Happy Howl-o-ween!

Halloween is here and costumes are a must in my opinion. Why should our puppy be left out?

She is going as Krypto the Superdog! Her cape and collar were made from a couple of child's size t-shirts from your craft store. The studs on the collar and S logo were drawn on with a gold fabric paint pen. Finally her custom Superdog-tag is hand-drawn by me on shrinky plastic. The cape is safety pinned to the collar which fits like a tube over her real collar.

With the perfect costume and pose, our little Gingko is ready to save the day!
Just for reference, you can see how she has grown from the last post she was in: Tilt Shift

Concrete Results Logo Work

So, with my current position at Concrete Results, I do a lot of things. My position involves creating banners, flyers, e-blasts, e-newsletters, maintaining our Facebook pages, creating new websites, working on packaging for products, getting printing quotes, creating brands, etc. It is a challenging position that requires me to constantly be learning new ways of doing things. One of the most fun parts of my job, to me, is getting to design a new logo for something.

I have a fascination with logos. A truly great logo says everything about a company without saying anything at all. The foundation of a good logo in current trends seems to be the type you choose. I feel like the personality then can come from the colors you choose. These two things can set the tone of either fun and whimsy, strict or tight-laced, efficient, archaic, etc. Here are just a smattering of some of the logos I have worked on... You might just see a few in stores in the near future.

Changes and Updates

Updates 10.2011

So I realized today that some of the older posts on this site have terrible grammar, some are just plain confusing, and most lack any artistic explanation of their subject matter. I guess it is to be expected; to feel that your younger self was a just a little bit dense. With that in mind I made a few changes to previous posts, not the smallest of which was fixing typos.

I also realized that the name of my blog here has never been explained. Expect a new post in the near future with the story and a few images.

Thanks for visiting! Stay tuned! :)

Brain Sucking Octopus!!

So there are some pretty cute things on Etsy, and being creative means that what I see I can most likely make for myself in some form. One store in particular sells crocheted toys. I have no intention of starting a business, but nor do I feel like playing $8 for something I can make in half an hour. By tweaking an existing pattern for the Brain Slugs I have previously made, I can simply change the dimensions to a little more rounded shape, add a different fringe to make tentacles, and voila! Octopus!

Since the store near me does not sell safety eyes, I had to make due with a few buttons. A quick embroidery with black thread for a mouth. (FYI, I have no idea what an octopus mouth looks like...) and add a hairclip to the bottom and shes done.

My little sister in law, who is 6, really wanted to learn to crochet and sat watching while I whipped up the body. I think she expects to see this in the mail to her. We shall see...

Lovely Ladybug

My trend continues...another baby shower, another crochet toy. :)

This time it is my husband's cousin. She is having her first girl (she already has three sons!) and her theme is basically anything NOT princess-y or pink. She also mentioned that she loves ladybugs, so with that in mind I set out to find a cute and quick pattern. I saw a few that I really really liked, but they were not children friendly. Thanks to a bit more searching I found this free pattern from Michaels and Lion Brand yarn.

This pattern is very beginner friendly and great for anyone looking to jump into amigurumi. Total time for this project I estimate to be just about 3 hours. The most difficult part is sewing all the little pieces together. I started following the pattern exactly and made the upper body, head, base, feet and spots all according to the pattern. Since I wanted this to be sturdy I sewed everything to each other with the yarn tails from the pieces. I added the eyes and stitched on a mouth with red yarn. The pattern was not very specific on the antenna for the head, so I used the antenna pattern from doing brain slugs (Chain 7, three dc in second chain from needle, slip stitch into the remaining 5 chain, bind off). I tied them into the stitching before stuffing. I also sewed the spots to the upper body before stuffing and the feet onto the base before sewing them together.

Two things to note, I used the black safety eyes I had lying around, since they are so large, I thought it made the lady bug look SUPER cute. (more so than the image on the pattern anyway) Also, since I wanted it to be a girl ladybug, I decided to add a flower. I wanted to make a really small one for on her head. A quick image search led me to Mimi's Crochet Stuff blog and this pattern which I really liked since it used two colors and had a little leaf! Since it came out larger than I expected I decided to add it to the back of the ladybug and I think it came out darling. Hope they like it. Such a fun little project for a baby shower.

Little Monkey, Jumping on the Bed

So, you might remember the Socktopus I made a while back for a friend's baby boy... Little did I know, but I feel like this is becoming my gift trend to friends babies. I have just completed work on an adorable Monkey for another of my high school friend's new baby boy. The pattern is Jaques from Pica-Pau on Etsy. Obviously mine doesn't look quite the same. I tweaked the colors to match my friend's color scheme and found a soft fluffy brown for the monkey fur. I also used different safety eyes that I had left over from another plush. I decided that I didn't like those eyes alone so I crocheted a quick circle to surround them. I am really happy with how this turned out. This pattern was interesting and fun, and a little bit challenging for the legs part, but I feel like my confidence has grown by learning to do something new.

Anyway, here's hoping their new addition loves it. I put a lot of love into the toys I make and it feels good.

Update: Socktopus has now become a good and faithful friend to his kid. Pictures hopefully to follow. :)

Next Project: Mr. Tuff-Guy T-Rex

Trying Tilt Shift Photoshopping

A job, a move and a new puppy can suck up your life. Saw a cool tutorial online today about turning your ordinary photographs into faux tilt-shift photographs with photoshop. Naturally I tried with whatever was on my desktop... that being a photo of my little pup, Gingko.

Before:

After:

Not sure if the photo is quite right to use; it isn't really an aerial shot or far enough away. With that said, I still like it a lot.