Thought I’d show you a little bit of what I’ve been up this past week, lots of pinning, sewing and painting and emergency trips to the fabric store……..got to be honest though it’s taking much longer than I expected as I had hoped to be all done by now,  ah well the best laid plans of mice and men and all that……..squeek.

So that’s all your getting for now as I really want it to be all finished for next week,  and I still have a load of bunting to sew.   Which is another exciting breaking news story this week………I think I may have finally figured out my sewing machine,  so exciting!!  but of course I don’t want to get ahead of myself as I really only sewed a straight line………but still,  I’m very proud of myself as the line was (mostly) straight ahhhhhh progress.

I also (somehow) got some lil cutie cupcakes made

And added them to the shop.

It must be as the temps are finally hitting the 90’s here……..I love the sticky hot of summer,  nothing better than sitting outside and getting some rays enjoying an ice coffee or 4, which I guess means you now know how I spent the last week.

Although Connor bounded into our lives in the meantime

He’s a sweet if rather timid lil’ fella and he will be heading to the shop soon.

Meanwhile my head is buzzing with sewing projects……always slightly dodgy for me,  as I always think big when it comes to sewing projects but my skill set is always a damper to my plans.  Regardless I shall be heading of to the fabric store a little later today to purchase the required fabric…..let’s just say lots of red and white pinstripe,  and that’s the only clue you’re getting.  I’m so excited to start but scared of the possible outcome if I can’t follow through on my grandiose plans.

Can’t wait to show you what I’m up to but I’d better get back to it………….

Alrighty I told you I was working on a sweet commission and here it is…

A lil’ cutie cupcake…….I couldn’t work out how to do the cupcake paper for the longest time,  I even bought real cupcake papers but didn’t like how it looked………. then at about 2 o’clock in the morning it struck me how to do it,  it was all I could not not to leap out of bed with scissors and felt right then and there but somehow I managed to restrain myself to wait till morning.  I am really pleased with how it turned out especially as I had some pressure on who it was going to,  you see the person who requested it is the incredibly talented doll artist Jen of Nanassisters…….I have been in absolute awe of her chibi juice dolls for a very long time,  they are sooooooo good there isn’t a word for how good they really are.  Take a look at the doll she made for me

and of course I couldn’t have Alice without the Cheshire cat

They are so perfect and wonderful it’s as if they came straight from Wonderland to hang out with us.

Anyway I highly recommend that when you check out Jen’s shop you look through her sold items I promise you’ll be blown away by her talent.

Meet CC

He’s called CC for his chubby cheeks ……I think it’s from his constant smiling,  as I’m sure you can tell he’s a pretty sweet guy.  He’s made entirely from alpaca wool which is a lot softer than the corriedale and although this sounds like a silly thing to say more hair like than sheep’s wool which means it requires quite a bit more stabbying.  But as you guys know I love the process so it was fun to work with something different,  makes the ole’ brain have to rethink things to make ideas work……I will of course add CC  to the shop.

I got a super sweet custom order that I’m working on at the moment…….I would give you a hint as to what it is but I think I just did,  I’ll share as soon as it’s done of course.

Have a great weekend

Ok so everyone loves the weekend…….that’s kinda  a no brainer right?  But this weekend I especially love as I’m going to see the rather brilliantly funny Joel Mchale at the Chicago theatre.  I Love Joel Mchale his comedic timing on the soup always has me in stitches, no one can say chicken tatrazini and make me need to weeeeee quite like Joel (in a good way).  And for the longest time I’ve always wanted to see something at the Chicago theatre so this really is a win win weekend……..plus we are staying at the Palmer hilton hotel for the night so we don’t have to endure the late night drive back to Rockford yaaaaaaaaaaaay life is good.

I have a new critter I’d like you to meet too

THis is Smithy,  and he’s a bit of a scally wag…….he is looking for a forever home though so I will add him to the shop asap.

Have a great weekend.

I Love, love, love creating completely new and weird little critters and thinking of where they have been or are going to,  or how they like to spend their day but with these guys I just can’t even begin to imagine

They are currently hanging out at my house as part of a space mobile I made for the rather fabulous Katie ( who has some of the best stabby requests ever) who just found out that she is expecting a lil’ one and is going with a space theme for the nursery………..How brilliant is that?  certainly very unique and original.  I just hope she likes it

They sure are cute,  like everything I make for Katie I’ll be sad to see them go…………

Last weekends Craftacular was brilliantly fun thanks to everyone who stopped by the booth to say hi,  Madison sure is a supportive community.

