More Paper

The project I showed off yesterday was only one of quite a few different paper craft projects that I did over the weekend. I was clearly in a papery mood rather than a yarny mood!

As well as yesterday's Iron Man, I found another cute template on Gus Santome's site and made this little Darth Vader. The best part, you can take his helmet off, to reveal a grumpy Anakin underneath *laughs*

I was also in a bit of a doodling mood, so I created a couple of pieces of artwork on pages from an old book (not a valuable antique of course!)

"Suck The Marrow" is my family motto. It comes from the film Dead Poet's Society and is essentially an extension of Carpe Diem, urging you to really make the most out of life, experiences and opportunities. It's a sentiment I keep in mind when I get the chance to do something new, so I thought a framed reminder would be good *smiles*

As I enjoyed making that so much, I took another piece of the paper and doodled this little guy:

I'm very into doodling robots at the moment *laughs* The backing paper was some plain, pearly gold that I decided needed texture. I just embossed lots of straight and wavy lines on it and I think it came out really well.

I love the robot, I think the black and gold pen really works on the aged paper:

It was kinda tough, using book pages, as I have an aversion to destroying books in any way. But it worked so well that I'm glad I did.

It makes me laugh that I doodled and wrote on pages from a book entitled "Manners and Tone of Good Society" though *grins*

Paper Punk

I don't know if I've mentioned before, but I'm a huge fan of the blog Epbot. Recently Jen posted a DIY Shadowbox tutorial to display a paper figure. I really liked it, so I decided to have a go myself...

Using a template from Gus Santome, I made a little Iron Man figure (his site has some seriously cute paper templates, I made another which I'll show you tomorrow).

And then I set to work on creating a little display. Rather foolishly, I didn't take any in progress pictures at all - probably because I was having so much fun making that I forgot to document *laughs* So instead I'll give you a tour of the finished product ;)

Presenting my little steampunk(ish) Iron Man display *grins*

After attaching a little metal corner piece to his head, I decided that the box needed to match, so I customised in lots of different ways. First I sprayed a plain cream box with copper paint, then used a black ink pad to give it some more depth:

The texture on the box really helped, I think.

The background isn't too easy to see, but I stuck in some gears and some circles cut from antique book paper:

The gears are also replicated on the front of the box, as shown in the first picture. I decided the front needed something more, so I added a line of "rivets" (stick on pearls that I stained with copper ink)

I carried on the rivet theme onto Iron Man's chest, to tie him in a bit better! I followed Jen's lead and added some flames to the front of the box (I know Iron Man doesn't really have reddish coloured flames, but they fitted better into my colour scheme *laughs*)

I coloured the tops of the flames with copper, and I used spacers between them to stagger the depth.

Overall, I totally love how this came out. It took ages, but I think it's worth it *grins*

To Dye For...

So, as I mentioned yesterday, boyfriend had a go at dyeing yarn *grins* He'd been quite impressed with my attempt  some time ago, and had suggested he might find it fun to have a go. So I bought undyed yarn at Knit Nation and ordered some more Kool Aid. We agreed that he could dye the yarn for my use, being somewhat reluctant to venture into the land of crazy coloured socks himself. Works for me ;)

We assembled our supplies:

I decided, having reviewed my sock yarn stash, that I was lacking in the green department, so we went with blue, green and yellow Kool Aid. I did order a purple one as well, in case a blue/purple combo might work, but we didn't use that in the end.

Boyfriend looked beautifully fetching in yellow rubber gloves and my cowprint apron *laughs* However, and I'm sorry to disappoint, to save his blushes there will be no photographic evidence of this. He did look cute though, especially while he was concentrating on dipping the yarn into different colours and being quite specific about what he wanted next ;)

Dyed and ready to go into the microwave to cure:

These colours are obviously a bit more saturated due to the yarn being wet. Also, being a wool/tencel blend, the yarn only adheres to the animal fibre and not to the tencel, so the final product looks a little different. However I was prepared for this, having dyed the same blend myself. I actually quite like the almost chalky quality of the colour. Next time I'll go for something a bit more vibrant though ;)

I took quite a few pictures of the finished skein (or hank if you prefer) to show off the subtle colour variations.

 Boyfriend has named his colourway "Seaweed of Endor" and is, I believe, really quite proud of it *smiles* I can't wait to knit with it and see how the colours combine, I love the icy blue sections particularly. Better get knitting socks fast!

