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Posted on December 19, 2015November 15, 2020 by Elizabeth Ruffing

Breather day

First of all, thank you, everyone who has been adopting Hug Me Slugs. I have been receiving such nice feedback and emails and photos. It is all much appreciated. You guys make my day every time I hear from you.

I had to hurry to print up some extra thank you cards for my orders.

The Post Office recommended Monday as the last shipping day for Priority Mail to arrive by Christmas, within the US. If anyone wants to place an order over the weekend, I will be happy to send it out on Monday. I’m not 100% sure they will make their deadline, but they seem to be doing well.

I had some weird health issues the past couple of weeks, but I’ve been holding steady, getting all my packages out on time. I was already getting rundown. I thought I needed to catch up on some sleep and eat better. I tried that. Then I got a fever and my lymph nodes under my arms grew to the size of grapes. They hurt. The fever is gone now and my lymph nodes are down to the size of peas. I still think I need some rest. I’ll have to get myself into the doctor near the beginning of the new year.

We scrambled to arrange some health insurance for me, by the deadline on the 15th. It took some doing, but I think I can swing it for about $200 a month. That is still better than the $780 a month quote I found a few years back. I do wish they would just extend the graduated subsidy to everyone who needs it, and not make arbitrary cutoff points, to leave anything up to the individual states. It makes no sense for some taxpayers to pay more if they make less, or to suddenly get no discount at all, after paying all year for insurance they might not otherwise afford, if they fail to meet a certain income dollar amount at the year’s end. That is hard on self-employed people whose income fluctuates. But I will try to make more, not less, once I recuperate.

Oliver has been keeping a careful eye on me, demonstrating how to rest properly.

He’s very good at it.

He likes to camp out under my work table, when he is done running. I thought he needed more exercise and so I made him a quickie obstacle course, out of a box lid, some cardboard boxes with holes in either end, and a cardboard tube.

It quickly turned into a kitty and bunny obstacle course.

Some of the obstacles were harder to pass through than others.

Everyone had fun for a while, and then they all went back to resting.

I had my birthday this week. Mom made me a cherry cheesecake, which we are still eating. It is very good.

I received beautiful birthday sneakers. Now I can run through Cosmos flowers and walk in the clouds. When my mom asked me what I would like for my birthday, my first response was that I would like a new toilet. No one was able to do the lifting on that, but these are much prettier.

Thank you, Mom and Dad. Thank you J.B. too, for the birthday video. I will be sure to watch it once I am done running around. I haven’t started the running yet, but I am working on it.

As a special birthday treat, I got to go the the Department of Motor Vehicles to renew my driver’s license. I meant to go in earlier, but wasn’t feeling well enough. I insisted on reading the whole driver’s handbook before we went, even though my mom told me I only needed to know the road signs and pass an eye test. Poor Mom. She endured much carrying on on my part. We were out a couple of hours, while she was a captive to my ranting. I had myself forgetting everything, having a surprise driving test, where I had to parallel park fifty-two times in a row, which would all somehow lead to my imminent death. In actuality, the last time I parallel parked, I did it perfectly. I don’t know why I get that way. It is my nature.

I was called up just before closing time, and rattled off the answers so quickly, I got ahead of my questioner. I realized at one point I was several answers ahead, and she had stopped asking me questions. So, I said the numbers and the answers. When I stepped away, my mom was laughing at me. I didn’t know anyone could hear me. She said the guy behind her said, “Wow.” I passed my eye test too.

There was a small holdup in getting my custom-printed eyeball fabric from Fabric on Demand, but guess what? The pupils are black! Hooray. These should work for me. I haven’t had a chance to test them out yet, but I will. I think I need to make the whites of the eyes bigger. This could lead to some custom-printed novelty toys, and should help me make more of my characters. I’ll see how it goes…when I’m done resting, which I am obviously not doing. I was up until 3:30am last night, which didn’t help. I was happy I had a “no-obligation Saturday” ahead, but I was still wound up.

