i have felt like i have been in a real creative slump for a long time now.
but this inspires me.

i haven't updated my bloggie in forever.

i have been to crafty bastards and back.
i have been to kentucky and back.
i have ran around town with a blue werewolf puppet talking to a formerly homeless man and running amuck in a comic store.
i am preparing for craftin outlaws august 16th.

i need to write in this more but i never do.

crafty bastards is next saturday.
i don't heve nearly what i had hoped to get done.
of course.
too many things have come up.
an important one being i am most likely getting a job again at a locally owned health bar when i get back.
i used to work there over a year ago but i quit when stacey got her job and i started staying home with jack.
i tried to hold out hope for the longest time that this stuff i do could bring in a decent amount of money.
but i am finally ready to admit defeat and i am going to work 5 days a week and try to sew when i get a chance.
i will miss the anticipation of creating new monsters.
but i will not miss the anticipation of constantly checking my email hoping for a sale.
it is just too hard to just sit around hoping that i will make money.
and with the economy going the way it is people just don't have the spare money they used to.
they don't have as much for health food i know, but they certainly don't have the money for plush. at least my plush.
at least food is something you NEED.
but i am not giving up completely.
i will still make things.
but i really don't know how much.
cause i make plush to try to sell so i can have money for my family.
i don't make it cause i want to be rich, or famous.
i just want my family to be able to have the things we need.
and i used to think that eventually things would be steady with this and maybe i wouldn't have to stress as much. but as i have gotten better and more popular people have less money. so yes lots of people leave little comments like "this is awesome! " and "i love this" and stuff on my flickr pictures and i have almost 300 people favorited me on etsy. but as much as i love all my fans, i understand that as much as they love my work they don't have the money to help me keep my family afloat.

if things work out i might be running the small health bar they already have as they are trying to open another larger location as well . i am going to find out more tomorrow.

yucko. 3 big roots

off to get my tooth pulled.
maybe i will even get to keep the yucky tooth.
if so i'll post a picture.

blerg

:-(

Tom Waits -Glitter and Boom Tour- Saturday, June 28, 2008 Columbus, OH US
Ohio Theatre @ 9:00 PM

Crafty Bastards - Saturday, June 28, 2008 Silver Spring, MD


AHHHHHHHH!!!! TOM hardly EVER tours! last time we missed it cause tickets were only being sold online and neither of us had a debit or credit card at the time. and the card holder had to bring their card and i.d. to prove ti was them. and you could only buy 2 tickets each. so we would have had to find 2 different people who both had cards, who would drive to Columbus with us and also shell out the like $60 for tickets. So no chance there.

And now the only tour date we could actually make it to is gonna be on the SAME day as Crafty Bastards. hey maybe i can get them to reschedule one of them... hmm no i doubt it lol.

and in yucky tooth news. i went to the dentist yesterday after many days of pain and found out i had an abscessed tooth. they put me on antibiotics and i am gonna go back to have it pulled on monday. so needless to say all my my orders are behind cause i have been in so much pain i can't focus on anything. my real problem is i grind my teeth at night. so much that all my teeth are flat now and my fillings are falling out. that is why i am having to have this tooth pulled. i lost the filling on it like 5 years ago and never got it fixed and just kinda forgot about it cause it is a top tooth so i can't see inside it with a mirror. but i am gonna make myself wear a mouth guard when i sleep after i get this pulled. i used to when i was younger but i just got out of the habit and kinda forgot about it and just tried to tell myself whenever i would wake up with my teeth hurting it would be okay. i only notice that i have done it at night if i am really stressed. when i am stressed apparently i really go to town on the grindin. but yeah the dental assistant told me my teeth look like old people teeth they are ground down so much. and then the dentist was like "woah he's really grindin em flat " as soon as he looked in my mouth.
so yeah stress is definitely prematurely aging me. my hair in the front is thinning pretty bad and my teeth and grindin down to nubs.

i got into crafty bastards! so i sat and cut out almost 30 roaming eyeballs of DOOM last night.
i am gonna try to really be more organized and prepared than i was last year, but neither of those things are my strong point.

so cross your fingers for me.

I REALLY need to raise money so I can make the trip to vend at this year's early Crafty Bastards in July.


Have you always wanted your own Tum Tum?
Well now you can!!!!
You descibe him and I'll draw him up!!
The one above is just an example.
And don't worry I just added the title and description I was given to this image for your sake.
It won't appear on your actual drawing.


First you choose a stage of Tum Tum
Stage 1- Coney - little cute heads with one eye and one tooth.
Stage 2- Baby Tum- have alotta poo on their minds and often wear fake moustaches
Stage 3-LIttle Tum - mostly face with cute little stripey arms and stumpy legs
Stage 4- Mr Tum Tum- the most popular and most official Tum of all!
Stage 5- Phantum- a ghostly spirit Tum
For full descriptions of each stage check out the guide up
above! Just click on it to make it bigger!!!

