I just realized I never actually posted this post from about a month ago! I thought it was up here already–shame on me.

In case you’re wondering what kind of a fall it’s been so far, it’s been the kind where I thought I left my camera charger in Minnesota, but really it’s been in my desk, where I’ve looked a zillion times, the whole time. Take from that what you will.

I don’t have so much in the way of Halloween plans for myself, but last year I wanted to make tesla an Appa costume, and totally flaked on it, so this year I made sure it happened by making it in early September, when I had plenty of time instead of waiting for October when free time was sure to be a hot commodity.

This is Appa, he is a Sky Bison:

This is Tesla. He is not a Sky Bison…yet:

The idea I had for the costume was pretty straightforward—basically I wanted to make an Appa pelt with a few straps to keep it on around the front and back legs. After a lot of bribing Tesla with treats so that I could measure him, I made a paper pattern and then a fabric one to check basic fit.

Tesla clearly hated it, and the fit wasn’t great, but I made a few minor changes and deemed it pretty good.

 I chose to make the actual costume out of fleece because it’s much easier to work than fake fur, and also snuggly. I wanted the costume to be double sided (for… realism?) so sewing it was basically the same as sewing a stuffed animal, but without the fluffing. I can’t decide which was more annoying—sewing the horns or cutting out and sewing twelve tiny bison feet.

Before putting the two sides together I had to make sure that absolutely every embellishment for each side was done, which meant horns were finished, tails were quilted and arrows were sewn. Then I pulled it inside out through the tail, which was a major pain, but worked out really well. I then hand stitched the tail to finish. I had left the brown arrow on the top extra big over the tail so this was time consuming but simple. Finally I sewed straps under the chin, on the four feet, and across the brisket to finish.

Tesla is none to pleased; I however, am delighted.

Check out the gallery for some pictures of the sewing process.

So, a couple of months ago (yikes) I said as soon as Missed Connections was over I’d be back to posting on the blog.

HA.

I crack myself up. The short and short of it is this: Missed Connections was an awesome success, and I ended up engaged at the end of it (Whaaat!). Also about two weeks before curtains I decided I was going to open an aerial studio in New Haven. So, there’s that. Both of these it turns out are Pieces of Work. Starting a business is Hard and time consuming, and planning a wedding is mostly just time consuming, though I suppose it can be hard if you let it.

Also, I discovered what Pinterest is actually for kids. It’s for planning a wedding whether you’re actually getting married or not!

But now that both of those things have settled down a little bit, I’ve actually had some time to work on projects. Actually it’s been a veritable project fest around here, though none of them have had to do with knocking down walls (though I did cut a hole in the ceiling of the downstairs bathroom.). My apologies though, if this post is a bit rough around the edges–getting back in the habit is hard.

I don’t have any grand plans to turn this into a wedding blog, but I did just send out most of our save the dates, which I made myself, so yeah. Let’s do it. Our save the dates are a four-color woodblock print. Feel free to go ‘oooh.’

We have neither a ‘theme’ nor colors for our wedding. Maybe we are bad at weddings, but it is taking place in northern Minnesota, the land of my people, so I decided for invites and stuff to design them with a sort of north-woodsy sensibility about them. I also decided that word of our impending nuptials would be spread by one super excited fox and his north woods comrades, because all the foxes are so excited for us.

Here we have my initial sketch, which I pretty much stuck with, with the exception of switching out the plain text with a sweet banner and moving it to the top.

 Laying out and carving the first two blocks—the animals and the text—was pretty much what you would expect. I got weirdly good at writing backwards from the project, to the point where for a few weeks I couldn’t remember which way non-symmetrical letters went. It resulted in a lot of re-filled out forms.

To figure out the layout of the birch bark block, I printed the first two block, then rubbed the print with vegetable oil and basically printed that onto the birch bark block.

I actually carved the postcard back as an afterthought, but it turned out to be my favorite block (maybe because it’s all one piece?) and I feel like it’s the most traditionally block-printy of the bunch.

Here’s some early test prints I did to make sure all the blocks were 5×5.

I was initially going to hand pull each save the date, but I was having problems finding paper that was absorbent enough yet strong enough to not fall apart in the mail. Plus hand pulling a four-block print is really tricky and I didn’t want to do it 40 times. Finally after my first wedding related meltdown (yay?) I decided to pull one good print, then scanned it into my computer, did a little cleaning in Photoshop and then took them to my local printer. Ta da:

Oh yes, and here is a picture of my butt in a wedding dress that I didn’t buy, because I can.

Yes, it’s been forever, and I’m apologetic about it, kind of. There have been some good Life things and some bad Life things, all of which have resulted in me not posting an update for a while. Today is one of those days where I’m feeling like this:

And unfortunately not everything can be fixed by re-watching Avatar: The Last Airbender for the eighteenth time. I really need a distraction from all of the above, and thus here I am.

So, thing One that’s kept me away from here for so long is this:

Yep, that’s a super successful Kickstarter that you see before you. To see it in its full glory, with a sweet video and everything click here.

