Moved

Hallo all,

I'm unable to maintain this blog really...
I'm kinda dodging between places. So if you wanna check out my stuff please head on over to
https://www.facebook.com/gardensofmay

or

http://gardensofmay.deviantart.com/

Bobomb~!

I have been quite hard at work recently. One of the first things I had to make was bobomb. And of course I found out while browsing pictures of bobomb that a bombette also existed! (I've obviously been living under a rock because I never knew she existed!~)

More details about them can be found on my facebook page :D

The Kirby Attack!

It started with just one kirby...

And then DK Kirby was born not long after that. 

And then a friend of mine requested Pikachu Kirby!

After all of the cuddly Kirby's...I couldn't help but make a "Kirby is eating my head!" Hat. Because that idea came to me ages ago and it just demanded to be made!

Details on how to obtain these creatures can be found at my facebook. There are definitely a lot more to come.  :)

Progressing!

Have been so sick so progress has been just about nonexistent. But! On the mend now. This time...it's a foray into my very own design. I hope it turns out just like I'm imagining it in my head :)
I wonder if anyone can guess what it's going to be!

Special little bear

Today, a special little teddy bear was born. He shares the same birthday as someone very special to me so this is one little bear that I'm going to be keeping as a part of my personal collection. :)

Slowly progressing

Didn't move as much as I was hoping for today but it still moved a little. He's getting close to his birth now.

Go little friend go. I've got lots of ideas for other things I want to create. Here's to me being able to get the shapes from in my head out into the real world.

Another little friend is almost born

Am on the way to creating a new little friend. I just have to finish up my homework first and then I can give him my attention again. :)

A new little friend...

After my last little project making the bird, I decided to make a present for a friend of mine. As a thank you for deciding to open up a stall with me at an upcoming convention. And I had just the idea to do it. This was a modification of a pattern I had, the "wings" were a first time effort and I might change the design if I ever visit this little friend again. I actually went through a few different wing designs before I settled on this one. The ears were adorable and I might just keep the ear design for any future little creatures I decide to make.

But this little guy took one and a bit seasons of Daria to finish and I hope she likes him. He was really fun to experiment with. He's 14.5cm tall and from wing tip to wing tip he measures 24cm. 

A new era~

With the onset of new motivations and new goals, I have taken up the art of crochet and knitting. I had decided upon crochet to begin with but was quickly then pulled into the direction of knitting. I have finished one scarf, on my way to finishing a second scarf which is a red raspberry knit but was then slowly beckoned back by the soft whispers of crochet. I am know completely in love with crochet and haven't touched my knitting needles in a very long time.

I love crochet because I can see how it works. I can follow a knitting pattern but I can shape crochet the way I want it to look and I can see it come to life. My first ever crochet was a little bird. I have to say that all my crochet is amigurumi. I don't think I will use crochet for things such as scarves, jumpers and other such things. But you never know. I am much preferring the hook to the two knitting needles but I like that with knitting I can do it anywhere ... whereas with crochet, I need just that little bit more concentration to count the rows and make sure I don't miss any stitches. I've written a few patterns on my own already, modifying some patterns I've seen and I think I can customize these little creatures a lot better than knitting.

Knitting confuses my brain a little bit.

But I'm so glad I picked up this hobby. I have quite a few other projects I want to continue with. I will still be making some fibreglass/sewing projects. With some that I won't be posting the progress images of as I have been sworn to secrecy. But...until then I'll post the little creatures I intend on creating.

This is the little Bluey I've just finished. He's adorable. He's a Stacey Trock design and it was thanks to her that I've been able to learn how to crochet so quickly. :)

And from now on, all of my sale items will be on my facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/nekomiaocreations

Art and what I do.

I've been talking with my friend for a while and this conversation came up:

I think I made the modelers happy telling them how cool they were 24/7

cause they were like "some jerk artists tell us they're the -real- artists and we're just workers! DX"

I'm not going to reveal which friend or who I was talking with because I don't know if I'm really allowed to say anything but the gist of it is, the modellers are the people who take other people's drawings and then bring them into the 3-D world. And it made me once again think about my position and what I want to do with my life. 

What I want to do is to bring other people's work into this world. I like looking at images and those images inspire me to make things. If you put down a piece of paper in front of me that's blank, I will stare at that blank piece of paper and not really know what to do with it. I don't design nor have I really tried to design because my inspiration doesn't work that way. However, put down a piece of art in front of me and my mind will work over time, thinking of the fabrics or materials which can be used, putting together the construction method in my head or devising a few methods of construction and then choosing the best one.

Not always choosing the best one first off, my experience levels are still growing so often I would choose the wrong one.

But it comes back to that point.

Am I an artist?

artist |ˈärtist|

noun

a person who produces paintings or drawings as a profession or hobby.

• a person who practices any of the various creative arts, such as a sculptor, novelist, poet, or filmmaker.

• a person skilled at a particular task or occupation: a surgeon who is an artist with the scalpel.

• a performer, such as a singer, actor, or dancer.

My dictionary brings that up when I have a look for the definition. It's not really something that I have been able to find. Everyone I talk to gives me a different definition of what they believe an artist is. I've been told by a few people that they think I'm an artist and been told by a few others that they don't really think that I am.

Personally, I don't think I'm an artist. To me, the artists are the people that inspire me. The ones that create the images that get my creative juices going so that I make things that are featured on this blog. I can't design things on my own. I would love to be able to design pretty dresses or accessories with my own trademark to sell but the things I sell on my etsy are all going to be creations from images that other people have designed. They will always be fan recreations. 

I want to make it into the industry and not be well known as the artistic creator or anything but I want to be able to work under these people and be asked to create these things into the 3-D world. I would love to be able to work in theatre or a movie production set and be able to work on the set or the costumes and put together these things. I'm not a good painter so my set work would be more limited to the actual construction and painting colour onto things rather than actual scenery or such but...that's what I want to do.

I don't know if that makes me an artist. I don't have the confidence to label myself as an artist.

All I know is...this is what I want to do and for the next few years, it's the dream I'm going to be pushing to catch with my own two hands. 

Nodame Inspired Piano Bag

I got inspired yesterday to create something that I saw in a drama a while ago. As soon as I saw it, it was the most adorable thing and my boyfriend agreed. The bag itself is actually quite easy to make. I've made one for myself and I'm going to make another 3 for my etsy store.

:)

Making it from a nice peachskin fabric so it's a little bit fluffy and soft to touch. All of the insides are overlocked together so it's all neat even without any lining. The black keys are individually sewn on and the black lines on the white fabric are also machine sewn on.

I think it's looking cute. I'm going to use it to carry uni books with me when I go to school.

The dimensions of the bag are 37x31x5cm. The handles go up 18cm. 

A look (kind of) of the inside of the bag with the neat edges. 

And just because I can a little close up of the keyboard itself. The keyboard took the most time because of the detail I chose to put on it but it was a lot of fun to make. 

I don't think I'll have any problems making another three of these. But if they sell well I might make a few more, who knows. 

Valentine's Day!

I celebrated Valentine's Day with my boyfriend on Sunday as we were able to spend the entire day together. It was an absolutely fun day that started with crepe and ended with stew and with lots of hug and cuddles in between and lots of crying by me at the end of the night (no, he wasn't being mean to me...he introduced me to Chihayafuru...an anime that had me get really attached to some of the characters). 

For Valentine's Day though, I hadn't gotten around to making him the cookies I had planned on making for him for the whole week before but I had made him a bag to put the cookies in already. The bag looked something like this:

And I am really glad that upon receiving it, he recognized straight away what it was, just means I got the symbol right. He's a starcraft player and this is one of the team logos. The bag itself took about half an hour to make and I put it together mostly with my overlocker and only used my sewing machine for the last stitch on the end.

