Art update- an elf and some mushrooms (and giveaway reminder!)

Birthday dance time! Yup, it's my 558th- no, that's my Elfling age, isn't it? 27th birthday. And yet I still don't feel like an adult, but that's okay because being grown up is overrated anyway. ;)

This means that today is the last day for my birthday giveaway, so if you haven't entered, please join in! This also means that today is the last day for the 27% off sale in my Artfire shop, so if you wanted to jump on that you only have until tonight at midnight. (Use the code 27BIRTHDAY. It's good on everything except custom dolls.)


And this week I'm actually able to share what I've been working on- hooray! I changed around some cartilage earrings and made a custom pair:


The main thing I've been working on are more plushies, though:

The mushrooms are for my friend's son (he really loves the one I made for my fiancé) and are finished. The doll is very much a work-in-progress, though- it's going to be an elf princess-type for one of my online friends. The doll doesn't look like much yet, but I promise she'll be cute. I always have so much fun when I get to make elves and other fantasy dolls because I get to be extra creative! :D

I'll keep you guys updated on this one as it progresses and the next art update will include that and the kobold I'm going to be starting for my fiancé.

Hey, look, a writing (and art) challenge!

Author Sign Ups | Artist Sign Ups
Come and join us at the fantasybigbang

The goal of this challenge is to team up writers and artists- the writers write long fics (at least 10,000 words) and the artists create ... well, art, obviously, to go with the stories (art includes drawing, painting, digital art, photo manipulations, photo shoots...). This is a fantasy challenge, though, so the stories have to be in that genre; luckily that's a wide category (anything from vampires to faeries and anything in between), and crossovers and stories about books and movies are allowed.

You can find the FAQs here. You need a livejournal to join, but those accounts are simple to make and free. So if this sounds like something you'd be interested in, please sign up as a writer or an artist (or both, if you're able!). And please spread word about this (even if it's not something you'd be able to join in on) so lots of people can get involved. :)


I'm signed up as a writer and will be writing a fantasy story in the world where my current story takes place. The main character of this one is going to be someone who'll be coming into my current story soon: a half-elf who has been growing on me and wanting his own chance to star in a story. ;)

Hey, look- giveaway prizes!

As if I wasn't far enough behind reading blogs and keeping up with my street teams from my own health problems and taking care of my mom and grandmother with theirs, lets add in a lack of electricity this week. *headdesk* Nothing like the power going out for days because of one (not very large) summer storm. Luckily I'm spending the weekend at my fiance's parents' house, so yay, air conditioning! Internet! Food I can heat up! For all that I play and write characters who are used to those conditions, I sure am not!

Anyway, I wanted to post more about my giveaway and I'm hoping the fact that I haven't been around much won't discourage people from entering. Because, hey, I want to share my art with you guys! :)

Giveaway info time!
You can read all about how to enter my giveaway here. (Basically, just spread word about my birthday sale and giveaway and let me know where you linked to it- that's it; that gives you entries into the drawing. Simple, right?) I wanted to make this post to show you guys what you could win.

Are you into costumes and fantasy? If you win, you could pick a pair of horns in any color or shape you want:


Or how about a pair of ears? You could have elf, hobbit, orc, or centaur in any colors:


For those not into costumes, how about jewelry? You could pick a cartilage chain earring in whatever colors you'd like; here are some examples:

(If you don't have piercings, no worries! I can make it with a clip-on post and/or a slide-on cuff.)

Or how about a hemp necklace?


If you're the winner of this giveaway, you'll have your choice of one of these four things (a pair of horns, a pair of ears, a cartilage earring, or a hemp necklace) in whatever color(s) you want- it'll be entirely custom. (You can see more examples of my finished art in my Artfire shop.)

So please enter the giveaway and spread the word about it and my sale. You could win something for free and that's always a good thing, right? ;) And if I can drum up enough interest in this, I'll give away two things (I did last year!). Remember- you only have through the 30th at midnight to enter!

Bet my inspiration is geekier than yours. ;)

The current Blogfire Guild theme is "Inspiration", specifically comparing and contrasting what we've made with where the inspiration comes from. I'll warn you in advance- this post is going to be extremely geeky. ;)

Most of my inspiration doesn't come from a physical source like a picture or an object- more like abstract words and roleplaying- so the pictures of the inspiration aren't always directly related to the finished project, if that makes sense. I'll try to get as close as possible, though. :)

First is the thing I've always been inspired by: The Lord of the Rings


I tend to be inspired by the locations in Middle Earth, but sometimes specific objects, certain races, or particular characters give me creative ideas, as well. (Please note- I found the LotR images from a Google search; obviously those do not belong to me.)

Gondor (specifically the White Tree)


Rohan (in this case, the flower Simbelmynë)


And my favorite location, Mirkwood, has inspired a lot of art, as have Wood Elves (okay, that's more a D&D term, but it works for that forest, too)



And elf ears come from my LotR obsession, too:

Here I'd like to post a picture of an elf, but none of the elves from LotR that I like made it into the movie (or at least, nothing more than possible cameos). That's okay, though- the inspiration for my elf ears came more from elves in general than the LotR ones, hence why my halfling, orc, and elf ears aren't the same style as any characters in the movie have. If anything, those were more inspired by Dungeons and Dragons, which takes me to my next inspiration theme...


