Mustachio the Mexican guitar

My friend Matty recently got a job as a primary school music teacher and requested I make him a puppet to entertain the kids. So he created Mustachio (c) and as per his detailed description "He's a guitar whose strings all broke and couldn't be played anymore. So the kids teach him to sing instead and he lives happily ever after," accompanied with this picture of his vision to go by:

 

 

So I set out to create this generation's greatest children's entertainer which has since been described as "freakish, like he's too happy and on the verge of craziness - he will scare children," so all in all, mission accomplished! 

Here's how he turned out!

Materials:

2 metres of brown felt
30cm dark brown felt
Black, pink, brown felt
Brown fur for his mustache and brows

2 teddy bear eyes
White, blue and black paint, paintbrush.


First of all, draw out a guitar pattern on folded felt like so. That oven mit was just to gauge how far up you would need to stick your arm... He's basically the same size as a full-sized guitar.

You will also need to long strips of darker brown to join the two guitar panels together, flip the right way round and fill with stuffing like so. Add a black felt circle which will become Mustachio's mouth.

Dont forget to  leave an opening so you get elbow deep inside him. Line it with some more brown felt and hand sew shut. And yes, I am aware this looks slightly suspect. Cue giggles.

Add some beautiful ocean blue eyes - I've shown in previous posts how to make these. Make the eyelids with a bit of brown felt, otherwise he looks faaaar too starey.

Now add a mustache using trimmed fur fabric, and mould it with some hairspray into a curled handlebar style for that extra Mexican-y feel. Put a little pink felt tongue on his mouth hole as if he is singing "La la la laaaaaaaaaaaa Amigos".

Don't forget his eyebrows. I experiemented with their placement and found the height gave him a happier look and didn't make him look so evil. It did kind of give him an Italian vibe though....

You can add a nose too if you want. Or you can leave that nose behind...

Matty was stoked with him. And I hope this will catapult me to best friend status so I win the stupid competition vying for the place of best friend. Manuel has only known him for more than a decade, but I made him a puppet dammit!

WHOSE YOUR BEST FRIEND NOW MATTY?!?!?!?!!?

Tricky xoxo

I call him, Happy Sandwich. But you may call him Mr Sandwich.

You have to be specific if you ask me to make you a sandwich. Otherwise you will end up with this:

I call him 'Happy Sandwich' because he is clearly happy to be the safest kind of sandwich, an inedible one. He is free to live forever without the fear of going mouldy or being eaten, that's definitely something to smile about, hense his slightly smug grin.

Here's what you will need:

- About six felt squares in various sandwichy colours

- Cotton and thread
- Scissors
- Stuffing

The entire thing has been hand sewn so no need for a machine.

Step one: Cut out 4 x bread shapes. Plus some lengths of brown felt for the crusts

Hand sew one length of the crust to the bread. Keep going all the way around.... 

Then sew the other side of the bread to the crust like so...

              

And then you have to flip it the right way out, whack a little stuffing in there to give the bread it's fluffiness, then finish the rest of the stitching to fill the gap.

 I know I wanted some kind of meat in there, so this was established to be some kind of devon slab, but you could create any kind of meat you wanted. Perhaps a nice pulled-pork, or ham, or even bacon strips!

Time to build the sandwich. This project makes you especially hungry for a sandwich. Add some cheese. The orange felt looks like Old English.

                                Add some tommys, for colour.

                                Some lettuce for greenery...

Followed by another piece of bread following the directions for the first few steps. Stitch each layer together as you assemble the sandwich, quite roughly, as noone will be able to see it, and so it doesn't fall apart when someone inevitably picks it up to eat it thinking it is indeed a real sandwich due to it's uncanny likeness.

Put a little smiling mouth and some eyes and you have your very own Happy Sandwich! Yay!  

View from the side: Does this bread make me look fat? Sidenote: If you have to ask that question to begin with, than yes, you are too fat. If you were skinny, you'd be hungry and you'd be asking for a sandwich...

Looks cute, although it serves no real purpose and will probably just sit in your spare room gathering dust......

 

Or you could give it to a homeless guy instead of money for booze, and he can trail it around behind him on a leash or something equally as crazy, cause that's what bums do.

                                                                   Om nom nom.....


                                             Tasty... And I'm sure the sandwich is good too.....
Tricky xoxo

Guest Blog: Featuring the artwork of Loose-legs Lawson.

My sister Tricky has asked me to be a guest on her blog this week.  I don’t have a cool nickname like ‘Tricky Hickson’ so… call me… Easy Lawson. No that won’t work…

Anyway, I’m going to show you step-by-step how to paint a portrait using soft pastels.