Another kitty showed up here, a big tabby-and-white cat. I think he is abandoned. Santana’s mom made up a flyer but no one claimed him. She’s going to make an appointment to have him vetted. My kitty friends next door have been inside for the most part. Three of them came to visit once, for pets, and Scooter popped over a couple of extra times to say hi. Fish is missing though. I am worried about him and hope he is okay.

Posted on December 12, 2015December 29, 2015 by Elizabeth Ruffing

Aerial, miniature angel Siamese cat art doll, handmade original, one-of-a-kind kitten by artist Max Bailey

Aerial is a handmade miniature original, one-of-a-kind cat art doll, hand painted and hand sculpted in paperclay by artist Max Bailey.

Aerial is a Siamese angel kitten who is always poised and ready for takeoff.

Aerial is an expert flight instructor for all the little kitten angels who need her help. Some have not yet learned to get off the ground and some need coaching on the finer points, like how to catch the wind under their wings, or how to swoop and swirl, or how to land gracefully.

Aerial patiently teaches her pupils to have courage, but most of all to believe in themselves. She can transform a trembling little angel into a happy and confident flier. Aerial loves her job.

Aerial’s robe is the color of the sky on a sunny day.

Aerial is a one-of-a-kind work of art, and is meant for display only. She was sculpted from paperclay in multiple stages, to allow for drying and detailing.

Aerial was painted under a magnifying light, with tiny brushes, one hair at a time. She is signed and sealed with matte varnish for protection and preservation, and comes with a certificate of authenticity.

Aerial is 1:12 scale. (One inch equals one foot.) She is 2 inches tall.

Update: Aerial has been adopted. Thank you!

Aerial’s friend is Genevieve the tabby Maine Coon angel kitten.

Posted on December 3, 2015December 29, 2015 by Elizabeth Ruffing — 3 Comments

Genevieve, miniature angel tabby Maine Coon cat art doll, handmade original, one-of-a-kind kitten by artist Max Bailey

Genevieve is a handmade miniature original, one-of-a-kind cat art doll, hand painted and hand sculpted in paperclay by artist Max Bailey.

Genevieve is a tabby Maine Coon angel kitten with a flair for color.

It is her responsibility to select the color of each angel kitten’s robe.

As she is very democratic, she first asks each angel what his or her favorite color is. She wants to make absolutely sure they are pleased with her selection.

Genevieve has to wait for the rain to stop and the sun to come out before she can look for a rainbow.

She then plucks little swatches of color from the rainbow, and considers each very carefully before she picks exactly the right hue for each angel.

Genevieve selected a soft pink for her own robe, and is very happy with it.

Genevieve is a one-of-a-kind work of art, and is meant for display only. She was sculpted from paperclay in multiple stages, to allow for drying and detailing.

Genevieve was painted under a magnifying light, with tiny brushes, one hair at a time. She is signed and sealed with matte varnish for protection and preservation, and comes with a certificate of authenticity.

Genevieve is 1:12 scale. (One inch equals one foot.) She is 2 inches tall.

Update: Genevieve has been adopted. Thank you!

Posted on November 28, 2015December 29, 2020 by Elizabeth Ruffing — 1 Comment

A teal slug and my Spoonflower eyeball experiment results

I have a new teal fleece Hug Me Slug joining my other stuffed animal plushies over our shop. I forgot to mention before that I now have the domains hugmeslug.com and hugaslug.com pointing to put website, so it will be easier to find us.

We’ve been hanging around home, avoiding the shoppers. Jojo did her own shopping and got all the cat toys, while Henrietta was occupied.

I hurried in to the vet to get Oliver Bunny his checkup and nail trim, before the traffic at the shopping centers started. He met a girl bunny named Daphne in the adoption room there.

Daphne

She liked him and nibbled on her cage to try to touch noses with him. He was hesitant. The vet asked if they made googly eyes at each other, and I told him she did, but he was nervous. He said, “Poor Daphne. She came on too strong.” Oliver finally settled back in by TV time. I told him I was sorry. He had the same reaction to the other two girl bunnies there, who were there the last time too. He doesn’t mind if big fat Santana jumps in my lap with him, or if Henrietta props her leg on his back while she gives herself a bath, but he isn’t sure about bunnies.

