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!

HalloCrafty!

Lazy bones is back! I have let go of my daily blog habit. I now blissfully relapse! I have been crazy busy lately, running all over town, hosting playgroups, planning parties, and spending my online hours doing Mommy group stuffs, it's practically a FT job. Plus, my pregnancy has officially slowed my butt way down. 3 more weeks...

My crafting has suffered. Immensly. I have an all new list of projects, all with pressing deadlines, which is exactly when my super procrastination kicks in!

Speaking of Super... Finally with hubby home all day yesterday, I peeled that cover off my sewing machine and went to town! I spent at least 8 hrs yesterday and made all three of our Halloween costumes. Yes, I opened that well organized craft box of materials labeled "Project Superhero" and made Taylor history. Well, I think it went well anyway. All I did was make three Superhero capes and three Superhero belts. I had to, since today was wear your costumes day.

I plan on embellishing further, since we have two more dress up events. I'd like to make some arm cuffs and maybe add some lightening bolts on the front of the chest or back of the cape. All in the gold, of course. But I really cannot complain with the minimum I finished, I mean just take a look at this baby in tights!

Now with the sewing machine dusted off, I must finish making beanbags for the Mommy group Halloween Party by Tuesday, and another assembly line of skunks by next weekend for the Skunkfest. Whew! Nothing like serious procrastinating to get some fire under your butt! Feels just like college.

I'll be back tomorrow with another post, I was tagged and need to get that ball rolling. Thanks to MAB for bringing me back to my blog!

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!

Back to my Skunks!

I sat down to clock in some time with my skunks during Lincoln's forst nap, and lo and behold, the time card does not lie, I had taken 4 days off from sewing! Shock! I did go out of town for 24 hrs. and I was suffering lack of sleep for a few days, but Jeez Louise! Get back to work already!

I am now starting to make record time per skunk, I am an obsessive timer, so that is good, because I am making WAY under minimum wage. I am hoping once I move on to the next assembly line (20 next time) my speed will even out teh per hour manufacture.

More on Skunks for Skyla... My very good friend Skyla Powers is a world champion fencer, and she constantly needs to raise funds to keep going to competitions to keep her ranking. If she misses a meet, that could throw her off the team and dash her chances for the 2012 Olympics. He rtalent is there, this is all about money. She needs to go to Europe every month to compete, and guess what? The athletes also need to pay for their coach to go. She also needs her mother as an adult escort, since she is at the young age of thirteen going on fourteen.

OK OK, long story short, I will do anything I can to help this kid reach her goals. She loves it and is the best in her field. So my meager offering is of course, SKUNKS FOR SKYLA!

Sklya will have a booth at the Albino Skunk Bluegrass Festival (see photo) and I am sending all the Skunks I can make by the festival for her to sell. I am selling them for $15 and she will get $5 per skunk. I will also list them on etsy and donate $5 from each there for Skyla as well. I will surely be blogging more on this topic as the date approaches. Please feel free to comment with any succesful ideas you have all had with fundraising with your crafts or other outlets. I am making some fabric postcards for $1 that people can buy to donate as well. (Who doesn't have ONE dolla?)

That's it for today, I look forward to getting back to Skunk assemblage during nap two today!

Here is the website http://www.albinoskunk.com and a Poster for the Skunk Fest if anyone is interested in going, it is a blast you can camp all weekend, I've been going for 8 yrs. (Missing this year due to impending due date!!!) GO team Skyla! Yeah!