Happy LOTR Valentine, Love Gollum

[UPDATE: See this as an embroidery piece here!]

Details: done by me in pencil, gold gel pen, calligraphy ink, and a normal red ink pen, as a weird mishmash of styles: Alan Lee's sketches for LOTR, and the goofy heart-as-eyes on the faces of the male Animaniacs when they say "Helllloooo nurse!" The calligraphy is done by me, but copied from the "Party Business" font.

Here is my one and only bloggy nod to Valentine's Day, a week early, in case you'd like to be prepared. Also because it's Sew Grateful Week, and even though I don't have a tutorial or pattern, I can at least offer this printable? Anyway, I'm not even going to bother with the red dress Sew Weekly challenge next week, only because I already have a fantastic red dress, and I'm getting a head start on my costume challenge. And although I love my husband so much, I still remember the angst of being single on V-Day, so I'm not into big mushy gushy parades. Instead, I drew my valentine based on this classic movie still of jubilant Gollum, reunited with his precious at last. If that's not obsessive, creepy, disturbing love*, I don't know what is.

B&W version, traced on GIMP.

Anyway, if you'd like this as a coloring page for your small human beings, download it here. Incidentally, since it's all line art, you could even use it as an embroidery pattern. Or, if you want my pencil version (with color for the hearts and ring!), download it here. And the obvious rules of decency, if you download this, don't claim it as yours, copy, reproduce, modify, or profit from this in any way. If you post it to your blog or Facebook or whatever, please credit or link back to me. Lastly, I would love to see pictures if your small human being actually uses it as a valentine for classmates!

And yes, I know, I'm a huge geek.

*For all that Gollum's err, feelings about The One Ring could hardly be termed as love, I think LOTR has such a beautiful collection of examples of various kinds of love. There's Sam's "If I can't carry the ring, I'll carry you" love for Frodo, Theoden's "I trust you to lead my people" love for Eowyn, Arwen's "I'll forsake immortality for you" love for Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli's bros forever love, Sam's love for Bill the Pony, Boromir's for his people, even implied loves like Celeborn's for his way- awesomer-than-he-is-can-see-into-your-minds-and-the-future wife Galadriel.

Geeky Star Wars and LOTR Snowflakes!

After putting up our fireplace, I decided that we needed some more season-appropriate decor to go with it...so I made some snowflakes! I still have to figure out how to hang them up, but I'm so excited to have them all cut out! I think the last time I made snowflakes was in elementary school, and I must say, these are way cooler than the ones I used to make. Because now that I've owned up to being a geek, I'm going to celebrate it in every way I can, including snowflake-making.

Admiral Ackbar, by Anthony Herrera.

It started out with seeing these amazing Star Wars character snowflakes in my RSS feed: this guy made up templates for Yoda, Admiral Ackbar, and C3PO, among others. These were inspired by Matters of Grey's Darth Vader, Stormtrooper, and Boba Fett snowflakes. Aren't they amazing? I pulled out some old origami paper (Winnie the Pooh brand, courtesy of a Cathay Pacific kid's activity pack from years ago), folded it into the starting wedge, and got started. I was too lazy to get out my X-Acto knife at first, so I went with the one I thought I could cut with just plain scissons: the stormtrooper. I didn't bother printing or sketching the design on the PDF; I just started cutting. Once I unfolded it, I got really excited and and realized that this art form is rife with possibilities. Rife, people!

I'm not brave enough to try more faces (my stormtrooper already looks a little kooky even though I tried my best to get his proportions right), so I just did silhouettes. I ended up with a generic tie fighter, Darth Vader's Lambda-class T-4a shuttle, and the symbol of the Rebel Alliance.

For the two ships, I tried my best to replicate the symbol of the Galactic Empire in the middle, but then gave up. Everyone already knows tie fighters are empire, anyway. After cutting out the shuttle, I realized that the scrap leftover was still pretty big, so, never being one to waste crafting supplies, I cut out an octopus snowflake from it. Errr, a tetrapus, really.

If they were squid, one could imagine that they were squirting a giant cloud of ink into the middle.

