Cretur Fetur gift cards and discount coupons!

I had said, on Twitter, that these guys would be available in the New Year. But I am A VERY IMPATIENT PERSON so I'm going to make them available a whole day and a half earlier! Wow, what an overachiever!

Discount coupons with every purchase!

Gift cards for your friends!

The gift cards are available here, at the Cretur Fetur Etsy store, in the Gift Cards section.

A raccoon and some tapir sketches

Even though I finished this guy a couple of weeks ago, I hadn't posted it because it was commissioned as a SECRET CHRISTMAS PRESENT and the recipient probably reads my blog on occasion. I'm pretty sure it has been delivered by now, so no surprises will be spoiled!

Procyon lotor

There are and will be more secret Christmas presents, but one has not arrived to its destination yet and two more are actually for Orthodox Christmas (Jan 7), so they will not be posted until after that date in order to not spoil anything for anyone. I really hate spoilers.

More raccoon photos and some HOT EXCLUSIVE TAPIR PLANNING:

Cretur Fetur's first invertebrate

Well, it was about time! After a million mammals and a couple of birds and amphibians, I've finally stepped into the world of arthropods. My inaugural invertebrate is a male Forficula auricularia, an earwig.

Fig. 1: F. auricularia

More pictures under "Read more":

A lot o' lotls

Yeah I'm gonna run that joke into the ground.

So, remember the axolotls-in-progress that I posted a while ago? I have finally finished them all! There are still many more to come but there's a big chance that it will get kind of repetitive after a while, so I'm just going to make this last exciting axolotl post full of color and variety, and keep subsequent axolotls to myself and my Flickr page.

Here are three varieties of axolotl:

Golden albino, melanoid, and leucistic.

These all exist, and in fact there's several more different colors of axolotl. Here is an excellent resource if you want to learn more about it.

wheeee

More pictures under the "read more":

Bye, curious hyena!

And thus, the very last of the first generation of creturs is shipped off to live with her clanmate, the littlest hyena. Goodbye, last of the yeens! Someday Cretur Fetur may get repopulated by another clan of hyenas, perhaps as soon as the metric ton of bats and axolotls are dealt with.

The last hyena watercolor I'll be doing for quite a while

There are other things in the works, too! As I work on commissions, my unruly brain keeps getting distracted with ideas. All of these ideas lately have involved things you can wear. I need to focus on commissions for now, as that is the responsible thing to do, so I can't give you many details yet... but I will soon!

A pig and a yeener

Today is an important day, because today I say goodbye to the very first thing I ever needlefelted. It's the littlest hyena, and he's going to someone who will probably appreciate him even more than I, so hooray little yeen!

Here is the companion watercolor:

And last night I finished a custom spherepig live on the internet! Thanks to everyone who accompanied me on my first livestream and watched me finish this guy:

HELLPIG

I will definitely do more livestreaming in the future, possibly in a couple of weeks. I'll be sure to let you know in advance.

And the serious hyena goes bye!

Saying farewell to Srs Yeener with this little watercolor:

What I'm working on right now

Well, I think it's gonna be a long long time til I make creturs of my own design. Commissions got me buried; am I sad? Oh, no, no no! It's a challenge, man! Got a plan: finish all these orders, then make more!

Anyway here's the very beginning of the holiday rush of custom cretur orders, and the reason why there will be no fetured creturs (and also no more commissions) until like March when I finally defeat the monster of a million orders.

Three axolotls in progress! Everybody loves a 'lotl.

And while this was happening, hyenas and pigs were also getting claimed! So here is the beginning of a hyena watercolor, which I just started about an hour ago:

It's gonna be badass because anything with hyenas in it is badass.

First craft fair + three bats! (Photo heavy post)

Last Saturday, Cretur Fetur made its first real world appearance.

I was rolling wool in my hands, not applauding myself

It was a highly instructive experience, and more fun than I expected. Most of the time I was frantically trying to finish another skull, another zombie head, and another bat – two out of three while selling other stuff ain't bad! I also gave four pumpkin needle felting classes, which are definitely something I'd like to keep doing in the future (but made me aware of my faults as a teacher, such as focusing on my own example-thing too much and not enough on the students).

Tons more photos, including some neato bats, under the fold:

Goodbye, chevrotain!

Here is the watercolor drawing on the companion Cretur Card:

And here is a very terrible picture of the mouse-deer preparing for the most epic voyage it's had in its entire existence:

Bye bye, Tragulus napu!

Greater Chevrotain - Tragulus napu

Finally finished! I'm tired and hungry so I'm just gonna dump these photos here and go have myself some shepherd's pie with grass-fed buffalo meat and watch Godfather II. OH YEAH.

 

Remember this guy?

 Yep, still working on it...

