2010 Secret Santa presents: three-cretur photodump!

Last year I overzealously plunged into not one, not two, but three secret santa gift trades. I will probably keep it to a maximum of two in the future, but I can't deny that I'm very pleased with the results. I'll make this a two-parter; today I will post photos of the presents I sent, and later (as soon as I receive the third present, or maybe sooner) I will post photos of the ones I got.

I present to you the Mr. Burns Toad (a new species discovered a couple of months ago in Colombia), an octopus, and a spheredoodle:

I do not know this creature's scientific name! O noes!

They went to different people, but they had time for friendship

More pictures after "read more":

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: