"INK" messenger Bag Concept

I've spent quite some time bouncing ideas around my brain for like 2-3 messenger bags, each filling specific niches that your average on the market Messenger bag don't work so well for.

Thus, I present the first of said bag designs:

 The "INK" bag is rather large and designed specifically for the storage and easy transport of Ink/Wash Supplies, and up to mid-size drawing pads/canvas boards/watercolor blocks. That's the reason for the large size, the interior has only the single large pocket currently in mind, with maybe a single divider if anything. That's also because of the high number of pockets on the inside front.

I'm hoping to actually sit down and try to prototype this out this week, I just need to go to an REI to pick up the larger width webbing and strap adjusters/mounts (because very few Jo-Ann's actually carry 2in Webbing n such, and it should be cheaper at REI anyway) I already have the fabric that I'll be using for the prototype and hopefully the final version as well, which is this tough Vinyl/Canvas material I found of all places, at Wall Mart. The Water bottle pouch will most likely be made from either spandex or neoprene, I have both handy. Either way, I'm stoked.

I should not that this design comes with both kinds of ink I work with in mind. See, I either use India ink and Windsor-Newton colored drawing inks and do wash and nib based work, or I use Graffiti Mops and Chemical or Alcohol-based inks like Witches Brew and Oink Ink although, I'm usually using them to draw rather than do typical Graffiti-styled art.

-Mad Artisan

Ok, I know I had something to post about...what was it?

Seriously I know that earlier today I hopped on this blog with a purpose.

But I've completely forgot it.

Hrumm...

Ponder ponder


Ah Yes!

Website Building!

I'm finally sitting down and setting up my many websites. I was gonna talk about them more, but I'll save that for when they're up or something. This was a fairly useless blog post but whatever.

-MadArtisan

Doin' that VooDoo that I do.

so yeah, if you hadn't noticed, this is a rather prolific December for me, I cranked out this little guy about 50% on the ride up to my grandparent's house for my Family Christmas gathering. he was completely assembled before I hit the hay. Finishing touches like stuffing and all the external stiches were done this morning.

^So here's what he looked like around 10 last night

And here's how it looks now, finished:

I'm Pleased. I look forward to making a bunch more of these, they come together pretty fast, and look rad, I should be able to sell them a little cheaper than my usual fare too, which means more options for people who wanna get something from my etsy store. *note to self...actually post things to said etsy store*

Also... ITS CHRISTMAS EVE! Holy Cow!

Seriously Its amazing how fast December's gone by. I guess it was helped along by the fact that I've done a pretty good job of keeping myself busy even with this being a relatively slow commission season.

Merry Christmas y'all!

-MadArtisan

I have built a Rhinoceros and am ready to do some voodoo

I've nicknamed it crash:

You may notice that his noggin doesn't match the one from last week's liveblog, well that's because it isn't, i screwed up the eyes on that one and had to make a new one, fortunately I had enough fabric to do so, also it let me make a better, more accurate representation of a Rhino's horn.

In additional plush news, I have besides my Cavalcade of Chunks that are in progress, I have inspiration for a new series of Plushies. Like I'd mentioned last week, Princess and the Frog was excellent, and my favorite character was Dr. Facilier.

A few of my friends have brought to my attention that the Voodoo dolls in the film (which during the friends on the other side song Dance/Play drums, and are very bright colors) reminded them of my plushies. Well, that quickly inspired me to design up A Voodoo series. Yes, I'll be making some psychedelically wacky Voodoo dolls soon. Naturally, they'll still be in my style, but a lot more loose in design; exposed stitches and mismatched color limbs and all that jazz. Now, from a technical standpoint I won't be sewing any less cleanly, I'll just add aesthetic "stitches" over seams n' such using some needlework heavy thread and the like. which I picked a little up during my last trip to Michale's:

Is it sad that every time I think of the word Voodoo, I hear the opening lines of David Bowie's "Magic Dance" from Labyrinth?  

You remind me of the Babe

What babe?

The Babe with the power

what Power

The of Voodoo

Who do?

You do

Do what?

Remind me of the babe...

