art. She is my little artsy mini pixie with the bright red hair and I love her to pieces. So for her birthday this year, I thought it’d be fun to make her an Aunt Karebear original, a fun funky faery with pigtails.
It’s not finished obviously. Tomorrow I hope to get the watercolor down and start on the paper flowers I’ll be adding to it. I look forward to seeing the look on my niece’s face when she opens up her present!
Happy Crafting!
With coughs and sore throats floating around this house, it’s a wonder I made it this long without catching it. And of course as karma would have it, I came down with a fever Monday night and have been fighting a stuffed nose and sore throat since. But today I feel like like I had been run over by a truck and a little bit more myself. I even climbed out of my pajamas that I’ve been living in for 2 days. But in the midst of being sick, I found that I wanted to create. I just didn’t have the energy to sit down at my art table with my paints or my sewing machine. All I wanted to do was curl up on the couch and watch the chick flicks I don’t usually get to watch living in a house where the boys out number the girls (that’s before we start talking about adding the 4 legged family members to the equation). What’s a girl to do then when dragging art supplies into another room just doesn’t quite work?
Crochet. I taught myself how to crochet about 2 months ago when I needed to add hair to a poppet I was working on for a swap. But the hair style I was going for was proving a little difficult to figure out with wefts. So I learned to crochet a wig cap.
And to show the final result:
Exactly what I was going for. So I’ve been slightly hooked on crocheting since. I am by no means an expert. Heck, after my crochet cap, I made a couple of dish clothes using a single crochet stitch. But I’m getting there. I find it enjoyable and relaxing to work on something like a dish cloth or scarf while watching TV with the family, or while waiting for soccer practice to finish, or the scout meeting to wrap up. I can see why a lot of people, my mom and grandmother included, enjoy this craft. And in a small way, as I use my grandmother’s hooks, it makes me feel a bit connected to her. And I hope that as I make things for my family using her hooks, that in a small way, they feel connected to her once more, especially my son who has no memory of his grandmother, but who had brought her so much happiness and joy during her last days before she passed.
I know my stitches aren’t straight or perfect. I know that someday I’ll get up the courage to try some other stitches like the double crochet or the triple crochet, but for now, I’ll keep right on making the little things for my family and enjoying every bit of it.
Happy Crafting!
October 31st, we had a simple family Samhain ritual, we talked as a family about the meaning of Samhain and rituals and traditions behind it. As we were wrapping up our little ritual, I had an idea. One that would allow us to teach how other cultures honor their loved ones who are gone (because let’s face it, my kid is a sponge and loves learning), allows us to get creative (I love looking for excuses to get my hubby using his creativeness other than home improvement projects), and it would be something fun.
I originally had the idea to print off a coloring book style page and let the kiddo color it in. But as I was looking at images of Day of the Dead skulls, I just wasn’t finding any that spoke to me. I didn’t find any simple skulls that I liked either for us to draw on and decorate.
You ever have one of those lightening strikes your brain with an idea kind of moments? The kind of moments where you face palm yourself on the forehead and exclaim at the top of your lungs “Oh my gosh!! I’m such an idiot!!” Yeah I had one of those moments when I realized that I could just draw the kind of skull I want (I swear sometimes I forget the fact that I can draw). So that’s where my brain child started, a simple skull on a piece of paper.
But it didn’t end there. It couldn’t. Remember my inked skull that I drew yesterday? It’s colored now and all framed. Even the dollar store frame that I’ve had forever for no good reason now has the perfect reason and purpose.
So what did we do with the paper skulls the kid and I decorated? Decorated our family altar of course! I had set up photos of family and pets that have passed on. I also included a small ceramic vase that was once my Nana’s. Our altar is simple this year. This evening after soccer practice, we’ll come home have a dinner of comfort food (mac and cheese is our family’s fav) and light the candles on our altar. We’ll share stories with our son of our fondest memories of family and pets he never got to meet. We’ll tell him stories of his great grandma who passed when he was only 3 months old. We’ll offer daddy lots of hugs and kisses because he misses Sir Galahad terribly. But most importantly, we’ll have honored our loved ones and create a new family tradition.
Want to make your own Day of the Dead skull? I’m sharing the one that I created!!
All that I ask is that you don’t sell it in any form. If you use it online, please link back to this post. Thanks! Let me know if you create your own skull, I’d love to see it!!
Thanks for swinging by and happy crafting!
Today marks the beginning of Art Every Day Month! I lurked last years participates from the shadows. Not this year. This year I am jumping feet first and making the commitment to do some sort of art, even if it’s a doodle or a quick sketch of an idea, every day for a month.
So if you are visiting from Creative Every Day, Welcome!! If you’re one of my readers, it’s good to see you again as always!
Today was a quiet day and a bit gloomy as it rained all day. So that made for a perfect drawing kind of day. I don’t have much to show today as I was putting together a project that my family will be working on this evening. But I do have a little something that I've been working on today.
Now to decide on my medium of choice for adding color. I think I might pull out the Inktense and use them to color it.
Happy Thursday all!!
