Crafts

These are made of glass with a hand-painted (slightly metallic) decal backing, silk/velvet/organza ribbons, and fake murano glass beads and bits of other stuff. I haven't made any jewelry since high school, so they were quite an adventure of mistakes and glued fingers. :P But they are really damn gorgeous to look at. Although they started out as a stained glass effect, I quickly realized that I liked the metal look more, so they are too opaque to be proper suncatchers at this point. I will keep experimenting on that, though, see if I can get a more translucent layer of paint. This is my first batch, and in subsequent attempts I've learned that printing a base layer of color really adds to the traditionally-colored glass look.

I started this project with the idea of making them an optional add-on for the comic orders at a nominal fee, but they have proven fairly spendy to construct - I'd have to price them at $25 or more. :/ I dunno, feel free to weigh in on your opinions. Maybe I could just make the glass charms without the beads and ribbons.

Photos by juliantheapostate.

This year's pumpkins. Skinny cat made an appearance on the small pumpkin (10 minute carve), alongside the Locked Maze laughter pumpkin (8 hours carve). The latter is sadly quite literally made from my blood, sweat, and tears. The inside was bright red by the time I finished after carving up my fingers in addition to gourd, x-acto knife NOT being the ideal tool for this type of carving.

Some other angles of the Difficult Pumpkin: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=4445312&id=127815620329

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2006: http://mleiv.com/mt/art/crafts/pumpkins_2006/
2007: http://mleiv.deviantart.com/art/Halloween-Pumpkins-2007-69206355
2008: http://mleiv.com/mt/art/crafts/pumpkin_2008/

Made from rice crispy treats. Decorated with m&m minis and other candies.

This is a highwayman costume - specifically The Shadow, from BlackAdder's "Amy and Amiability."

I purchased the pieces form various websites and altered them to fit me. Since women only wear slutty costumes for halloween, apparently these were all made just for men. Tall, fat, broad-shouldered men.

More photos and Jeffrey's costume at Flickr.com.

I am gonna try to take a twilight picture tomorrow if the pumpkin lives that long. My camera sucks at really low-light shots like this. :P

The image was a little too complex and the carving was a little too clumsy on this guy for my tastes. I prefer the traditional clean-cut, no midtone chunky cats of years past. But this design will make a nice painting later. :)

I was a highwayman this year (went to my costume ball on Saturday). Inspired by Black Adder's "Amy and Amiability." The event photographer was a French aristocrat and I swear, if I was socially well-adjusted in any way at all, dammit, I would have snuck up behind him with my pistol and demanded he hand over all his valuables. *sigh* Missed opportunities.



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2006: http://mleiv.com/mt/art/crafts/pumpkins_2006/
2007: http://mleiv.deviantart.com/art/Halloween-Pumpkins-2007-69206355
2009: http://mleiv.com/mt/art/crafts/pumpkins_2009/

No fondant, this is homemade fudgey frosting and impromptu tube of frosting white decoration. That store bought stuff is crap: my hand hurts now.

I've been wanting to do this particular stripe painting for awhile, but I just never got around to it. I'm not good at doing "practice" paintings in general because they seem like such a waste of my very scarce time. But I needed a birthday box and I hate going shopping, so I figured it was a way to kill two birds with one stone, eh?

It turned out very nicely and I am a little sad that painted functional objects are viewed with such disinterest when compared with painted canvas, because I actually find it much more enjoyable to paint some existing object than a boring flat piece of paper. C'est la vie, I suppose.