A race to the finish!

It's been a race that's captured the heart's of the world (if by the world you mean me), and now there are only a few hours left to vote! It only takes about 30 seconds (honestly) & it's oh so easy! I'm only a few votes behind 1st place right now & I have a real honest-to-goodness chance at winning! (Which would be totally awesome because I really want to be an olympic gold medalist!)

Thanks to everyone (friends, family, fans) for putting up with my constant bombardment of "vote for me vote for me" on the facebook & the twitter (and the in-person, too). You guys are awesome to tweet, retweet, repost, share & everything. I love feeling so supported!

Alright then, get out & vote for my Dragon Finger Puppet! Remember you can vote from your mobile device, too!

Shooting for Gold!

So a few crafty people I know were holding/sponsoring something called The Handmade Olympics. It's over on the swanky blogger bloggity blog blog, rikarakstudio and the prizes look snappy!

I didn't enter something myself because I didn't know what to enter, so I just decided to watch on the sidelines. But lo' and behold, I get a message saying that one of my puppets has been, not only nominated, but also chosen to be one of the final 7 to be voted on! Voted on by YOU dear reader. Voted on by you.

So here's my dearest and humblestest requestestest: Please vote for Digby the Honknose Clownbat finger puppet! His picture is at the all-the-way-bottom and you'll find the voting box just underneath him (he's listed last). I'm shooting for Gold, but I'll be happy with whatever prize I actually win (even if that means it's just lots and lots of votes)!

Thanks guys!

Photo Contest Contestants! (Finally!)

So life kinda got in the way of Puppet Pie & the photo contest (Read that: Burglary (incl. all of our laptops & cameras), a few diagnosis for our son, school IEP stuff, goose bite infection (...yeah), heater/AC replacement, and a hole in our ceiling.) But I'm looking forward to seeing who the winner is & diving into Puppet Pie face first with a fork in my fist & no napkin to clean the mess (I live dangerously like that). So yeah, thanks for your patience, guys!

So anyway, there were 3 entries to the photo contest...which I think should be annual... I mean, that will give you guys a whole lot of time to come up with new, fun, and exciting ways to play with & photograph your puppets, right? RIGHT! Alright, so let's get started.

Entry #1 is Amanda's.

"This guy keeps me company all the time... this is a picture of him snubbing me, but he's normally pretty friendly... I don't know what was up the day I took this..."

Entry #2 is from Naomi

"I loved the idea of one of my puppets attacking one of Stacey's. What better way than with a giant shadow puppet nomming on the finger puppet!"

Entry #3 is from Jamie

"Puppet Western Bar: Back in the old West after a long day on the trail puppets were able to put their felt up at a local boarding house where they could find a room, warm meal, plentiful libations and engaging company. Just don’t pull on the bartenders’ udders."

So there ya have it. Which one is your favorite? Go vote off to the right. Voting will close February 2nd at midnight blogger-time. The winner & their prize will be announced hopefully sometime when I get around to it in February. (2010 taught me to not promise any real kind of dates)

Wheee!

Why I've not been making finger puppets: an excuse in more than 140 characters

I checked how many puppets I'd made in June. only 21. That's a far cry from my goal of 60 finger puppets/month. like...a really far cry. But I have a good excuse! My dog ate my--er..no...my friggin FIVE cats made me play with them.

Slight detour: We have 5 cats. 3 are 3 months old. We decided about 3 months ago that we'd probably keep them all. However, I do really enjoy seeing the exact same set of worried eyebrows on my friends' faces when they, for the 7th time, ask me, "So have you decided whether or not you're going to keep them?" My husband (yes, I'll blame him) had pretty much declared that we'd keep them all the moment we found out there were only 3. Still, each time the kittens are brought up, someone will ask, "So have you decided to keep all of them?" And they look at me like--if I do, I run the risk of donning a large, floral-print, over-sized mu'umu'u and chasing children down the street shaking a broom at them. To which I say, I don't even know where to buy a mu'umu'u. I do have a husband and a child...hopefully that will keep me from turning into an old cat-lady. And I go back to the husband-blaming I mentioned earlier. Totally his fault. He was allergic for so many years, I think this is his way of falling off the wagon.

Back to the road.
So I really do have a good excuse. I've been working on a very short (30 seconds) video for Etsy.com. They're having a "make us a commercial & you can win some $" contest. So I did. I'm hoping it wins. But I suppose everyone who enters a video into the contest hopes it wins. If they didn't I'd be surprised.

