Tuesday, November 29, 2011

My Five-Year Craft Blogging Anniversary

My first craft post
With all the craziness of NaNoWriMo this month, I missed my five-year craft blogging anniversary on November 14th. I will have to go buy myself something made of wood (the 5th anniversary gift) to celebrate!

I counted it up and discovered that I have made 128 posts over those five years. It doesn't seem like much, but I never set out to be a high-capacity blogger. My goal with The Crafty Cattery has been to make every post useful (or at the very least, interesting) and I think I've accomplished that goal.

If you're curious, my first post was instructions for carving a pumpkin using a real photo, which I did with Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean (as you can see in the photo above).

Friday, November 18, 2011

Arrested Development, Parks and Recreation Paper Dolls by Kyle Hilton

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Who would win in a fight: Gob Bluth or Ron Swanson? (Ron, obviously!)
I thought I'd take a break from NaNoWriMo to let others like me, who enjoy paper dolls based on TV shows, about Kyle Hilton. Kyle has made several dozen free printable paper dolls from shows such as Arrested Development and Parks and Recreation. I also noticed that he has The Office paper dolls listed as "coming soon." He's an amazing artist so I can't wait to see them!

And, on a not unrelated note, if you haven't seen my Office paper dolls yet, here they are all in one place:



Saturday, November 05, 2011

National Novel Writing Month




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 It's National Novel Writing Month again, which means I won't be doing much crafting (though I do have a mystery crochet project I'll share some work-in-progress photos of soon!). You can follow my progress on my other blog, CatCarlisle.com.

One of the most fun time-wasting (but also crafty!) parts of writing is coming up with titles and mock covers - you can see this year's attempt above. Based just on the title and cover, what do you think my story is about? Post your guesses in the comments. I'm curious to see what you all think!

Tuesday, November 01, 2011

Shrek Puss In Boots Costume

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My only opportunity for dressing up this Halloween was at a friends "Trunk or Treat" event (that's where you trick or treat out of the trunk of your car). She and her husband were going as Shrek and Fiona so I decided to throw together a Puss in Boots costume. It only took me an afternoon and I think it could be easily adapted to put together a costume for a child. Here's what I did:

Hat - Purchased from a costume store. I sewed one side up and stuck in a yellow feather (you can't really see it in this picture). I also sewed on felt cat ears, though in the cartoon you don't actually see Puss' ears when he's wearing his hat.

Shirt - I got a cheap orange sweatshirt and used iron on adhesive to attach a yellow fleece patch to the chest and yellow stripes to the arms. It probably won't hold up to machine washing, but I only needed it to last for a night. The black cape was borrowed from an old costume belonging to my friend's child.

Gloves - I sewed peach "paw pads" on to some fuzzy white gloves. In the movies Puss often wears over-sized black leather gloves so those could be substituted.

Belt and Tail - The belt was my husband's, the sword was purchased from a costume store. To make the tail, I cut a long strip of the yellow fleece I used for the stripes on the shirt and used iron on adhesive to attach stripes of brown felt. I folded the fleece so the stripes were on the inside and sewed it shut, leaving one of the short ends open and rounding the other. I trimmed the edges, turned it right side out, stuffed it then sewed it to the belt.

Pants and Boots - The pants are khakis and the boots are left over from my Jack Aubrey costume.

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