Squid Box

Here's the second High School Musical hat box:





And here's my shit-eating Better Homes & Gardens shot of both together:


Look how murky! I live in a cave.

"I Don't Do 'A' Material For Charity." -- Krusty the Klown

Oh Krusty! You cad.

Lately I have donated several pieces of my terrible shit "art" to raise money for charitable causes. The first was to raise money for a coworker's sister's kidney transplant. Apparently she gets to live if she can raise $10K. I donated the following two paintings that I had lying around the house:



I don't think they sold because after the sale one of the ladies cheerfully told me, "And the stuff we DIDN'T sell will go into the next yard sale!" So that's comforting. I hope they at least generate the $20 each I spent getting them framed. In case you're wondering, yeah, that's the Hoff. Who wouldn't want that??

The second charity event is an auction being held because a friend of a friend moved home to help out his terminally ill mother and then died in a motorcycle accident. Money was raised to cover his funeral expenses, and this round of fundraising is to help his mom pay her bills. I am donating the following three ceramic pieces:




That last shot is terrible. It's 2" high so I had to use the stupid macro setting. Look at the detail in the muslin. Sure, that's what I wanted in focus.

The auction is here on Facebook: James McNish Memorial Benefit and bidding starts Monday the 27th. Go buy some stuff.

I would like to say I do 'A' material for charity, except I hardly do 'A' material at all. Maybe B-. You be the judge.

BFF Means FOREVER.

Each year I like to make the BFF's birthday more magical than the last. Sometimes he actually provides the opportunity through the blessing of Drunken Texting. He may actually have been sober when he texted these old song lyrics to me, but there's no way he was sober when he wrote them. I kept them in my phone and, when the time was right (the Birthday time!), I took paint to cheap shitty canvas panel and let the glory spew forth:


I wrote the words on with Sharpie because there was a lot of text to get through and painting would have been very sloppy. Also it turns out we're dealing with two different songs, but it came through in the text as one giant ramble so I assumed it was all the same song. The BFF assures me it is much better this way.

And here he is receiving it:


I made him wear rubber gloves because it is fine art and I didn't want his greasy mitts to ruin it. He's not to be trusted. Happy Birthday, BFF!!

I did find time to make one other birthday special; my friend's nickname is KC/DC, so I decided to wrap her present in a special KC/DC box:



See how shiny it is? That's when I realized I hadn't grabbed the can of spray primer, I was actually using spray paint. Oops. So I just kept going with the black, then masked out the KC/DC with the shelf paper I use for etching, and spray painted that yellow. After that was done I did a couple of coats of spray varnish and called it a day. It wouldn't look as spotty if it had been primer, but it also wouldn't have been as Rock'N'Roll!!! Right? Am I right? Meh.

Happy Birthday to everyone!

Quite Literally the Mouth of Madness

A friend of mine with a fiendishly keen eye spotted this abomination sitting in a garbage pile in her neighborhood. Of course she thought of me when she saw it. And of course I framed it and hung it in my kitchen:


Double you. Tee. Eff. Seriously, I was only like mildly unnerved by clowns before. YEESH. I sort of hope that by possessing this talisman I will ward off any future clown attacks, sort of like holding up the Evil Eye. I suppose only time will tell.

Mount ATHF + HSM

This request started off as Elvira. Somehow we came around to Meatwad, then all three foodstuffs, then the carving needed a fourth so that's how Carl ended up there. But don't tell him that.


It's way lighter than that IRL, and I attempted to fix it, but I had about six different fights with flickr, the Mac, and the relationship between the two, somehow deleted the only good shot, etc. etc. and here we are. Screw it.

Once upon a time I found these horrible High School Musical hatboxes at TJ Maxx for like $2. They're huge, so I decided to get two of them and just sit on them a while.


I sprayed them with black primer (before I took the picture, natch, so only the lid is unpainted here) and this is what I painted on the first one:






Also I swapped out the yellow nylon string with some thin rope that I got at Michael's.

I'm sure I've complained before about the state of Michael's and how it's such a disorganized mess in there that I'm surprised they don't sell livestock. But for a year I've been going to a gym that shares a strip mall with one, and in the interest of convenience they finally wore me down. It's still a hot mess, but I'm able to navigate it a little better and I'm saving gas.

Anyhoo, that's the first hat box and I've started working on the second one. Let's just say I'm sticking to the theme.

Great Big Stitched Postcard Swap 3 - Continued

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Here's what I received from Australia!!


Look at this beautiful quilted postcard. The background fabric is designed to look like notebook paper and the trees and flowers are quilted on. I know absolutely nothing about quilting, so you won't get any fancy terminology out of me. All I know is it's gorgeous. And has a ladybug button on it!!

But not only did I get that gorgeous quilted postcard, I got loot too!


A lovely fabric swatch covered in Australian fauna (that paper koala is the tag), a keychain shaped like Australia with kangaroos on it, and a beautiful explanatory notecard from the delightful Hilary. I scored this time. Yay!

Here's what one Canadian lass may or may not have scored, since I have yet to hear anything:


Ooh...whatever could this be?


(As you may have guessed, once again I blew the whole "stitch" part of the project by painting on balsa wood and had to salvage at the end by knitting an envelope. I'm not sure I'm qualified for these projects.) So intriguing....


Aaaaand Captain Bringdown strikes again. That's right, love is a disease and should be avoided at all cost. The End.

Great Big Stitched Postcard Swap 3!

Once again I'm participating in the Great Big Stitched Postcard Swap! This is the third one and the theme is love:

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I'd better get busy thinking up ideas. I'm not good at these abstract themes. I hope the next theme is Armageddon because I can get behind that one.