Help Us Have an AWESOME Wedding - Sale!

As I was crocheting flowers for the bouquet for my wedding last night, I was thinking about how wonderful all my friends have been about helping make our wedding possible.

The night before, Roger and I got to sample some delicious beer that our neighbour has been home-brewing for the event. He specifically asked us what we like in beer and then =POOF= there was an icy bottle with a stopper delivered to our porch a few weeks later. :D

Then our good friend, Loun, scheduled her vacation so that she could make us some tasty cupcakes for our guests! Pumpkin spice and Mexican Chocolate - my FAVOURITE!!

Then my friend, Katy, came over today to check out the "situation" that is our backyard. With some weedwhackers and some composting, it looks like we may be able to actually pull this thing off!! *fingers crossed*

But even with all of the extra gigs we've picked up and money we've tried to put aside, we still don't have a ton of funds to get food, lights and pay the awesome photographer (you know, Stef did my portraits last year)!

That's where you come in!! :D I've noticed that people really love getting a good deal and being part of something awesome. Well, since we don't have time to run a Kickstarter, Roger and I thought we could do a "Help Us Have an AWESOME Wedding" SALE in both of our shops! Roger hand-sculpts cute polymer clay jewelry shaped like food and you know I make geekery of all kinds!

This was a particularly good meal at Denny's

We've gone through both of our shops and marked everything down for you, so all you have to do is go in and shop your little hearts out! :D

Every sale made from now until Oct 12th will help fund our BIG DAY!!!

Roger may even make his super happy face as seen in this picture... which he normally reserves for really tasty food or when he sees adorable kitties.

You can see why I wanna marry him. :)

Thank you all so much for supporting handmade geekery for all of 2012! And for telling all your friends!!!

I'm particularly excited to be moving on with my brand in 2013, so this will be the last year that I'll be making Super Mario Amigurumi plushies.

So if you'd like to get them for holiday gifts (or even a gift to self), this would be the best time to do so! :D

Check out what we've got right now...

That's all I've got for now, dudes. I'm still a nervous bride trying to figure out paperwork and possibly giving up on the whole making-my-own-piñata deal, but really - it feels so good to know cool people like you are out there supporting us!

THANK YOU FOR BEING AWESOME!

xo - Steph

P.S. Here's a shot of the beer! It was sooooo freaking delish! :D Nevermind all the craftastic hot messes in the background....

Things I Love to Share: SHOWER ART!

I saw this at Rosalie's table at Geek Girl Con and I JUST HAD TO get it!
Glasses Are Awesome - Shower Art by Ugly Baby

About a week ago I was in Seattle, WA and stayed at my friend's house, cos they're cool like that. We agreed to help each other crash at each others' places when we were visiting our respective cities back at Craftcation. And it was marvelous!

I loved hanging at her place, filled with awesome art! In fact, while I was showering at their place, I got to see some of what they make in action.

What do they make, you ask?

SHOWER ART! - I purchased some of their awesomeness for my friend. You should, too!
Get some at UglyBaby.etsy.com!

It was so great to see some shower art (waterproof art for your shower) in its intended habitat! In fact, their entire bathroom was kind of a shrine to everything awesome.

PROOF: When I needed to go to the bathroom, Rosalie told me to put on the 3D glasses and look around. The freaking art of the walls came to life! Best experience using the restroom ever!

I only share this peeing experience with you since we're such good friends. ;D 

Image by Jessica Glein

Also Rosalie & Doug's company, Ugly Baby, was just featured on Etsy's blog under the "Quit Your Day Job" section!

Wowzers! I loved reading their ultra practical advice for leaving your 9-5 for a creative life. 

If you're a creative human looking for some perspective on being a full-time artist, read on...

I gotta say, I always love product process shots. It inspires me to be more creative... Well, I'm even more inspired by throwing-glitter-in-the-air shots, but that's besides the point!

So, MY POINT WAS: I bought some shower art! I wanted to share the shower art that I got for my friend, Katy Kristin (who also make adorable things, but more on the jewelry side). She has a baby blue themed bathroom, and we love potty humour. I just know she'll love looking at Rosalie's art in her adorably themed shower.

And to thank Rosalie for letting us hang out at her house (appropriately dubbed "Couch Island") for the weekend, I made her a little something-something to go in her HUGE collection of designer dolls in her bathroom (oh, I didn't mention that she has an amazeball collection of toys on one of her bathroom walls?! No? Well, I should have)....

It's not finished (cos I underestimated the amount of time f*ckin' cacti spikes would take to make out of felt), but here's a sneak peek at her pressie!

Rosalie had a mini collection of tokidoki items, so I made her a Bastardino!
Then I branded that bad boy on the ass!

I won't be making this fool to put up in the shop, but some of my readers have said they've wanted to see more of the items I've been working on! What do ya think?

