Teeny Tiny Puppet Buddies!

For my puppet challenge, I decided to crochet little finger puppets - one for each of us!

I'll talk about each individually, in the order in which I made them:

I started with a kitty for Jeanne. Note the shades from white to black.
I even gave the kitty a little tail!

Next, I made Julie's. Hers is a penguin, but it is fun and crazy colors!
I wanted to make it look like it came right out of a picture book.

Then I made a giraffe for Mom in pink and red. 
This is where my polka dot "signature" comes in - I wanted to make it a spotty giraffe!

Finally, I made an octopus for myself! My favorite animal is actually a flamingo, but I had already made a bird and these octopi are just too darn cute.
This octopus only has five legs, though - I guess that makes her a pentapus?

This was such a fun project! Crocheting teeny finger puppets requires a different kind of dexterity and attention to detail than crocheting hats, and it was really fun to try something new!

Group Challenge: Puppets!

When we were all together earlier this month, we came up with a looooong list of fun ideas to do for group challenges. I got to decide what we're doing next, and I chose:

Puppets!

The above images are some inspiration for our projects. Click on the images to be linked to a tutorial, and you can join in on the fun!

Viney Wrist

Sorry to be the last to post about my henna! I swear, it happened the exact same morning as everyone else's. I just got back from a being a wedding date for a friend on the Oregon coast, so all my thoughts lately have been geared toward that. Now I'm back and realized I needed to post my image.

As mentioned before, I've had henna done once before at a Renaissance fair in Pennsylvania. I've never done it at home, though I've always wanted to. When it was time to come up with a design, I knew I wanted it pretty small. I don't remember who started looking up images of tattoos online, but when Jodie and I saw this one, I knew it was what I wanted. 

Jodie did a great job adding it on to my left wrist. Why my wrist when everyone else went with an ankle? Unlike the rest of my family members, my choice of clothing on my legs doesn't actually change much with the seasons. I wear jeans a lot, especially since my job is in a dirty-ish environment and I want to stay a bit more professional than shorts. (Seriously, libraries are great but weird places where jeans count as day-to-day professional-ish attire.)

I love that it's a flower. There's not a great image of the sides, though it did go around the sides of my wrist some. Originally the sides were supposed to be kind of curly things with dots (see the left side of that picture). Unfortunately, we learned pretty quickly that henna on the wrist smears a bit easier than we'd like. Still, if you look at how the design altered itself over on the right, I love it. It looks like a branch with leaves!

My sister did a great job with this one. This picture was taken a week after the fact. Up until this past weekend with all the ocean and sun, the tattoo was still strong. Now, though, it's almost completely faded. Thank goodness I got a great pic while it was around!

Another Leg, Another Phoenix

Quite some time ago, a friend sent me a poem about a phoenix. Since then, I seem to be attracted to them. I wrote my own phoenix poem about my (then current) life burning up due to a mental health scare, and rising to a new life: Chapter Three, we call it. 

Chapter One = growing up

Chapter Two = raising a family

Chapter Three = fulfilling my destiny with my husband at my side.

Over a year ago I found this image on the interwebs:

I fell in love with it, and have it on my computer desktop. When we decided to give each other henna tattoos, I brought out this image -- even before Jeanne showed us her wildfire! Like mother, like daughter. Yes?

Jodie said she could use this image as inspiration, and drew her version on my left calf.

I like that her tail is composed of hearts.

After all of us finished with our main tattoos, there was a bit of henna left over. So Julie gave me another heart on my upper arm right on top of my birthmark. 

 Now I not only wear my heart on my sleeve. I wear my heart under my sleeve as well!

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Wildfire

I was the last AuralArtist to wake up on Sunday, which means the other three had already gotten started on the tattoos (good thing too, the henna mix has to sit for 45 minutes before it can be used). 


I had designed a simple phoenix image a couple months ago, and when I drew it for them, they told me I should use that for my tattoo. I wanted to make it an anklet design, so with a little help from Julie, I found a pattern I liked to add to it.














I'd actually been wanting a henna tattoo for quite a while now. I'm very pleased with how it came out.


Thank you to everyone for such a great visit!

Handsy Henna

I love my henna tattoo!

My brilliant sister Julie did my tattoo, which was inspired by one that she had gotten at a Renaissance Faire. I loved the swirly hand, and the dots were a big bonus for me!

I left the henna on for about nine hours, during which time I drove all the way back to Oregon and sustained 15 (15!!!!!) mosquito bites. Ouch! The tattoo is beautiful though, and a week later it is still really dark. I love it! Thanks Julie!!

Artists In Action

Group photos!


Don't we all just look amazing with purple hair? 

This is the result of our Henna and Hairspray challenge. Julie didn't do anything with the back of her head, so she opted out of the second shot.


We also took a group photo of the tattoos we gave ourselves. This is what they look like before they've dried and been washed off. The final versions, and the answers to whose tattoo is whose, will be shown in individual posts by each of us.

Henna and Hairspray

Last week, all four of us AuralArtists were able to get together back at home for a couple days. We decided to do a mini group challenge together: give each other henna tattoos and spray our hair a wild purple color!


With so little time and so much else we wanted to do, we missed our original goal of having a Spa Night on Saturday, which means we didn't get to do the whole beauty parlor shebang that would have included manicures and pedicures all around. But we did manage to sneak in a few extra hours before Jodie left on Sunday morning to get the tattoos and hair coloring completed.

Golden Rod

Sometime, once upon a time ago, Julie gave us a wizarding wand challenge. Two-and-a-half months later, I finally got mine done.


Since I didn't have a hot-glue gun at the time, and then I bought the wrong size glue sticks, by the time I was done procrastinating and about ready to make my wand, it was time for a visit home.


My wand is different from everyone else's because I was allowed to use a real stick! Our dad had found a really cool stick he thought would make a good wand, and the other AuralArtists agreed that I could paint it up and use it as my wand.


It's approximately 12 1/2 inches long and made to resemble larch wood (my Pottermore wand). Unfortunately, there is no phoenix feather core. Oh well.


The designs were still done using hot glue. The handle got a criss-cross pattern, and the rest of it was just sort of haphazardly dripped on. My family says it looks just like me: unplanned, spontaneous, and a little reckless.


It may not look so impressive at first, but the real charm is when you see it up-close. All the natural wood fibers and knots and cracks give my wand all sorts of character.


















I honestly wasn't too thrilled with the wand-making idea at first. It sounded fun, but I didn't know what I would do with it after it was done. Now, though, I'm very glad I made it, because even though I still don't know what to do with it, I love it to bits.