At this point, I got totally crazy and decided to break out the X-Acto. Having already paid homage to one of my favorite geekdoms (and one anatomically incorrect cephalopod), I knew I had to make some LOTR snowflakes to balance it out. After some thought about what would be most snowflake-appropriate, I decided on Arwen's Evenstar pendant; it already looks all lacy and delicate. Again, I didn't bother sketching anything, just looked at pictures online and started cutting.

I used the cardboard from the Cathay Pacific package as my cutting mat.

Not exactly a movie replica, but good enough!

And then of course I had to make one representing my favorite country, Rohan. I based the horse head loosely off of the banners that Theoden King has hanging in Meduseld. For this one, I took the time to sketch a rough outline before cutting. The wavy lines of the mane were the most difficult of all the designs to cut and then poke out.

Preliminary sketching.

All cut out! Mostly.

Not Winnie the Pooh this time.

Other side!

Here they are in all their Winne the Pooh glory!

I really wasn't kidding about Winnie the Pooh.

I'm so happy with my geeky snowflakes! I'd forgotten how fun paper-cutting is. Now I *almost* want to try making one of those crazy pieces like this amazing artist.

If you want to try making your own, I've put downloadable/printable templates for the Galactic Empire ships (and tetrapus) and Rebel Alliance snowflakes here. Just follow the directions on this site for how to fold a square piece of paper, then cut out all the shaded areas on the template. These can all be done without an X-Acto knife; just make sure you use a really sharp pair of scissors. I like using origami paper because it's thinner than printer paper, but don't feel obliged to use Winnie the Pooh origami paper!

Linked to Wow Me Wednesday,  Whatever Goes Wednesday, and Show and Tell Wednesday.

My First Printable: The Trouble With Reincats!

I ran into a roadblock with my current sewing project -- the fabric marker that I planned to use turns out to be not quite laundry-safe. I did a test run with the marker on the same fabric that I intended to use it on, heat set it, then washed it in cold water. The black of the marker itself didn't fade, but it did bleed a faint yellow outline around each stroke. Not quite what I intended for my graphic black and white dress! Time to find another brand of fabric marker.

See the yellow around his mouth and paws? (This is not the printable.)

In the meantime, I decided to take a break from sewing and get back into a little drawing. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy doodling until Elaine asked me to draw something for her and her fiance's anniversary. Anyway, I had so much fun with that I decided to do another full-scale illustration, this time Christmas themed! I know, I know, it's still too early for Christmas since Thanksgiving isn't even over yet (although Jo-Ann's and Target don't seem to realize that), but this just popped into my mind this afternoon in the middle of doing laundry and demanded to be drawn. I drew a couple of preliminary sketches on a Post-It, then drew and colored the actual thing in about an hour. I think that's a record for me. I didn't even use pencil first! I used a normal cheapo black pen we had lying around for the line art, then colored it with my precious Copic and Tombow markers. That was a challenge, since those markers are expensive and I only own eight colors total between the two brands. I bought all the Copics back in 2002 when I went through a manga-drawing phase, and it's remarkable that they've lasted this long. But enough blathering on, here it is:

I have no idea what actual sleigh harness is supposed to look like, and I couldn't be bothered to look it up.

It was inspired by Walnut and how my husband is always commenting how useless of a cat he is (facetiously, of course, we don't expect anything out of Walnut other than cuteness). We're always jokingly assigning him chores (not letting any ants into the apartment is his main responsibility), which of course he doesn't do. I don't know how I got from our useless cat to what if Santa's sled was pulled by reincats (like reindeer, but cats), but so goes inspiration, I guess. All the cats' poses are totally based on Walnut's actual lounging positions.

Feel free to use as random Christmas art, on Christmas cards, or as a computer desktop background. Or you can print it out and laugh at my feeble attempt at illustration and pin it up and throw darts at all the cats. And the obvious rule, don't claim it as yours, copy, reproduce, modify, or profit from this in any way. If you post it to your blog or Facebook or whatever, please credit/link back to me...thanks! And now that I've written all that, I feel incredibly silly -- as if anyone would even want this. Do you ever suffer from a simultaneous artist possessiveness and inferiority complex like that?

Download the pdf, the jpeg, or the black & white jpeg here.