Making a swamp dragon- Post 1 of ?

Urgh, the 40C weather has come and I don't like it!  It's also a scarily short period of time before the Australian Discworld Convention- at least if you have not yet done any thing for your costume *eep!*

So I have spent some time today starting my very own puppet swamp dragon.  Early days so far but here is the head with some features.

Don't mind the bit on the bottom left- that's the gap for me to add stuffing and other things

I'm just working on the ears now as I want to have the head as complete as possible as it needs the most attention to the details.  There will be a pattern of sorts at some point in the distant future but for now I am just going to be recording progress!

The end of the holidays (sob!)

As I procrastinate my morning away on my first day back at work, I thought I would post a final update on some finished projects.

First up, I managed to make a tear off calendar of my own in time for January to be of some use!  Here are the pages before assembly.

And in the nick of time and after several days of frustration as the spine guilding wasn't working (turns out that varnishing the fabric before guilding is NOT optional) I managed to put my latest two Discworld stamp yearbooks together.  I even found time to put stamps into the 2014 edition!

Oh, and I also assembled/varnished the cute bookend that you see.  Little tip- don't buy the tubes of acrylic paint from Kmart- I used the ENTIRE tube of white to try and paint it and it was so watery that it still didn't cover it properly.  I had to use another paint to give it the final coat.

Craft is going to be on the backburner for a while but I'll post if I come up with anything that might be useful!

D'oh!

I had and have big plans for these holidays but the universe seems to be against me right now.  I have managed to scientifically demonstrate that it is safer for me to do craft than it is to do housework.  While washing the dishes a glass decided to shuffle off this mortal coin and one of the bits embedded itself into my right hand.  A trip to hospital, four stitches, a course of antibiotics and a tetanus shot later and week pause in crafting (bending hand in certain directions was Not A Good Idea).  So instead I did what any sane person would do, and went on holidays to NSW- Parkes and Bathurst specifically.

Anyhow, over the Christmas break I stayed with my parents and managed to put this necklace together that had been in the queue for a while:

Celtic Knot necklace- kit bought at a craft fair from Bead Shack

And make the beading on this pretty perfume bottle (sidenote- while there doesn't seem to be anywhere to get this kit online, look on ebay or similar for woodworking supplies for pen, bottle and other bits that beading can be used on)

And my old desk pen holder (an old mug) was starting to look a bit battered so I put this together.

Parkes Telescope: 'The Dish' from the movie The Dish

So as I start to unpack from my trip, enjoy my first day without stitches and nurse a sore back (pulled a muscle just before driving home.  Turns out 7.5 hours driving is not a good thing either... urgh, I need a holiday....)

More to come- some new stamp albums to bind, I need to get my convention costume sorted for the next DW convention and just before I wrecked my hand I had started a new beading project.

Small monthly desk calendar

At the end of November, there is the annual Hogswatch event for Discworld fans, in the little town of Wincanton, Somerset, England.  But for many fans, including myself, it's a little far to pop in and visit. So instead, several of us got together in a Skype chat and had our own fun.  I wrote* a lovely little quiz and made this little desk calendar as a prize for the winner.  It has a Discworld stamp theme with tear off pages but if you like bookbinding or scrapbooking you should enjoy this and can easily modify it for any theme you like.  It also folds flat which means it is a great present to post.

This post is going up 28th December so if you are sitting around the house, tired from the Boxing Day Sales (or avoiding the shops completly) it's a fun couple of hours (most of that time being design- decision making is hard!)

This small calendar has tear off pages and sits nicely on a desk or table

*well, stole questions from various places online

Materials

• Various scrapbook papers 7.5 cm x 11 cm
• One piece of light card 7.7 cm x 23.5 cm
• Print out of months- I just googled '2015 calendar' and found something that would work for me.  If you are reading this post in a later year, obviously change the year to something suitable!
• Decorative bits (my theme was a Discworld stamp calendar but you could go with anything you like)
• Hole punch- smaller holes would work better but you could probably make do with a holepunch.
• Pretty string (it will be visible and need to hold the calendar together so choose carefully)
• Needle with an eye big enough for the string
• Drill with small drill bit
• Pretty button

Note- all the sizes are based on what I made, with minimal layers on each page.  If you make your pages with lots of layers/thickness you will need to adjust some of these dimensions, particularly for the cover.
Method
Step 1 is the hardest part- deciding what papers to use for what month!

Draw a faint line on the bottom of your calendar, 2 cm from the bottom.  Use this as a guide to make a row of holes for each page using the holepunch.  This is what will let you tear away months as they pass.  Spacing of the holes will depend on what size punch you have.  If you are worried, have a practice on a bit of scrap paper to see what is the best spacing to allow you to tear away later.

Layout and glue down the bits to make your calendar up.  Make sure you keep your work above the row of holes.

