I'm Still Here...

...even though it may not seem that way. My mom had knee replacement surgery and is doing well. She's able to do a lot for herself now what makes it so much easier on me. The first week was really stressful for us both. I don't think I'm a very good caretaker, but I do try so I guess that's what counts. The 5 months I took care of my step dad about did me in so it was hard to pull the energy together to help my mom.

My mom or my brother usually do the cooking and we all eat together. I'm not a great cook, as a matter of fact I really enjoy watching cooking shows but hate cooking myself. So it's been a struggle to feed everyone. (My brother is working a lot of late hours at work learning a new computer tracking system). Thank goodness some lovely church friends of my mom's dropped by with casseroles and helped us get through.

I've had to put projects on hold again cause I just can't deal with my mom and other family issues and taking care of the entire house, shopping, cooking, dealing with my own medical issues and doing this large penguin order, etc right now. My stress and anxiety level is a bit high right now but I'm managing. I guess I sound like a whiner but really I'm just exhausted. I had much more energy 4 years ago when my mom had her first knee done.

I have 80 of the 300 penguins completely finished!

Here's what I have left to do.

I ran out of the ribbon for the hanging loops and have not been able to find it anywhere. Tomorrow I'm taking a run out to the far away Hobby Lobby cause I hear they have it. Fingers crossed!

I received a package from Fed Ex this morning. From my mom for Mother's Day. She is just the sweetest!

It's that a pretty box? What's inside?

Cookies from Harry and David. My mom rocks!

Well now you know what's going on with me and I hope soon to have more to show than penguins.

What's Happening In Sassyland?

I know I haven't posted in a bit. I've been so busy but I don't have much to show. I'm working on a 300 mini penguin project for a client. I have 150 just about ready to sew together and stuff. It's taking up huge amounts of time and is bothering my carpel tunnel but I'm plowing along.

I am still working on my Circus challenge piece. After some initial proportion problems with my companion piece things are moving smoother. Here's the horse. I need to trim her mane it's too Unicorn and and she is a horse. I originally started a horse soft sculpture back in January or so POST HERE that I never finished. I used that pattern with some modifications for this project so although I never finished the first one I did finish it with this one. Does that make sense?

I have 2 other dolls in the works but they are still in my head. I'm still working out the basic details before starting. The Wonderland piece is still bumping around in there too. I plan to start that in the summer. I have such an urge to start Halloween pieces too!

My studio was featured on ADA's Blog so if you haven't already seen my creative space or are interested in my rambling on about it, you can check it out. It's not pretty but it works for me.

Let's see what else. My mom is going to have knee replacement surgery in 10 days so I'll be Nurse Jen again and will have less time for everything I've got going on. My brother again will be of little help during our mom's recovery so I'm sure there will be friction there. I probably won't be posting much for a while.

My 300th Post and My Favorite Things

So I've reached my 300th blog post. It took me a few days to figure out what I was going to do for it. I decided to show in photos my most favorite things. Owls, Coffee, Dr. Who, Chihuahuas, Zombies, Penguins, Pirates, and Cupcakes. Enjoy!

Winston and Squeak

 Cupcake Cookies 

 Coffee Poster

Dr. Who Charm

 Chihuahua Plush

 Zombie Pendant

Plush Penguin

Pirate Doll

 Plush Owl

 Happy Cupcake Print

 

Dr. Who Print

 Little Chihuahua Plush

Pirate Zombie

Coffee Head Print

A Blog Feature and 4 Sales!

Susan of Susan's Greetings on etsy did a feature on her blog about Colorful Christmas Penguins on etsy and was kind enough to feature my Fat Plush Penguins. Click on the link below to see these great fun penguins!

http://susanschrock.blogspot.com/2010/11/colorful-christmas-penguins-on-etsy.html

I also had a sale buster weekend in my etsy shop. I sold 4 items this weekend. I know, 4 items?! Well in my little shop that's a huge deal so I'm very pleased and excited!
I sold a fat penguin and 3 Custom Tardis Plush. One of the Tardis is a totally custom PINK one! So excited to make that!

