The Crafty Red Rabbit

After making the mandrake sculpture for Halloween, my mom asked if I would show her how to work with clay. I went a step further and suggested that we do so as another activity with Caleb. Looking back, there are things I would have done differently. One, I would have picked something specific for us to make. Leaving it open made it hard for my mom to decide what to do and Caleb's first choice was to build a snowman. Thankfully, it was an easy thing to make, though rather out of season. Two, I would have picked a less ambitious subject matter for my piece. I originally thought to make a sculpture of Mater from Cars, being one of Caleb's favorite characters. But once I started, I realized that I needed to start with a foam base like I did with with the mandrake in order to make a statute of sufficient size to work in details, otherwise I wouldn't have enough clay to work with. And third, we should have had more colors of clay. My initial idea was to make the sculptures...

Having newly acquired the skill of pyromancy, er, I mean pyrography, I wanted to apply it to a wedding shower present for a friend of mine. Nicole has always been encouraging of my crafting projects. And her husband to be is a graphic designer and artist who appreciates anything handmade. So I hit up a couple of discount home goods stores and went searching for interesting pieces of wood to burn. I found some more sets of wooden cooking utensils (much like the ones I had decorated for Danielle) and several very pretty cutting boards. I picked a paddle shaped one and went to work sketching out a design. I drew their initials and the year in the center of the board and then some roses. Since I wanted to add something that would represent both of them, I did some searches for some images that represent Puerto Rico, flowers, fruit, and eventually came across the Coqui... an adorable species of tree frog. It had a tiny body, over-sized head, round little toys and huge expressive eyes. I...