Though that video is two minutes long, it took about 16 hours to film. Sorry, it took 16 hours to make/film the animated portions. (It also took about that long to clean up.) So now you can see where a large chunk of my time in the last month has gone.

Here’s some documentation of the mess project in action. The ladder camera rig was a pretty genius idea of Nick’s—sadly it only appeared about halfway through.

If you’re here from APW, let me just say ‘Hello! It’s nice to see you here!’ If you’re here because this is what you do on Tuesday mornings, rock on, rock on. So, APWers, a little about me–my name is Stacey, (but you already knew that), I like to write (you knew that too), I thrive on creativity and I’m in an awesome CIRCUS. Really. You should check it out. If you want to know more about me specifically, and my little dog too, check out the About page. Otherwise, may I suggest the following:

If you want to check out an in-progress block print of a kraken, go here.

If you’re into schaudenfreude, I suggest this.

If you want to see a sick before and after of my bathroom remodel (including a vanity I designed and built from scratch) check this out.

If you’re into poached eggs (delicious!) saunter over on this way.

If you’re a regular here, and have ZERO idea what’s going on, an article I wrote was published this morning on a super awesome website called A Practical Wedding. You can find my words of wisdom here!

Peace!

Hello gentle readers, today marks a momentous day for me. Today is my first day writing a blog post from my desk and not from a hand me down futon. It’s very exciting.

While I was in Minnesota, Nick took it upon himself to build me a desk since he couldn’t handle me setting up shop in the living room any more. It is rather more made of 2x4s and red countertops than the one I was designing to make myself, and I’m already brainstorming ways to fix it up (did you know there is such a thing as countertop paint? No? I did.), but for now it is so much better than nothing, and I’m thankful to Nick for saving me a lot of time and effort on this project.

So, without further ado, a tour!

Here are the things I needed to make this very red space ‘mine’:

[   ] A Blue Chair.

[  ] Some trusty plaid.

[1.] Some books: Instructional, inspirational, and favorites. I’ll leave sorting out which is which to you.

CSS: The Missing Manual, David McFarland

The Children’s Book, A.S. Byatt

Shelley’s Poetry and Prose, Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, Bros. Grimm

The Wasteland and Other Poems, T.S. Eliot

The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman

[2.] Apple Cider in a jar.

[3.] A typewriter.

[4.] A wise owl from a wise friend.

[5.] A picture of my boyfriend. Just kidding. Kind of.

[6.] Some sealing wax for feeling fancy.

[7.] Postcards I never sent

[8.] Some plants. It is not a requirement that they be very unhappy. Guess who’s been winning in the case of Stacey vs. Spidermites?

[9.] Coffee from BabyCakes

[10.] The Mac-hine.

[11.] Journals.

[12.] A little bit of mysticism.

[13.] A plastic dinosaur. Always, always.

[14.] Materials.

[15.] A How-To Manual: The Treehouse Book.

[16.] Tablet.

[17.] Fancy boxes.

My new space and this rainy fall day have me feeling very inspired. I particularly like that I can look out the living room windows and just see the branches of some orange-y, very wet birches.

Also, here are two inspiring blogs for you since this post was very short:

The Blog of Carson Ellis, one of my favorite artists

Work.Place. Exactly what it sounds like.

Have an inspiring weekend friends!

Just another quick post since it’s my mom’s last day in town–sadness.

Two upcoming projects to keep an eye out for:

Project One:

Replacing this monstrosity of a mirror:

With this one I found in the hallway, which I don’t think I stole because it was just chillaxin’ in the stairwell for four days despite being in perfect condition and still having a sticker on the glass:

Probably I will also paint. The call of Olympic 3052-C ‘Misty Surf’ is nigh impossible to resist.

Project Two:

Turning hideous $2 lamps from Goodwill:

Into Asian Inspired Paper Lantern type illuminating devices:

That’s all for today, sportsfans. Or DIY fans. Or sick of the heat fans. Whatever you are, have a nice afternoon!

And now a break from the super thrilling posts about the bathroom vanity (though those will be back now that I’ve found my camera and can stop taking pictures with my phone) to talk about the kitchen.

By tomorrow, this, our humble, humble kitchen wall will be transformed into something magical, replete with candy castles and unicorns, and virgin births, I’m sure. Don’t worry, the pizza peel isn’t going anywhere.

Check back tomorrow to taste the rainbow!

It’s Tuesday, which means it’s tile day (aka the day my mosaic tiles for the counter and trim arrive), hooray! I’ve been waiting to make this physical comparison with something other than a 4×4 tile sample for weeks now.

I think it’s pretty spiffy, but what about you dear readers? (And by dear readers I mean my mom, who reads this blog.)

Yep, this is my first post. Hopefully there will be many more to come about remodeling your bathroom for under $700, how not to ruin risotto, and how to to make your own dreamcatcher, inset hinges on a cabinet, and paint an attic red figure pair of Chucks.

You will not find information on cracking the job market in North-western Connecticut, sorry.