I'm baaaaaaaack- with news of an upcoming art show. :D

Told you I was trying to be better at this! :D This week's post is all about the upcoming "Common Threads" fiber art show at the FOE Gallery in Northampton, MA which opens this Friday, November 14th! I was really excited to get asked to participate in this show by the ever-amazing Lana Crooks, who curated the show along with the Gallery.

For this show I wanted to try something that I hadn't done too much before, which was create with a bunch of faux fur, layering the two colors of fur to create my own textile for the effect that I wanted. I braved the dreaded "fluff-lung" that comes with cutting/sewing faux fur to create this guy, my first Faun.

Friedrich Faun teaches math by day at the prestigious Woodland Academy; but by night he rocks out with his punk band, Verdant.

I used a variety of fabrics to create Friedrich, including faux-suede for his face, hands and ears, as well as faux-leathers for his horns and hooves. His facial features are made from wool felt, with a hand embroidered mouth.

 His tail coat is made from plaid flannel, with houndstooth flannel lapels and cuffs. His shirt is a funky patterned quilting cotton, and the patches on his jacket elbow are wool felt. 

 I felt that if I made Friedrich's hair out of the same color fur as his legs, that it would get overwhelming, so I chose to use the dark brown fur for his hair, but add in the caramel colored fur for his goatee and for a highlight in his bangs. (Thus the punk-rocking, maths teaching Faun was born. :D)
The reverse applied for the dark brown patches on his legs- I wanted to make sure that the fur on his head was integrated into the design and looked natural.

If you are in the Northampton area, check out all the amazing work that has been created for this terrific show- you won't be disappointed!

I've been a BAAAAAAAAD blogger!

Lately it seems like I can't find enough time to fit in all the things I have to and want to do, which includes spending the time to update my blog regularly. Life has gotten in the way for the past 6-7 months, and I am going to try and remedy that situation starting today! You might notice a change to the blog design- I decided to start fresh and update the look of things.

Since I last posted, I vended at my first Emerald Con, which was a blast and a feast for the eyes! Such people watching! Thanks to everyone who came out and stopped by the booth, we had a terrific time seeing you all.  Here's a quick look at our booth set-up:

It was great seeing our good friends Daniel and Dawna over at Steam Crow for the weekend, as well as meeting some new friends, like Rick and Jeff at the ZOMs booth across from us.

After Emerald Con, I was really excited to be accepted into the summer Urban Craft Uprising craft show at the Seattle Exhibition Hall in July, where I had my own booth for the very first time! It was a change from all the shared booth shows I've done in the past, and it was so much fun. A bit nerve-racking, but fun. I met some great people there, and saw some repeat customers from Emerald Con, which was awesome.

What have I been doing since July, you ask? Well, besides taking a few weeks off for family vacations, I created a piece for the 10th anniversary of Ice Bat for this year's UglyCon art show at Giant Robot in Los Angeles:

and have been doing a bunch of commissioned work, like creating mini hanging versions of my Franchesca and Franklin Frankenstein:

including creating plush for an online classroom video game learning tool (more to come on that later), as well as plush portraits of a San Francisco couple and their dogs:

As well as creating pieces for this year's 10th anniversary PlushYou! art show at Schmancy Toys in Seattle. Meet Peter and Piper Pumpkin:

I'm almost caught up on my plush-making exploits of the past few months, so I'll say good-bye for now, but I will be back next week with more updates and plush-making progress to share! In the meantime, you can always find me over on instagram, where I upload pics of my progress every day or so. See you next week!