nubby eared hat

I knitted this hat for a girl who requested "shorter nubbier ears". Looks more cute and teddy-bear-like than the original Floppy Eared Hat w/ Elegant Long Ears... but I approve of it, I accept the cuteness in my life.. yes yes, teddybears and all sorts, bring it on, I don't flinch in the sight of teddies.. I love the new nubby eared version of my old classic floppy eared hat.

handmade pixie paper

I made paper! I have given most away, and used the rest for drawing on. I hadn't expected to enjoy drawing on it as much as I did, the texture and colour of the handmade paper really adds to the drawing.

I used shredded up paper, paint, ink, yarn, patchouli oil to make it smell faintly of hippieness, little bits of pot pourri, yarn and fibre, golden stars and a TON of glitter. You can't really tell how glittery the paper is, but it's very, very glittery. I bet you've never seen Dagens Næringsliv* like this:






Making paper is easy but messy, and it also takes a lot more time than I expected. Maybe it would have taken less time if I didn't make such an effort to get them all flat. I always feel the need to make things perfect, which is ironic, as I love how imperfections adds character, soul and a sense of authenticity that mass produced stuff lacks. I need to remember that the reason why I hand make things is NOT to have the result looking like it came out of a factory..

A little paper-making instruction I found, just to give you an idea of how it's done:
* Dagens Næringsliv is a Norwegian paper that mainly focuses on economy and business.. I thought it was very fitting for it to be re-born all glittery and smelling of patchouli.

character design concept art

I've been looking at concept art for games, and did a little character design of my own using Photoshop & a pen tablet. Grunge background is courtesy of Google image search.

nervous

I did this little cat drawing in a corner of a letter I wrote to my friend Kat. I love how it's expression turned out! I find that impulsive, rushed drawings like this one often has more expression and feeling than the ones that are planned to death. I often kill my art by overworking it.
The paper is handmade by me! I will post pictures of the paper later, it was a good experiment. I like how the drawings I make on it gets lovely textured backgrounds instead of clinical harsh white.

alien friends hanging out on lazy days

A little doodle from my sketchbook. I added colours in Photoshop.

I drew this

I drew this with a marker, and added the bits of colour and the black vignette in Photoshop. It reminds me of Art Nouveau.

a drawing from my sketchbook

I've never had a sketchbook with brown pages before. I think it makes the drawings look really old fashioned.

glittery objects are better than non-glittery objects

I bought myself a glittery crochet hook, it's very pretty in the sunlight. I had to start crocheting to justify the purchase, and so I'm in the process of making a rag rug. I wish more mundane objects could be as pretty(and glittery(or furry)), as it would make everything more fun to do. Maybe they should start sending out glittery bills, or have glittery dentists.


Lillepus approves of the rug, even though it isn't finished yet. She prefers to be on top of things that are in use, as it makes her the center of attention:

A video still from something I watched while crocheting:
Ah yes, thanks for the warning.

Beyond Reason Etsy shop

I have opened my Etsy shop again! You can see the link to my shop in the sidebar of this blog. I've been making beaded jewellery for a while, and so that is what my shop is full of at the moment. I am planning on using my illustrations to make cards and other paper things that I can offer in my shop as well.

These are the things I've put up in my shop so far:





My grandmother and my boyfriend have both told me that this necklace shouldn't have seen the light of day due to the colour combination.. but I think it's cool:



THIS IS A BIG BRACELET:

I made something in pastel colours! It's not very typical for being me, it was inspired by my friend Kat, who says turquoise and pink is the best colour combination ever:

A lot of my jewellery end up looking a bit like they come from a toy shop, so this was an attempt at making something that was a little bit more grown up looking:



I have made lots more stuff, and will put them up in my shop little by little.

tree house nostalgia

All the tree houses my brother and I built as children are starting to come apart, and we hadn't even finished a third of what we had planned for it! We worked on connecting the tree houses into one, big building. It would be a fortress, and was going to have high fences, or walls around it. If you look at the bottom of the photo, you can see the bridge that was going to be the only entrance to the fortress. It has hinges, and can be pulled up with a rope.


What a shame that it's all falling apart before it's finished!

my craft achievements

I made these leg warmers as a Christmas present for a friend of mine, I consider them one of the bestest things I've knitted so far. I made her a matching bracelet for her birthday. Not many people have sets of matching leg warmers and bracelets.



