Thing-a-day.com

So I haven’t actually posted what I’ve been up to for the last week or so, but I have been creating.  At the very least I doodled in my paperback which has taught me that even 30 seconds of scribbling is better for my creative juices than sitting on my rear end doing nothing.

24-26:  Doodles

27: Gave myself a haircut.  (Shortened to a pixie!)

28: Posted on my blog.  (I am stretching here, but I am giving myself a break on this one.)

29:  Still have a few hours, so we’ll see.

Here is to creating/destroying/documenting/pushing ourselves to do something.  Now, maybe I’ll go sew…

Title: Might as well JUMP
Description: Ecard of encouragement and best wishes for your future creative endeavors
Inspirations: Today is Leap Year Day and the conclusion of Thing-A-Day for 2008

I got a new (used) camera (Olympus C-5050 Zoom)! To celebrate, I took some photos of ecchi my cat playing baseball:

I’ve never lived with cats or mice for that matter, but apparently this is what they look like in my head. The wheel is for speed of course.

I think I was looking at Craft’s blog when I stumbled upon a great tutorial on how to make beads from recycled newspaper. Today I decided to give that tutorial a try and I’m partially through the process. The beads take several days to dry so it’ll be a while before I can paint them, hopefully by the 29th! Yikes! Anyway, I boiled the water with the newspapers inside and waited for about an hour and then rolled the beads, which took about twenty minutes or so.

While I waited I made some more shrinky dinks:

a black cat with big yellow eyes (in honor of my ever-so-curious feline companion Phoebe who modeled for me), an owl and a friendly heart.

First of all, Rory is a guy. And he’s a Cornish Rex cat, which means he has short, wavy fur. He is the world’s best cat: he has a fantastic sense of humor, wags his tail like a dog, is a grandpa, and is a therapy animal. His worst trait is that he’s a mooch, and wants to share anything you’re eating.

seeing as I missed 4 days here’s a quick bonus- margaret in blue

thrown into a crappy old frame and looking as pensive as can be about it.

Today I was feeling a little worn down, so I just did a little bit of knitting. I think I added about ten rows onto what I already had. I’m making another knitted kitty, but this one I’m planning to add some catnip to the stuffing and turn it into a playmate for my sister’s cat. It’s cotton yarn which I think I’ll stuff with more cottonballs again.

some befores:

on an unrelated note, I want this:

is it considered creepy to find random pictures of someone’s cat and post them in all their adorable glory?

love nethack. love pets. therefore:

CC attributions: Original dog picture by Johnny Jet. Original cat picture by Michael_CH.

Just print, fold and there you go! Okay, so I am having problems with this pdf, let me try again kittyvalentine.pdf 

I slacked on POSTING this weekend, but I think everything I actually DID makes up for it (and tonight, if this headache doesn’t go away!)

Table we made. After adding more reinforcement. It’s sturdy now.

I painted a pic of my cat Cheesecake. (Affectionately known as Cheesekitteh, Cheesey, or Cheesebutt) FAIL!

Well, hey it’s not bad considering I wasn’t looking at her face at all. I forgot the exact shape of cat mouths. SUE me!

Oh yeah, and we painted this wall at the top of the stairs (and also two closet doors) in our apartment. A small wall, but hey, it was enough to get me high on paint (and a terrible headache).

That painting is a pastel self-portrait I did in college. That’s Cheesebutt’s tail in the way.

Inspired by MikeJ’s earlier Thing, here’s my more conventional take on Scott McCloud’s Dadaist narrative construction game Five Card Nancy.

Yep, it’s sick and wrong. And you know you just chuckled at it.

Bunniken’s knitted bunny was too just too cute, so I followed the “bunny-trail” as it were to get to the original pattern by geobabe. This is the first knitted project I have ever completed! I think I’ll call him Mocha. It took me some time on Wednesday and Thursday to knit the body and I finished the head, tail and assembly all today. He’s stuffed with some cotton balls I found laying around.

so this dude http://www.thing-a-day.com/author/rowstyles/ has been putting up some mad dope fonts for days.. which in turn made me want to do the same. Unfortunately all I got is this one sad little guy:

And even more tragic-  I tried neopastels for the first time on a portait with disasterous results. The garish neon bright colors I had to choose from didn’t help any as I attempted to approximate skin tones. All that being said, here she is anyway:

Finally, I put Margaret in a sweater mostly to amuse myself. She, on the other hand, doesn’t look amused at all. Since this was probably my most successful attempt at anything the whole damn night I think I’ll post it:

it’s the last day of my “japanese pop” theme and i’ll end it with an ultraman cat toy. (i swear it’s not an updated venus of willendorf. heh heh) he’s stuffed with cotton and cat nip for ultra cat enjoyment. you can see clouseau on the left sniffing his new friend..

Alright.. day 6 was kind of a throw away.  Copious amounts of school and tired left me looking to the closest thing for inspiration- Margaret, that jerk:

in pencil:

in conte (it won’t let me thumbnail all of a sudden):

a tuna salad with fixins:

and a homemade ice cream sandwich (this was technically thrown together yesterday to freeze up and devoured today right in margaret’s face):

I’m not totally happy with this one but it has that odd feeling which I was aiming for. Based on a photo of model Chanel Iman, if anyone cares.

Blueberries on sale plus lemons in the back yard equals this sourcream blueberry poundcake.   I got the recipe straight outta the Williams-Sonoma Desserts cookbook that good aunt Sara gifted me one Christmas.  One of the stickiest cake doughs I’ve ever encountered, it actually climbed up the electric mixer and made a huge mess much to my shock and awe.  I might add a little more salt to bring out the flavors in the future.  I have determined that this cake is good all the time- but It’s really good in the morning warmed up with some cawfee..

here’s margaret trying to hide from my too awesome cake: