The SuperTaylors!

Costumes Completed and Worn by the Whole Taylor Clan!

I have been pretty laid up lately with what I will call "pregnancy back." A lot of couch time, a lot of hot baths, a lot of diaper changes and meals served on the floor instead of lifting the kid into the highchair. I do it to myself, I know I should be slowing down, but I am very active in my Mommy group. It has come down to one hour of fun equaling two days of being laid up on the couch.

Worth it? Look at this picture of us at Boo at the Zoo and you tell me! I had Daddy do all the heavy lifting, (he even lifted my purse into and out of the stroller) I just pushed (leaned on) the stroller and followed them around. So worth it. Lincoln had so much fun and it was easy to keep track of him!

This was the final result of my backbreaking measly few hours ( oh probably around 8-10)making our Super Taylor Costumes. We decided that we were "Super Baby", "Super Beard", and "Super Pregnant."

My time has been spent mostly relaxing, but I have my bursts: the Super Costumes, about 5 Mommy events a week, (yeah, that is coming to a swift halt!) and I just this weekend for the first time, closed my etsy shop and sent all my stuff to the Albino Skunk Bluegrass Festival to be sold at the merch booth. I did pretty ok, considering the sales were slow all around due to the freezing weather. It is an outside all weekend camping event. I was also relieved that sales were on the slow side since I really let down my promise of Skunks, I was hoping to make around 40, and I only put out ten. (See previous posts about the great Polyfil Search of 2009, Skunks for Skyla, as well as many posts outlining my late pregnancy laziness) As of my last cell convo with my salesbooth helper, I sold about five skunks, nine robots, three stars, and a few postcards. I can certainly live with that, and since I didn't provide that many skunks, I am going ahead and donating 30% across the top from all sales to my fencing friend Skyla.

So, crafting has been slow but steady. I made a sale on etsy this week right before I sent off my stuff for the weekend, and after finishing the costumes, I got around to making beanbags for our Mommy group Halloween party. Those turned out very cute, I just finished them right before this post.

Allright, enough of this upright position, I am going back to my couch! Have a very Happy Halloween!

Yes, I name my crafts

When I am creating a robot or a star or a skunk, even in an assembly line they have their own personality, their own life. The fabrics may seem random, but I feel each piece tells me which ones they want, like a child dressing themselves. I use a pattern I made from paper grocery bags, but the tracing and seam allowance takes on it's own path as well, its as if it were a loose interpretation of the pattern.

Once I get them dressed, it's all about the face. Sewing on the eyes particularly really adds that breath of life, and it is my favorite step. I always freehand the eyes and only cut them one set at a time. This is a slow step, it only takes a sec to sew them on, but this is where I take a moment to appreciate each one like a little newborn I'm going to send out to a loving family. I know, Cheeze Louise, but I'm extra sappy when I'm pregnant.

So the names, where do they come from?

With the Robots, I initially had 60 of them, so as I took pictures of them I stuck little dot tags on them A-Z, AA-whatever, and then named the photos accordingly. I have a book of Sci Fi Baby Names that I recieved from my sister in law when I was pregnant with my first, and I just picked them out alphabetically. They all came from movies or books or tv series, and had a description of the character. I tried to choose ones that fit. Some were boys, some were girls, some were ambiguous and recieved names accordingly. The ones that got into the double letters got double names, with a hyphen, and that gave me a little creative license to mix and match. My favorite was Olivia-Wan.

So then were the stars, and those I chose just by the way they looked, mostly their lips, or the way they held their "arms" or their eye shape. Their faces made it easy. They were like naming your stuffed animals as a kid.

The Skunks took a more interesting and personal twist. Yes, these are the Skunks for Skyla. They are all Albino Skunks in reference of the Albino Skunk Bluegrass Festival, http://www.skunkfest.com/ , and are made for the ASBF founders' grandaughter and Olympic hopeful Skyla Powers http://skylasjourney.blogspot.com/ (competing in Poland this week!) I donate a portion from each skunk directly to her.

The Skunks are all made from canvas, so I named them for their distinctive stripes. I used the same three giant storage boxes of scrap fabrics and goodwill clothes (ALL WASHED!!!) that I used for the pieces of the robots. But each piece of fabric has a unique history of its aquisition. There are the plaids from flannel shirts I used to make myself a modern grunge skirt for my bands cd release party last year. Those fabrics gave birth to Kurt and Eddie. Yeah. They do smell a little like Teen Spirit. (Which is great for a Skunk)

There are the fabrics I recieved from my mother in law, Some hers, Some quilting fabric from her mother. They birthed the two lovely skunks Judy and Blanche, respectively.

There is Wilmington, from a fabric I bought to make pillows when I first graduated college and moved to the beach, I thought it looked sandy. So you see the trend.

Well, above I included a few pics, see if you can guess the skunk with the fabric described. I tried to get some of the robots with their nametag visible for your enjoyment as well.

Thanks for indulging me with the read, naming my crafts really gives you that extra ingredient, listed in my shop item materials as "love." (Yeah yeah, Sap)

Feel free to click to the right on my etsy store to go spy on the items listed, and look at their names, (no purchase necessary, you can peek away, I'll never know it was you!) Feel free to post a comment here or convo me on etsy if you want to know the history behind any of the specific names. Now, if I can only choose a name for this baby that is going to come out of me in 8 weeks, I'll really have something to blog about!

New Shirt on etsy for the super nerdy baby!

first up, for those who have been following the Skunks for Skyla saga, here is a link to her new blog. GO SKYLA! It was also her bithday yesterday, so a very happy 14 to her!

http://skylasjourney.blogspot.com/

Now back to me! :) I FINALLY got my camera cord in the mail, so armed with the power of a fully charged camera, I set out to redo my etsy photos to make my storefront the mostest! That consisted of doing alot of research on the Storque articles (I did just get the Storque email about this very topic, it would be a waste not to read it!) and then I really wanted to get pics of a tshirt I made so I could post it as a new item. (See photo)

We went on a family walk to get some quality shots, and as soon as I got my star model in the beautiful sunny grassy area, he walked straight up to a giant mound of red ants that swarmed him in less than a second and we ripped off his clothes and shoes. My one year old was miraculously unscathed, but somehow me and Daddy were both bitten about five times each.

I got a few shots, and look forward to another day to work on my other merch, the stars and robots desperately need some TLC, and I have some new Skunks to pic and post as well . I am a really, really crappy photographer, but I take lots of shots, so I get something!

Well, Mommy is soooo sleepy, and I pray that my little man does not awake at 3am again this morning! Good night, and dream of Skunks and robots. I certainly will.