SoS #5: Squishy and a Polka-dot X-Wing

So... sorry I missed last week, and that I haven't posted any of those new projects yet, but school's been pretty busy lately.  So this week I decided to put up TWO projects!!

Squishy!

Squishy was my first crochet project EVER.  The only crocheting I'd done before him was the strap for a market-bag I made for a friend (the bag itself was knit and beaded).  Squishy generally lives sitting atop my computer monitor and actually has eight legs, though they were a bit hard to fit on.

Though I generally prefer knitting to crocheting - I still find crocheting quite awkward and slow - I have to say though, that stuff requiring shaping like small toys turn out really nice done in crochet.  I've done a few toys now and I like how they turned out :D

The only knitted toy I've done was a knitted ninja, and while I loved how it turned out, getting all the shaping done did get a little tricky, hehehe.

X-Wing

So this is an origami x-wing I folded.  It's another pattern from Joseph Wu's site, though the pattern itself is by Wayne Ko.

The pattern is actually a bit confusing in places - when I went to do it again(months later) I couldn't remember how I got it to work!  Nothing a bit of perseverance can't handle, however.

SoS #4: Yoda Pumpkin

I carved this for Halloween a few years ago.  What you do is you take the picture you want to carve and make it layered in four (or so - it depends on the picture) tones of greyscale from white to black, print it out, and use it as your guide on the pumpkin.  I know some people use dremels but I personally found I had much more control with the exacto knife and box cutter combination I had going on.  If I remember correctly, I did punch through with a metal skewer to get some of the detailed edges on the super shiny bits.

I don't really have a lot to say about this hahaha.  I learned not to carve a pumpkin too far in advance of Halloween - the back was moldy by the time we put him out.

Coming soon:  I do have a (new) FO I'm fairly happy with to share, I just need to get some good pics.  I've also got a WIP, though I haven't decided whether I should wait until it's done to post.  I'll definitely take some WIP pictures of it in any case.

P.S.  Yoda is Bad Ass.

Something old Sunday #3: 'Teeny' Origami Dragon

4"x0.5" yellow origami paper
Design by Joseph Wu. Modified because I made it so small, some bits are simplified.

I made this guy in 2005 - such a long time ago now!  I figured it was around about time I posted something non-sculpey on this site... and this was the first thing that came to mind that I knew where to find a picture of.

It is Very Small.

I have this thing where I tend to make things small.  With origami, after I figure out a pattern I always end up reducing it - or for simpler patterns making it small to start with.

Not this pattern - I've littered several desks of friends, family, and coworkers with bigger versions of this guy.  People got tired of little tiny cranes everywhere... these take longer and are a bit different from what you'd normally see to boot.

Now... this is proof that apparently I *used to* know how to take a picture, if you look at the nice one above, I apparently set the dragon up with some sparkly seed beads to act as the dragon's hoard.

Something Old Sunday: The Legion of goblins.

Yeaah, I know, I know, but it's Sunday somewhere right?

It's... not?

Oh.  Well, I'm sure if we got the Tardis involved, it *could* be.

Got eaten by school.  It happens from time to time.  So, I didn't want to not post *anything* so I'm just going to put up a few pictures, and I'll come back and talk about them later.

So there are four goblins, two with swords, one with a dagger, and one with a shortbow/quiver.  I meant to add arrows later but never did.  They don't have names!  Hmm... I need a set of four names... all I can think of is Leo, Donnie, Raph, and Mikey.  But these goblins are not nearly cool enough for that.

Here they are, there are five individual shots because I took a behind shot of the archer to show the quiver:

And as a group:

Yeah I probably didn't need the flash on for that one.

You can see that these were made before I started using proper wire frames for things.  They've got an ogre buddy who's even the worse for wear, but he'll come in another post.  You can see I was having a bit of fun experimenting with different face types I could get made.  They're also not painted.  Nothing is!  Some day I am going to have a big painting day, but it has not come.

~Kerry

Something Old Sunday #1: My first Sculpey Miniature

So, to start off, my MacBook's harddrive crashed. It's under warranty so they'll replace it and everything, but I'm currently waiting on it to respawn.

I thought instead of posting a whole slew of random pictures that I wouldn't have time to comment on properly all at once, I'd post only a few at a time. That also gives me time to find or take pictures of things...!

Alright, so today we have my very first miniature ever.

Isn't he cute. I had even less of an idea of what I was doing than I do now, which is saying something, but he's still one of the ones I get the most compliments on if I show people a group of minis. He was relatively simple - I made a head and a cylinder (slightly squashed) for the body. Originally I had been thinking I would have him raising two arms above his head as if calling some force down from another plane. Honestly, after I made the first arm, I couldn't make a second one to match closely enough. So when I made the cloak I formed it to suggest a second (nonexistant) arm underneath.

I do like him, though. There's always the shady guy in the huge black cloak, and he does look pretty at home on the map.





Issues and lessons:

• If you're going to have to make more than one of something, do them all at the same time in stages after carefully making sure you have the same amount of clay for each. Arms, legs, ears, anything.
• The clasp on the guy's cloak is almost the same size as his head. I've decided it's some sort of creepy thing carved from bone, but really I just fumbled that one a bit. Oops. :(

What I should have learned but still messed up on in later projects:

• "Eyeing it" doesn't work very well when you're working with such small sizes. I'm still not great at keeping my minis in appropriate scale to one another, but yesterday I made an unfortunate error in sizing within one miniature because I didn't compare what I was working on to the minature it was going to go with. Pictures will be included when I post that project.