Santa Cthulhu, NOW with Genuine Flaming City!

Last night after we posted the Santa Cthulhu, Brian couldn't help but think something was still missing. Today he sat down and felted a little city to go in the fireplace, with buildings that are burning and collapsing. Yours at no added cost, genuine flaming city! :)

2012 Needle Felted Santa Cthulhu

He's done! This year's Santa Cthulhu is finished and posted for sale in the Etsy shop. If you haven't been following along, here's the story ...

In 2007, Brian and I made our first needle felted Santa Cthulhu around Christmastime. It was so much fun we had to make another in 2008, and again in 2009. In 2010 I branched away a bit and made an epoxy clay Cthulhu Elf on my lonesome, but it just wasn't the same. The needle felted ones are much more fun. And it's always better when Brian and I get to work on a project together!

Last year we started another felt Santa Cthulhu, but then Brian was in a tragic garage accident that left him with a broken hand. With him being unable to felt, we put last year's Santa on hold. We dug it out again this year and now Santa's finally done! This is our 4th needle felted Santa Cthulhu. He's got a fireplace, stockings, a plate of cookies, a dead trout and a live moray eel to leave as stocking stuffers ... all needle felted from wool. See the Etsy listing or the page in the Thirdroar gallery for more details, meanwhile I'll just post a heap of photos here!

Flying Spaghetti Monster Ornament

The mold for the snowman ornament turned out well, I just tried pouring the first cast of it today. Moving right along, up next is the flying spaghetti monster! I gave him a santa hat and tried to make his spaghetti look like the curls of Santa's beard. Now I have to make the mold for this one, and then we'll see how a cast looks painted. Right now all the parts of him seem to blur together, to my eyes. But once I've got one painted it should look better. I hope.

Christmas Ornaments

It's October! Which means I am already behind on all of my Halloween projects. The felted pumpkins class at the local library begins this Wednesday, so we're packing up supply kits for students and felting up a couple more demo pumpkins. In the meantime, I started working on Christmas ornaments a little bit. If I don't start them now, it'll be December before I know it and I'll be REALLY behind.

I made a better mold of last year's bas-relief style Santa Cthulhu, and started pouring a few of them in Ultracal. Last year I used the mold as a push-mold for polymer clay so I could touch up each one before baking. This year I figured it'd just be smarter to touch up the original and make a better quality mold, then pour casts. These were the first few, they look pretty good! Now they're just waiting for painting.

Then I started working on another original. I love making the Cthulhu Snowmen ornaments, but they are so time consuming. I might make a few more of them (I have a plate ful of half-finished ones already) but for the most part I'm going to retire them in favor of the bas-relief style ornaments. Here's the snowman original I am working on. Once it's done, I'll bake the polymer clay, make a mold, and start casting! I use latex for my molds, so the mold-making process will take several days. But once it's done, it's good for quite a few casts before the quality even begins to deteriorate.

Merry Christmas!!!

Cloudy wishes you a very Merry Christmas! Brian said that one of the gifts he got me this year was Cloudy's idea: a Cozy Toes foot warmer! Apparently she likes to sit on her perch in the studio with me, because it's momma-and-birdy time. It's very cold in my studio in the winter, so I haven't been in there as often as I'd like. Of course Cloudy would want me to have a Cozy Toes, so we can share studio time more often. She's a very thoughtful bird like that. :)

Needle Felted Santa Cthulhu, not quite

Every year for the last few years, Brian and I have made some sort of large Santa Cthulhu project together for the holidays. I know, as Christmas traditions go, it's a little bit twisted. But hey, we have fun. You can see some of our previous Santa Cthulhus here, here, here, and here.

This year, we started another needle felted Santa Cthulhu. The plan was for him to be standing in front of a fireplace, putting icky things into little stockings. Other projects kept getting in the way, though. Then Brian broke his right hand in a tragic Man Cave accident, and his needle felting days were over (at least until they let him out of the cast). I realized I wasn't going to have time to finish the Santa by myself before Christmas this year, so we're just going to have to put him away until next year. This is as far as we got (that's his arm laying next to his feet). Stop by this time next year, and hopefully we'll have him finished!

Santa Cthulhu Ornament

I've had so many requests for Christmas Cthulhu items this year that I'm having a hard time keeping up! But here's a new one that I've made. I sculpted the original in polymer clay, made a latex mold with an epoxy clay backup mold, and then used polymer clay again to make a few push-casts. Each one is hand-painted, and I'm selling them on Etsy for a very reasonable price. Happy holidays!

Christmas Cthulhus in Progress

I've had a few requests for more of these, so I've been sculpting. Here's a progress photo of some Christmas Cthulhus in various stages of completion. From left to right we have sittin' Santa, standin' Santa, and Mrs. Cthulhu. Check the Etsy shop in a couple of days and I should have some done and listed for sale!

My Cthulhu Obsession

I don't think I can explain it. I like sculpting silly Cthulhu objects. It started with the Santa Cthulhus that Brian and I make around Christmas-time and escalated from there. Last winter I began making small Snowman Cthulhu ornaments like the ones shown here. I sold them on Etsy and people must have really liked them because I couldn't make them fast enough. They were fast and fun to sculpt so I just ran with it.

For anyone not familiar with Cthulhu, he's one of H. P. Lovecraft's creations. A character mentioned in several of Lovecraft's short stories, Cthulhu is a malevolent, powerful, gigantic entity trapped beneath the ocean. One of the Great Old Ones, he is usually depicted as a scaly sort of humanoid figure with rudimentary wings and a squid or octupus for a head. In sci-fi/fantasy/horror circles, Cthulhu has become a facetious synonym for anything horrific. Making him cute is something done by many artists. You could accuse me of jumping on the Cute-Cthulhu Bandwagon, and I can't really argue. But it amuses me no end, so (with apologies to Mr. Lovecraft) I keep doing it. This spring I even started making Cthulhu Easter Bunnies. Come on, he looks good in pink!