ACW Episode 271 – Don’t drink and craft

Webcomic!

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Yes, this actually happened. I was working on a display for a Girl Scout recruiting event and thought it would be fun to make a camping diorama with needlefelted Girl Scouts. And I thought it would be even more fun to enjoy a glass of wine while I did this. Then I discovered a few weeks later that there are actually thimbles I could have used instead of bleeding to death for my art. Ouch.

Krampus Tree continued – What do I deserve?

So, two days later… TWO days later, Krampus finally returns. With a decoration.

“Where the hell have you been!” I shouted. “You said you’d be here tomorrow!”

“So you’re complaining that I’m early?” he said, cocking one hairy, scary eyebrow.

“No! I mean you said two days ago you’d be coming back tomorrow! Which would have been yesterday, only now you’re here today so you’re late!”

“Are you sure about that?”

I went over the whole argument in my head and had to admit, I might not be right. Today, tomorrow, yesterday, two days ago?

“Whatever. It doesn’t matter. I’ve been stuck here with this horrible Krampus tree for the last two days, and you said you had decorations for it. So, what did you bring me?”

Krampus stretched his arms overhead until his spine cracked three times. “Oh, this isn’t something I brought you. It’s something Santa sent you.”

Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a Flaming Lump of Coal.

Krampus tree!

A flaming lump of COAL?!

“Oh, that’s… lovely,” I said. “What did I do to deserve that?”

Krampus laughed so hard he started choking. “You have to ask?!”

So anyway, he farted a few times, laughed some more, and made lots more threats to come back… sometime with more decorations.

So yeah, flaming lump of coal. Flippin’ flaming lump of coal. Like I deserved this.

Yeah, I know. I probably did.

coal_20141227b

Isn’t it lovely?!

(The flaming lump of coal was made from bamboo felt, embroidered with DMC embroidery floss. I used a bit of rick-rack ribbon for the hanger.)

Evil Crafting – Princess has another use for Perler Beads

Believe it or not, I have been very busy working on things for the blog. But everything is still in progress, so I haven’t been able to post stuff yet.

However, Princess came up with something that I really wanted to share with you all. Remember how overjoyed I was to discover the Perler Bead/Geek connection? Perler Beads are PERFECT for recreating 8-bit graphic images, and there are TONS of patterns online for all my favorite cartoons and sci-fi shows.

But Princess came up with a totally unique use for the beads. She had to make a diorama about the nitrogen cycle. Apparently cows play an important part of the nitrogen cycle, so we had to go to the craft store to buy a little toy cow. And to show why cows are an important part of the nitrogen cycle, Princess decided to use Perler Beads. Here’s a picture of how she used them.

Moo...

Do you see the Perler Beads?

Mooooo...

How about now?

Moo poo!

There they are!

Yep,  my kid turned Perler Beads into moo poo! And just so you know, she got an A on her diorama 🙂

Evil Crafting – OMGPERLERBEADS!!

When I do crafts, I always make sure they’re evil crafts. Especially when I’m doing crafts with kids. The one thing I hate about having kids is that no matter where they go – school, church, the local Y, a community fair – there’s always a table set up with “crafts for kids!” Those crafts are always crap. Coloring sheets, cotton balls stuck to popsicle sticks with cheap glue sticks, and those glob-awful craft bits of “craft” foam stuck to paper plates colored with washable markers to make what I think is supposed to be some sort of puppet but ends up being a snack for my cats that eventually gets thrown up all over my carpet.

So yeah, I hate lousy kid crafts.

As I am a Girl Scout troop leader, and as such, I am expected to be an expert in crafts and to share said expertise with the girls. So when we have troop meetings, I always try to come up with something good. Or rather, something EVIL.

One thing Girl Scouts do is make SWAPS. SWAPS stands for Some Whatchmacallit Affectionately Pinned Somewhere. At least I think that’s what it stands for. Girl Scouts make and trade these things and I’ve seen girls with vests and sashes and hats and shirts just covered with little pinned-on doodads. Some are fantastic! Some are… eh. I decided this year my girls were going to make the “fantastic” kinds of swaps.

So far this year, we’ve made a flash-light swap that actually lights up (and you can replace the battery and bulb when needed!). We experimented with lenticular portraits, but it’s really hard to make those small enough to be wearable, if you do them the old-fashioned way. This past troop meeting, I decided we’d do one for the winter holidays.

For the winter holidays, I wanted a way to make little snowflakes that the girls could pin on their vests. I wanted the snowflakes to be durable, so paper was out. I also needed to be able to teach the girls how to make the snowflakes quickly, and the process had to be fairly simple to follow. After browsing through the craft shop for a while, I stumbled across the Perler Beads display, and a little light bulb went on over my head. I was able to get a big bucket of beads for a low price, along with the plastic peg boards, and I went straight home to research snowflake patterns.