Out of town

I'm going to be away from home and away from the internet from today until Sunday. It is work-related, but I'm going to have a lot of free time to needlefelt. I'm packing a bag full of wool that will hopefully come back a bag with at least one finished cretur, maybe two, or three!

PS: Get some spherepigs, come on!

Bye, second axolotl!

So, based on my previous axolotl, I thought this would take me 3-5 days, and it did, but they were awfully hectic. No one should allow me to make time estimates ever again.

I did some improvements on the design, as usual, and I am so freaking happy with this little salamander that for the first time ever I'm actually a little sad to let him go.

Ambystoma mexicanum

Here's the watercolor card that goes with it:

S is for September and Spherepig

Spherepigs! They are great! It is their month!

What does this mean? It means you can get your very own one-of-a-kind spherepig, that you can design yourself!

These are pigs I've made before:

You can design your own custom pig by going to my Etsy shop, clicking on the Custom Spherepig item, and choosing from the following options to build your pig:

Color - Midnight blue, turquoise, bright aqua, neon green, forest green, yellow, amber, apricot, bright orange, baby pink, neon pink, strawberry red, bright red, dark red, plum purple, chestnut, chocolate brown, black, silver gray.

Size - Anywhere between an inch and a half and 3 inches in circumference.

Eyes - Large or small, solid color or over white, whatever color you like from the ones listed above, whatever distance from each other.

Extras - Legs, wings, a tail, a mohawk, a curl of hair, whatever you can think of!

Here are some examples that I just drew, of what your pig could look like:

Preview of the chevrotain

This is what I've been working on, among other things:

Just needs some legs, ears, eyes, and a tail... maybe it'll be done by next week.

As for one of those other things I'm working on, I'll post something resembling a preview sometime later this week!

Mexican free-tailed bat. Yes, again! And goodbye to it!

Like the second hoatzin, this Bat II was commissioned and thus was fated to fly away as soon as the final needle stab fell upon its fuzzy abdomen.  Like the first hoatzin, I still had the first bat, because its owner has not yet picked it up.

Also like the second hoatzin, I improved upon the second bat a little:

More pictures under the fold.

I have a tablet!!

I used to have an Intuos tablet with a serial port, which I bought way back when I thought serial ports were The In Thing. This was a horribly long time ago. The last two (or three? two and a half?) computers I've owned had no serial ports at all, and apparently tablets don't like serial-to-usb converters. So imagine my joy when a friend of my husband's just gave me his old USB port tablet!

First thing I did was draw the next cretur I'll be working on: a greater chevrotain. It was just a quick "whee I have a tablet" exercise so you may notice I just kind of copied the photo in the Wikipedia article.

So consider this a cretur preview! Chevrotain! Look forward to it, and so on!

Back from NYC

I've been away for a week, enjoying as many New York City wonders as I could possibly cram into a week. I don't think I've ever walked so much in my life, and I kind of miss it already, though my feet sure don't. The only real free time I had was at the airport, waiting for the plane that would take us to NYC. I spent it needlefelting, thinking that surely this would not be the only downtime in the trip that I could use to be productive. BUT IT WAS.

I was listening to This American Life.

Most of our time was spent in museums, and getting to museums. We ate delicious food that we often found by going "oh man I am hungry, let's find someplace to eat" in the middle of a museum-bound trek.

The first museum we visited was the Museum of Natural History.

Look at those silly knees!

I took a few photos, some of them of creturs I intend to make in the future. Click on "read more" to see them, if you'd like.

Finished - needle felted Mexican free-tailed bat (Tadarida brasiliensis)

As usual, tried some new techniques... this time, aside from some experiments in the needling process, it was sewing, for the wings. I am terrible at it, generally, but I think it worked out pretty well in this case. What do you think?

More pictures:

Inching closer

We can rebuild him. We have the technology. Better, stronger, faster.

Next work in progress: Tadarida brasiliensis

A little mouse

Here is a little mouse that I made as part of a collaboration. A friend of mine will receive it soon, and make a chainmail armor for it. And then we will have a mouse with chainmail armor!

More pictures after the cut.

Starting up starting over

Hi everyone! Hi. Hey.

I'm really sorry for the sudden disappearance. Those of you that follow me on Twitter may have had a better idea of what happened, but it was still not the full story. I moved, but that wasn't all. I also had to put the store on hiatus, legally, because the visa I was under expired on May 31st, so I couldn't work until I got my greencard. I fully expected that to take until September at least, but I was very pleasantly surprised with the San Antonio INS crowd... I got it half a month ago!

So I should have like three new creturs already, right? Well... right, I should, but, see, things happened. Dogs happened. One dog happened in from the street, a sweet, mild 5-year-old pit mix. Then as we were walking that one, another dog happened. A little 8-week old puppy, possibly a lab-terrier mix, followed us home. We were powerless to prevent these dogs from happening to us. And those of you who have had puppies know what an amazing time-sucking ability puppies have.