I am such a dork.

Right, so that about covers that. I still need to finish updating my websites and start uploading crap to Deviant Art, my DA page is really behind on things... sigh.

On a lighter note, I'm doing family Christmas with the bulk of my family today. And Family, delicious food, and presents are always a good way to take one's mind off lackluster performances.

-Mad Artisan

Yeah, so I completely dodged the Jury Duty Bullet. XD

called in tonight, as instructed, Boom. "you do not need to report, you have served for the year"

Today was a good day.

Also Today's trip to the San Diego Wild Animal Park was exceptional, nuff said. I'll be uploading pics from that and my Fall Quarter Sculpture Exhibition tomorrow.

In other news, I just bought the coolest belt evar:

-MadArtisan

Plushwatch 2009 (Liveblog Wed Dec 16)

10:37 A.M. Gonna take another shot at this glorious Livebloging thing again and well, I guess I should kick this off with an update of plushies I've yet to post on here but finished before today so let's go:

Turtlebug:

From the start the Turtlebug was a challenge: check out the shell itself:

Here's the fist of many penguins I've been working on:

Next I have a more nonsensical Critter ... its unnamed for now:

 

12:27 PM taking a break to eat some lunch... I'm nearly finished with a hand-stitched Mutant Penguin, a commission gig, same colors as the wee penguin I posted above. Here's concept art I did for it a couple months ago, back when the commissioner first asked about it... His payment is "on its way" unfortunately its not here yet.

1:19 PM Mutant Penguin is done XD

 

2:57 PM: Been Cutting out patterns to make a few more Pyramidsaurs Akin to the Muhwunk Brothers I made a few years ago :

 

The next step is to do the spike ridges for them, and pick out socks to make limbs/mouths. along with all this I have another penguin to finish putting together. It uses a very different color palette than the other two. Consequently, all this cutting, stitching and the like is starting to make my wrist hurt oh well, its worth it in the long run. Also, my mother has commissioned a Rhinoceros in the style of the Toe-Sock Lion I made last month, I'll post progress pics soon.

4:23 PM Parts Measured and Cut for  most of the Pyramidsaurs, and I'm getting the Rhinoceros ready too, just about time to go to town on my Sewing machine. Of course, I have made plans for tomorrow that involve a trip to the San Diego Wild Animal Park, and I forgot that said plans involve me being picked up the the friend I'm going with. Hence, I may put my plushing operations to a stop early tonight, as I have to have this place a little cleaner when she comes by.

6:17 PM The Rhino is ready to be put together, as is the last penguin and the 5 new Pyramidsaurs, which means I'm gonna have  plenty of plushies to finish off in the next day or so. If I finish any more of them tonight, expect an additional update.

8:22 PM pouring in Stuffing Pellets into my final penguin, then i kick off Sewing together the Rhino. I've concluded my wrist pains originate from my some 3+ hours of intense ping-pong I played with my buddy Tony more than the sewing today.

9:05 PM Ok, I was on Fire today,  second penguin done. That puts me at two completed plush and 6 prepared for today. That, I must say, is schweet.

9:19 PM Already started in on the Rhino, hopefully will have the head finished before I go to bed tonight if I do, I'll post another pic.

10:17 Got Caught up watching TV while I worked so went a little slow but here's the Rhino's head

 

All in All I think this was a pretty successful day o plushcrafting. nearly 12 solid hours of creative production ain't to shabby to get out of one day, time to call it a night.

-MadArtisan

Quarter's over, Jury Duty failure, and Princess and The Frog was excellent

Hey there everyone out there on the Timmy...I mean Internet. I can has a lot of stuff to post updates about. many new plushies on the table, Sculptures from two classes and a video assignment n such. Consequently, I've discovered that I have lot more time to do so now, considering the cavalcade of fail that has been the Riverside County Court System's attempt to give me Jury Service this week. See, my summons came up around October, right smack in the middle of classes. Naturally I postponed it to my first week of vacation. Well along with my card telling me that I'd need to call in over the weekend before to find out when/if I'd be needed. The system told me to call again on Monday, I did...same thing call in on Tuesday. According to the call yesterday, because today is the third Wednesday of the month, no one can serve... then it said call Thursday. So yeah. I've spent this entire week wondering if I'll have to go in at all... with the inability to make my plans to do anything other than "by the day" which is no fun. On an upside, I've had a decent amount of time to work on plush stuff, which is always a good thing.

