Turnover Ugly Face

I've encouraged my son Sam's interest in art since he was very young and we'd scour the library checking out loads of "how to" drawing books from the library.

When Sam was about 8, we came upon a library book sale late in the day . They were trying to get rid of as many books as possible and you could buy a box for $1 and fill it with as many books that would fit. We were so excited to find a stack of one of our favorite how-to-draw author-illustrators, Lee J. Ames. Can you say best deal EVER?!? We've gotten a lot of use out of the those books over the years.

One of my favorite instructions are for the "Turnover Uglies" that we found in the book "Beasties and Yugglies and Turnover Uglies and Things that go Bump in the Night" by Lee J. Ames. These are faces and characters drawn so they look one way right side up and a different thing upside down. A man with a big bushy mustache transforms with a simple flip to an angry guy with out of control eyebrows. His name is Frank Knarf. Another is what I call the skateboard dude into witch doctor his name is Llewellen Nell Ewell and he was the inspiration for my latest creation.

I've been doing a lot of hand sewing and designing my own line of creatures which I hope to release to the wild soon. So, this was just an experiment that went a little awry. 

He, the pillow, was completely hand stitched from "green" materials.

• The red face is eco-friendly felt made from recycled plastic bottles. 
• The pink corduroy back was salvaged from a bag of fabric being thrown out. 
• The pink cheeks were cut from an old t-shirt. 
• The teeth, lips and hair were made from scraps of fleece and felt left over from hats I made. 
• The pillow is stuffed with left over bits of fabric from many, many projects.

It's a little bit crazy, a lot weird and yes, my son did run from the room shouting "What is that thing?!? MY EYES MY EYES!" But, after all the hours I've put into this ugly pillow, I've grown to love it.