To create this magnificent piece of art that will hang in your parent’s hallway proudly, and for which you will most likely only get paid in the form of a sushi lunch with your mum, you will need;

Conte Paris Pastel Pencils

Art Spectrum Soft Pastels

Faber Castel Sketching Pencils

Eraser

Photo for reference (unless ridiculously talented you can do it from memory only)

I chose to draw our beloved Daschund Neuman. Although he’s no longer with us, this drawing captures him perfectly and pays homage to adventurous life he led. It might be creepy if you painted my dog so feel free to paint your own beloved pet, family member or celebrity crush. Or you could combine two of those things and paint Robert Cattinson:

First start off by sketching a pretty detailed outline of your subject. This is by far the most important stage and can make or break your final piece if you don’t spend enough time perfecting it. So don’t fuck it up!

Once that’s done, you can begin colouring with the pastels. Pastels are essentially like chalk but they can be smudged and blended to create a smoother finish. I like to start with the eye area because it really brings the subject to life. (Unfortunately, not literally. RIP). The most important part of the eye is the pupil and the reflected light which can be achieved by a quick swipe of pure white over the pupil.  It gives the eye more dimension. If the dog you’re painting is also black, or your painting a person with black hair, make sure to not just use straight black. Mix in some blues, tans, yellows, browns and skin tones where necessary. Keep checking back on your photo for reference.

Work your way around the ears. See all the different colours in the hair that I’ve used? This also applies to painting humans. A blonde girl might have whites, yellows, creams, umbers, greys or even blacks in her hair. It would never be a straight colour. The strokes should obviously go in the same direction as the hair would. The good thing with pastels is they can be smudged and mixed on the page, and you can rarely fuck it up because you can go over the top of it as many times as you like. Good news for novices!

I’m working my way through the picture in a logical order of the direction of the hair to keep it all flowing naturally.

Almost finished. While the painting could be finished here, I like to go over them at the end with a white pastel and highlight any areas that are hit by sun or light. Also to draw in any grey hairs or whiskers or any finishing touches.

And voila! The painting is complete. And I’m very pleased with how it’s come along. Give it a decent spray with hair spray to set and it’s ready to be framed.

Here is a super close up of the eye area to show you what pastel looks like close up and how much detail goes into each piece.

My guest blog post might not have been as lol-worthy as Tricky’s normal posts but I hope you found it informative enough to go and pick up a pack of cheap pastels from Stacks and give it a go! Or not be pov and actually fork out for some proper materials from an art store. Either way, good luck my fellow artistes!

This jewellery 'looks' good!

Most girls like looking at jewellery, but what a lot of people don't know is jewellery really likes looking at you too...

Enter: Eyeball Ring Thing.....

It was my friend Lauren Confos's birthday over the weekend so I decided to make her something I thought she would like. I once saw her wear a dress with eyeballs on it, so, that was pretty much what I was going by. I mean, she HAS eyeballs, so surely she likes them...

And this was really fun to make, I also made matching hairclips to add to her collection of about 1000000 hairclips...

You will need:

Large teddy bear eyes
White paint
Red texta
Brown, blue, green, yellow paints (or whatever colour you want the iris to be)
Paintbrush
Ring/hairclips
Hacksaw, or steak knife you don't mind blunting the shit out of - I went for the latter cause I'm badass
Coloured textas
Black marker
Flesh coloured material
Super glue
Scissors
Hairspray

Wine... to help with the.. sealing, of the.. glue...thing..........Fuck, I don't know.

First get the teddy bear eyes (about $4 a pack from Spotlight), about this size.... Have a drink of wine.

Then paint it white, like an eyeball. It will need a few coats, so I sat there with a hairdryer and dried each layer to speed up the process. It helps to sip your wine while you blow dry the eyeball.

Then get your main colour, ie green and paint an iris. Put lighter flecks through or use yellows or other colours to get a realistic looking iris. Once you are happy, spray it with hairspray to give it that realistic glazed look. Do this before applying texta for the detail or the texta will run. Use a red texta to draw on little red veins and the black marker for the pupil. Have a drink of wine then put a dash of white on the pupil to make it look like a reflection.  

Grab your hacksaw - aka steak knife - (probably shouldn't have had all that wine before....) and saw off the back `spike bit' of the eye. Pretty sure that's the technical term..... It helps if you have plyers handy too. Then cut out two strips of the flesh material and fold a crease to form 'eyelids' and glue them down. Try not to glue your fingers together like I did because your skin WILL peel off and it WILL hurt like a bitch. Once it's dry you can glue it on to a ring or clips as so:

You can even glue it to a bow! Wow, the possibilities! No... wait, that's pretty much it....

Don't they look pretty!

I made a few different coloured ones but here are the finished products... Stop....it's wine time!

I wore mine to the shops and totally got looks... so yeah.

xoxo Tricky