We have swamp dragons!

It's done!  The head only nods, it doesn't turn like I wanted but he's done, stuffed and ready.  I'll probably use a bit of hidden velcro or tape or similar to hold him in place when walking around but I'm resonably pleased.  I won't be posting a full tutorial down the track as a lot involved making it up as I went and fixing the odd bit that went a bit funny, but if you do know a little about sewing and toymaking, I should be posting enough to let you make your own version. That won't be for at least a month so stay tuned!

Four weeks to go... uh oh...

ARRRGGGHHH!  Only four weeks to go before the convention, and my weekends are already too busy (glances guiltily at the unmarked SACs in the corner).  But I really want to finish my dragon (not to mention make the rest of the costume!) so I got stuck in this weekend to try and finish him off.

Here's the side view- as you can tell, I've not put the front legs on yet!

Front legs are on and you can see he has ears and a face

I think I'm on the home stretch now, I just need to make some ears wings (which are basically slightly bigger ears).  He's not got the range of movement that I really wanted (while he can nod well, it's very hard to get him to turn his head side to side).

I also tried to make a 'leather' apron for Lady Sybil to wear but.. well the less said, the better right now. I've not experienced the joy of sewing vinyl in a machine before and while I tried a few tricks, they are not helping right now.  I'm leaning towards ignoring seam details and just hand sew the string/ neck band on and calling it good enough.  And I have no idea about the rest of the costume, too little time, no great ideas.  ARRRGGHH!

Oh, and I've been told that some people (hi Mum!) are having issues with commenting.  Sorry- I've tried playing with the settings available to see if that helps but I would rather not have it anonymous as I end up playing spam filter to poorly worded advertising posts.

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.