Artistic Adventures

Seamus

2011-08-23T15:02:00.001-04:00

This is my latest two inch bear, Seamus. He's on etsy here: http://www.etsy.com/listing/80130351/seamus-ooak-2-tall-miniature-teddy-bear, if you want to visit him.

More Marbling

2011-08-19T17:17:00.001-04:00

I did some more marbling, and I thought I'd share some pictures :)

I figured out how to make a cat!

Marbling!

2011-08-14T15:08:00.000-04:00

My mom and I taught a class on marbling fabric last week, and I thought I'd share some of my favorite pieces we made :) To learn more about marbling, I have a step-by-step here: http://delphinesquiltshop.blogspot.com/2011/08/how-to-marble.html

Farm Quilt!

2011-08-10T12:29:00.000-04:00

This is just a simple, cute strip quilt I made as a sample for my Mom's quilt shop. I learned how to machine quilt on this one :) The picture isn't really clear enough to actually see the quilting really well, but that's okay.

The back is fun, too :)

Cycling

2011-08-04T08:48:00.002-04:00

I've been motivated to start getting myself on a schedule of getting up at 6am every morning and going on a bike ride before work. It's actually a great way to start the day, once I manage to get myself up. I really do like cycling in the morning :)

Okay, this last one isn't from the morning, but I like it :)

Chainmaille

2011-08-01T18:43:00.002-04:00

...or chainmail, depending on how I feel like spelling it. This is my latest hobby. I'm hoping to sell these at my mom's store, and maybe even on etsy. If you don't know, chainmail is what they used to use for armor. It's basically weaving with metal rings. It feels really cool and is lots of fun to play with :)

These are the first things I made, some bracelets and a bowlful of crosses:

Now, individual pictures. First, are half persian 4:1 (every 1 ring goes through 4 other rings) weave bracelets. I took most of these pictures before I bought clasps for the bracelets.

Now, full persian 6:1:

And now, two bracelets in the "shaggy loops" weave with seed beads. These are lots of fun :) They're literally shaggy and really pretty.

...and this is what started it all, chainmail crosses:

Just for fun, I figured out how to make a dodecahedron. This is just fun to play with :)

Merkle - King of the Sea

2011-07-27T19:31:00.000-04:00

Merkle is an older creation of mine, having been made in 2007. I made him before I learned how to disc joint miniatures, and before I discovered onyx bead eyes, so he's thread-jointed and has seed bead eyes, but I still like him :) I just added him to etsy here: http://www.etsy.com/listing/78629302/merkle-king-of-the-sea-ooak

Winston

2011-07-22T19:17:00.000-04:00

I added a new bear to etsy! You can visit him here: http://www.etsy.com/listing/78318071/winston-ooak-2-microminiature-teddy-bear

Winston stands all of two inches tall. I finished him last summer, but I didn't come up with a name for him until recently. I went with "Winston" because I think he resembles Winnie the Pooh :)

Chainmail

2011-07-13T09:16:00.000-04:00

This weekend, one of my friends taught me how to make a cross out of chainmail! I might get myself some more chainmail supplies and start a new hobby :)

Patrick

2011-07-04T10:46:00.000-04:00

This is my latest teddy bear. He's all of two inches tall. If you want to visit him on etsy, he's here: http://www.etsy.com/listing/77158950/patrick-ooak-2-patriotic-teddy-bear

I Spy

2011-06-28T12:16:00.001-04:00

This is a quilt I posted a "work-in-progress" picture of last summer. I finished it somewhere around the end of last summer. It's a scrappy "I Spy" quilt. I just cut out pieces of novelty fabrics that I really like, then bordered them with wonky borders, then cut them all down to squares and rectangles and sewed them together. Here's the finished product:

Old Pictures

2011-06-27T18:48:00.000-04:00

I was looking through all my old pictures of my bears, and I thought I'd share some of my favorites :) All of these little guys are two inches tall, except for Petunia. Petunia is one inch tall.

This is Brambles.

Butterscotch

Coco

Eggnog

I love these pictures of Gingerbread :)

Petunia

Robert

Seafoam stars in some of my favorite pictures.