Anywho, thank you so much to Rosalie & Doug of Ugly Baby for making amazing shower art & for the use of your couches. :) 

Bearo likes Bob-Ombs! Even in Japan! - A Toy's Travelogue

Mini Bob-Omb w/ Tanooki Mario in Japan!
Photo courtesy of bearo.com

There was a day earlier this year when I got a lovely email from Jian Shen, the curator of the awesome Bearo blog, asking me if there was a chance we could do a feature together.

He runs a blog that features designer toys (mainly vinyl, but we would make some room for plush nerdity) and I design custom toys!

Awesome sauce!

So we met at the Cherry Blossom Festival and started chatting about all kinds of toy goodness!

He even did a sweet feature which included my plushies and the whole festival experience (which was ultra awesome)! Plus, his pictures of my items are phenomenal! It's as if you could just reach out and touch them through the screen.

I mean, who else could make Thwomp look so insanely terrifying and really adorable at the same time?!

Thwomp - photo courtesy of bearo.com

Hot Pink Bob-Omb
photo courtesy of bearo.com

If you dig toys & amazing photographs of toys, take the time to meander over to Jian's new blog, Bearo! I promise you'll be amazed with how gorgeous everything is! I could spend a whole afternoon drooling over all of the eye candy!

Plus, if you've never been to Japan (like me), you can check out Mini Bob-Omb near Tokyo Tower and live vicariously through his trip through a sunny day in Tokyo while Hot Pink Bob-Omb devours French macaroons in California. :)

The trip begins here!

Thank you so much, Jian, for taking the time to feature my items - and especially for being patient for me to take the time to tell the world about your amazing photographs!

We wanna CELEBRATE! - On getting hitched at a comic convention

There's a lot of reasons why I wanna celebrate this year (and even some things that I wish I could forget), but the biggest thing I'd like to get excited about is my upcoming nuptials!

If you haven't heard the rumours that Roger and I have been spreading since the beginning of this year, we're totally getting married!!! And we're doing it at APE 2012!

I usually draw a comic on my envelope for the comic book convention application. This year, I drew an invite & shared it on the interwebs. It looks like this:

Pretty silly to put on your application envelope, right? But we're hopeful it'll happen!

Anywho, we've been trying to think about how we want our wedding to go down. All we know is the following:

• We're ultra broke so it's gotta be simple
• It's gonna be at our booth at APE an hour before the end of the first day. :)
• We want to get a taco truck for the food bit at our place, but probably won't be able to afford it
• We'll probably make a lot of enchilada casseroles, salads & punch
• We can't afford to buy tickets for everyone to get into APE to see us get married
• Someone said that's okay, since people just wanna come to support us. We hope that's true!
• We have no idea how to get married at a comic book convention or if they'll even let us do it.

With wedding planning comes a lot of money necessity and craziness, so we're foregoing that  part. I mean, I don't even have an engagement ring! Roger might make me one...

Roger makes cute polymer clay sculptures, so maybe a cupcake ring? Check out his Etsy shop, Effing Awesome!

... which has the potential to be pretty cool! :) Anywho, since the wedding about 2 months away, we have to get started on officially inviting people. If you're gonna be in San Francisco around mid October, you should stop by & party with us!

These are the kinds of faces we make at shows:

You've been warned of the zaniness! :D

I imagine that I'll be pretty excited when we can just go home with the well earned titles of "HUSBAND & WIFE!" I'm sure it'll look something like the comic version I did of it a million years ago.

The way I imagined exiting my wedding in "A Girl Can Dream, Right?" - $3 USD

My Take on Super Heroes - Spiderball & Fatman at BUS Gallery

My Super Balls - Spiderball & Fatman - for Big Umbrella Studios Gallery show

When Rick from Monkey + Seal told me that Big Umbrella Studios was going to be doing a comic book hero themed show, I practically begged him to let me be in it! After all, I am a nerd.

But not the nerd that grew up reading these comic books - I was the nerd who'd rush home after school to sit down with a bowl of cereal & watch Batman cartoons. And on the weekend, after the Batman cartoons were over, I'd watch Batman movies.

I really liked Batman. :) He's super badass.

So when I found out that Batman would be featured along with Spidey in "The Amazing Arachnid Guy & Flying Rodent Man Tribute Show" ... you know I had to give it a shot.

Fatman - Super Ball Series - by nerd JERK - $150 USD

FATMAN, as I lovingly call him, is about 7" tall and is made of soft wool blended & acrylic yarns. His cape is made of wool felt & his little accents on his face, emblem & belt are hand-cut eco felt.

Can I just say that when I saw him all together for the first time, I squealed like I was 9 again?!?! I had originally pictured him all dark, muscular and fierce, but then it struck me that's not so much my style. I'm a round human that make round toys our of soft yarn... there ain't no shame in Fatman's game.

