PROJECT DUMP

I'm really behind on posting about my projects, so here's a PROJECT DUMP. (Meant to be said in the manliest of voices)

Pita

My sister commissioned me to paint a picture of her friends dog Pita who had recently passed away, to give to her as a birthday present.  She asked that it be done in the same style that I did the three paintings of our dogs.

Kevin 2

I had posted my Kevin costume on a home-made costumes website a few years ago, and in September I received an email asking if I still had it, and if I would be willing to sell it.  I was extremely excited that someone actually wanted to buy something that I had made, and it was someone who wasn't related to me!   The costume was for her young daughter though, and the Kevin head that I had made for myself was very large, awkward and heavy.  I made a new head for the costume that was slightly smaller and made out of lighter materials.  I had learned a lot while making the original head, and was able to improve on the new one quite a bit.

The new head (left) and old head (right)

I painted the beak so that it had more of a natural looking gradient than the older one, and gave it's eye's highlights to give it a bit more life.

I fixed up the body as well.  It originally had a cardboard box inside of it to make it look bigger, but that made it super difficult to move in and almost impossible to ship anywhere.  I luckily had some of the blue fabric left over, and sewed it inside, stuffing it and cutting arms holes to make it into a sort of feathery vest.

DQ Cat

One of our managers had been away for a couple of months, and to welcome him back a friend of mine had suggested that everyone give him the gift of cat pictures.  I luckily had a large picture of a kitten just lying around....so I suited it up in the proper DQ attire and added a lovely cat pun.  I ended up being the only one to bring a cat picture, because no one else was ridiculous enough to take the note seriously...My manager really enjoyed it though! :)

Lucky's Birthday Present

My friend Shawna, the same friend who suggested that we bring my manager cat pictures, also requested that we give her dog Lucky a birthday present.  Shawna is a HUGE Harry Potter fan, so I made a tiny Gryffindor scarf and an owl for her dog.  She was very pleased. 

Birthday gift for my Mom

My mom loves both Tinkerbell and her dog, so I decided to make her a paper piece with both of those things!

You can see our other two dogs in the background as well.  Amigo is chasing his favorite carrot toy.

MAXIMUS.

As seems to be tradition, here is a Halloween post almost 2 months after the fact.  I wasn't sure if I was going to have the time or money to make myself a costume this year, so I didn't start planning one until about a week in advance.  My friend Charli was giving me a bunch of ideas, and she mentioned the 'sassy horse' from Tangled.  Tangled is one of my favorite movies and I decided that 'sassy horse' would be a wonderful costume.

I looked up some reference images of Maximus and did a couple of very rough sketches of the costume, and how it would work.  I look very happy in sketch form.

I built the base of the head out of foam.

And then covered it in felt, made the 'harness' part out of fun foam and found some ping pong balls for the eyes.

So sassy.

The front of the body was made out of white felt and then fun foam for the saddle straps.

I painted all of the embellishments gold.

The saddle was actually the first part of the costume that I made.  I had Murder She Wrote on in the background, which made working on it even more fun!  I made the blanket under the saddle out of felt and then the saddle itself out of fun foam.

I gave Maximus a glorious and luxurious yarn mane.

And painted his eyes.

It was very important that I have a wanted sign for Flynn Rider.

And a little Pascal to keep me company.

I wore it to work and put on my best Maximus face.

It was probably the easiest costume I've worn at work seeing as how it didn't have enormous wings or as 3 foot tall head.  People seemed to enjoy it, even when they didn't know exactly who I was.  I'm pretty sure that a lot of the older customers thought that I was just a very disgruntled horse.

My manager really enjoyed it and whinnied at me throughout the day.

Slothy goodness.

I have been slightly obsessed with sloths lately.  I have my good friend Catherine to thank for that.  She sent me a video of a baby sloth, and I was overcome by how incredibly weird and adorable these little creatures were.  It was Catherine's birthday last month, so I decided that I would make her a sloth of her very own!

I started off with a couple of sketches





And then made the body out of felt





And gave it a wire skeleton so that the legs would be posable.



I covered the toes in fun foam and then made the legs out of felt and attached them



I sewed everything together, stuffed him up a little and gave him a friendly little face.







I got my mom to hold up a paper towel roll branch for him to hang off of.  She was also enjoying a caramel apple sucker...

It's a DRAGON?!

So I promised to try posting things more often, and here's some stuff!  I made this little guy a few months ago.  He was my second 'felty' experiment (after the dog for my sister and before little Harry).  I wanted to make a dragon that looked a bit like the 'Terrible Terror' from How to Train Your Dragon.  I had found some wonderful scaly looking felt at Michaels and thought that it would work perfectly.  I did some quick sketches of how I wanted him to look and then tried to figure out some sort of a pattern off of those to cut the pieces out.  There was a lot of trial and error involved, but this is what the main 'body shell' (for lack of a better term...) ended up looking like.  I made sure to give him some lovely bulgy eyes and twisty looking horns as well!

You can really notice all of the nerdy things that I have in my closet in this picture...  Superman is gettin' his creep on.

The little white pins in his back were to mark where his wings were supposed to go.

I put a little armature inside of him so that he would stand up and I could put him in dragony poses.

Then he was given the power of flight.  One wing at a time.

And a lower jaw as well!  I left the end of the 'snout' open so that I could stuff the head once the neck was sowed onto the lower jaw.  I could push the fabric in a bit and it made it look like he had a hilarious little mouth.  I quite enjoyed it.

Here's more of the armature inside.  And look, he has little toes too!

Voila!  The finished Dragon! Also, my pitiful attempt to create a plain 'backdrop' with one of my sketchbooks....

Precious.