Author: Michelle

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Halloween fun, and stabberies to come…

Hello, my dears! I know it’s been a while since I’ve put something here; mostly I’ve moved a lot of my written content to Patreon. But I did want to check in a little, and tell you what I’ve been up to.

October in particular has been pretty ambitious. On top of teaching embroidery and knitting classes for an adult community education program, I offered work for two art showings in town and got accepted for both. The first one was Gods and Monsters, and it was a wonderful show, full of incredible artists! If I had a nauseating amount of money, I’d happily have bought up the entire room, just to keep the collection together. The next show coming up is MiniARTure, and I can’t wait to show off some smaller pieces. In between classes and organizing for the shows, I kept making new things for the shop and working on a few commissions here and there. So my Halloween was full of busyness! But it was fun, rewarding busyness, and it made me really happy.

Now that Halloween is done, (sob!) I’m gearing up the shop for the holidays. Which means a handful of little Gutmonsters in there, embroideries big and small, knits and yarns to keep you warm, and paintings to delight you and fill your walls. So while the busyness isn’t going to stop anytime soon, I’m oddly okay with it.

I hope your Halloween/Samhain was incredible, and that you’re all doing well. I adore each and every one of you!

Love, your Mausi…

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Autumn? Autumn!

It’s finally starting to look like my favorite season!! And I’m thrilled to death! Mostly because this is the season that makes the most sense for all the spooky weird things I’ve been gleefully making, all year long. My Halloween decorating has already started, and now I have new bats, to go with all the other bats I have, as well as a new skull or two. And I have so many, many things to offer you all in the gift shop! Staring eyes, and strange jewelry, and interesting paintings and prints galore! Plus I’ll be making new things all the time, like this fun teapot I just finished. It was such a cutie, I think I need to make a few more in different shapes and colors, just for the fun of it. Autumn gives me unlimited inspiration, and I’m more than happy to share it all with you…

I hope you’re doing well, you’re enjoying cooler weather and that the Pumpkin Spice flows freely wherever you are…

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Wonderful company, wonderful projects…

Hello, my dears! I hope your summer is going well and you’re not boiled, flooded, sunburnt, bitten, or out of ice cream. Personally I’m doing well, and I’m busily making stuff for the autumn and winter seasons coming oh so soon. But recently I did take a wonderful week off, to spend it with some of my best friends who had come down from Canada to visit family and friends and me!

And it was delightful! And I got to see people I hadn’t seen in ages and ages! And meet new ones! Even little introverted me that I am had the very best time, and it was so hard, so very hard to wave everyone goodbye again.

But now I’m trying hard to get back onto my summer projects. I’ve got a tutorial I’m working on for my Patreon, and some knitting for the shop. I’ve got a fistful of embryonic Guardian Eyes that need sewing into their embroidery hoops. There’s jewelry to make, and stuff to learn, and paintery things to paint. And I will stuff all sorts of fun things in the shop for you kind, kind people to gawk at…

Stay out of the sun and don’t get too hot, my dearies!! And I will hunker down and make interesting things for you all until Autumn finally comes…

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The Joys of Ferriswheel Press Inks: A Review…

Hi, my dearies! I hope Springtime, now that it’s finally here, is treating you kindly. Here it’s been the delight of having greenery all around again, and fighting off the outdoor critters who want to snack on my baby plants. Ah well, it’s still so worth it. I’ve been craving some spinning with my wheel on the front porch, enjoying the breezes and hoping the neighbor’s cat comes over for a head-scritch. As Spring goes, this is a good one so far…

But I have a fun ramble to ramble about, really. Recently my husband had given me a few inks to play with, and I discovered just how very, very good Ferriswheel Press Inks are. They’re based in Canada, and they have astoundingly beautiful inks and pens to play with, whether you’re a writer, a painter, or like to do a little bit of both at the same time. The colors I got were just so luminescent, so flexible and easy to use. And they come out with new colors every season, each one more beautiful than the last. Having a few bottles of different inks to play with, in their lovely bottles, feels like the pinnacle of decadence.

