Leah's Stuff Cute Month Awards Ceremony!

** Birds fly in, hang the drapery for the stage. Hummingbirds and bunnies set up the sound system. To open the show, a giant cupcake will lower from the top of the stage, and then I'll burst out of it! The audience (stuffed & live animals) bursts into applause. **

Cutest Cupcakes (pictured left) goes to Michelle's Hedgehog Cupcakes!

Cutest Design Studio (Responsible for the Cutest Olympic Mascots) goes to Meomi!



Cutest Video Featuring Stuffed Animal Playing Instruments (pictured left) goes to The Boy Least Likely to for their video "Be Gentle With Me"!

Cutest Manga goes to Yotsuba!

Cutest Flickr Group w/o Cute in the Title goes to The Secret Life of Toys!

That's all we've got for this month's awards! Join me in August for Incredibly Useful month!

If you have any cute awards you'd like to ceremonially mention, go right ahead in the comments!

Cute Month - Some Cute Stuff

Djonesgirlz Totoro Needlebook

Whenever I want to work on a project, I spend some time on flickr looking at other people's to get inspired. Sometimes it's intimidating. I need to make a needlebook so I was searching for some online and found this ridiculously cute Totoro one! And look at that sheep! Oh dear.

For the rest of you, if you're ever in need of just general cute browsing on flickr, there's a group for you! It is called (and I quote):
the CUTE THINGS EVERYTHING CUTE!! flickr pool. There are so many cute things on here! SO MANY! SO MUCH CAPITALIZATION! AND EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!!

Besides cuteoverload.com, flickr, and icanhazcheezburger, is there anywhere else online to go for super cute OMG?

Cute Animal Week: AstroCat Completed!

AstroCat Complete!

Yay! Let's go to space! The cuteness is a pretty good payoff since I spent a lot longer than intended working on this (because of sewing machine hassles).


Owly!

For those of you who don't know, they debuted the Owly animated short at Comic-Con this week!

So far, it hasn't been leaked onto YouTube yet, but I'm sure we'll eventually get to see it! More info over at Owly creator, Andy Runton's blog

Cute Animal Week: There was Another Trouble!

My Nemesis

So, I know I keep taunting you with this "astrocat" business, but it's an unintentional tease! Yesterday, I spent three hours taking apart my sewing machine attempting to equalize the tension between the upper and lower thread. I was getting what people term "birdnesting" or "rat's nests".

It turns out the reason the upper thread tension wasn't working was because if you thread the machine when the presser foot is down the upper thread tension just won't work. This is not mentioned anywhere in the manual, but fortunately, the internet provided.

I did some maintenance while I was in there, and I won't even getting into the laughably unintelligible directions in the manual for where to oil.

THIS IS HAPPENING

In happier Leah Riley & Animal News - I gave Jason (the writer over at Indie Squid Kid and personal pal) my mixed media piece "Three Hearts Beat as One" for his birthday, and he made a whole post about it! Totally Airwolf!

Cute Animals: I'm having Troubles

Money Eating Trow

Sometimes, when I try to make cute things, they come out weird. Like that! I was just trying to use up some scrap fabric and voila! Some sort of money eating troll thing! Hooray!

Seriously, I'm going to concentrate on this cute thing and get back to you tomorrow.

In the meantime, you should click here and see a baby bear and baby lion hilarious interacting (from Korean tv). Thanks to Will for that link!

Cute or Weird

Platypenguin Outside Enjoying the Flowers


I attempted to make a stuffed animal from this sketch of mine. I'm not entirely sure how successful I was in terms of resemblance, or cuteness, but I like him anyway.

He's just a prototype, so he's mostly made from scraps (old sheets, a button that fell off of some pants). He really likes flowers, though. Poking his beak in them all the time, like he's a hummingbird instead of a platypenguin.


Tune back Tuesday or Wednesday for a Real Life AstroCat
(Well, real plush.)

Cute Month, Wonderland Week!

Steampunk Alice Design, Front

All this week I'll be making a Steampunk Alice costume - which means all the posts are going to be Alice in Wonderland related. Of course, it could have been a normal Alice costume, but what fun is it if I can't mix some of my favorite genres, like steampunk, Alice in Wonderland, and lolita, all into one convenient costume?

I've always preferred the idea of a gothic Alice, more with a spade theme than the hearts or diamonds, so I've also folded that into the idea. I used to call this gothic spade-sprinkled Alice "Black Alyss" (a sort of reference to Frank Beddor's Looking Glass Wars) but I thought that might be a bit confusing (or silly?)

This shouldn't be too hard, since I only need to work on the apron, skirt, and various accessories, as I plan to wear a blouse and vest I already have for the top. Here you can see how I break down costumes when I need to put them together - by color. This is especially helpful when I'm making pieces, as I can see at a glance how much material I'll need.

The steampunk lolita skirt I made a few weeks ago was the prototype for working on this, so I have at least one under my belt before I started here.

On the other hand, I've never made an apron from scratch, and I'm planning to use some unorthodox transfer methods to get the spade designs on the apron, so we'll see how that turns out. I'm crossing my fingers that I avoid a debacle.