Thinking about sushi...

Sashimi Toy Set

One day I wanted to eat sushi...I thought and thought and thought about the sushi. Oh how yummy it would be to eat sushi. I did not have any sushi. I did not have money to buy sushi, but I did make this delicious stuffed set of sashimi. All of the pieces snap together for loads of sashimi making fun, and best of all you can throw them all in this cute little bag with a sushi print. YEAH! This went up at my etsy shop today. Time to gear up for Cyber Monday!

Grateful Dead inspired Travel Kitties and some shopping tips

These are some of the latest Travel Kitties I made. I think I was looking for a reason to use bright colors and the dancing bears came to mind. They are cute and happy like these kitties. I just started putting these guys up at my etsy store, which despite my efforts to stockpile my kitty supply...it has been bought out. I'll see if I can fill it back up before Black Friday. Oh, on that note if you have not taken the handmade pledge, now is the time...support an artist!

Here are a few more places to find cool handmade goods this season:

The inspiration behind the drawing...

[flickr video=2968283404 show_info=true w=260 h=195]

Eli ties his shoes!

Originally uploaded by temporal millionaire

tie your shoes

tie your shoes

The Illustration Friday topic for the week was "strings" (I thought). My wee boy learned how to tie his shoes today, so I had shoe strings on my mind, perfect. I drew this up and went to IF to upload it and that topic must have been for last week. This weeks topic is "late"...still seems like a fitting drawing given my dilemma.I also started the list of drawing topics for Everyday Matters. I knew shoes was the first thing on the list for a long time now. I never felt like drawing shoes, which means in my twisted way that I could not continue on with the list...lame. I'm counting this as my shoes drawing and moving on. Join me! It's a drawing party and you're invited. Yeah!

I love carnies

I've been taking pictures of carnival rides...I can't help it.

They are so colorful and, well...run by carnies-and who doesn't love the carnies?!

Another Gocco Success! (and a gocco tip)

Here are the latest cards I printed with my gocco! I took a little illustration I made of my neice Emily and made them into cards for my sister, Emily's momma, as a birthday present. I hope she likes them.

For this print I used two screens and four colors. The outline of the girl I did on one screen so that I could print the envelopes without the word hello. The second screen had all the colors. One thing I did learn that I can pass along to you new gocco-ers is to make sure you mix your colors well. I mixed the blue for this print and although it looked thoroughly mixed, it was not. Their were little swirls of white that came through while I was printing, and as a result the blue looks faded in some of the prints. I did do fairly well with the registration which I was happy about. They have some Gocco machines that come with a plate to help you with registration and i can see how that would be helpful in more complicated prints, but for this one using the Gocco pad to line up the prints worked out just fine for me.

Slapping up some TKP stickers

I made up a bunch of stickers with the little Travel Kitty lino print I carved a whileback. I gave most of them to a store that is selling my kitties. The next thing I know I was seeing them up around town. Crazy!

It's been a long time!

Sometimes I fall off the computer wagon. I don't think this is a bad thing. It probably means I'm spending more time playing outside or making something neat...and that's probably for the best. My latest break from the blog world started when I pulled out my Gocco machine to print some invitation for my mom's 70th birthday party. That was back in May! I was helping plan the party from many states away (NY) and prep for my annual trip back to the homeland (Chicago). I all went well. It was a terrific summer and has been a busy but productive start to fall.

The invitations were a collaboritive effort between my sister and I. She recommended the colors which went with the decor of the place where we hosted the party and I did the layout and printing. I think they came out pretty good for my first Gocco attempt. I hand cut a bunch of matte board for the invitations instead of using cards, and did a two color print using one Gocco screen. If i were to do it again I would have used two screens and put the text in the center of the screen and just worked with the registration on the prints. The font I chose was really delicate and pretty (like mom...awe) and it didn't always print well because it was on the edge of the screen. I printed a bunch of extras and chose the best of the bunch to send out.

The Gocco machine makes me so happy. Life would be good if you could experience the flash of the Gocco bulbs everyday. I also really enjoy making prints. I kept wanting to screen print things, but the space, mess, and chunk of time you have to commit makes it a bit prohibitive with a wee boy running around. I was able to start making these prints after he went to bed and still finish and clean up before it was too late. So all hail the Gocco, it rocks my world.

Travel Kitty Makes it on the Book Cover!

Here's the book cover for the Crammed Organisms Show . This print features art inspired by the plush works of: Waffle Brown Ugly Pretty Things Trish Tatman Temporal Millionaire (Yeah!) Stitches & Glue Kill Taupe Spooky Daddy Toys Cyrus Cords Prickly Pear Apple Noggin Cate Anevski Absolutely Small Travel Kitty sportin' his Puss in Boots cape made the cover. Yeah TK! The art work is by Kill Taupe who also has 50 limited edition prints of the piece-cool. I like that TK is telling the world about love...what do you think? If you haven't made it over to the TKP site yet here is a link.

Starhead is my invisible friend

Starhead is my invisible friend

  If you didn't check out Dave Bloomfield the first time I posted about him, you're silly. He decorates my life with happiness. Thanks Starhead for the great pack of goodies!

We mourn the spindle

I saw the Spindle with my big sister when I was 14. It was 1989, the year the Spindle was put up. Her "cool" high school friends took me as some sort of mascot to Berwyn for fun. They took me to Parkey's for a double dog with handmade fries in a greesy bag and to see the Berwyn Moose.  I was as happy as could be. Years later I married and had my first place in Berwyn. I drove past the Spindle and the Garbage Sculpture regularly. Sadly, today I heard the Spindle had been torn down.  Such tragedy...for a Walgreens. Bummer. Thank you to Dustin Shuler for all the crazy art in Cermak Plaza. I loved it.

Free Art Friday

Here is Sunshine Sally giving out a little love this Friday. This is going out on the street somewhere today.

Puss in Boots Travel Kitties!

These Special Edition Travel Kitties headed to St. Louis yesterday to make their appearence at the Crammed Organism Plush Show. They will also be in the Crammed Organism book that's coming out. Go Travel Kitties go!

Making Some Special Edition Travel Kitties

I drew this up at lunch yesterday. Travel Kitty is going to rock the cape for the Crammed Organisms show. The theme for the show is "Fairy, Folk, and Fable", so he's going as a hip Puss in Boots...awe yeah! Actually four kitties will be going. I'll try to get another picture up here before I send them off to St. Louis. Have a good Friday everyone. Don't forget to go to the Poetry Project tonight to see Nicole Georges if you are in NYC...and hook me up with a copy of Invincible Summer #2 while you're feeling happy.

Nicole J. Georges is cool-See her in NYC tomorrow night!

I was lucky enough to stumble upon Nicole's first volume of Invincible Summer while I was at Gosh! in London. I loved the drawings, so I got it. The writing was just as fun and interesting and I spent a handful of nights staying up to long reading and admiring how she drew black hair with shine spots in it. Now Nicole has volume 2 coming out! Hooray! She will be coming to NYC tomorrow night (10 pm at St. Marks Poetry Project). Oh, how I had planned on being there to get my copy of I.S. #2, but gettting selected for the Crammed Organisms show means I may be making kitties on Friday night instead of heading to the city. If there had to be a reason not to go, at least it's a positive one. I am still excited about living in my new city, knowing people I like actually come to this area. Yeah for NY! You should go though. Really, it'll be fun.

TKP will rock the Crammed Organisms show!

Well TKP friends, in addition to being world-wide, the TKP will be showing St. Louis, Missouri (North America) just how cool plush can be when some special edition Travel Kitties make their way to the worlds largest plush show! YEAH! I was so excited to get the news today. Head over to the Crammed Organisms site and look at the other artists who were selected for the show!

TURN TO CLEAR VISION

  I took this picture on my first trip to the beach this season. It was still chilly, but I do believe it cleared my vision. Seeing the ocean is still unexplainable and beautiful to me. I love it every time.    

 

Travel Kitty Hats!

The fun never stops with the Travel Kitties. I made a bunch of these little kitty hats today. Check them out at my etsy shop.

Happy Spring!

TK Poog Forest Today I made a bunch of these Travel Kitty lino prints and sewed them into little plushies. They were so cute I took them out for a spring time photo shoot. Now they're mega-cute!On a side note... A laundrymat in my town has a sign outside that says "Super Mega Jumbo Washers!" My guess is they are pretty freaking big.

Makin' Zines

Makin' Zines I spent a little time collating a bunch of zine copies today. Nothing fancy, just getting it done in my wee boy's yellow chair with all my words of wisdom spread out on my garage sale couch. Can't beat it!

I utility piece of work for me

 

I used to have a bunch of needles all poked into a piece of paper and then put in a plastic baggie. It was messy and drove me crazy. You may be asking, why not a pin cusion? Well my deranged kitty likes to bite all the pins and needles and pull them out and leave them all over the floor. This is not safe for a kitty...(or anyone else right?!) so I started putting them in the secret hiding plastic baggie. It was ugly and we shouldn't live with ugly if cute is only takes 50 cents of felt! I made this little book to have a some cute for my needles...they deserve it. It has made me happy, and all my needles are always ready to go for some crazy sewing!

A movie to see this weekend

I saw this movie a few weeks ago, but I really thought it was good...and artsy, so this seemed like a good place to share it. I also enjoy the word busker, so it was really a winner all the way around for me.

Here's a wikipedia link if you want to know more or check out the music from the film.

German Interview Translated

I got the translation of the German interview I did last week.  I posted it over at the Travel Kitty Project site if you want to read it.

TKP Interview with German Newspaper

Here's the interview I did with the great Heike Unger from the Amberger Zeitung in Amberg, Germany. You can click on the article and head over to Flickr to see a larger size and read it if you know German. That's me and my wee little boy in the middle. Now you know who made that cool little kitty of yours. Oh, and the boy, he's hugged every one of those kitties before they left, so I figured he needed to get some credit too. Pretty neat! Thanks Heike!

Clean out those cigarette machines. It's time for the ART-O-MAT!

Super cool machines huh?! The beauty of the remade machines and the idea of turning evil into good just couldn't be passed up. I never gave a bit of thought to where all those cigarette machines went, lucky Clark Whittington did. Terrific idea Clark! I have my submission for the ART-O-MAT almost complete and I should have it shipped off by the weekend if all goes well. Hopefully my little box of goodies will get picked for the project. Check out the Art-o-mat site and see if you have a machine near you!