365/2013 - Day 257

sewing and then pushing things

Today I worked more on the small spikey guy.

I sewed the other green leg joint.

I sewed the right foot.

Before I could sew the left foot I had to fix the left leg's seam.

I sewed the left foot...hey -- they are pretty even...this is the back view.

Front view.

Standing up view.

He might keep these whiskers.

Then it was a lovely fall-ish day and I made some "make-it-up-as-you-go-along" soup.  It tastes pretty darn good...oh...I just remembered I forgot to add the black beans to it.  Maybe for tomorrow's version.

That was a decent amount of prep work and playing around -- I should have stopped at that point.  But I felt like I hadn't done "enough" for today, so I pushed it.  (Rarely a good idea.)

I hauled out the long horns guy and the baby snake guy.  I figured I could add paper to one or the other.  I found a big piece of wood patterned tissue paper and I wanted to use it.

Ready to go.

I tore up the wood patterned tissue paper.

I chose the baby snake guy.

I knew for a while now that I wanted to give this guy vertical stripes.  I tried to do that with the torn pieces of paper and also leave a band in between.

Not too bad.  I should have left it like this.

It almost looked a little snakey.

But no -- I had to push it.  I went into the studio to retrieve a bunch of bags of torn up papers in different colors that I had left over from collages.  They were not where I though they'd be but I found these instead.  Clean used tea bags (I can't remember who gave them to me...someone in the ATC group) and I also found the pale yellow/creamy colored paper and some thin white paper.

After about the third piece I knew I didn't want to use the tea bags for this...but I had started already and it would have been messier to pull them off than to finish putting on the rest of them.

Meh -- I didn't hate it but I didn't love it.

I let it all dry for a while then I went back over it with the creamy colored paper...taking my time and trying to cover not just the stripes/tea bags but also some of the side colors.

Usually I tell you that things look better in person than they do in the photos -- not today -- the photos look much better than the real thing...which isn't saying much -- ha ha ha.

Ah well...it will probably look different when it is dry.  And I am planning to paint him anyway...and/or paper him more.

It seems like when I willfully "push" my limit and try to achieve more in a day than I am "feeling" at the time, it all goes wrong.  I need to listen more closely when I hear myself saying "that's enough for today" -- even when it is still early in the evening.