One of my blog posts made it to the Home page of The Hive a great  social networking site for creative people. You can find me here. http://creatingthehive.com/sassypackrat

  I have a mini gingerbread owl finished and ready to go in the shop and a mini reindeer and mini snowman. (I'll probably hold off on the reindeer and snowman cause family comments have me re-thinking them.) Don't have a photo to share of the owl yet my camera battery died last night.

New Plush Debut etc.

Those of you who have been with me a while know that I started my journey into seriously making plush with Penguins. Remember Herman? Well someone once commented that they thought I should make my penguins rounder and fatter, and after much thought I agreed and worked up a new design. I know I just can't stop making birds!

The left one is the prototype of the new design. Hated the face but liked the feet. The one on the right is the final design. I choose to leave out the feet because they were too time consuming to do.

New design next to original penguins. Interesting progression, huh?

I went nuts and made them in tons of colors. Please let me know what you think about them. Worth my time and energy? Cute or not?

On a completely different note I wanted to quick show you the Graduation Announcement my daughter and I worked on together. We incorporated Kindergarten, 8th Grade and High School graduation photos to send to family and friends.

A Bunch Of Colorful Items In my Etsy shop.

Tutti Fruitti Owls have landed.

Chocolate Bunnies have hopped in too.

Cute Panda Face Stickers.

Cute Monkey Face Stickers.

Lots of Pink Penguin Stickers.

Ballerina Soft Dolls have danced their way too.

My 1st Custom Soft Sculpture Order

I put one of my mini St. Pat's Penguins on a

little shamrock pedestal for my mom's Irish friend.

I hope she likes it!

One World One Heart Winners!

I want to thank everyone who signed up for
my giveway! The response was more than I
could have hoped for.

I ended up with 203 entries so ended up
doing one large and two smaller giveaways.

I used Random.org to pick my winners.

The winner of the digial print Penguins in love

plus the 2 mini penguins is:

#12 is Sylvia of My Trinkets

There are 2 winners of the mini penguin in the bucket
with Valentine Goodies. One penguin will be red as shown
and the other winner will get a hot pink penguin. Both

penguins have hearts sewn on their chests.

#65 is Edi of Memories for Life Scrapbooks

#161 is Karla Rosendall of Day Dream Studios

Congrats to the winners!

I'll contact you all later this afternoon.

I didn't enter every giveaway on the ride but I did stop

by and see everyone's blog and had a great time

doing it too! So many interesting people to

meet. Can't wait until next year!

Hot Pink Penguin For Valentine's Day.

My daughter who I call "the Girl" or Queen of Snarkdom

on twitter requested that I make a Hot Pink Mini

Penguin for her for Valentine's Day. She wanted a
heart on it with her nickname "Sen".

I sewed this up while watching the Opening Olympic
Ceremony and got so excited the "N" got a

bit wonky, but I know she'll like it anyway.

You have no idea how huge this request is for me!

She wanted me to make something? She really

likes my little creatures?

We have struggle much though her teen years

and the fact that she is putting value on what

I do is priceless to me!

Gangster Bears Are Taking Over The Studio!

Gangster Bears moved in last night and are bullying

the smaller studio residents.

The Penguin Gang is unhappy with the
newcomers, there might be a rumble!

Penguins, Penguins Everywhere! A Mermaid and A Treasury

Since I've been under the weather recently and I can't just sit and do nothing, I've been sewing penguins. I now have penguins in many colors and many sizes taking over my cutting table. I have more than is shown in the above photo. Once I got on a roll I just couldn't stop! Not entirely sure what I'll do with them all. I've listed Herman the big guy with the heart in my shop and 2 of the blue and pink small ones in a giveaway I'm doing for One World One Heart, which you can click on the sidebar link to get more info and also check out my previous post.


I'd really like to know what people think of these because I'd like to make more plush/softies based on my stationery designs. I don't want to waste my time if they are ugly or people don't like them, ya know?

Here's a mermaid softie I'm starting. She's based on my mermaid print I have in my etsy shop. She's got a bit of the old nakedness going on right now, but she doesn't have eyes yet so doesn't know. Shhhhhh! Don't tell her!