Then just make sure in your comment section when you tell me how you want him to look.

For only $10 you get your Tum Tum however you want.
8 1/2 inches by 5 1/2 inches plus you get a spooktacular Spooky Daddy button and any other goodies I can scrape up!

just head over to my Etsy and pick one up!!!

so this is really silly and still really rough but this was my reward for hours of camera positioning and messing with the video editor and the compression i finally get 36 seconds of sillyness.
i want to film my actual thing i am gonn asend in to crafty bastards today. i am gonna send in 2 pictures and a little song and dance video.
it has just been hard to not feel self concious doing it and finding some kind of voice for him. cause the first several times he just sounds like Greengo did in that other little test i did. they sound like beetlejuice/slingblade.
this one kinda sounds like a french strong bad.

Want a Monster for yourself? Visit www.monsterbymail.com. Original 4 x 6 monster drawings!
ONLY $25!!!!
Add $10 extra!



Watch his site soon for Skull Bunnies. I'm working on a batch for a giveaway he's doing in May.

And look for more Loomis news ...i finally finished up my first Cousin Loomis puppet. He isn;t really DONE cause there are a few things i want to tweak like i am repolacing his nose with one that is on it's way from www.crscraft.com. but he is done for the moment cause i am going to use him to do a video for my crafty bastards application.
of course i am doing it tomorrow cause the deadline is thursday.
just like i did my taxes... tonight and sent em in on tax act at 11;50. but i woo i get my $9 from the state. yeah that's all. cause i only had a w-2 for 500 somethin dollars.
plus some a t & t stock my granny bought me. (she used to work for the south central bell phone comany and over the years bought some stock here and there for all of us grand kids. but now at &1 took over bell south so now i have at & t stock.)

they say the way you do anything is the way you do everything.
and i always have to agree.

i have so many things in the works right now i wish i could talk about any of them but i just don't want to jinx anything. so soon...soon...

I am always so surprised and excited when I find out other artist like my stuff. And the more I like that artist's work the more excited i get! SO you can imagine how excited I got when I found out an amazing Australian sculptress named Lorell Lehman liked my work! I was so much more excited when she wanted to order LIef. I had originally made Lief for myself. He was the first thing i have ever sewn for myself. But after I finished him I decided that my family needing money was more important than me having a HObgoblin. I can always make another one for me. So i put him up for sale and i was so happy when she ordered him and worried about him as he fly all the way ovcer to Australia. But when he got there she made this because she is also the nicest as well as the most talented customer i have had so far
!
And then she ordered Abe too! So just a few days ago I found this on her flickr.

Like I said my fans are the coolest!!!!!!
I got a big ol batch of a WHOLE FAMILY that is just in love with their Roaming Eyeball of DOOM! SO I will tr yo post hose tomorrow!!

i had forgotten how scary this is.
i blame fern gully along with captain planet for inspiring the environmental backlash of my generation.it helped the whole idea that giving a crap about nature made you lame or a hippy. but now everything is different...but captain planet is still pretty lame

man was i suprised when i was thinking about applying to Crafty Bastards 2008 and I startred looking at the article on tips for your application and man was i suprised when i found this!

"Rather than just taking a photo of your stuff on the kitchen table (dude, I have totally done this before), create a memorable world with your photos. Spooky Daddy did this last year with his army of skull bunnies. He was also bold enough to include himself in one of the photos. This makes sense for him because HE is his brand. Smart move and awesome if you can pull it off."

oh and check this out.

The illegitimate son of Bert and Oscar the grouch
my first serious puppet currently in the works. he is just a test for Greengo
he will probably look totally different when he is done.

It is really embarrassing driving one of those little wheely carts around walmart. i hate walmart but we need food and we aren't exactly made of money and i needed materials for making a puppet. so as much as i hate to we went to walmart last night.
my foots till hurts. not all the time. but i have my good days and my bad days..and my really bad days. i know alot of it is probably from not exorcizing it enough as it has been healing. but the rehab part is sometimes the roughest part and i am just kinda dealing with this on my own.
but last night on the way to walmart my foot was hurting and by the time we got hrer is was hurting pretty bad so i had to make the chose of walking around in pain or rolling around in embarrassment. so i chose the rolling. people just look at you really funny when you are not old and not visibly hurt and are on a little cart like that. it came in handy at first cause i could put the tempting stuff in my basket away from jack in the cart stacey was pushing. but after a while the stares and the beep beep beep backing up and trying to turn around got old. and i got stuck going around a corner..um like 2 or 3 times. yeah and once was in front of the 2 dudes in the sporting goods. after the weird lookin guy asks where ping pong balls are he gets stuck on the corner of an aisle.
i need ping pong balls for puppet eyes. i learned online how to make a blinking mechanism for a puppet i need to make. i tried it out on a test head yesterday and it works great. i was able to make him be able to talk pretty well and be able to do a complete open and close at the simple movement of one finger. but i figured out a much better way to do it that involves a glove and a spring. but we forgot to go to lowes last night to get said spring cause the grocery shopping took so long and we needed to get jack home and in bed.

so here's the run down of everything i am doing now since i am typing i am going to make this a long crazy rambly post. even though i doubt too many people will actually read this all.