Trying Not to Pun

Recently I was lucky to be offered some yarn to try out - from a company called Home Crafts .

Anyway, one of the yarns I had to try out was a skein of recycled sari silk.

I've never used sari silk before, as pretty as it is I have never had any idea to what to do with it, so I never bought any. But then I had some, and it was the perfect opportunity to try it out.

Because of all the amazing colours, I have noticed that sometimes projects using it can get a bit overwhelming. So I decided to pair it with some cream yarn that I had lurking in my stash and do something with stripes...

I think it gives the colours a real opportunity to shine, rather than getting a bit muddled together. They really are beautiful - although I found the yarn really tough on the hands when I was working with it, so it's probably not something I would use again. I'm glad I have given it a go though - if only to know that I like to look at the skeins but don't want to buy any ;)

So, enough jabbering, do you want to see what I made?!

 A cute hat *smiles* It's not my usual style, but I actually really like it.


Fair disclaimer - I was sent this yarn as well as a few other skeins free of charge by Home Crafts, to make a project and blog about it as part of a crafting competition. I hadn't actually heard of the site before this, but they sell lots of crafty supplies that I now quite fancy buying. As this isn't a review as such, the usual "all opinions are my own and not something I was asked to say" isn't entirely relevant, but still true *laughs*


It's Friday, so you know what to do... Visit Tami's, Natural Suburbia and Wisdom Begins in Wonder. Have a great weekend :)

PS - it was tough coming up with a post title that didn't involve a pun based on the word Sari sounding like Sorry!

Blogsy

I've seen a few people recommend the Blogsy app for blogging, so I thought I would give it a try *smiles*

I don't think I am likely to use it for long posts, as I can type much faster on an actual keyboard than on here, but it is a pretty good app. It seems to be easy to add and resize pictures, either from my iPad directly or from Flickr etc.

The picture above it actually the outcome of smashing a giant chuppa chupp lolly ;)

Essentially this post is just me playing around!

 

Posted with Blogsy

Um... Works Not In Progress Wednesday!

So, I have no progress to show this week!

This is partly because the weather is so gorgeous that knitting is the last thing on my mind ;) Finally having some sun has a great effect on my mood but a stalling effect on crafting. But I'm ok with this, I like the sun *laughs*

I have done a couple of repeats of my Starpower socks (naming credit to Vanessa *grins*) and that's pretty much it.

See, I'm even recycling the picture, because not enough has changed to warrant a new one *laughs* I do like this picture though, it really shows off the yarn and the pattern nicely.

The weather forecast is lovely for the rest of the week, so I don't imagine I'll get much more knitting done. I am reading a lot more though - sitting in the garden in the sun with a book is one of my favourite things *smiles*

To read about actual crafting progress, head on over to Tami's and Ginny's *smiles*

Aaargh, Snaaaaaaaaaaaaake!

Introducing Billy, the Snake.

This was a Nerd Wars project, but even if it hadn't been, I think I still would have worked on him exclusively until he was finished, just because he's so cute *laughs*

I was inspired by a few different patterns, but in the end I made this one up as I went along. He's knitted with random stashed acrylic yarn, with a flexible wire inside so he can be posed...

See, ready to strike ;)

The challenge that this project came under was inspiration from a book cover, tied into a different team. I found a book with the myth of Ophiuchus, a constellation that I love, who has a snake around him. Hence, snake *laughs*

The myth of Ophiuchus is pretty cool, he was a man who turned into a healer after seeing one snake take some herbs to a sick snake. The sick snake got better, so Ophiuchus used the same herbs to heal the sick. Only, the God Zeus wasn't too happy about it and struck Ophiuchus down, to prevent humans becoming immortal like the gods. But, to honour him, he put Ophiuchus in the stars as a constellation.

This is where the image of a snake round a staff to represent healing/hospitals comes from - although it is usually called the rod of Asclepius after the Greek version of Ophiuchus. Same guy, but Ophiuchus was the Roman version (side note, the caduceus, a staff with 2 snakes around it that is sometimes used to mean hospital, is actually a symbol of commerce but is often used incorrectly - not that this bugs me or anything *laughs*)

Anyway, enough of the lecture, back to my snake ;)

To show off the snake as attributed to the myth, cunning boyfriend lent a hand (literally) and posed for me...

*laughs*

It's Friday, so you know what to do... Visit Tami's, Natural Suburbia and Wisdom Begins in Wonder. Have a great weekend :)