Now, I doubt I'll be doing all that updating on this single blog post Thus I'll post my pics from Sculpture sometime later this week, and I'll be livebloggin my plush progress in another post today, I'm pulling out the sewing machine and going to town on monstercrafting.

In other news, I saw Disney's new 2d Animated marvel The Princess and The Frog, and I thoroughly Enjoyed it. I look forward to seeing it again. I won't go in to much detail, but the long and short of it is this: it was well made, the Villain is AWESOME, songs were fun and mostly memorable, and it kinda has a bit of pixar's fingerprints on it, when I say that I mean in terms of sense of humor/visual gags more than anything else. A good example of this is at the end of the Musical sequence for the song "almost there" watch for it.

Like I was saying The Villain Doctor Facilier AKA The Shadow Man is Awesome. A lot of that is owed to the voice acting of Keith David who is perfect in the role. What's fun about the character is that while manipulative and scheming, its rather clear that he in fact fears his "friends" on the other side, driven by desperation and self preservation perhaps more than he is by greed, which for the slightest moment, makes him a sympathetic character. Also his song is really really cool.  Disney Posted this rad video about him on their animation page on Facebook, check it out. 

Anywho, I'll be live Plushbloggin Today. So Stay Tuned folks.

-MadArtisan

Wooo... school's almost over...

Almost.

Tomorrow, I turn in my Final Videos for Video Installation and then I'm done with my winter quarter.

Oy...

can't wait to be done with this quarter, and then I can get back to work on plushies. I have a few new ones, made them over the weekend ...no pictures to share yet though. I will soon. Currently I'm sewing some while I wait for my turn to work on our video again. the Final is a group project. Thus, all I can do it sit here.

Oh well, at least I have my sewing supplies with me right. so I can kill this time reasonably well.

The great end-of-November Monster-Fest! (Saturday Nov 28 2009 liveblog)

10:46 AM hey y'all tis a day I've been waiting for, one where I can go nuts on the monster making. Monster's Inc is in the Dvd Player (still can't afford the new Blu-Ray one... sigh) Dinosaur Bandanna is on,  got my power sweats, and rawkin my Nonsense monster shoes. On my list today are several plushies and coloring a set of Ceramic monster faces I made for a sculpture class.

11:12 AM Getting ready to go outside and do a Test Dyeing of one of the Ceramic pieces, I'm trying out using Rit Dye to color Bisque fired Pieces, should give me Bold colors and a matte finish.

12:17 PM Dyeing the Ceramics is go!  here's some pics I snapped of them:

One of the color batches is lighter than I wanted, and not qute orange enough, so I'm off to buy more dye... WOOOSH!

2:05 PM I've returned from Michael's and already thrown down the additional dye for the ones that needed another soak. I snapped some pics of the finished ones:

Also, I guess I should explain why I haven't posted any Plush Updates yet, well you see... My sewing Desk looks like This:

aaaand thus my Sewing machine is living on the floor till I clean it

2:36 PM WHEW.... that was close, its been overcast all day, and well I just Barely rescued everything from the rain that just kicked up. I literally looked out my window...said "rain... RAIN!" and ran out the door just saying "RAIN RAIN RAIN!" ... I'm crazy. Consequently, this most definitely puts me inside for the rest of today... its sewing time.

5:02 PM Still cleaning up, and preparing a number of things to run through the sewing machine in one go, thing is, at the same time I'm also preparing for what could be another All-day video shoot tomorrow, so... well so much for getting a tonne of plush done today...although there is plenty of time so who knows?

9:42 PM ok, so I totally Failed on getting much plush work done, did some hand stitching, that's about it, mah sewing machine is a prop for this video shoot I have tomorrow, and I realized I had to pack it back up. ... Also, cleaning ... is still going. sigh.