Art Update - Mario Bros and D&D plushies

This has also been Crazy Plushie Making Month... although it's rapidly turning into Summer Plushie Making Madness. I finished six and am working on two more for a art/writing challenge I'm in by next month and another for an order (will blog those soon!), and have two I want to make for myself at some point. And there's still one I need to start for a friend's order and another (or two) for another friend's birthday... *swims around in yarn, doll eyes and stuffing*

First up are the Mario Bros fire and ice flowers I made my friend's son for his birthday:

Not so happy with the eyes on the fire one; my paint got all runny in the humidity and was difficult to work with. I'd made that design before, but this time I didn't make the box below it. One of these days I'd like to create a pattern for this in a larger size- didn't have time this month, so had to work with a pattern I'd found on Ravelry.

Next up is the kobold plushie I made of Whiffy, my fiancé's "Dungeons and Dragons" character. I don't have a good picture of this one yet (gave it to Josh before we had a chance to make Whiffy's dagger), but here's my fiancé making the same face as the kobold:


And I'll share this picture, too, because it not only makes me giggle, it shows the kobold I made Josh last year and a few goblins in the background:

I'll get a better picture of El Whiffo later, now that his dagger is made.

I recently finished three for someone who wanted plushies for her rpg group. This made me very happy because I don't get to make D&D-style plushies nearly often enough! First I sketched out the design for them:

(Changed it up some- gave the middle one longer hair and switched the hand the sword was in, for one thing.)

Then I got to work. Here's a peek at what they looked like as I was working on them:




And here they are finished:



I'm really happy with these! :D Two of the ones I'm working on at the moment are for a fantasy story, so they fall into the realm of D&D-type dolls, too. Yay! I'll share those soon.

Art Update - Too many cartilage earrings!

I'm all sorts of terribly behind with blogging, huh? I have been working on art, though, so I'll just jump into that. Today I'll share jewelry (ooo, shinies!).

I had a few custom orders this past month for cartilage earrings. (I love custom orders- if you're interested, contact me via my shops on Artfire or Etsy.)

First was for the Fire Dragon cartilage chain earring, but with an ear cuff and in colors to match this gothic chainmaille heart necklace. This is what I came up with:

These kinds of earrings always look strange on my mannequin, though; her ear is smaller than life-sized, so the chain always looks like it dangles too low and the cuff won't fit on her right. I swear an earring like this looks fine on a human ear; I wear this style all the time. :)

I also had a set of four custom earrings for an awesome customer who has two lobe piercings in both ears and also a cartilage in the one:


These all have sterling silver posts. Three are remakes of designs I'd done before and that silver leaf one is brand new. She wanted something that would work with any outfit and those definitely fit the bill!

And here was a very simple coin dangle ear cuff that someone requested:


I also listed a new, summertime ear cuff in my shops:

"Summer Seahorse" Cartilage Ear Cuff - on Etsy and Artfire

And it's not jewelry, but it is beaded, so I'll share it here. I also listed another "Dungeons and Dragons" inspired geeky keychain that I'd finished a while ago:

"Blue and Silver Cleric Keychain" - on Etsy and Artfire
I tried out a new material here and used thicker wire than I usually do; this will make the keychains a lot sturdier. I think I may redo some of the other ones I have made; the downside is that I only have the wire in silver-colored.

It's inspired by Apollo, one of the important gods in my D&D game's world. Normally I'm all about Hermes, playing a cleric of that deity, but I figured Apollo would make for a much more general and generic D&D keychain because who besides me wants feathers and whoopee cushions on one? ;)



My "Wreck this Journal" is still on the west coast, so look for another Adventure post at some point in the near future. We're continuing the LotR drawing theme for July, too.

Elfsisters' Art Adventures, Week 9 - Throwing fire and drawing hobbits

Adventure time! Our books are still in incorrect locations, so our schedules are a bit wonky here. Ruthie currently has both books now to make up for the fact that last week I had both. ;) Our task with the swap was to do each other's "ask a friend to do something destructive to this page. Don't look" page. Since we're on opposite sides of the country, not watching wasn't a problem. ;)


To start, I colored her page in with lots of colored pencils and crossed out "friend" to write "elfsister".

That wasn't destructive enough. Nope! With very little convincing, I was able to get my fiancé Josh to join in:

(Hi, Josh!)

Why so easy to get him to play? FIRE, of course! Neither he nor Ruthie have the "burn this page" page that I have in my WTJ (they have later editions), so this gave Josh a chance for some pyrotechnics and for Ruthie to have a slightly charred book:




After dousing it with water, then setting the bottom on fire, then hitting it with more water, it eventually looked like this:



I wasn't done with her WTJ yet, though! I decided to do for her much like I did for Josh's book. I found her "hide a secret message somewhere in this book" page and followed that instruction, leaving her a message on her "page of good thoughts":



I know we usually do things in Elvish (see the numbers at the bottom of her pages?) but Old English is my favorite odd language, so I left part of the message in that. (I'm not at all fluent, but someday I'll be!)

Then I left her a message saying I did so:


Hopefully she'll find the message before seeing this blog post. ;)


Down to the wire, but I did get something LotR drawn this month for our monthly drawing challenge! Well, sorta. It's actually from The Hobbit. I'm a huge Lord of the Rings fan, but my favorite Middle Earth thing is that book, probably because I had it read to me as a child, so I've loved it the longest.

My favorite scenes all involve Mirkwood (surprising no one), and my very favorite part is probably the "Barrels Out of Bond" chapter, so I chose to sketch that:


This isn't a particularly polished drawing, hence why I'm considering it a sketch; I'd like to draw this out better on larger paper (my sketchbook is tiny) and do a much better job with the background and everything. Basically all that green is just a placeholder for when I work on something better. :) I just had a lot of fun drawing barrels although I know the perspectives are off. I really should have added more barrels, too, because if I remember right there are a few more barrels than dwarves (I did draw a few extra, though). And yeah, Bilbo should be invisible, but where's the fun in that? ;)

I still have other ideas of things I want to draw from that book, so at some point I'll do that.

Want to join the art adventure?
Ruthie and I would love to have you along on our art adventures! If you want to know more, check out out this post and if you're playing along, feel free to join our flickr group. Each week we do a different WTJ page and every month is a new drawing challenge.

Like I said, we're both behind with our books, so there isn't going to be a WTJ page assigned this week yet. July is scheduled to be a new drawing challenge theme, but personally I wouldn't mind extending the LotR one because I only got one thing worked on, and that was at the tail end of the month.