Dungeons and Dragons
Ye gads, do I get a lot of inspiration from this! Two of my characters in particular have given me lots of art ideas over the years. This is one of those abstract things that's hard to photograph, so I took a picture of my D&D stuff.

First is Aldalion Kalmîr, my Grey Elf bard; everything with this boy was purple, purple, purple from his clothing (you can see in the drawing I did of him and the figure I painted) to the dice I rolled for him. Even his eyes were purple!


I'm sure I've made more art based on him, but that's what I could remember off the top of my head- a doll and three pieces of jewelry (I actually still have to list that bracelet- remember that, Meri). If you see me making something sepia and purple, Aldalion is the reason. (I still laugh over the fact that I had crossed out a girl's name on his sheet to add the masculine ending; this character was originally going to be female, but ... well, gender is rather arbitrary with this elf, to say the least.)

And by now you guys all know my other D&D inspiration- Cyneric Conroy, my human cleric:

Where Aldal is purple, Cyn is all about reds, oranges, and browns. And foxes and feathers, and all that other good stuff that goes with being a Messenger. I didn't get a picture of his character sheet, but you can see the figures and dice I use, his spellbook, D&D notes, and his spells (all you can see is a fire spell and an air elemental sticking out of the box). This kind of gives you an insight as to what my part of the table looks like during a D&D game- my orc figure and that character sheet are also missing (I play an orc, too), but this is most of it.

Here are those spell bits:


And here's some other art inspired by this character:

Hey, look, another bracelet I haven't listed yet. How did I manage to forget about those, anyway? These guys must inspire me but not enough to remember what I make, I guess. LOL!

And what the heck, here are the dolls I made of some of the characters in my D&D game:

That gnome in the top left has since been killed off and we've had a paladin and two druids in and out of the game, but those are most of the characters.


Now onto my last geeky inspiration: video games
This usually takes the form of dolls for me and my friends, but I have a bit of an obsession with putting triforces into chainmaille, too.

My best friend is all about Dark Link, so of course I made her a doll of him.

And my favorite Smash Bros character is Pit:

(Yes, I do find it amusing that I play the angel and my best friend plays the evil character.) I started working on a smaller Pit doll (the same size as the Link) for myself over a year ago, but I haven't finished it yet. One of these days! I'm still not sure if I put that bow in the right hand; it doubles as a sword and daggers, so he's constantly switching it between hands in the game.


And that about wraps it up, I think. I'm also inspired by nature, but my love of oceans and forests generally connects into my fantasy obsession (mermaids, dryads, elementals, that kind of thing), so I'll just leave this post as it is. It's already long enough, right? I hope you enjoyed a look into my rather geeky head; not a lot of normal goes on in here. ;)

Birthday sale and giveaway!

I had so much fun with this last year that I'm doing a sale/giveaway again this year in honor of my 27th birthday on the 30th. :) I'm changing things up a bit, though.

Here's the scoop this time around:
-Take 27% off the items* in my Artfire shop with the coupon code 27BIRTHDAY from June 23rd until June 30th (midnight at the end of the day).

(*Custom dolls are excluded but everything else is part of this sale.)

-Everyone who purchases something from my shop in that week is put in a drawing to win a FREE one of the following:
(a)Pair of horns (you can see examples in in this flickr set)
(b)Crocheted elf ears on a headband (you can see examples in that above flickr link)
(c)Beaded hemp necklace (like the ones here in my shop)
or
(e)Single cartilage chain earring like those in my shop (can be pierced or with a cuff or clip-on post for those without piercings)
Your choice would be in your preferred color(s), of course!



***There's also another way to be entered into that drawing; spread word about my sale and giveaway! Post about it in your blog (feel free to use one of those images at the top of this post and link back to this blog post or my Artfire shop), Plurk, Tweet, etc, and then come back here and reply with the link to where you posted about it. Each place you post about it counts as another entry, so be sure to link me to all of the places you mention this sale/giveaway. No purchase necessary!***

The winner will be randomly drawn and I'll make a blog post on July 1st letting you know who won- then the winner can email me their item and color preference and mailing address. If I sell enough this week, I'll likely do more than one giveaway, so your chances will improve. ;)

I'll be posting about this on my blogger blog as well as my livejournal; it doesn't matter which one you reply in or link to, you'll be entered into the same drawing. :)

Please join in and spread the word- you could win something!

Geocaching and writing time!

Art
This week I don't have any art to share, but since I'm almost done the dolls I can't blog about yet (all I have to do is varnish the clay parts) and have started a doll I *can* blog about, that means you'll get to see that one in the next update. In fact, you might see two since I'm also going to be working on one for my fiancé. :)

Geocaching
Besides being in doll-mode lately, I've also been geocaching and writing (and writing about geocaching) this past week. I was up to going caching twice this week (in hindsight, I should have probably just gone once since it very much wore me out), but since I blogged about it here and here in me and my friend's adventure blog, I'm not going to ramble about it here. I will share a few of my favorite pictures from the latest adventure, though:

The view while trekking through the forest.