Ok here's where it gets a little "uh oh": They choose the top 25 videos that go to the finals based on the number of views they get! (see? Uh oh.) I'm not sure if it's individual ISP views (meaning that you can view it once from your computer) or if it's the total number of views (meaning you can watch it a few times from your computer). So here's what I ask the 12 of you who read my blog to do: I need you to watch it. And! If you like it, send it to your friends, have them watch it too & tell them that your weirdo-friend made it. If you don't like it, send it to all of your enemies as punishment for being your enemy. Or if you're ambivalent about it, you can send it to your friends as punishment--or to your enemies as a reward.

I've gone on and on about watching it and I've provided you no link by which to see. I'm terrible.
http://www.etsy.tv/video/Mister-Donuts-Handmade-Moment-2
Hooray! I'm not terrible anymore!

Alright then. World: do me proud. pretty please.

Attention!

I'm the youngest child in my family. I also have red hair. Both of these things combined have made me into the lovely attention whore I am today...although whore is such a "negative" word....Or is it?

You may question the red hair thing, but when you're a member of just 2% of the population on Earth, people comment on your hair.... a lot. Especially when you were such a cute little bugger. (See above.)

Attention seems to go in waves. Particularly when it comes to my Etsy shop. Sometimes things are all a flurry, and sometimes not so much. Right now it's certainly a-flurry! Hooray!

I've had the lucky-luck of having been featured in an Etsy-wide (subscribers at least) email by Tina seamonster, who is everywhere and is super-awesome-wacky-fun. I've also been on the homepage of Etsy.com a couple of times within the last month or so.... And 1000 Markets featured my bacon puppet--and then a pretty snarky twitter account who can get downright mean sometimes (I won't mention who...) featured me as well! Wheee!

So I've been getting lots and lots of "hooray me" time. Isn't that fun?

There's more, world. There's more....

Not only is this a feature, this is a call to duty for you good people...all 27 of you. It's time to stand up for your country--whichever country that may be--and vote for my wonky finger puppet! I know you may be tempted to vote for something better or more adorable, or better made, or funnier...but resist those urges that cause you to be honest in your voting and vote for me! This is a friggin popularity contest here and won't I be so sad when I only have 2 votes at the finish line. So yes, I'm asking for your pity-vote. Hooray pity votes!

The sad thing here is that I'm "competing" against some of my favorite people--totally unfair...and I'm finding new favorite people, too...I mean, c'mon, pizza cake? Total winner!

So yeah...uhhh vote for my finger. please.

That's the entire point of this blog post.

Vote because you love me

Ok, apparently it's not obvious to everyone reading the blog that I have a poll. That you can vote on. Unless its the same 14 people coming back to visit the blog to find out if there's a new poll...I'm just sayin'. You can also choose more than one option when you vote. its amazing.

So I'm starting to pick the show up little-by-little. Very little. Every time I pick up a puppet to perform for an audience of nobody I transform into a human ball of nervous energy that can't settle. And then heaven forbid I need to do the show for the director--or anyone else in the theater! So they sit there & it's just some puppets, a solitary folding chair and me...ready to rap my little heart out.

It was brought up to me that as long as the music isn't going that I can rap okay, but if you add a beat then I'm lost. This I knew. Need not point out--thanks. So then I was advised to tap my foot to the beat. Its helping a little, but let's think about this....when you hear ragtime, or polkas, or some big band you have a tendency to want to tap your feet....but rap? Do you tap your feet to rap? Not so much--so it's either sound like a fool or look like a fool. Which I should be used to already. I am somewhat of a dingus. (Somehow the word dingus is in my web-browser's dictionary--that makes me happy.)

Ok so this is where I make excuses for my bad puppetry skills:
I'm using a style of puppet that I've never performed with before(which is neat!). They're mostly table-top rod puppets. They're controlled by a rod going through the back of their head or body with a string and elastic for the mouth control (all but one anyway). So first off, I need to keep my derned feet on the playboard. Not something I've ever had to worry about before. Second, I'm so used to moving a puppet's mouth with syllables in a word that I am moving my puppet's body with every syllable which is terribly distracting and uncool. I'm also doing 4 characters in one show..not something I've ever done. I'm usually only one or two characters in a show and they're very seldomly on stage together, so I've never had to worry about vocal distinction in characters. I also work with a male puppeteer most of the time, so I'm never really doing any boy-parts. So in this show 3 of the characters are boys. OY VEY!

My first two shows are Monday, back0-to-back. So today is Wednesday. I have--not that long. Keep your fingers crossed, people. Otherwise some first graders at an elementary school in Chandler are going to be very disappointed.

So I'm thinking about the next puppet fest & what kinds of workshops I'm going to sign up for. I'm thinking a manipulation workshop for sure, and probably a vocal one as well.

Growing in your artform is sometimes a very difficult thing.
(Also, I wish people wouldn't smoke in the basement--just sayin')