Ghost In The Machine

I usually skip right over Halloween but when I saw these graphics, I had to make them. They are so darn cute without being too cartoonish. 

I discovered this artist while perusing through Etsy looking for Christmas miniatures. They are from Susan Hoerth of Hoerth Studio in McAllen, Texas with raidersofthelostart as her Etsy screen name. She's terrific. Go look at her stuff and you'll see what I mean. I've made my share of decorative books and journals so I wanted to make some of these. I love paper crafts.

I haven't used my glitter glue in a while but I really wanted a slick black glitter to accent these pieces with and to get that I first used glitter glue and went over it when dry with Glossy Accents or put down Glossy Accents first and then sprinkled glitter over it while it was still wet. It just depends on how shiny you want it to be.

It gave me exactly what I was wanting. I could complain about all the little pieces I had to cut out but I found I could take a 6 x 9 .png (transparent background) of the pieces I want to use and import the sheet into my Cricut and use the 'print then cut' feature and let the machine do all that work for me. 

I don't know how everyone else uses their Cricut but I use mine most of the time to print and cut graphics for my projects after working with them in PhotoShop or Gimp. I love that feature of Cricut. 

So I wound up doing three little folding book projects with these graphics while dealing with a loudly rattling computer off and on for two days. My computer is about six years old and I've already replaced a fan and two memory modules recently. I decided to upgrade my hard drive with a solid state disk drive since the old one was rattling. It sounded like grinding gears... and got on my last nerve. I was trying to hurry up and finish my project and get everything printed off before it crashed. 

I'm a little bit of a geek so I decided to get in there and find out what was going on and just fix it if I could. I though it was a bearing on a fan since I have three of them on board but when I popped the cover, the noise was coming from my hard drive... YIKES! That meant I had to hurry if I wanted to clone it to another drive. Cloning it means I don't have to reinstall Windows and all my programs. This is the easiest and quickest way really. As long as you have a working hard drive, you can clone it. It's too late after it fails. If it's already grinding, you are on borrowed time and you better get busy fast.

So I researched through the screeching noise and found this resource on YouTube to help me fix it.

Explaining Computers

Yes, I had to open the machine again. It's amazing how much dust it can collect in just a few months. Another cleaning. I cloned the hard drive from a writable disk to SSD and I decided to go from 1 terabyte to down to 500 gigs. That seems like a downgrade but it's not since I only used about 127 gigs in the last six years. I don't need all that extra room. I have a gaming computer but I'm not a gamer. It's got a kick arse graphics card though. I store my graphics library on a backup external drive and pull off collections onto DVD for a backup of my backups. Never store anything important on your computer's hard drive because hardware failure is imminent, not "if" but "when". 

So I got rid of the loud screeching and clattering noises, upgraded my hard drive to solid state which makes it noticeably quicker and the ghost in the machine is happy once again. True story.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN !!!

 

Toy Store Preview

What have I gotten myself into now? A new project of course! I usually skip over Halloween, my kids and grandkids are grown and my young grandkids are two thousand miles away so I don't get into it any more. We have not had trick or treaters for several years now. 

Add that all together and I start crafting Christmas sometime in October.  So when I saw this project I thought about it for several months before I decided that I would give it a go. 

There were no instructions for making it except to point you toward pre-made chipboard kits. I like to craft from scratch whenever I can. I would have loved a set of plans to save me time and money.

So at least I had the rough dimensions of the project to make my own. I had some finishing plywood left over from other dollhouses I've made so that's what I used.  And a lot of cardboard and some pressed board in places. I made the front 10" x 12" and the sides finished out to be 10" x 5-1/2". The base was 10" x 7-1/2".  

Some of my previous projects are on an older blog here . I have too many hobbies to keep up with a blog site for each one so this year I decided to combine all my projects into just this one blog.

The bay windows were a little tricky for me and very, very detailed. They were a pain because they had to be precise to fit and look right. I made them out of cardboard and card stock covered with paper.

This project is from Artfully Musing by Laura Carson. You can get the digital print files from her site or on Etsy very reasonable. 

There are several sheets you can use for materials to make this but you have to have the Toy Shop graphics for the building  And you will want to also get some toy prints and people for your store. I don't think you can start too early on this project. A lot of things you will have to figure out or make on your own. I tried to stick to the original as much as possible but I did add my own little touches. You can add different types of lighting if you want. There are so many options available now. 

This project will keep you busy with all the details. This is such a large project that I will have to post it in pieces with all my tips and tricks as I move along on it. 

I had to buy very little because after years of crafting and doing artwork I actually have supplies like a mini craft store in my room. What I did buy, I got at the Dollar Tree. I've spent about four days on it so far. I'm totally obsessed with it and was up until two o'clock working on the details last night/this morning. Time just got away from me! So you better get started if you're hoping to get this project done soon.

After all, Christmas is coming!

Busy, Busy Kitties

I ran across these patterns while searching for other soft dolls to knit and I fell in love with them. This is the first out of five patterns by Alan Dart called "Kitty's Knit Klub.

I can relate to each and every one of them although I don't belong to any knit clubs around here. Cute, cute, cute is how I would describe these.

I did have a little trouble and had to re-do the stripes on her head. I didn't like the chain stitch ones and the darker ones didn't look right. I settled for just plain yarn stripes.

I think they look better when you color the cheeks and ears with chalk. It gives them a little depth.

I also had trouble with the bow. I made my own pattern on that. Didn't like the way the one in the instructions looked and I found the pattern a little lacking in detailed instruction. You better know how to knit and put things together before you start this one!

I got everything done but saved the skirt for last. Ribbed stitch is not my favorite stitch to do so the skirt was torture for me but I eventually got it done. I took a lot of breaks and made other stuff in-between the row making.

I will make the other cats maybe changing a color or two here and there. I have some pretty variegated cat colored yarn I want to use up and that black cat will probably turn out to be a tuxedo like the one I have, Mr. Baby. He's my real cat.