Stardust

This is Stu, he's another favorite. I actually sewed and then tie-dyed his shirt :)

Tim

Wesley

Alec

2011-06-27T11:26:00.001-04:00

Here's one of my latest one-inch bears! His name is Alec, and he's fully jointed and made of ultrasuede. I have him on etsy here: http://www.etsy.com/listing/76662247/alec-ooak-1-miniature-teddy-bear

I'm on etsy!

2011-06-25T19:23:00.000-04:00

Well, I finally got myself on etsy. Here’s my “store”: http://www.etsy.com/shop/katrinasminiatures

Right now, I’m posting all the animals I’ve made over the last few years, but never gotten a chance to sell. Some of them are a little old and others are quite new. I’m hoping they’ll do well. I’m also hoping I’ll be able to get new ones made, so I can keep putting new ones up for sale. I have so many ideas and so many projects I can hardly keep up with myself sometimes! As long as I keep things balanced and work on things a little bit at a time, I think I can keep going at a slow and steady pace and get things done. It’s a little challenging to balance everything I want to do (work, studying, art, reading, school…), but with priorities, deadlines, and patience, I should be fine. I just need to set aside a little time for everything each day, or each week, and I can slowly work on getting everything done.

Store Sample Quilts

2011-06-22T18:43:00.000-04:00

I just keep making quilts as store samples for Mom :) Here are two of the latest:

This first one uses a book panel we have at the store, but I made it into a quilt instead. I love it. It reminds me of a book I used to check out of the school library all the time in the third grade.

I really like the fabrics in this one, too. I tend to like animal fabrics, and I really like the animals in this one.

Quilts of Valor

2011-06-20T17:41:00.000-04:00

Well, after a long absence, I thought I'd see about maybe getting this going again. I'm back working at Mom's quilt shop now, so I've been mostly making store samples. I've made quite a few since coming home! One of the first ones is a Quilts of Valor quilt. It was designed by Robert Kaufman, and it's my first quilt with actual pieced blocks! It'll be donated to a wounded veteran.

Tie-Dye!

2010-07-31T14:54:00.000-04:00

I taught a class on tie-dyeing t-shirts at my mom's quilt shop last Saturday. It was fun :) My mom taught fabric-dyeing in the afternoon, and I experimented with new tie-dye designs :) Here are my experiments:

I made an octopus!

This looks like an ichthys symbol :)

Doll Clothes

2010-06-16T19:12:00.000-04:00

I volunteered to make a sample of a pattern for doll clothes that Mom has at her quilt shop. It was so much fun! I couldn't decide which fabrics I wanted to use, so Mom said I could make four dresses! It's a modkid pattern, and it might be the best pattern I've ever worked with. The instructions were very clear, the illustrations were helpful, and it only took about 2-3 hours to make each outfit.

We got out Mom's old doll and let her dress up too :) We need to make her an appointment with a doll restorer though (we know someone who's really good). For some reason, the poor doll has had her head partially shaved, and she's missing half of her eyelashes...

More Bears!

2010-06-14T17:08:00.000-04:00

I'm having a hard time coming up with names for some of my bears... I guess I don't need to have them named until I get on etsy, which should happen around the middle/end of July :)

I just can't think of a name for this guy, but his face reminds me of Winnie the Pooh.

This one may wind up being named Alex.

I think I've decided this one will be named Blueberry Ice.

This is Andy. He reminds me of Andes mints :) His colors were inspired by the Indiana mint brownies we make every Christmas :)

Oh, p.s. all of these bears are two inches tall.

Amy

2010-06-07T16:15:00.000-04:00

This is Amy (short for Amethyst). She's one inch tall and made of ultrasuede (and fully jointed, like all my bears).

"Lemon Zest"

2010-05-28T11:44:00.000-04:00

Meet my latest bear, Lemon Zest. He's two inches tall :)

Dolls

2010-05-27T16:49:00.000-04:00

I've decided to start experimenting with making dolls. Here are my first ever attempts at making hands, feet, and a face. If I can be patient enough to keep practicing and making these, I think I could get pretty good at this.

"Hi," the highlighter bear

2010-05-26T17:16:00.000-04:00

Here's my latest one-inch bear! I love him; he's so bright! He really is the exact same color as a yellow highlighter. I might make a couple more like him. He might be only one inch tall, but it's pretty easy to see him clear across the room, even if he's grouped with a few other animals :)

And people think MINIATURES are hard...