I was in a great treasury made up of etsy Twitter friends. See my Cupcake Love Print in the middle there? There were so many great items but unfortunately I didn't get this blogged about in time and the treasury has expired! Darn it! Anyway scrapaddict put it together and it was cool.

One World One Heart Giveaway Event

Welcome and Come Ride The Magic

Carpet Around the World!

A Whimsical Bohemian created this wonderful international
Blogging event.

This is it's 4th year and I'm so please to be a part of it! This event
has bloggers from around the world offering wonderful giveaways
all at the same time and a wayto connect with others around the world.

You can click the link on my sidebar to get more info about this
event and a list of all the great creative bloggers who are participating.

***I realized after I started reading other people's blogs that I should
have put some info about myself, so here it goes.***

I'm an avid reader.

Mother to 2 teenagers.

I have a Chihuahua furbaby.

I'm completely obsessed with Dr. Who, international

soccer and zombies.

I have a serious addiction to coffee. I design stationery and
have started making dolls and softies.

This is my giveaway. It's an 8.5" 11" (21 cm x 28 cm) digital print
of my Penguins In Love design plus my original small 5" (13 cm) plush

based on the design. The print is on linen textured stock and printed

with archival inks so will not fade. The plush penguins are hand sewn

by me from my own pattern. I would be happy to change the

English words to a language of your choice.

To enter the giveaway is easy as pie! No jumping thru hoops!

Just leave a comment and an email address so you can be contacted if you win.

You do not need to blog, tweet or follow my blog in order to win.

The giveaway starts today and I'll pick ONE winner on the 15th of February.

Remember to enter this giveaway just leave a comment - One one comment per person please! Good Luck and have fun riding the Magic Carpet Around the World!

The response to this giveaway far exceeds my wildest dreams! So in all fairness I'm going to add another giveaway so that 2 people can win & possibly even 3.

This is the additional giveaway. A little Valentine's
bucket, magnet shown on front, mini red penguin,
note pad & some other goodies.

So Very Busy Lately

Worked on a new plush for the etsy shop last night. Need to go back and re-work a few things before it's ready but over all I'm pretty happy with it. Any of you who have seen my etsy shop will recognize her from my Penguins in Love art. This is Gwen the penguin. She does stand alone but I'm thinking of adding rice or something to the base for more stability. I usually like to do plush much smaller than this but wanted to give this size a go.

I've been super busy with the kids falling ill with the flu one after the other, lots of ebay orders, a lovely large website order and sketching the hundreds of ideas that are exploding out of my head.

This is Binks. He doesn't usually get pictures taken since he mostly looks like a big dark blob when I try, but he was very cooperative this morning. I guess he feels bad that Lita gets all the photo attention so I promised him he would be the furry star of today's blog post. He'll be 12 this March. I rescued him from a pet store as a bitty little fluffball. As an all black cat he was in danger of being sold to the "wrong people" so I snatched him up and he and I have been very happy together.


On further news, the studio re-do is just about complete. I have a few things that I need help moving out and some shelves to put up then I can take pictures for the after. I'm am so loving my new cutting table/shipping center! I've used it and it's lovely!

Lots Of Things Going On In Sassyland!

Valentine Cupcake Hearts Stickers. (ebay)

.

Sweetheart Valentine Stickers. (ebay)

Lollihearts Valentine Stickers. (ebay)

Brand new "High-Heeled Diva Notes" for my etsy shop.

Extreme, snarky sassiness!

These will be in the shop by this weekend and if you are snarky and sassy you will love these!

Some jewelry based on these is in the works too.

Penguins In Love 8.5 x 10 Print. (etsy)

Cupcake Love 8.5 x 10 Print. (etsy)

I have so many things going on right now that for my sanity I've set aside my doll making for a while. I enjoy it so much but I just don't have the time needed to devote to it. And since it's more of a personal pleasure than a money opportunity right now...well you get the drift.

I do have many exciting other projects and also some tutorials coming up so be sure to keep an eye out!