The first thing I did was cut out two bit rectangles, that made the two main panels of the bag. Then measured the two long sides and one short side of the bag and cut out a long rectangle that was about 2cm wide and the length of the measurement I had just taken.

All of the sides were then serged together. I cut out a handle for the bag that was the same size but just a bit shorter than the rectangle I had cut out earlier and serged that to the top of the bag when I was neatening the top edge. With my sewing machine I then sewed a line on the top of each part of the bag just to make sure the handle of the bag stays in place.

Oh, this symbol? I totally forgot to talk about it. I had found a vectored image of the logo, traced it onto the bag and painted it on with fabric paint. :) Very simple process and a very easy way of making the bag look cute.

So...because I forgot to make cookies, what did I put in it? I can't just give him an empty bag right? Saturday night, I freaked out and made something else to put in it instead. 

Little heart onigiri! Took about half an hour and if anybody wants to know how to make it, I can put up a tutorial later because I didn't really photograph the steps, I rushed to make this little plush. 

WaiCon is over!

Well...Waicon is finally over now. I have been busy sewing up until the last moments of going into my first sales phase on the Twin Bells stall and it was a wonderful experience. I sold all of my companion cubes in the end and I sold two of my kitty hats so it was a wonderful success for me.

I'm going to be looking into getting business cards for next year and am definitely going to be setting up my etsy store sometime in the very near future. GardensofMay is always going to be a hobby project for me. It's probably never going to be a full time job and I guess the main reason for that is I don't know if I will ever be comfortable charging premium prices for my services and sales because it'll always be fan merchandise that I make...and my life direction is more directed towards KitchensofMay.

I do say that now...but if I get into WAAPA and opportunities open up for me in the future then that goal may change but for now...I'm going to loosely set it as this. And we'll see what direction I end up going in. There are lots of opportunities :3 I can't wait to see what it ends up as.

For now I'm glad that I have quite a lot of people supporting me on this journey and willing to be a part of my projects. And I hope that you all support me from now on.

And I end this post with a companion cube wall.

Companion Cube Update!

I've got some good news in that I'm going to be on time for the convention! That's always a good thing to hear. :) And some images to be presented to people. In regards to companion cubes, I'm going to have five of them for sale at the convention for $35.00 each. There's going to be 3 of the normal coloured ones, one of them in gingerbread and one of them as raver. You'll see what I mean when the pictures come up later on in this entry. For now though, this is what it looks like when you have three cubes cut out and ready to be assembled.

If I recall correctly, when I told my friend how many pieces there were to one cube...there was 138 so all together in this pile there were 414 pieces. :) More pieces that I have cut out in one go for any project I have worked on before.

In regards to labour, I should probably be charging more than that because the edgings are all hand sewn on but that's really more because I prefer the look of the cube this way. There are ways to make it entirely by machine which would be much faster but I'm not really complaining. It's a job that I can do while watching drama so I'm not really counting the hours for this project. If I had time I would have loved to have made more cubes but this was really a last minute kind of idea I had for the convention.

These are the individual pieces that I used to shape out the edgings and such for the cube. I won't be uploading my pattern pieces up but if you look carefully at it you should be able to see and draw out your own if you really want to make your own cube.

Now here we go with the pieces that went into the raver cube. As you can see, the grey is still the same but the actual box part of the cube is a much darker charcoal colour (well...that's what the colour's called...charcoal) and the pink is much more fluro which is how this cube got dubbed the raver cube. 

A little more assembly required. The top image was me beginning the process of it being put together and the bottom image is one (half) completed side. The cube doesn't actually get more completed until it's sewn together and I start sewing all the edge parts on by hand.

And without further ado. Completed cubes!

OH wait...sorry. You wanted a size comparison? Well I just grabbed the closest thing I had at the time and took another image.

I'll make another post when the normal coloured cubes are done.