Pronoun Trouble

The latest in my long list of Crafts I Do: Enamel pin display banners.

I ordered one when I backed some projects on Pintopia 2.0 earlier this year, and it arrived not long ago. It's lovely! A true piece of art! Very few of my pins would actually look good on it!

So I resorted to making my own. So far I have two complete, and another six in progress; of the two that are complete, one is hanging on my wall, with a whole bunch of pins I ordered yeeeeaaars ago set on it, and it looks fab ♥ The other one is basically a carbon copy of the first one, so I'll probably see if I can't sell it. Same for probably four or five of the second batch that are currently in progress, because I have a lot of enamel pins, but I don't have that many enamel pins!

Hopefully I can make myself stop there, because I can only make so much stuff without having a good way to sell it off. (Honestly, the second batch is really only happening because I saw some cloth I really liked at Joann's, and was still thinking about using it to make more pin banners a week later, which I figured was justification enough.)

Photos of pin banners to come eventually, I hope!

Okay, these should be the real Final Rats, unless I find any other moods I want to re-do.

( Touched with ring splints, Intimidated and Rushed with an owl )

As per usual (oops), it's late, so I'll be switching out the old versions of Intimidated and Rushed in the morning. I probably won't go out of my way to replace the old links, and will instead just add the two new links to the end of the list, because that's 132 links I'd have to sort through. Even with find-and-replace, that's a chore!

I'll also be throwing in links to the moods I've decided to use as icons, because that's something I've been doing. I've been avoiding using the icons for general posts, and instead stick to using them in the comments section, perhaps out of an over abundance of caution, but whatever; I'll probably change that as soon as I get the icon links up, though, because sometimes a post about rat art just needs an art rat!

Edit: Links are up in the block post, woot! Now I need a nap 😅

Just a few things that are kinda pretty exciting for me personally, nothing like. Global or anything.

For some background, I'm still in contact with a couple of people from AnimeIowa; one of them runs Info Desk for AI and took over Accessibility when I left, and one of whom runs the Art Show for both AI and its SFF sibling convention, ICON. They've both commissioned some work from me before, and I offered to help out the former with any Accessibility stuff that I was able to (without going back to the con before I'm ready), and that included an offer of making the Accessibility Pass art every year. (This year's art features the con's mascot, Buu-chan (an anthropomorphic pig), wearing a zebra hoodie and a knee brace.)

Anyway! Art Show friend told me a little while ago that she makes little coloring pouches, with colored pencils and small coloring books and such, and that she wanted to commission me to make about twelve illustrations for a new book. Having been reminded how much I love drawing by my rat mood theme, I agreed readily! I'm aiming to get them done by the end of the month, and hopefully sooner, since Art Show friend wants to have the new pouches ready to go for a con on July 4th weekend.

Info Desk friend has also been wanting to commission me to crochet a particular Minion for a while now. The plans have fallen through the cracks a few times, so we arranged to meet up before June's AI planning meeting to finally discuss the details and really get down to business.

While I was there, I showed Info Desk friend some of the drawings I'd been doing for Art Show friend's commission, hoping to get some feedback on whether Info Desk thought they were a good fit for what Art Show wanted. Art Show requested some simpler things and some more complicated things, for a nice variety, and just... stuff that's fun to color! So you might understand why I wanted some extra feedback 😂

Info Desk assured me that all of the sketches so far looked like exactly what Art Show wants, and then dropped a bombshell on me. "Now, don't get offended by this," she started with, and followed up with, "but you're my second favorite artist."

