Hello! It's me again!
April is over, and what a month it was, wow! No time for preamble, I'm jumping right in.

I got engaged! I put a down payment on a new car! I cut my hair real short! Life is beautiful and change is constant and the world keeps spinning forever! I'm really proud of the work it took to reach this point. I'm really grateful for the support that made it possible- from my family, and my friends, and from you, the fans who have made my little business possible. Thank you for being here.

I've spent more time this month sappy and teary and overjoyed than I have in a long long time.

I also did a Ton of artsy stuff this month.

Sculpture progress! My desk is always such a disaster mid project.

I started out working on these turkey tail mushrooms, intending to make some terrariums with logs clipped through them, lush with mushrooms. That hasn't quite worked out. The mushrooms themselves are coming out great! And the logs, while tricky, are on a good trajectory. I think they look very lush and cool put together. But unfortunately the whole thing is just way too big for the little terrarium jars that I have. They don't remotely fit in there. So I either have to find bigger bell jars to put them in, making bigger more complicated terrariums, or design some sort of creature to mount them on. I sold my beloved mushroom goat and that could make for an exciting replacement. I'm playing with mushroom-dragon concepts right now, which could be fun? I haven't done any dragons before! But for now they're going into a drawer.

In the meantime I've started a big batch of rainbow mushrooms! This should make for a nice big batch of terrariums, a bit closer to my comfort zone. I'm still debating between amanita style, inky cap style, and chantarelle style for the mushroom shapes- probably a few of each? But in these fun rainbow hues, almost cartoony. So I have the basic mushrooms mostly pulled together, just in need of some finishing details, gills and spots and ruffles. And I have a bunch of leaves half-made, and plans to make some little slugs and snails and bugs to round the set out. If my math is right this should make for 10-15 bell jars, a respectable collection. Which is important! Cuz I've applied to bring my felt work to the Oregon Country Fair this year, and I want to have a ton of fun pieces to show off!

This piece still needs a boarder, and I think the knife needs some tweaking to make it look more knife-like and less like a wand. But it's close.

I think it'll make a great Ace of Spades for my long tarot deck project! That's been in the works for Years now and it's nice to be making some progress on it again. At some point I want to go through my paintings and assign some to cards, but it's a lot more satisfying to actually make new stuff.

I've also made a fair bit of progress on my personal doll project. I showed some snippets of her last month, but here's a much more detailed breakdown of her layers so far, and my notes for crocheting her new lacy hoop skirts.

The shoes, hoop skirt, sleeves, and I think undershirt all happened this month. The shoes are probably the bit I'm least happy with, but they fit and they match and I don't intend to remake them.

The hoop skirt was a Beast to construct, with tons of trial and error figuring out different stitch patterns, adapting the lace pattern to work with this project, and figuring out how to crochet around the hoops my fiance 3d printed for me. I hurt my hands pretty bad, losing track of time and crocheting into the night. That's something I've been much better at avoiding this year, typically. It needed to hang in a very precise shape in order for the over-skirts to lay correctly and it feels like a lot of raw luck that I never had to tear the whole thing apart and start over.

The sleeves are still a rough draft while I figure out a shape that drapes correctly. I'm not certain I'll even stick with this fabric once I have that figured out. I'm getting closer on the shape though, and I think I'll have something solid within a couple iterations. And the undershirt was an easy afternoon of work, just two drafts to get something that draped properly and fit under the corset.

So I still have to finish the sleeves, and then figure out the hair and face. It's getting so close to finished! I often feel strange about putting so much of my creative energy into something that I have no intention of selling, but I think it's good to do this now and then. To pour some passion into something for yourself. It heals the heart.

Thank you for reading my newsletter, and joining me on my artistic journey <3

As thanks, here's a little discount for the month of May.