2010-05-25T09:42:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, I decided I wanted to make another one-inch teddy bear. I sat down, traced the pattern, cut it out, and, three or four hours later, I had a completed teddy bear sitting in my hand. I love one-inchers, they're so fast and easy.
After completing that teddy, I decided to get out some Minkee fabric I bought years ago and make that cat pattern I found at Market. It's huge! It's about a foot tall and long! Really, I think making things that big is just so much harder than making a miniature. You wind up with handfuls of slippery fabric, you have to use pins, you get covered with fuzz, you have to feed it all through a sewing machine and try to keep the edges lined up, you have to fight with it as you stuff it... It's all just so big and cumbersome. Okay, I'm exaggerating my frustration a little bit; I just think it's so funny that it's so annoying for me to make something larger than about three inches tall :-P

Works in Progress and Ideas

2010-05-24T15:11:00.000-04:00

Mom and I just got back from the Spring Quilt Market in Minneapolis. It was awesome! I got so many new ideas! I also wound up showing several people my miniature bears, and their responses really motivated me to get to work on making some more!

Here are some projects I'm working on right now:

We have some Dolly Dingle fabrics in Mom's quilt shop, and she thought it would be really cute to make some little "pocket dolls" out of one of the prints. I volunteered to do it :)

I'm also working on a store sample of a clothesline basket. I'm using a Mint Chip Bali-pop.

There are some other store samples I'm really excited to make. One is a sample of doll clothes, and another is a fusible applique horse wallhanging.

Here's the scrappy quilt I'm working on right now. I picked a pile of fabrics I like and some focus fabrics, cut the focus fabrics into large-ish pieces, and randomly sewed the other fabrics around them. After the blocks were big enough, we cut the edges strait. Now, I just have to sew them together and baste and quilt the quilt. Another quilt I want to make is a t-shirt quilt, since I acquired quite a pile of t-shirts during my two years as a collegiate rower.

I also picked up a pattern for a cat at Market, and I'm excited to make it and learn some new tricks :)

On the ride home from Market, Mom and I listened to the Lord of the Rings soundtrack, and I started thinking about how I would LOVE to make some LOTR-style clothes. I'm thinking of starting doll-making and making the clothes in miniature :)

There are also some larger animals I want to make (like the cat). I bought fabric years ago to make a floppy dog, and I still haven't gotten around to making a pattern for it. I'd really like to make a huge bear. There were a couple of big, big, big bears on display as samples for a new line of Cuddle fabric at Market, and I just wanted to pick them up and give them a big hug.

2010-03-21T15:49:00.005-04:00

Wow, I am not doing a very good job of keeping up on this. In my defense, I've been really busy, and I don't know that anyone actually reads this anyway :)

I sold several animals this weekend, so I know I have potential. I really want to work on becoming an artist and selling more animals, but it's hard to balance that with school sometimes :S

Hopefully I'll get better at this and have some new creations to post soon(ish). In the meantime, I've discovered that Play-Doh is great for studying, so here are a few pictures from studying.

Here we have a trilobite:

Now some crayfish appendages:

This is a barnacle:

And this is a penguin, which has absolutely no relation to what I was studying:

Felimath the dragon

2010-01-31T12:06:00.002-05:00

Apparently one dragon wasn't enough, so I decided to make another. I needed to do something with all the things I learned and ideas I came up with while working on Oscar. This dragon is named Felimath. The only reason he's named that is because it just came into my head while I was working on him, and it seemed like a good name. Felimath is actually the name of one of the Lone Islands in the Chronicles of Narnia, but it just sounded good for this dragon.

I made Felimath in the same way I made Oscar, but I used ultrasuede this time, and it was MUCH easier to work with. I also made his armature slightly differently, and used 26 gauge paddle wire, so he's much more posable than Oscar is. Here he is fully felted:

He actually looks something like a wingless dragon in this picture. In the really early stages, he looked more like some sort of carpet monster that had been run over by a vacuum cleaner. He's blue and purple because I was planning on making his body that shade of blue, but I found out I didn't have enough fabric. The purple is because I ran out of blue wool. I actually wound up making him grey, which was a bit of a problem because the wool fibers liked to get caught in the seams.

