Gainfully employed

Here's a rough sketch of my idea for elves on the ladder, and the first of three elves who will be working thereon. The one on top will get hazardous duty pay.  The one on the bottom will earn a bonus for hauling the goods from the truck to the ladder.  And the middle guy is the ne'er-do-well.  He's just sitting idly on the ladder dreaming about his coffee break.  It's much like a regular construction zone.

A cat rock with tutorial

So, here's my cat on a rock as promised.  Mr. Gadget let me borrow him long enough for a photo op.  His eyes aren't very well defined in this photo, but his ears are good.  There was no need to yank them off and do over.

Here's how he was constructed in case you want to make your own kitty on a rock.  First, find a rock.  This one came from the beach, but I've also helped myself to one or two from a front yard in my neighborhood.  After dark.  With a flashlight.  Just kidding.

Then, brush off the dirt and cover the rock with aluminum foil. My cat was made with paperclay, but Sculpey works well too.  The advantage of paperclay is that it air dries.  Other types of clay have to be baked in the oven, and most cats don't like that...

Form your cat on the foil-covered rock and let it dry.  You really don't need any special modeling tools.  Nail files, small knives and toothpicks will work.  You'll want a small craft paint brush to dip in water and use to do some smoothing work on him. I usually do this along the way to keep him moist and to smooth out any wrinkles.

After a few days he'll be dry, and you'll be very happy at this point that you used the foil.  Just gently remove the cat and the foil from the rock.  Slowly peel away any remaining stubborn foil.  Kitty's rock will be nice and tidy, but he might need a little once-over with some fine sandpaper.

You can paint a base coat on him....or not...this isn't a big deal. I use gesso. Then have fun painting your cat any color(s) you choose.  Regular craft paint works fine.  When mine was done and dry I added some accents (mouth, toes, etc.) with a fine black permanent marker.  Then I added a glossy sealer to make him shiny.  A satin sealer will work well too and he'll be a little more muted. Note:  Make sure it's a permanent marker or the sealer will smear it.

The final step is to glue him onto the rock.  Hot glue or tacky glue would work, but my glue of choice....which I learned about through trial and error and tears....is E-6000.  Here are some helpful hints:

• Buy the package with 4 small tubes.  It doesn't keep well.
• Before gluing, try the cat on the rock to find the right fit and put several light pencil marks around the base.  

Enjoy your cat-making project.  I suggest you take a bag along when you go rock hunting.  You'll probably want to make several.  And don't forget the flashlight.

What's she makin' now?

In early December last year I stopped by the annual holiday bazaar at our local senior center.  I always enjoy browsing through the room they set aside for flea-market trinkets. It was there that I had a light-bulb moment.  Wouldn't it be fun to combine one of my needle-felted creatures with an old timeworn object that had been languishing in someone's musty, mildewed basement?  So I picked through the offerings and found this small weathered ladder. I just knew it would be the perfect complement to one of my handmade whimsies.

Mr. Gadget offered to clean it up for me and add a couple of coats of sealer.  He's learned never to question my reasons for choosing whatever it is I send down to his basement workshop for remedial work.  Early on I told him, "Don't worry, it will be wonderful!"

So, my plan is to affix two elves to the ladder. One will stand near the top rung holding an ornament for a Christmas tree. The other one will be down closer to the bottom with more ornaments in hand.  I'm counting on the ladder (it's about two-feet high) to lean nicely against a Christmas tree.  And I'm imagining that when people see it they will say, "Oh wow!  What a clever idea!"

You can see some of my felting process in this sorry-looking elf.  But he will soon come to life and you might be pleasantly surprised at my elf-making abilities. I've never made an elf before.  But I'm confident. I'll just add some little pointy shoes, a colorful pointy hat and an eye twinkle to my gnome blueprint.

