Stuff I made in 2025

I started this painting in late October 2024 and finished it in January 2025, just in time for the intended recipient's birthday. Apparently he forgot that he had inquired about commissioning a painting, but it took me a few months to think of a subject that both matched his prompt ("Tomato art, no adult themes") and was exciting for me to work on. Tomatoes by themselves were not quite thrilling enough on their own. I'm particularly pleased with the inexplicable extra hands (for holding more tomatoes) in the era of weird inexplicable AI-generated art.

I took my first acrylic painting class at Lillstreet Art Center in 2023, and I loved the end products, but it. is. so. time. consuming. I'd love to paint more, but I need more hours in the day, and/or much smaller canvasses.

I'm a sucker for a crafting kit!!! This one was a palate cleanser after I attempted an impossible crochet kit earlier in the year. I have a backlog of these that I bought in Japan – the felting kits in particular are so satisfying and cute! I don't think this took more than a day or two.

My friend and I went to a beginner workshop at the Chicago School of Shoemaking and Leather Arts and immediately wanted to do more, so I enrolled in the Molded Vegetable-tanned Leather class and made this bag. This one was an ~8 hr class in 4 total sessions that continually felt like a race against time. You also have to make so many important design decisions right away, like choosing shape, colors of each element, etc. I was very stressed, but I love what I made. I bought the moon-shaped stone later on especially to cover up the rivet, and it adds so much!

I thought it was a good idea to buy blank postcards because I didn't like the ones I was seeing online, but this took a ton of effort. I made these for a letter writing campaign in advance of the Wisconsin Supreme Court election in the spring, and some of them turned pretty cute! But yeah, next time I'm printing something. Mark would like it to be noted that he helped me in this endeavor.

In April, RuPaul's Drag Race Season 17 ended, but more notably, contestant Suzie Toot debuted her cherry bomb wig on stage and ate at the Lalaparuza challenge. I love this look and it definitely inspired some art. I'm including this sketch only because it was such a notable moment in my year! There's more Suzie stuff in my mini-drawings collection at the end.

This was another kit. I'd never done embroidery before, and I chose a Level 3 project 😅 but it turned out okay. This just took a really, really long time. Probably months??

After the molded leather class, I wanted to make more bags!!! The instructor told me to take an industrial sewing machine class next, so that's what this pouch is from. I think the camo and pink zipper look so cute together.

I'm terrible with plants. Kokedama seemed like they would be low maintenance/fairly idiot proof, so I had high hopes for this workshop being offered by the Uncommon Plant Guy, and six months later (Jan 2026), my kokedama is still thriving!!! I think this is a hoya plant.

My third(!) Chicago School of Shoemaking and Leather Arts class this year was Beautiful Bag I. I'm obsessed with this bag that came out of it. This took about ~12 hours? As usual, I was very stressed about the choices (I agonized over the red thread and whether the red straps would go well with the navy) but I'm super happy with it. If you look at it closely, you can tell that I don't know how to sew straight, but from a reasonable distance, it looks clean and expensive. Good enough for me. I think, at this point, I have enough bag construction skills to be able to make something like this on my own, and I'm excited to try something.

Polymer clay is a steadfast part of my crafting repertoire, so I didn't think to take pictures of all the things I've made this year. Most of them were towards the end of the year. I made some Koroks (a usual favorite), the chicken is a Cucco attempt, and a Bat Signal ornament (for the annual celebration of Batsmas). I regret not getting a picture of the mini gnome I made for a friend's gnome-themed birthday, but maybe I can eventually get one in its new home. I need to figure out how to make my pieces look cleaner (fingerprints, lint, etc) – white clay is killer.

I worked on these throughout the year. They're more or less lined up from old to new, so the Zelda themes at the top are the earlier ones and the Pikachu at the bottom was from a few days ago. Honestly, the older ones look better.

During my last trip to Japan in November 2023, I let myself purchase a starter pack of Copic Ciao markers. It felt so impractical, because when do I ever draw or color?! so I decided to make small drawings to have something to do with this extra thick paper I had, and a way to practice with my new markers. I figured out later that people who do amazing things with Copics tend to use a million shades (instead of blending the ones they have), so it's hard to use a limited palette, but this is not an acceptable reason to buy like 40 more Copics, so here's my small collection of mediocre-ly colored drawings.

I want to get back into doodling! and I think the only way to do it is to just keep drawing, even if you're not thrilled with your drawings. I used to have a seemingly endless font of inspiration for doodling, but it's a real struggle now that I'm so out of practice, and I feel this lack of imagination acutely.

I still have so many projects I started in 2025 (and before) that I haven't finished, but looking at what I've actually completed this year makes me feel better about it. With that said, I will continue chipping away at my pile of unfinished things. I spent a lot of time trying to teach myself to crochet this year with pretty much nothing to show for it, and I want to do more drawing, painting, and bag-making, too. Maybe this will be the year that I focus enough to finish a gamedev project? Onward to another year of making stuff!