What I discovered, however, was a new crafting addiction!

You see, when I went online to look for Perler bead patterns, what I discovered was that Perler beads are a great way to recreate 8-bit graphics. As a digital artist of a certain age (I’m 45), I cut my teeth on 8-bit graphics, and seeing all those Perler bead patterns made me giddy like you wouldn’t believe.

But then I saw the patterns for 8-bit versions of my current favorite cartoon characters (Adventure Time, Regular Show, Gumball) and suddenly I was ecstatic.

And when I saw the Perler bead patterns for 8-bit kawaii cookies and donuts? You could have heard my screams of glee in the next state.

Here is a quick sample of what I made.

Perler Beads

OMGPERLERBEADS!

As you can see, I made a snowflake, an 8-bit shrimp sushi, and a kawaii cookie.  Those 3 snowflakes on the bottom are a little experiment.  I popped a couple handfuls of the beads in a silicon cookie tray and baked them in the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit. I had to flip the snowflakes over in the tray a couple times to get the melted beads to even out, but I liked the results.

My iron doesn’t heat evenly, so I’m going to replace it before I do any more Perler beads. But in the meantime, I’m already planning an evening of making Minecraft Perler bead ornaments with the kids and some of their friends. Oh, and the Girl Scouts LOVED working with the Perler beads. Some of them made the cookie I made below, some of them made snowflakes, and some of them made a blocky version of Olaf from “Frozen.” But they all LOVED working with the beads.

I have a few other evil craft projects in the work at the moment. I will share them with you as soon as I can get some good photos of the work in progress 🙂

The Awful Story of the Krampus Beneath the Lampus

Happy middle-of-the-start-of-Ridiculous-Shopping-Season! Otherwise known as “Thanksgiving Day.”

For the holiday season this year, I thought I would introduce you to a little family tradition the girls and I started last year, called, “The Kids Want Something Very Bad that Mama Absolutely Hates.” Actually, this tradition started years ago, and it’s not even a tradition unique to our family. I’m sure your family has a similar tradition. What may vary from family to family is what awful thing it is that the kids want and how Mama decides to deal with it.

Last year, Princess and Pixie both wanted an “Elf on the Shelf.” I hate that thing. I hate the smarmy look on its face. I hate the effort some families go to make the Elf “come to life” (i.e. make a mess and tear up the house to convince the kids the elf is actually ALIVE). I hate that this frikkin’ elf seems to come with more outfits than Barbie these days. Have you SEEN the displays at Barnes & Noble? Really, the elf does not need clothes. Its clothing is sewed onto its body!!!!

But for whatever reason, millions of kids the world over want “The Elf on the Shelf,” including mine. When we went to Barnes & Noble last year and they asked for elves, I nearly choked to death on my Peppermint Mocha Latte.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I said, spewing hot, frothy, over-priced and over-flavored coffee everywhere.

“Please Mama?!” they begged, eyes getting big. “PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE?!!”

I looked at the EOTS. If you’ve ever taken a close look at these things, you realize it has the same gleeful, murderous look as the Chucky doll from those cruddy horror movies. Only Chucky has more personality.

“No,” I said, backing away in fear. “Nononononononononononononono!!!”

“You never get us anything we like,” my children whined as they sipped on their own Peppermint Mocha Lattes.

Anyway, the kids kept asking for an EOTS, and I kept saying no, and the whining kept getting worse. But then, then I got very lucky. I picked up a holiday crochet magazine and I found a pattern for ugly little monsters, designed by Jill Watt at www.dappertoad.com. The pattern is here – http://www.dappertoad.com/2012/12/shelf-free-crochet-pattern.html.

What’s so great about a pattern, you ask? Why is it any better – or less awful – than buying an actual EOTS?

It’s better because I realized I could take that pattern and make my own horrible little elves. And that’s exactly what I did.
I changed the colors, choosing the most yucky green yarn I could find. Red Heart Super Saver has a couple that I love to use for crocheting zombies, including a sage green and a tea leaf green that are just to DIE for. I used Red Heart’s variegated oatmeal color for the faces and picked a couple of dull grays for the trim. I had some pink “monster” safety eyes. And to all that I added this really awful hairy black yarn for the elves hair and beards.

Yes, beards. You see, these weren’t just going to be elves I was making. They were going to be KRAMPUSES!!! OF DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

Or you know, Krampuses beneath the Lampuses.