- the puppet i mentioned is for the super stylin Rev Tom Fury aka the masked El Diablo on the web series Hero Envy. It is going to be his new sidekick! So I am working really hard on this puppet to make him really awesome cause he is going to be appearing in a few episodes and will even be taken to conventions with them! But until Greengo makes his appearance you can catch Tom in his premiere Enter El Diablo ! (CAUTION it contains comedic violence, lots of swearing, and nerd humor, so be warned it's not suitable for all the viewers)

oh yeah and the puppet is a trade for these.
i made them small cause i know some people are still on dial up like my granny for one. hi granny. yes my granny reads my lj. doesn't your's?



just click on any of them to go the bigger one. Rev Tom is the coooolest! I wanted a caricature of me and some of my plush for my website and he is so great he just went ahead and drew one of each of the fam. "the spookies" as people call us now. I was Spooky Daddy so Stacey started using Spooky Momma of course. and everyone seems to call Jack Spooky Baby or Little Spooky. and he has no idea.

- i am working on coming up with my 4 pieces for the Crammed Organisms show

I am thinking of making some puppets now. since they are having a big hoopla at each of the 4 venues the show is at. i know that sounds confusing. they are trying to throw the biggest plush show ever so they are having it at 4 different locations. each person accepted sends 4 pieces. one for each venue. and that way they have 4 big premiere events to draw people in. so i think since they are having live music and stuff that perhaps some monster puppets are in order.

- i am still trying to keep my Etsy store stocked. it is going pretty well i'd have to say. i listed my first thing ( a skull bunny of course) on Dec 31st and i have managed to sell 38 items so far. (it only says 34 on my etsy page cause one of those items was actually a set of 5 bunnies. but go visit my shop if you don't already have it up in another browser window ;-)

- other stuff i can't remember right now.

- also on a more personal note today is stacey and mine's 3 year anniversary.
yes we are april fools

-oh and today is the first International Mismatched Sock Day If you have on two different sock, take a picture and send it to the flickr group. and if you don't have on 2 different socks change and then take the picture and then send it to the flickr group and then enjoy the feeling of mismatched socks. live a little. don't be so uptight. geeze.

Why did I just get a spam email titled

from- Andrea Garcia

SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT: democrats nation nations friend hole next take DyDTVzebvDN0C9...


what the hell?

i should have posted this sooner but i figured most anyone who would read this on here would have already heard about it anyway. but just for good measure.

the deadline is March 29th so you have 3 more days to apply!

i know a few people on my friends list are already doing this. but i also encourage you artist who normaly wouldn't do this kind of thing to participate! it's not just plus. they also want illustrations and writings. i hope danielleorama is aboard as well as both members of team GOBLINKO and i think sappymoose mandy is doin it.

but HEY miss monster! and mutleyjames you should do this too!!!

and teresa of course

and anyone i didn't mention it isn't cause i don't dig your work only cause i forgot cause i'm tryin to list a buncho peoples!!!

i don't write and here and the longer i go the more i feel i need to catch up. so the less i want to write. so instead of trying to catch up read this i wrote a while back in the middle of the night. i was thinking of using it on my about page on my website. but i kinda never finished it. so i am just gonna post this cause i want someone to read it. it's more of a list than a bio but yeah. just a little insight into why i do what i do and why i do it the way i do it.



i grew up in the 80's. while many people remember the ugly clothes and even worse music, i remember the monsters.

little monsters with howie mandel
boglins
monster in my pocket
battle beasts ( even though they were more cyborg animals than monsters per say)
my pet monster
madballs
the muppets and sesame street
ghostbusters
he-man
garbagepail kids
teddy scares


i always loved count chocula the best. no lucky, no trix rabbit or tony, just give me some count chocula or even frankenberry. sadly i am too young for fruit brute or yummy mummy

creepy crawlers ( although not monsters it did encourage all us little boys to want to be mad scientists)

the ninja turtles had lots of monster characters and figures.

my dad was never around. so when he was the always wanted to buy me some new toy. a lot of the time it was just something to distract me while he slept or read the paper. he always liked monster movies so i'm not sure if he chose the toys or i was just influenced by his taste and i picked them. but i always remember having a monster in one hand and a pencil or crayon in the other. many of my earliest art memories are drawing monsters that i remember telling someone scared me but i that was just what i liked to draw. i was always the art kid. and i was always the monster kid. i remember doing my own zombie makeup on halloween when i was like 8 or 9. umm but then i also remember when i was like 6 and my mom woke up to find i had drawn zig zaggy lines on my arm with a brown marker cause i was pretending to be a werewolf and that was my "fur". yeah sorry bout that one mom!