You can check out more deets (and even BUY HIM) on Etsy. :)

Spiderball - Super Ball Series - by nerd JERK - $150 USD

SPIDERBALL was another story. Made solely of acrylic yarn & eco felt, this guy was a hell of an embroidery piece. All of Spiderball's trademark accent webbing was hand-stitched over many hours. He also stands about 7" tall and is crazy awesome.

After unsuccessfully stitching his planned out webbing no less than 5 times, I finally had to just freeball it. I was obsessed with getting it right... and I still don't think I quite got it. But for a Spiderman amigurumi whose head is only half of a ball..?!! Not so bad. It also struck me that I had to do the webbing detail work on every red surface on Spidey... which really frustrated me. In the end, though, I gotta say it was worth it.

These guys were so time consuming - and I wasn't really expecting them to be!! The snag I ran into was that I ended up redesigning the kind of Spiderman & Batman I wanted to do about 3-5 times (depending on each character, respectively) and even started crocheting Spiderman in cute muscular form, using new techniques to create joints and such.

But no matter how hard I tried, I just hated doing it that way.

From the very beginning, I giggled at the thought of them being balls. Mainly cos I like saying the word "Balls!" but also cos how rad would it be if these guys were reduced from all muscles to roly polies?!

It was exciting to try out new methods of construction that I hadn't really thought about doing before and go through the whole "This Will Never Work!" design phase again. I haven't had a chance to be able to do new designs in such a long time, especially with new techiniques. I hope with my rebranding in 2013, I'll be able to make a lot more items that challenge me in rad ways.

Thanks to Rick Kitagawa & the whole Big Umbrella Studios crew for letting me show my work in this awesome show last month!

I'll also be submitting some of my more well known pieces for Big Umbrella Studios' upcoming show, J-Pop Explosion!! The opening will be this upcoming Friday, July 13th from 7 to 11 PM.

There's a whole bunch of talented artists that'll be featured, along with food carts, a DJ & a live art battle!! I don't see how we could stay away. Lolita kawaii-ness and overall Japanese awesomeness also encouraged. :D See you there!

The Real Reason Why I Haven't Been Around - My Health

In the ER for 7 hrs at SF General makes ya take photos

Folks - it's time to get real. So, gather round & pop a squat - it's "Real Talk" time.

I've been pretty sick since mid December 2011. Without going into gruesome detail, I've been depleted of some needed nutrients and have been exhausted for it. I thought this problem would just sort itself out, so I continued to ignore it.

In fact, I decided the best way to ignore the problem was to keep myself busy... so I started taking on more work. I started setting huge goals for myself (speaking, teaching, consulting, gallery work), gathering a work force (2 interns and looking to start wholesaling with a sales rep) and get married!

Now, beloved audience: what do you think happened as a result of all of this new stress on me & my system?

I totally prevailed!... for a while. Until my body rebelled against the late nights (sometimes all nighters) and started shutting me down.

Soon I was just falling asleep while I was working. I felt weak all of the time. My hair even fell out, dudes. And as the month went on, it only got worse.

So I ignored it some more...

Oh balls...

... and it got pretty horrible.

For someone who takes great pride is working very hard, meeting as many deadlines as possible & taking care of the people around me, I sure wasn't doin' myself any favours.

Despite the pain & lethargy, I decided to keep my condition under wraps - 'cept to a couple of my homies that needed to be in the know. These homies could tell something was up. I wasn't my normal "Steph-like" self. They begged me to go to a doctor & take care of myself.

Instead, I put it off cos of anxiety. I could come up with a million reasons why I didn't need help. I was a DIY Crafter. I could fannegle my way outta some health issue.

Well, no - I couldn't. More often than not, I was so exhausted from trying to get things done & just feel normal that I ended up going to bed... for most of the day. Eventually this ended up affecting my business & personal relationships in a big way. Deadlines whooshed past, people didn't talk to me anymore (cos I was sleeping & hurting) and I just shut myself out of the world.

Something had to be done. So I went to the hospital.

After a million tests, they came up with a simple solution (which I thought of months before but was too chicken to go through with) and sent me on my way. I'm glad to say that "our" solution is working well enough to get some of the health issues under control.

I'm still tired, I'm still achey and I'm still stressed from all the deadlines about to whoosh past me next week. :(

What my face looks like when I look at my To Do List

And while, yeah, stuff isn't gonna change overnight and we don't completely know what's wrong with me yet, I took the first step to getting back to getting back to you guys... getting back to being myself.

I'm excited to get this shit under control, dudes. And I'm really stoked that I will be able to be normal for my nerd wedding (which I might need your opinion on)... but in the meantime, I've just gotta take it a day at a time.

So that's the real reason why I haven't been around: I put myself last on the "To Do List" for too long.

I'll try to be better about that, guys. It may take practise, but we'll get there.

Thanks so much for being patient while waiting for me to get back to you all. It means a lot to me that y'all still give a hoot about this nerd.

xo, Steph