Sorry for the fuzzy pic,  the iphone doesn’t like taking pics in darker environments and I of course forgot my camera……..ah well.

Like you didn’t know already huh?  Well I guess not what with my love of all things Mario related,  I just had to add Bullet Bill to the collection

I made a couple of these guys as this weekend is the Spring Fling Craftacular at the High Noon Saloon in Madison Wisconsin.   If you are in the Madison area you should come check us out,  lots of great crafters and artists and the first 25 shoppers get a free goody bag wooohooo you may even find a little stabby goodie in there……..(hint you will).

Anyway going back to the geekery theme of this post I also made Pacman

Growing up my sister had a pacman game where the whole game looked like pacman and it was soooooo awesome I was forever borrowing it,  so I figured pacman could really be awesome to add to my geekery line……..I can’t stress enough how tricksy he actually was to make though.  I know, I know he’s just a ball with limbs as Mark kept helpfully pointing out, but the importance of making him completely round and getting his mouth just right was shockingly difficult.  I figure he’s totally worth it though as he’s very cute and of course I’ll add him and Bullet Bill to the shop later today.

Bob Omb has finally arrived to add to my stabby homage to Mario……

He’s a fun guy to make, and one of my favourite characters to play……..remember in Mario cart when you lost,  you could control Bob to bomb your opponents?  aaaaaaaaah good times.

So he will of course be added to the shop later today.

Tonight we are heading back into Chicago to see The xx at Lincoln Hall,  which should be great as the venue is brilliant…..although I have a feeling we may be the oldest people in the room……..(not difficult when you consider the fact that the 4 members of the band are only 19).

So back to stabby frenzy for the upcoming Craftacular………Gaaaaaaaaah only a little over 2 weeks to go before the show………busy, busy,busy!!!!

And I’d like to share it with you.  First of all the weather was absolutely perfect,  and we were heading to Dandy things in Long Grove Ilinois.   A really unbelievably cool indie hand made store that I am thrilled to tell you Stabbies can now be found at………yippppppppeeeeeee.  Then we headed into Chicago to see Heidi Kenney’s Seedling, sprout and spores show at Renegade Handmade……….which of course was brilliant.

Renegade Handmade did a fantastic job of hosting the gallery night  even the window got me excited to see Heidi’s work, but not as excited as I got when I saw Heidi……….she was so nice.

And I was there early enough (oh boy was I) to snag a goody bag and some of her pieces (they didn’t last long)

This cute little group scene and

the individual tree and the individual mushroom on the right are mine as well as the sprouts on the right

I am so excited to get them I can’t tell you how hard it was to walk away from the store without them (they are on display at Renegade until May 18th).

Mark of course was excited to be in Chicago for other reasons…………..the apple Ipad came out at the weekend so of course we had to head over to the Apple store on Michigan Ave so he could play with one.  After picking one up for all of 5 seconds the sales assistant barely gets out the “can I help you” question before Mark blurts out I want one do you have them in stock?  So Mark got a goody too…………The store was absolutely mobbed

This was the frenzy of people all waiting to play  with the demo Ipads (there was always at least 30 people crammed around the table) and in the 10mins we were in the store they must have sold at least 30 ipads………probably more but still pretty immpressive.    Anyway Mark is in nerd heaven with his new toy…….it is pretty cool though.

So that was my fantastic Easter weekend,  pretty great huh?  How was yours?

This Saturday (April 3rd) the amazingly talented  plushie maker Heidi Kenney (I’ve gushed about her here before) is coming to Chicago to exhibit her work at Renegade Handmade.  I am so excited about this I decided to make her a present

I just though of the things I think of when I think of Heidi,  donuts and mushrooms were definitely at the top of the list,  so I hope she likes them.

And a new critter showed up this week……

He’s a bit of a boffin is Boris,  in fact he’s been called a knockout by the boys in the lab.  Although Boris doesn’t let it go to his head…..probably because his head is too full of mazes and equations.  It’s lovely having him around though as he’s so smart,  I may set him the challenge of figuring out my taxes.

Oh and in other news the Glitterworkshop is having another Craftacular (yippppeeeeeee) and I just found out I’m in!!!  It’s going to be at the High Noon Saloon on Saturday April 24th which isn’t long away…………….waaaaaaaaaaah I’m going to have to be very busy for the next couple of weeks.