The mermaid I’m showing off here was done with only one ink color; “Glistening Glass”. It was amazing to watch the shifts in color and tint, while using a pen, or a brush, or adding a bit of water, or adding a drop of ink to a wet sheet of paper to watch the colors bloom.

For even more fun, I played with “Cloak and Forest”, which is a deep green ink with a red shiny bloom, and it was so very, very satisfying for forest leaves. And it showed up so beautifully with the red cloak on my Red Riding Hood…

If you have the opportunity and don’t mind spending a little extra money, definitely get a hold of a bottle of these fine inks. They really made all the difference in my more recent drawings, and I think you’ll find them so satisfying to write or draw with!

(I’m not being compensated, by the way. They’re just that glorious. And if you’re not into painting, no worries! I’ll just keep on playing with them myself and showing you all the results.)

Ever loving, your inky fingered Maus…

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Books? Books!!

Hello, my dear friends! I’m afraid I have been a bit neglectful of this poor blog recently, which is shameful of me. Shameful! My only excuse is I’ve been a busy, busy Maus, making new things, packing them up and shipping them off. I had a nice little trip in February too, which slowed me down a bit art-wise. And I started a Patreon, under the name, “MsFledermaus Arts” where I could show off content and do the occasional tutorial. But that’s still no excuse for neglecting you all. But I do have some fun news to share here…

I’m offering a few self-published art books for sale, here in my online shop! I’ll be offering softcover and hardcover compilations of my paintings for the past few years, along with some other little treats. If they go well, I’ll try other compilations. I’m thinking hard of putting one together that’s strictly Guardian Eyes, and One that’s full of Delicate Swears. It would be a fun thing, to have a few organized books like this together; a little like those Time Life Books on Faeries, the Occult and ESP I loved so much when I was a kid. But baby steps, I think. I’m just hopeful that these little books will find happy homes.

Meanwhile, I keep staring out at my cold, wintery wasteland outside, hoping for springtime, and all the good things it will bring. And distracting myself any way I can until the snows finally *finally* melt away. I know many of you are doing the same. Stay warm, stay healthy and I’ll pop up again soon…

All the love, your Maus.

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Happy almost Valloween!

Hello, my dears! I hope the new year has been treating you kindly, and it’s not overly cold or snowy where you are. Here, we’re up to our kneecaps in the chunky white stuff, which is now dusted with a pretty, sugar-spun lacing of snowflakes, It’s lovely until you have to dig into a bit of it and hit that dirty gray January ice.

But never mind all that! It’s almost Valloween! What’s Valloween, you may ask? It’s…well, it’s Valentine’s day, only with spooky things. I’m at best kind of lukewarm about Valentine’s day, but I do like making some pretty things for it, so when I heard somebody else calling it Valloween, I decided to run with it too. So if you look closely, you’ll find some sweet valentine’s gifts in my online shop. Of course many of these gifts have things like bat wings, or a pretty little vampire gazing wistfully from her ornate frame and whatnot. I also have cards available in the prints section, of Mothman madly in love with a lamp. Why oh why does February seem to make me want to make vampires and cryptids in love? The answer? er…I’m…weird?

I also have a Patreon account now too, for more updates of art, artistic processes and all kinds of fun things. I do a tutorial a month, and ramble about art, and there’s fun merch there to decorate your lovely home. But you can also stay here with me, where the updates are free and easy, if somewhat infrequent, or add me as a friend on the dreaded Facebook, where I update on my projects daily.

I can’t wait for the warmer weather. But for now I’m happy making lovelorn vampires, odd jewelry, fun embroideries and paintings. And I’m always really glad you’re here with me…

With love, your Maus.

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Small Business Saturday!! Hurray!

Now that I’ve gotten over being completely stuffed full of turkey and cranberries, I finally have the oomph to say…thank you all. All of you kind, wonderful friends out there who have made my funny little business happen with your support. I’m grateful beyond words, and I really love this website and every treasure I put in the shop for you all to ogle. Every flossy wonder, every staring Guardian Eye, every watercolor and bit of knitting and spun up woolly madness…I love them all so much. And I’m so glad I can share that love with all of you.