And here, sitting on the top rung, is a cat with no ears. (No, he's no relation to the elves.) He had ears until yesterday when I yanked them off. They just weren't right. They weren't cat ears.  I have to listen to my inner-crafter intuition at all times.  It rarely steers me wrong.  I find cats difficult to needle-felt.  The body isn't the problem.  It's the head. It's hard to get the snout (do cats have snouts?) the right shape.  But I will perservere because I like cats.  Did I ever post a photo of my clay cat sitting on a rock?  Mr. Gadget claimed it for his man cave.  I will show it to you next time.

Now I must go and sit in my recliner to rest up from a very busy day of doing absolutely nothing.

Call the ghostbusters

Mr. Gadget just rolls his eyes when I tell him I think there might be ghosts in our house.  He's a black-and-white kind of guy. I'm more likely to allow a little color in. 

Whenever I've heard a loud clunk coming from another room, or noticed the lights flickering on my bedside table lamp, he usually has a good explanation. He didn't have one, however, for the time I saw the motion-sensor light in the downstairs bathroom came on in the middle of the night.  It wasn't pets.  We have none.

So this morning around 9:30 he called me from the bedroom.  "Come in here and take a look at this orb," he said--clueless to the fact that orbs are round.  He knows I have an interest in orbs.  I've seen quite a few around family members in pictures I've taken.

So I scurried in hoping to see more evidence.

I have to say, it was rather striking.  Mr. Gadget's first name starts with an F.  It seemed it was meant just for him.  What could it mean?  Well, of course it was just the sun and blinds playing a little game with us.  We do see bright lines on the walls occasionally, but never on this lampshade, or any lampshade for that matter.  I'm calling it a forb.  This hasn't swayed Mr. Gadget's thinking in the least, although he did say if he ever sees an "M' on the lamp he might reconsider.

Easter bunnies `

First, just so you know, these are NOT my slippers.  They belong to the morning lady--a doll I made a few years ago.  

I'm not a religious person and have never been a regular church-goer. I know some of you will judge, especially one of my cousins who has been trying to save me for years.  My mother went to church occasionally and I often went with her. My dad not at all.  Neither ever told me which religion to follow. They left it up to me to decide.  During my youth I tried out different ones by going to church with friends and relatives, and eventually let lots of reading and life experiences be my guide.

My children had some religious education, primarily because their grandmother insisted on it and Mr. Gadget didn't want to disappoint.  

But I was always in charge of Easter and that meant cooking a tasty holiday meal and filling hidden Easter baskets with candy and little trinkets.  As the kids got older I continued that tradition, but added an egg hunt in the backyard.  Hard-boiled colored eggs eventually evolved to plastic eggs with money inside.

But we parents don't know what we don't know.  Those money eggs ended up being a bad idea.  The morning trek around the yard would usually turn out like this:

"He got more eggs than I did!" she'd yell.

"I'm just faster," said he.

"This is totally unfair!" she'd proclaim as she stomped into the house, not to be seen again until afternoon.

Maybe we should have all gone to church instead.

Got bagels?

As I've mentioned, Big City Girl is right in the thick of things down there in the big city.  She's good about staying home but sometimes, like the rest of us, she has to grocery shop.  So I made her some protective gear.

Mr. Gadget has lovingly offered to do our grocery shopping so as to keep me out of harm's way.  I suggested that it would be very easy for me to make a mask for him, but he declined my offer saying he would wear one of his shop masks instead.  I told him I had some nice prints that would be very appropriate for a man with his talents and interests.  Perhaps something with bright salsa bottles, or even some books.  I might even have a piece hidden away with gadgets of some kind.  But he continued to dismiss my offers.  Mr. Gadget would never want to be known around town as a spectacle.

A little something for the birds

I've decided to share some of my felting fiber with the birds.  This will assist them in making really cushy nests.  I was hoping I had an old suet feeder, but I must have tossed it when we moved from our house.  So I used the next best thing.  A plastic bag that held my latest supply of Cuties. I pulled a little fiber out through the holes just to give the birdies a heads up.  There's a tree right next to our back deck that will be a perfect place to hang it. The foliage is sufficiently thick so that I should be able to hide it from the condo grounds committee if they decide to walk around the complex looking for criminals.