Now for the cover.  Take the card and score at the 2.5, 3, 14, 14.5 cm lengths (if your pages are thicker then adjust here accordingly).

Scoring the lines with a knife or a bone folder (note- not actually made of bone these days!) is crucial for crisp folds

Fold at the score marks and check if your pages fit into the cover correctly.

Horray, the pages fit in nicely!

Now to mark out the dots to drill with.  Exact measurements don't matter, provided things look symmetrical.  You want to make three holes in a triangle, with one dot in the middle and further from the bottom than the other two.  See the picture and you'll see what I mean.

Location of holes and numbered so you can follow the next bit.  Note my incredibly useful little hand drill

Use bulldog clips to hold everything together, cover and pages, while you drill the holes.  Another bit of scrap paper is useful to prevent marks being left on your cover.

Appearance after step 1

Now to sew it all together.  Take a long length of string (about a meter.  You won't use it all but it is much better to have too much than too little!) and thread it onto the needle.  To sew, refer to the diagram above to follow along with each hole:

1. Starting from the front, go through hole 2 leaving a length of around 10 cm of string.  
2. Go through hole 2 again from the front and pull tightly.
3. From the back, bring the needle through hole 1 to the front, then loop the thread around the bottom and bring the needle through hole 1 again from back to front.
4. Loop the thread around the left side of the book and through hole 1 again from back to front.
5. Put the needle through hole 2 from the front and bring the thread around the left side to the front before putting the needle through hole 2 again from front to back.
6. On the back, put the needle through hole three to bring it to the front.  Take the thread to the back around the base and back through hole 3 .
7. Take the thread to the back again and through hole three.
8. Bring the needle through hole 2 and you should have the pattern now completed.

Tie the threads off (a drop of clear nail polish is a good way to secure the knot) but leave about 10 cm of length for each.

The threads will be used to wrap around a button to hold the cover closed or open in place on a desk.  Just put the button onto the cover, use a pencil to mark where the holes are and punch out with a needle or holepunch.  Sew the button into place and tie string off at the back.

And you are pretty much done.  I prettied up the cover, just because I could but you could also leave it plain if you preferred.

Beaded Christmas tree update

Tis the season to bring the Christmas tree out.  Since I live in a small unit, a big tree is not going to happen so for the last few years, since I made it, I've had my beaded Christmas tree.

But see that ugly wire down there?  This year I decided to hide it away.  Now I could've just put stuff at the bottom to hide it but that wouldn't completely hide it as the lid would be problematic.  Instead I've gone a bit more posh and cut the wire to let me thread it where I would.

Step one was to make a hole in the box so it can be turned on/off from the outside.  I had a new box I was going to move the tree to as part of this process that was a bit taller so the battery pack fit in well.  A bit of scrap paper to rough out the shape of the end of the battery pack and the location of the switch and I had a template.

The template is upside down in the photo relative to the pack but oh well

The template then let me draw where I wanted the switch hole to be easily.

The final spot is on the left- the bottom is where I tried to freehand draw it and failed.

Using a craft knife I cut out a hole for the switch, making sure that it was long enough to let it be turned on and off.

Next step is the lights.  LED stands for Light Emitting Diode and the diode part of that means that they only work when the current is passing through the correct direction. If you have the poles around the other way nothing will happen.  So I used a black marker to colour one of the wires in so when cut I could tell which end went with which.

The wire is coloured in so I can identify it later- I'm using a different set of lights for this part to make it easier to follow

Then cut the wire using wire cutters and strip the ends.

Wires cut and stripped- note the bottom two are coloured black for easy identification.

Before doing anything else, checking things are still good is useful- just hold the bare metal of each wire together and see if it lights up (note- this should ONLY be done for low powered battery lights, not something running off mains!)

Yep, still works

I had to remount the tree into the box so that meant making four holes for the trunk of the tree (four rigid metal wires bound together with florist tape) and an extra hole near the trunk for the lights wire to pass through).  Once things were stable in the box lid it was time to fix the base up.

Place the battery pack into the box so the switch is in the correct place.  I used tape initially but will go back later with hot glue as I am finding the pack is moving just enough to make using the switch annoying.

Interior of the box showing the battery pack in location and my lovely wire connections (real electricians should probably turn away here)

Inside, check that you have the wires around the correct way again (it's only paranoia if the universe is NOT out to get you!) and then join the wires- a light twist then lots of electrical tape is my method of choice.  Just a light twist mind you- too much and you'll break the individual wires.  And the tape is important as it will prevent any short circuit occurring which could kill the lights, tree or batteries or all of the above.  You should also check that there is enough length in the wire to allow you to place the lid on a table next to the box easily.  Otherwise you'll be trying to hold the tree while also replacing batteries and that's just annoying.

That's pretty much it.  Not fancy but it does make for a nice tree.

Look at that base- isn't it nice with no wires!

Happy Christmas everyone.