Santana is healing up and in a great mood. He appears to be enjoying the cats being closed up next door. Their new cat sitter showed up, which was a relief. I was afraid the same kid who didn’t take care of them before might be not taking care of them again. This one seems to be doing a good job of showing up daily.

So…I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I ordered a color map of Minky fabric from Spoonflower and then a fat quarter with my toy eyeballs printed on their Minky as well.

I’ll repeat those two photos here, above, to be more organized. As I said before, the fabric itself was nice and soft, and the colors were pretty. But I was a little worried about white showing through since the black didn’t cover the fibers all the way down to the base. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out for my eyeballs, as you can see below. The white showed through as I sewed, and the black edges of my circles got mixed with white. Everything was wobbling and mixing. (I used Photoshop to paste my eyeballs photos onto a clearer backgrounds, and so the edges shown are actually cleaner and neater than they were in reality.)

At first, I tried sewing the eyeball with no Wonder-Under paper-backed fusible stabilizer on the Minky, which made a bigger mess, since the outside edges were moving. I thought maybe if I were to stabilize the fabric, I might have better results.

It looked a lot better, sewing with the Wonder-Under, as you can see above, or at least it did with just the white.

I fused a printed eyeball onto fabric with Wonder-Under, and you can see above that the black fibers were not making an even line and the white ones weren’t either. That is just the nature of the pile being too long for my project.

Oddly, the eyeballs that were printed along the edge of the fat quarter were ovals instead of circles. The Minky is a knit and it must have stretched along the edges while going through the printer.

When I tried sewing the fused eyeballs down, I had the same problems, with the white and black getting mixed up and everything losing its shape. The eyeball above was a slightly smaller eyeball, which came out even worse. I tried to accent the white dot in the pupil with embroidery floss, but that didn’t work.

The Minky fabric might work well for a blanket, but I think anything stuffed tightly, or with smaller seams, or with top stitching would probably have white showing through the colors.

I thought I might have better luck using a lower-pile fabric and I chose Spoonflower’s Faux Suede to try. I used the stabilizer again, and it came out pretty neat. I thought I might get lucky this time.

Unfortunately again, there was a problem. Above are my eyeballs printed on Minky, with a skein of black DMC floss for comparison. You can see they are close to black.

Above are my same eyeballs printed on Faux Suede, and you can see they are not black, but charcoal gray. My black in my file was hex color #000000, black as black can be.

The colors on my colored eyeballs, below, came out well, but the blacks were still gray. By the way, if you are making a file to print, be sure to use the type of file in the resolution you need at the beginning, so color information doesn’t get thrown out when you make the file smaller. Spoonflower uses 150 dpi. I used 150 dpi (ppi) and a .png file. I tried a .jpeg and kept having issues with my hex color #’s changing after I uploaded my files. I did double check my colors by downloading my files from the site, after uploading them to the site, to make sure my colors were the same. They were.

I thought there might be a mistake and wrote to Spoonflower, but there was no mistake. They just can’t print black on some fabrics, and have trouble printing black in general. They said their fabrics that get blacker blacks are Basic Cotton Ultra, Satin, Performance Knit and Performance Pique, but none of those are fuzzy like my toy eyes, plus the edges would fray on them if I were to try to sew them on by hand with a blanket stitch, as I do.

They were nice and sent me a refund on everything after I returned the fabrics to them. I only had to cover the postage to send the fabrics back. They also sent everything out right away, which was great. It was just disappointing about the blacks. I am going to try Fabric On Demand, another custom fabric printer, who carries fleece, to see how they do. They responded right away, but so far they have taken longer to send a sample. We’ll see how it looks. I hope I can find something that works for me.

Update: Both Fabric on Demand and Spoonflower have fleece now, and the black comes out nicely on both. I coated my eyeballs with some Liquitex Fabric Medium to make sure the edges didn’t fray when I cut them out.