Alice in Wonderland Pen and Ink Series

I've always been a fan of Alice in Wonderland. The silliness and pure imagination within the story appeal to my more whimsical side. In particular, I've always loved the poem, The Jabberwocky, so I set out one day to create a pen and ink drawing of the beast. I could never find the right inspiration to tackle the Jabberwock, so I thought I'd start with depicting portions of the book that particularly lent themselves to visual representation...and the project blew up from there. I could have easily done 20 more drawings, but these took me a year as it was.

While I never actually got to drawing the Jabberwock - I never had the courage to tackle the beast - I did create a wonderful series of art that currently hangs in story order along my stairway at home. Each of the following illustrations can be enlarged by clicking on the picture.

The first shows Alice daydreaming as she first notices the white rabbit rushing by. The second in the series is my favorite. This shows Alice reaching for the orange marmalade while falling down the rabbit hole. The reason this one appeals to me so much is the use of line to depict depth within the rabbit hole.

The next drawing shows the key and the bottle labeled "Drink Me" that starts Alice's adventures in size alterations.

The next drawing shows Alice in her particularly large state, crying as the white rabbit runs away in terror.

The next drawing is another of my my favorites, depicting Alice as three inches tall while asking for help from the caterpillar.

The next character Alice meets is the smiling Cheshire cat talking to her from the tree.

She then finds the Mad Hatter, March Hare and Door Mouse at the tea party.

Then we meet the cards who are working very hard to paint the white roses red!

Next we find Alice meeting the Queen of Hearts for the first time.

Followed by being attacked by the pack of cards at the conclusion of the first book.

At the beginning of the second book, Alice encounters the Red Queen and learns that you have to run awfully fast in order to stay in the same place!

Followed by meeting Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum at the fourth square.

And having an interesting conversation about the passing of time in Looking Glass Land with the White Queen.

Next is the only drawing from the Jabberwocky poem I could gather the courage to create showing momeraths, borogroves and slithy toves.

Finally we see Alice become a queen at the eighth square, suddenly discovering a crown which appeared on her head - another one of my favorites as I seemed to show her surprise on her face.

Baby Gift for my Cousin

My Cousin had her first baby - a girl - this past fall. In anticipation for the baby, my mother and I coordinated homemade gifts to welcome our newest family member.

When going through my mother's plastic canvas books I found an adorable baby item to make and play with. I altered the pattern a little to utilize pastels since she is a girl. I also put their last name on the lid of the box to ensure it is something that can be passed on to more than one child.

Each of the shapes that fit through the hole are filled with a different noise maker - penies, corn kernals, jingle bells, an plastic beads so it enhances playtime with color, shapes, letters, numbers, sound and puzzle solving skillls. In addition to her little blocks and container, I made a few additional blocks for the baby to play with to fill the rest of the box.

It was a time consuming project and I'm not sure I'll have the time to make another one of these again (unless it is slightly modified), but I'm really pleased with how it turned out!

Chopstick Rest

I've been eating with chopsticks a lot recently to slow myself down when I eat. I have lots of chopsticks at home, but no rests. That had to be remedied.
I made the rests out of sculpy, painted them with the same ceramic paint used for the trivets and made them to match the asian style dish set I already have (Just like the trivets!). I really like how they turned out and am excited to use them when I eat my dinner at night!

Kiss Box

Grandma used to make the kiss boxes is all shapes and sizes. These are the little ones that originally just held hershey kisses. If you squeeze the two sides it opens up to reveal the treat. Grandma made bigger ones also. Those were decorated like gift boxes, reindeer, pigs, etc. and put money inside them! I thought the little ones would be enough. I made them look like gift boxes wrapped in black ribbon and embellished with clear beads.

Tree Ornament

Grandma used to make these christmas tree ornaments with colored sequins and yellow beads on the edges to look like candles. I kept with the black and white theme by changing thee sequins and beads to blackk and white. I really like how these came out, but they were certainly the more time consuming to embellish!

Pointsettia Ornament

The pointsettia ornament is one that my grandmother never made before. I found it as part of one of the plastic canvas magazines where you make a bunch and put them together as a wall decoration. I thought they looked fantastic by themselves so made a bunch of them individually. Not quite in line with the theme, but they look cool!

Picture Frame Ornament

Grandma used to make these picture frame ornaments and put pictues of us kids inside. To make it more generic, I simply used a snowflake picture, but a kid's picture can easily be inserted still!