And I just. Not only is that still an incredibly huge compliment, IMO, I kinda actually think it's cooler than being her number one favorite artist? It's pretty easy to tell someone that they're your favorite artist, but to have evidence that someone has actually sat down and thought about who their top favorite artists are, in order, is pretty neat. Being in second place also not only means that I'm practically at the top, but that I'm not on a pedestal; I've got room to improve, but also room to fail. Also, being realistic about my skills and how much work I've put into visual/2D art as opposed to my crochet work, I think I would've felt like a fraud if she'd told me I was her number one favorite. Drop-kick imposter syndrome off a cliff, I know I'm good, but I've seen some of the stuff that other artists make, and there are a lot of them who are a lot more skilled then I am, especially in areas I've neglected training. But second favorite? I think I can accept that.

Anyway, she said she loves my art style because it's "versatile", which is definitely one of the coolest compliments I've ever gotten, IMO.

So that's my art news! I've got pencils done for nine of the twelve coloring book drawings, half-done for one of them, and I'm thinking about what to draw for the last two. We'll see what I come up with!

These ones were fun...

( Rat moods, rat moods~ Irritated, Infuriated, Enraged, Crushed, Depressed, Shocked, Bouncy, Flirty, Okay )

Ten more rat moods, with twelve more rats! A couple of the moods have guests 😉

( See the ratties: Drunk, Refreshed, Sleepy, Annoyed, Tired, Anxious, Artistic, Uncomfortable, Content, Mischievous )

I should really make myself a rat art icon. Logically, I could just use any of the mood theme images I've made already, since they also have to be 100x100 pixels or smaller, but I want something special, you know?

( Rat art here! Sick, Exanimate, Cold, Stressed, Silly, Surprised, Optimistic, Exhausted, Relaxed )

I am also officially turning my custom mood theme on at this point ♥ I wanted to wait until moodthemeinayear got through Part 1, which covers the minimum moods needed for a custom mood theme, so I would feel more in sync with the community, and we finally made it on Monday! If you want to block the images for my mood theme, I've got all the links (I think) listed in this post, and will be adding links as I go. (I may have missed one! If so, and you have the time/willingness to check, please let me know which it is so I can include it properly!)

I blame the metric fuckton of snow that was dumped on the Midwest over the past couple of days (with more to be added over the next couple of days).

Anyway! ( More rat moods: Nerdy, Indescribable, Happy, Excited, Energetic, Working )

With these, I officially have all the basic/"root" moods complete! I have an image for every single mood in Dreamwidth's mood drop-down menu. Sure, a lot of them are "inherited" from previous moods ("Happy" covers a lot of ground, for example, as does "Sad"), but everything's covered! I've got everything uploaded and assigned to moods, so I could make the switch to my custom mood theme whenever I want.

But I gotta check. I know not everyone likes rats (or mice, which these could be mistaken for). If there's anyone who would prefer not to see these images at all, I can make a post listing links to all of the images for anyone who wants to run them through an image blocker. Is that something that anyone would be interested in? Lurkers, your voice counts here, too!

Edit: If you want to see all the (current) rats at once, click this link 👍

Yay, I figured out the best way for me to translate physical space sketches to digital mood theme images!

( Cut for cartoony drawings of adorable rats (including one in a coffee mug) (moods: Angry, Awake, Confused, Scared, Thoughtful, Busy) )

I think they work pretty well, though not perfectly. I may go through and tune up Confused later, but for now I'm fairly pleased with the results!

Edit: ( Now with three more! )

Guess who just remembered these exist? 😂 That's right, it's me! Anyway, I finally got the photos uploaded here, even if I have no idea where the originals got to. (The original images, that is; all of the rays in these photos were bought at either AnimeIowa or ICON.)

( When they're underground, they're called MAGMA stingrays )

I'm planning to buy my third (and possibly fourth) bag of feed corn tomorrow, and I think it's time I finally admitted to myself that corn bags are going to be a Thing for me now. I'm planning to supplement them with marble mazes as well, since those make fantastic stim toys, and the fabric I get doesn't usually come out to whole numbers of corn sacks.

Time will tell if foam book-pillows also end up on the repertoire. Maybe a few per year, probably not more than that.

I'm definitely getting plenty of use out of my sewing machine these days!