I made a cuttlefish!

Dear reader,

If you are not Casey Fay, you may read on.
Otherwise, you are going to have to turn back now because the following post is about the incredible Christmas present your girlfriend got you.
If you stumbled upon me because you were Googling yourself and found your name and illustrations on my blog, then you should be totally embarrassed that I caught you!! And that I'm going to tell Ashleyanne of your narcissistic tendencies.

Love,
Danica

P.S. It's ok for you to look at da pie stuff. But nothing else!

A dear friend from my favorite moments of high school put in a custom order on Etsy with me last month after having shared via facebook our mutual of cephalopods. As it turns out, she - like me -is in cahoots with a super nerdy wonderful illustrator! Casey Fay is the author of the should-be/soon-to-be renowned children's book Wonders of the Sea: Cephalapods (currently sold out - DANG IT) and the illustrator of many awesome quirky, colorful, animal adventure pieces (I want this one so bad!)

For this Christmas, his lovely lady wanted to bestow upon him a gift celebrating his affection for these wonderful invertebrates of the sea. She enlisted my services - seeing as I manifest my own love for cephalopods by crochet hook - with a special request for a brightly colored cuttlefish. I hope my handiwork reflects Mr. Fay's whimsical imagery justly:

I learned that foil is a very useful crafting tool.

I think foil is a lot like duct tape: cheap, all purpose, and probably grossly overused when it comes to amateur crafting (I used foil in EVERY diorama I ever made. Including the tiny reproduction Fort Ross which featured weapons fashioned from toothpicks covered tin foil). I also recall my old art professor scoffing at a piece I made using predominantly foil... he also hated duct tape.

In any case, it turns out this stuff can save you a lotta money & headaches when properly applied to projects. For example, instead of using muslin or some scrap fabric - which can always be re-appropriated to something else - I used foil to hold the shape of the thing I was creating a pattern for (including my torso) and cut it (not with my fabric scissors!!) where I guessed I would want the seams. I also used it to take the shape of the inside of the little treasure boxes the pocket sea creatures come in. It's the easiest way a right-brained like me could think to translate something three-dimensional to two-dimensions.

Foil is also great for Halloween costumes.

Today, however, when I frustratingly failed at my third makeshift row marker, I discovered that little candy foils (like the kind on Kisses) can also be re-appropriated by being twisted into strands used for marking rows! Oh how I love to give things, like wrappers, a second life:

(oh and what is this picture of you ask? It's going to be a crocheted VAMPIRE SQUID!! available this weekend at my shop :D )

I Made Cephalopods.