I've been making lots of stuff lately, even though I haven't posted much of the things I've done in this blog. I've also been painting. People tell me I need to craft less and paint more, and they're probably right.

polymer clay beads

It's very therapeutic to look at all the colour variations that comes up while mixing clay together.

I've been making fibre bangles

They have a rubber core, so they are soft and comfy to wear. I think they look great stacked, so I'll probably make more. They're just wrapped with yarn, so I think they should be very fast to make, but apparently thinking about making something is a lot faster than actually doing it..



I've decided I need to start photographing my crafts on more busy, colourful backgrounds. I'm not a tidy, minimalistic person, and my wardrobe (and bedroom!) is black.. so I don't see why I photographed my crafts on white backgrounds. I probably thought tidy white backgrounds was the ideal, like my crafts was made by someone else who was more professional than myself, and got featured in boring blogs written by people I have nothing in common with. But who am I kidding, it's just not my style, and I don't find it interesting.
I'm glad to have that out of the system, I'm sure I'll make much better stuff now, and have a more interesting shop once it opens again.
Isn't it weird that it's so hard to know if one is being true to oneself?

an old painting of mine

I didn't like this painting when I made it, but now I do and I wonder where it is. I either sold it or gave it away.

oil on canvas

vector alien

I've been checking out the pen tool in Photoshop, and have made my first vector drawing based on one of my sketches. I always make such a mess when I do anything creative, so it's very satisfying to be able to make something so neat and clean and perfect. I'm sure the novelty will wear off soon.

The eyes are sampled from a picture of some eye disease I found, it sounds nasty but I think it looks pretty.

Eva paints Eve

One of two commission oil paintings I've been working on recently.

the prettiest usb lead in the universe

I'm proud to be the owner of the prettiest usb lead in the universe, and I've decorated it aaaall by myself. I used lots of funky novelty yarn and wool and some acrylic paint for the computery parts that I couldn't cover with yarn.

The picture quality is rubbish as my camera is broken, so I had to use my camera phone.

My 10 year old laptop has been born again as a new shiny purple thing! I used normal acrylic paint and water based glossy varnish. Probably not the thing for a brand new expensive computer, but mine was old and worn out and f***** ugly so *anything* I could have done to it would have been an improvement. And so far the paint job looks fine:

I want to decorate the top of it more, but I still haven't worked out what I want on it. In a perfect world where computers didn't switch off from overheating, I would have covered the lid with some matching purple long haired faux fur.

I had to have a go at decorating the usb for my mouse too..

The leads reminds me of of hand spun art yarn. I've seen people making diy drop spindles on the internet to spin yarn, and I'm thinking of trying it out.

self portrait

This is a super-quick miniature sketch in my sketchbook that I've crudely coloured in in Photoshop. I'm really satisfied with it because it is possibly the best self portrait I've ever done!

a drawing from my sketchbook

I've been sketching for my doll project lately. I like that they are bodies, yet not alive. They are uncanny. I'm using real dolls as my models. I can't afford fancy ball jointed ones, so this one is Barbie's cousin that I ripped the head off because she looked too much like a cheerleader. I then replaced it with the head from a Pocahontas Barbie that I stripped the paint off of because she looked too much like Pocahontas (go figure). I stripped her hair off too, and made her dreads from yarn. If I'm going to paint dolls, they can't look like cheerleaders. I think I just have to work with my dolls, dress them up and pose them and see what comes out of it.


In this sketch, I glued on pieces of yarn for her hair (The turquoise and black yarn is sock yarn that I'm using to knit socks with at the moment, I think they'll be the prettiest socks ever!). I'd like to work more with texture for these paintings, and maybe use a bit of collage, and in general just do less minimalistic stuff than I've done before when I've painted people/bodies.

The Holy Grail

I've knitted my first pair of socks, following the sock knitting instructions on Knitty, and designing an alien pattern for them. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, but knitting man-sized socks was a tedious task and not a "quick knit" as I was told it should be.

I exptected to feel really proud when I mastered the sock knitting. I was hyping it up, bragging to my friends about how proud I was going to be when I had finished my socks.



But now that I'm finished, it's a bit of an anti-climax. I thought I'd get a euphoric high, a confidence boost, a feeling of being a new and better person. But all I'm left with is a pair of socks. And they're not super natural socks with glitter sparkles and a halo of wonder and magic around them, they're just socks. I feel cheated somehow. Maybe my expectations weren't very realistic.