The other problem there was that the dogs lived in the area that we had previously designated to be my studio. All over it. You see, that area has a concrete floor off of which the inevitable puppy mess is a lot easier to clean. But this made working in the (destruction-prone, poop-smelly) studio very unappetizing, so that took up some more time while we futilely tried to teach the puppy not to poop all over the place, not to destroy everything within reach, and other normal puppylike activities. So my husband and I made a rolling gate and divided the studio to give the dogs roughly a third of it to hang out in while we are at work, and I finally got to have a real studio. Yay!

1. Cretur boxes
2. Dog fence
3. Wool chest
4. Filing cabinet full of mostly yarn and works in progress
5. Wool-soaking tubs
6. Desk, and the blindingly bright outdoors

So there, I am starting up again at last. ONWARD

Bye, springhaas!

Phew! I'm a little late on this one. I've had a pretty crazy week, and it's only gonna get crazier from here. Moving, soon, into our very own house. zomg. HERE IS A SPRINGHARE:

And now it is gone! Goodbye you little cretur!

Goodbye, quoll!

The lovely couple who won the painted dog at the Painted Dog Conservation fundraiser decided to expand their needlefelted cretur collection with a creature as Australian as they, the tiger quoll. And so, cardmaking is in order!

Dasyurus maculatus

Bye, second hoatzin!

Three days ago, a hoatzin was commissioned by someone who expressed a lot of enthusiasm for good ol' Opisthocomus hoazin. So I, equally enthusiastic, made Hoatzin 2.0 for her:

More photos:

Bye, painted dog! Have a good time down under!

The painted dog was finished this very morning, and sent to Australia immediately after. The post office guy tells me it will be there in 6-10 days, which assuages my fear that it wouldn't get there before the 20th, to be auctioned by Painted Dog Conservation on the 23rd. (go there, it's in Perth, do it)

I hope you sell for a MILLION AUSTRALIAN DOLLARS

Lots more pictures under the cut:

African Wild Dog / Painted Dog (Lycaon pictus)

I've got a ton of custom orders this month, somehow. The first and most important is being donated to an organization dedicated to the conservation of Lycaon pictus, the painted dog of Africa, which happens to be my second-favorite African carnivore right after the spotted hyena. Painted Dog Conservation Inc. is holding a fundraiser on April 23 at the Memorial Hall Exhibition Center in Perth, WA, Australia (click here for the Facebook event). If you're anywhere around Perth, I really suggest you go. I was invited by a good friend who is donating a couple of pieces herself, and she makes animal paintings that are worth a plane ticket to Perth to see. If you can't make it, though, I hope you'll consider helping the organization out all the same.

Here is a video about the trade of painted dogs, which considering that there are only about 3,000 of them left in the wild is a huge issue. This is something I wasn't aware of until fairly recently. I want to help out this organization further, so for the month of April, 20% of all my sales will be donated to Painted Dog Conservation.


Um. All I have to show in the way of pictures right now is what I have of the dog so far, which if all goes according to plan will be complete and in Australia within the next three weeks:

Finished tiger quoll!

Tiger quoll or spotted quoll, Dasyurus maculatus. March's fetured cretur!

A pig and a preview

Introducing the new model of pig, Flying Pig (which sold immediately):

An interlude of a wildly different sort

I am working on several things, that will probably be finished in the following order:

1. Tiger quoll
2. Flying pig
3. Mouse
4. African Wild Dog
5. Ground Squirrel
6. Sparrow
7. Portrait

But for the past two days, I've been working on a completely different thing. It is a birthday present for my husband, who will be 27 on Saturday, yaaaay Stevan!

I was also making him a sweater on the Ultimate Sweater Machine but the yarn I'm using is too thick and it keeps getting stuck and it resulted in this:

:'(

Bye kea!

The kea was not with me for long, which I consider a very good thing. Once I finish a cretur, I don't really do much with it until someone else buys it. I bet they get lonely. So today the kea had the good fortune in getting packed into a box and sent away to be loved, along with the obligatory cretur card.

I realize I've never really posted the cards I send, so I scanned this one in the brief window of free time that I had this morning before work:

Bye, apricot pig!

The apricot pig got claimed on Friday, so I get to use my neato handmade stamp for the first time:

Bye, pig! Have fun!

Finished kea!

YES.

  

More photos and a quoll preview after the jump:

Birth of a kea, part 2

When we last saw our kea, he was a little blob with wings but no beak or legs. Let's move on then!

Some of the photos in this post are taken by my lovely assistant Stevan, and are therefore blurry and terrible, but well-intentioned!

Make and attach the tail in the same fashion as the wings; first I made a flat shape of the darkest color, then poked feather-shaped layers of different colors on top of it. Once it was constructed, I poked it onto the kea's body, adding a bit more of the dark-colored wool to the underside to better blend it.