And because I’ve been so beloved by you crazy people, I am full up on embroidery commissions until after the new year. But I think here and there I can knock out a few new yarns, just to give my stabbing fingers a break from all the luscious stabbery. I might sculpt a thing or two as well, because these things happen. But I’ll also take some time off to think and sketch and come up with new ideas for next year. I’m thinking of a spooky children’s book, and what that’ll need to be a thing. But we’ll see where the energy goes.

Happy soon-to-be-holidays, my dearies. And be good. I don’t want to hear any familiar wails from that sack Krampus keeps toting past my house every year…

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Yarny goodness? And a coupon? Welly well well…

Hello again, my dearie dears! I hope the beautiful October weather is everything you’ve been dreaming about all this time. I know it is for me!

Anyway, I thought I’d have some fun with something new…a coupon! A coupon for you! Yeah, you, I see you there, looking sheepish. I know I’ve been on this painting and embroidery kick for a while, but this website started out as a site for showcasing a bunch of my handspun art yarns. Recently I’ve been spinning more again, and realizing I could use a bit more space for the new yarns. And that’s when the coupon comes in!

Basically it goes like this: If you’re in the US and you purchase more than $75 worth of yarn, and type “yarn75us” at checkout, you get free Priority shipping. (And also a happy fistful of postcards, because why not?) This coupon only works once per shopper, but I’ll keep the offer going for a while.

I just hope it’ll be a little helpful, for people wanting something really pretty to play with on their needles, and it’ll help me make room for more fall and winter yarns. There’s a few knits going into the shop soonish too, which will be nice. And of course, more paintings, embroidery and amusing miscellany…

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Embroidery Versus The HoneyBadger…

I’ve been extremely lucky when it comes to sending out my embroidery to my customers. Only one embroidery hasn’t made it to it’s destination in the couple of years I’ve been doing this. (After much nagging from myself, the postal office assured me it was in Alaska, somewhere. I had originally sent it to…California. I eventually had to write it off and made a new piece for my client. I’m still salty about it.)

But recently I had sent off a couple of embroideries to a friend of mine, and a few days later had gotten some very bad news indeed. The pieces were delivered, but the postal worker, trying to be thoughtful, had put the package onto the front porch instead of the mailbox, which was quite a distance away. My friend hadn’t realized it was out there, and let her dogs outside to play. And play they did…

One dog is named the Honeybadger, because she takes what she wants. She likes sticks. A lot. And when she found a pillowy thing that fit in her mouth that felt like it had sticks in it, well that was just the best thing ever to play with. My friend found the embroideries in pieces all over the lawn. To her credit, the Honeybadger did put herself in Time Out when she realized that her mom was extremely upset with what she did. And after my friend had a chance to recover, she asked me for a new piece, because one was so damaged it was unsavable. And she also asked me for a hoop.

“The other piece, you can still see the embroidery, but it’s got a rip in it. The hoop was in splinters, but I’d like to sew a new bit of fabric onto the rip, and put it in a new hoop to give to my friend. We’ve always talked about brokenness making us more beautiful, so it really will be perfect.”

Well, how can I say no to that? Besides the fact that she’s absolutely right. So I finished a new piece to replace the one that the Honeybadger had flossed her teeth with, I painted a new hoop to replace the one that had gotten so brutally chomped, this time with a hint of purple glitter in the varnish. And I wrote out a quick set of tips for washing and repairing the embroidery, setting it in it’s hoop and sewing up the back. Mended pieces deserve extra love and attention, and while I was dismayed by what happened, I was glad to be part of making something a little more personal for a dear friend.

Sometimes it’s not the end of the world if something gets damaged. It’s amazing how much is fixable, if you want to put in the effort. Often the tricky part is being patient with yourself. That it’s okay to show that something happened, and you were able to move along with it to make something that still has the message you want to show people. And often the tricky part is getting something beautiful and irresistible past the Honeybadger…

Bad, bad Honeybadger.