Here's a side view:

Here he is with the start of a skin:

Woohoo! Body and tail all done! That would be my physics homework that he's on top of. The sun had set, and the only place with enough light to sew by was occupied by physics, and I didn't see any need to move it.

Okay, now comes the insanity part. After I finished his legs and body, I need to do his feet. This is one of his feet before doing anything with it:

Now each of those toes needs to be covered, so I need to cut out a piece of fabric to sew around them:

Done! Well, almost, he needs a little piece of blue sewn on there as a paw pad.

Just showing off how dexterous his little toes are. That's a pin he's holding.

Next day, better lighting, holding another pin. I have no idea what he's doing with it, maybe he's conducting an orchestra.

...and now he's holding my scissors.

He still doesn't have wings. These I sewed the normal way, right sides together, then turned them right side out and put the armature in.

All done! Well, mostly done, he needs some eyes and a face. I think I made his wings a little small, oh well.

And now he is finally done! I'm not sure what he's doing here, maybe he's singing.

Feed me! (Oh yeah, he has a tongue. :))

Nap time.

Oscar decided to jump off his perch on my cardboard wall and explore the floor while I was working on Felimath.

Felimath decided to check out big brother's perch while Oscar explored the floor.

Then he decided to check out a lamp.

Then I realized that he matches my bike almost perfectly! He looks like he's singing again in this picture. Like he's just gently rocking the wheel back and forth and singing.

He can hold on pretty well with those little toes of his.

Oscar the dragon

2010-01-30T16:19:00.003-05:00

After reading the article about Gordon and Peggy Hayes' dragons in the Winter 2009 Teddy Bear & Friends, I was inspired to make a dragon. This is the first large soft sculpture I've ever made (that I can remember anyway). I decided I didn't want to go through all the hassle of making a pattern and turning the pieces and stuffing the dragon and trying to get an armature in it, so I decided to make a dragon from the inside out. I made an armature out of copper wire (maybe not the best choice, but it was all I had on hand that was big enough), and then felted the dragon's body around that.

After that was all finished, I gave him some skin. I used a batik fabric for this, mainly because I liked the print, but also because batiks don't really fray. It was still a bit of a pain to work with though. I had originally planned to use ultrasuede, but I was doing this over Christmas break, and I had left all of my ultrasuede at school.

Here he is after I finished his tail and had the fabric in place for his body. I used a combination of ladder stitch and applique to attach the fabric. Invisible thread is my best friend.

In the next picture, he's all done, except for his head, since I hadn't ordered his eyes yet. There are no pictures between these two because I didn't want to stop and take pictures. I just wanted to get the torture of finishing him over with. His toes were the worst part. He has 16 of them. They're made out of pipe cleaners, and each one needed to be individually covered with fabric, and they each needed to have two pieces of fabric sewn on. One red piece was sewn around each toe, then a green piece was appliqued to the bottom to cover the seam and give him cool-looking paw pads. I have never stabbed myself with my needle so many times while working on a project.

Now we get to the really fun pictures! I finished him last night! In case you're wondering why on earth I decided to name him Oscar, it's just because that's the name that kept coming to mind while I was working on him, and it stuck.

In case you're also wondering why he's sitting on top of cardboard, it's because I have a cardboard wall in the middle of my apartment. See, I have a one-room studio apartment, and I didn't like sleeping in the living room, so I built a wall and made myself a bedroom and a living room. I made the wall out of cardboard because you can stick lots of stuff to cardboard.

His mouth didn't turn out quite the way I planned, but, oh well, I'll get better.

I just love his eyes. :)

Drawings

2010-01-19T18:17:00.005-05:00

A friend of mine inspired me to start drawing again, so I just thought I'd share some of my favorites from the last few months. I'm not very good at drawing something off the top of my head yet, so these are all copies I've draw of pictures I've taken or found.

I really like this one. I actually drew it with my left hand, since my right arm was in a cast at the time. I drew this one after practicing with several other pictures that definitely look like they were drawn left-handed!

I drew this one left-handed too. This is Claire, my brother's cat.