Krampuses

We are KRAMPUSES!! Beneath the LAMPUSES

So I spent a couple weeks putting these creatures together, following the directions in Jill Watt’s pattern but using my own colors and adding monster eyes and beards. And the result was truly god-awful. I wired up the limbs so that I could pose the critters, and very early on Christmas morning, I posed the little darlings beneath my favorite lamp in the living room, complete with notes about whom and what they were.

Their names, according to the notes, were Kankle and Krum, and they were Krampus dolls. When the girls came down on Christmas morning to open their presents, there was a lot of squealing and then some confusion and then some screaming.

“Oh my GOD! Mama! What are these horrible gross THINGS?!”

It was exactly reaction I was looking for.

The Krampuses, or Hairy Elves, as the girls decided to call them, have since become permanent fixtures in our home. On various occasions, they can be found hanging from the dining room chandelier (sometimes by the neck)…

Wheeeeee!

Wheeeeeee!

Sometimes they can be found crawling around in the girls’ dirty laundry, or stealing toys and stuffing them into trashcans. They have tied up Pixie’s Doctor doll and tortured him with his own sonic screwdriver…

Hairy elves, attack!

We have you now, Doctor!

They have stolen letters sent to the girls by the Doctor (did I mention my kids get letters from the Doctor? Yeah, they’re future companions). And once, they laid eggs in the kids’ underwear drawers.

Poo egg

This is an egg. How do you like your eggs?

But they never, EVER make a mess of my kitchen, or destroy anything of mine. No, these hairy elves are too smart and too lazy for nonsense like that. Instead, I tell the kids that their elves are the kind of creatures that prefer to fart in their faces with the girls are asleep. And that seems to be naughty enough behavior for Princess and Pixie.

But still, they want the original “Elf on the Shelf.” And still, I refuse to get them one, or let anyone else get them one. So this year, I’m going back to Jill Watts pattern, and this year, I’m going to make another set of hairy elves. This year, the elves are going to be GIRLS, and GIRL hairy elves (complete with beards) are even worse than BOY hairy elves.

For starters, they eat normal, boring “Elves on the Shelves.” And I plan to stage evidence of that crime for Christmas this year. All I need is a stuffing, a few shreds of red and white felt, and two willing, horrible, awful HAIRY ELVES to help me do the murderous deed.

MWAHAHAHAHA!

Evil hairy elves…

And maybe that will keep the girls from asking for things they know I hate 🙂

 

Evil Crafting – Mini-Coffins and Zombie Dolls

The girls and I decided to make some new Halloween decorations this year. Naturally, because we are who we are, these decorations are somewhat twisted in nature.

First off, mini-coffins. Our local A. C. Moore's is selling small wooden coffins for $1 each. I got 5 of these and the girls and I have spent a few afternoons decorating them. We're using basic craft pains – Folk Art acrylic paint, some glitter paint, a little Mod-Podge. Each of us is deciding what to put in them.

The other half of this project is based on a zombie doll tutorial I found last year. We started with some fashion dolls from Dollar Tree. I spray painted these with white primer, then the girls and I started coating them with craft paint, using various shades of green, grey, black, and of course, red. We took a couple apart, removing a head, an arm or leg as we saw fit. And like the tutorial, I've glued a couple dolls together to make zombie conjoined twins. We've also coated these in outdoor Mod Podge, which gives them a sort of slimy look. And we used the excess limbs and heads to fill up the mini-coffins as well.

Here are some photos of the works in progress.

This is my coffin. It's boring right now, just painted seashell pink and sea foam green.

Here is Princess' coffin. She's stuffed it with some cheese cloth and left-over bits of zombie fashion dolls.

This is Pixie's zombie doll. She plans to hang it off our front porch.

Princess decided her zombie doll needed something special, like a plastic skull instead of a head.

And finally, here is my zombie doll, in progress. I still want to do more painting, and haven't put together an outfit for it yet, but so far I'm pretty pleased with the results.

And that's our evil crafting project!

 

Bitchcraft! Episode 38 – Man Oh Man, part 3

Bitchcraft!

Click on the image above to see it full-size!

Oh my! I actually got a webcomic done on time!

Bitchcraft is back. I finally hit a point where I’m feeling better and Girl Scout cookie season has wound down enough that I’ve got a bit of free time. So the next couple of episodes have been photographed and are ready to be assembled.

Meanwhile, I have been working very hard to be lazy. I’ve cut back a lot on my daily list of things to do, and I think that’s helped me feel better. I still have a lot going on, but now if I’m tired, I just chuck everything and take a nap. And I’m sleeping later and going to bed earlier, so that all seems to help.

So here’s hoping that I can continue to get the comics done on time. Because I got lots of stuff to show you guys!