Me and my fiancé


A pond we passed on the way to one of the caches


One of the really unique caches we found that day- a beehive!

Writing
I'm still waiting on Josh to give me the info I need (maps specifically) for the next part of my story, but was itching to get some writing done, so I had my character write a letter to his best friend.

It was a pleasant change to be able to write something about my character that's current rather than about his distant past! (I had to be a bit... secretive about what went into the letter, though, because people in my D&D group read that blog sometimes and they could forget that what they know out of game isn't the same as what their characters know.) I still have another letter to write, so I'll probably be doing that soon, too. Josh told me I'll get extra experience in the D&D game for writing these, but it's not like I don't write constantly about this character anyway, lol.


I think that's what I wanted to share this week. I really have to get back into the swing of updating this blog more than once every other week! Hopefully now that I'm working on art I can share, that'll be happening. :)

Art update- back to crafting, hooray! My muse, how I missed you!

I've really been neglecting my blog for a few weeks. :( Luckily my mom is well on the way to recovery from her knee surgery, so I'll be able to concentrate more on art than on running up and down the stairs to get her things and to take care of my grandmother.

This week I did manage to work on art and list new things, though! Hooray! Judging from the colors of most of this week's art, I'm back to being inspired by my art muse- I'm glad she's back because I missed working in all these greens, browns, and blues!

Art:


These two were for the same person- her daughter has multiple piercings in her ears, so I connected the chains to two lobe posts and the two lobes to a cartilage in the matching earring. I think these turned out really neat!


These earrings were for another fun customer- she really wanted the colors of my Imladris earring but with the beaded dangle bit of the Woodland earring. I actually like this pair better than the earrings they were based from; I love making custom orders because I get to come up with new styles and designs. :D

I also listed two new things in my shops:

"Wood Elf green and brown hemp bracelet or anklet" on Etsy and Artfire


"Green and Brown Leaf Cartilage Chain Earring - Wood Elf" on Artfire and Etsy

Yup, they kinda match- or at least, they were from the same inspiration. Here's a bit of trivia about that earring: that brown bead above the leaf is one of the very very oldest beads in my stash; it's close to twenty years old, which is pretty neat considering that I'm only 26.

Writing
I didn't get to work on any writing this week, unfortunately. Well, I've been hit by some plot bunnies, but I've been working on a large custom order that has to come first, so those ideas are on the back burner. But speaking of plot bunnies, one of my Plurk friends linked me to a site for writers and I joined up. The site is bunnyrabbitsex.com, but don't be appalled by the name- it just has to do with those plot bunnies I mentioned (there's an explanation here).

I'm hoping that being around other writers will give me the encouragement to work on my current story/character more, as well as start more fantasy stories about that world (I've got a grey elf who wants me to write about him, too). And hey, maybe I'll finish those LotR parodies I started years and years ago... probably not, but maybe. (Did I really think I could parody entire books? lol!)

Trove Thursday- Secrets of the Sea

Sorry I haven't been blogging much lately- it's a combination of working on a project I can't share yet and taking care of my mom who had surgery on her knee and is constantly needing me to run up and down the stairs to do things for her. I've handed that poor woman enough ice this week to build an entire igloo. ;)

Luckily I do have a theme for Trove Thursday:

The newest FAEteam (fantasy artists of Etsy) exhibition is Secrets of the Sea and features all sorts of lovely ocean-related art from mermaids to pirates and jewelry to dolls. Check out the exhibition here because I can only feature sixteen of these awesome things at a time. ;)


This is a Treasury East, so you can find it here indefinitely since it won't expire. Hooray! To make it easier, though, I'll also link to everything individually.

1.) "Cocker Spaniel Dog mermaid magnet upcycled cd art" by kreationkween72.
2.) "Tourmaline Mermaid Wire Wrap Necklace" by tangocatgems.
3.) "The Dead Marshes pendant" by MiddleEarths.
4.) "Moonlit Seductress -- Sexy Mermaid Necklace with Dichroic Cab" by ErtheFae.
5.) "Treasure . mermaid art bookmark" by aquariann.
6.) "Caught at Sea - Mermaid Headdress" by VimaSunrider.
7.) "Little Mermaid" by fairyrealm.
8.) "Water Nymph - Soy Spell Candle - 4 ounce in glass hex jar" by MoonlitHerbals.
9.) "Fernando the Furious Sea Monster" by PlushroomSoup.
10.) "Sculpted Mermaid Mirror Frame" by ladymudwerkes.
11.) "Sparkling Strands from the Sea Necklace" by FaerieKat.
12.) "Mermaid Garden Wedding Hair Pin Fascinator Flower Stick" by Thyme2dreamWeddings.
13.) "Mermaid Magic Wand" by BunnyKissd.
14.) "MerChest - Mermaid Treasure Chest - Shoreline" by FaerieFaeStudios.
15.) "Hand Painted Wooden Keepsake Box With Fish Decoration (Aqua)" by spiralmoonfantasy.
16.) "Aquamarine-OOAK Fairy Mermaid Art Doll" by fairymermaid.