Okay, now these ones I did all right-handed. This is my brother's other cat, Lilly.

This is our old dog, Buster. He was a good dog.

My friends' cat, Westley:

I've always liked tree frogs.

Some picture of a bird from a wildlife photography book we have:

I didn't copy this one from anything. I just came across the saying in a bike shop.

LEGOS!

2010-01-09T23:17:00.000-05:00

My camera is essentially dead right now, so no pictures of the new projects I've been working on. I'm not really done with the one I've been working on all week anyway, since I still need to order some eyeballs for him. I feel like posting something though, so I thought I'd put up a couple of Lego creations I've made. My family is pretty into Legos. I tend to like making larger models and space sets, and my brother makes cities. Our basement used to have an eight-foot by eight-foot city in it, and it was pretty cool.

My mom wanted me to make a Lego version of a Singer Featherweight sewing machine for her store, so I did. I made one over summer vacation, but made another one a couple of weeks ago and made a couple of improvements. It doesn't actually sew, but parts of it do move. :)

I made this years ago. It's just a large version of a normal Lego mini-figure head. I made it based on a picture of a similar model in a Lego book we have.

This is a dinosaur I made shortly after 9/11. He's about the size of a large cat.

New animals!

2010-01-02T16:25:00.005-05:00

I finally got my website all updated with new animals. Most of them are needle-felted, but there are a couple of bears up, and I'm working on three bears :)

Here are the new animals (all of these are around three inches in length or height):

Leo the lion

I'm so proud of my moose. He was really hard to get a good picture of though. I couldn't come up with a good name for him either...

I made a couple of little dragons, and I couldn't come up with names for them either, but they're cute!

These two were on ebay several months ago, but didn't sell.

Cammie:

Susy:

She's almost two inches tall and fully disc-jointed.

An introduction...

2010-01-01T14:06:00.004-05:00

I've made the name of this blog "Katrina's Artistic Adventures" because I never seem to know what form of artwork I'm going to try next. Throughout my life, I've painted, sewn, dyed fabric, marbled fabric, batiked fabric, drawn, sculpted, decorated cupcakes, played with Legos, played the guitar, and quilted. Art is something I've grown up with. My mom is very artistic and an excellent quilter. One of her quilts was even displayed in Paducah, Kentucky for a while. She recently opened up a quilt shop, and I maintain the store's website and work there when I'm not at school. My brother is also pretty talented. He takes amazing pictures, designed his own quilt, makes great Lego models, and makes WWII dioramas (with one-inch tall guys with amazing detail, even eyebrows!). My dad is an engineer, so he is also good at designing and making things. He invented an automatic transmission for a bicycle and also holds a patent on thimbles he makes at home and ships around the world! (I think they are the most comfortable thimbles around). I consider myself to be truly blessed with some talent and a great family. I don’t know why I should be so blessed, but I thank God for what he has given me and try to honour the Giver by using the gifts well.

For several years, I've been making and selling miniature teddy bears under the name of Katrina's Miniature Menagerie. Since beginning college, I've not been very good about updating my website or putting new animals up for sale online. I'm still in school, but I keep hoping to get back into the teddy bear world, so I'm hoping this blog will help me get connected and stay connected. I have a lot of new ideas for animals, so I'm hoping I'll find some time to work on them this semester! Maybe I'll be able to earn some money to pay some college expenses…

Most of the teddy bears I make now are about two inches tall, though I want to make some more one-inchers. I've made several other animals, all from my own patterns. I've made dragons, horses, an otter, penguins… I use upholstery velvet or mini bear fabric and ultrasuede for my animals. Every single one is entirely hand-made by me. The two-inch bears are all disc jointed, and the smaller bears are thread-jointed. Other animals typically have an armature so they are posable.

Recently, I've discovered needle-felting, and I really enjoy it! It's so much fun to see what I can make, and there's no pattern required! I really have needle-felted a whole menagerie by now, and I have lots of ideas still. One of my favorite creations is a miniature of our former dog that I made for my mom.

I guess that's enough to get started with. I hope to post more as I finish new projects and head down different artistic avenues. Here are some more examples of bears (and a horse) I've made over the years (I'll put up current ones in my next post, after I get my website updated):