A Cretaceous Christmas

Ok, when it comes to Christmas I begrudge spending top dollar on decorations that I will only have on display for less than one month of the year, Especially when I cant find EXACTLY what I want.

I tend to be fairly frugal any how, I think making things I one of the most important part of the festive feeling, but hey that could just be me…

So when it comes to decorating my mini Christmas tree (Poundland for a £1!) I wanted something extra special, If you didn’t already know I ABSOLUTELY LOVE Dinosaurs, and after seeing the monstrosity of a ceramic diplodocus tree decoration in PaperChase for the princely sum of £14, it got me thinking ‘I could do something much more tastefull for A LOT less…

So for this Cretaceous Craft you will require the following:

·       

•           A handful of the cheapest Plastic Dinosaur toys (mine are fairly small but this would work with any size)
•          Paint, I used matt emulsion I had lying about in the basement (homebase’s ‘just one coat matt classic cream emulsion)
•     Sandpaper
•      Elastic: Colour and thickness is your choice but I used 1mm Red  ‘Elastic string’
•      Jewellery Findings, I picked 20 of these up in TIGER for  £1, but I imagine you could find these in the jewellery section of any hobby/craft shop, shapes vary mae sure its thin enough to bend with fingers or pliers
•        Length of thread.
•       Your trusty Glue Gun, locked and loaded
•      A can of clear coat (optional) mine will probably need the protection ,I used Plastikote’s Krystal Clear 

2. Pick your lovely dinosaurs.

Here I have a nice range everything from a stegosaurus to some weird mutated kangaroo beast, rub them up the wrong way with some sand paper to give some bite for your paint, this prevents it from flaking off like my first one did…

2. Paint your Dinosaurs with your desired paint I’d recommend priming them with white if you are planning to use a lighter colour (I had to do about 5 coats to get an even coverage in white) It’s worth noting using a brush to do several thinner layers will allow more detail to show though (faces and scales) on smaller toys

3.Leave these to dry, and if you have decided to, give them a quick coat of clear coat to minimalize chipping, set aside

4.Next take the required amount of your chosen elastic 

(I used about 3 inches) Make a loop and tie the ends in a big double thickness single knot. Pull tight, but knot too tight (I couldn't resist) you want it to be larger than the hole in your ‘finding’ but smaller than the finding itself.

5.Now for the tricky part, threading the loop through the ‘finding’

The elastic will fit but needs some help, so I enlisted the help of some thread, thread it through the hole, loop  though the elastic, thread it back through the hole again, grab both ends and firmly pull, your elastic should pop through with minimal fuss.

Before

After

Here you can see a before and after 

6.Trim the knot ends

7.Now all it’s a case of hot gluing the loops to the dinosaurs

 I folded my findings slightly to match the curves of the dinosaurs before applying glue to minimalize fuss and burnt fingers, It’s worth noting I actually folded the finding backwards in the case of the Stegosaur to fit it tidily between his plates

 

VOILA!

Feel free to add glitter, tie ribbon around the necks ect, if these were bigger I’d put santa hats on them. I guess this could be used with any toys (Pokemon, farmyard animals, fish ect ) the world is your metaphorical oyster!

Mandatory Owls

lets get some owls up in this joint!  really easy to  make with the addition of a sewing machine.. this is the pattern that I happened to use, busting!, its odd how different, little changes make as well, i even gave explorer owl a little backpack, made from a 'leather glove' shaped tag of some of the other half's clothes...

Gimp Continued

Well I've been playing on GIMP lots, with emphasis on old vintage style, I love it, my brush sets are all geared up to this design orientation of mine, I've done a few things, but I've found the most simple things seem to turn out the best....

Man points this was so ridiculously easy to do once I knew the Basics :D

Mandatory Lightsabre Edit

this was actually one of my earlier creations, when i was having fun with fonts...

I'm definitely not the most savvy of photo editors, but I'm showing a Marked improvement yes?
Also... New banner...its not perfectly aligned but it looks a lot better than the old one!

More Jurassic park

I don't know what it is lately...
Heres my girlfriend as Dr. Ellie Sattler sifting through Dino poo, Shes currently doing a dissertation on equine fecal matter, so I thought this scene was pretty apt.

Oh and if you don't get the reference... It's here

Making Finger Puppets

Me make stuff? Never! this is all for my interview (which i totally failed at, but i thought i'd whack this up anyway, i figured someone in the world might think its remotely interesting, you never know...
I think the fox is fucking BADMAN personally, but hey, I just like orange, its not my most favourite pigment, but there are not enough ginger animals, actually maybe that's why farmers hate them... everyone beats on  gingers...

Also the mole looking thing... IT's A BLOODY SHREW GODAMMIT!

This is my preliminary sketches (its based on on food chains btw) God that snail is a happy fellow, look at him go!

The top ones made of felt, but as I couldn't get 10 year olds to sew him together within half hour (along side his mates) so to card i Went (I'm so totally going to make some real felt finger puppets soon methinks)

And a quick how to presentation board:D

I'm pretty chuffed with them, they are cute and quick to make :D definateley need to make some all felt ones mind

5 Reasons a European Bison is Better than a Nintendo DS

well i did this for a job interview, which sadly i didn't get, a little gutted, but the world still turns and I still possess a full set of limbs so its not all bad. I blame much of my failure on the room in which I had the pleasure of having my interview which was not unlike the natural history museum, only a little less organised, a large room littered with stuffed badgers, bones, logs, excessive amounts of wasps nests, skulls and other miraculous curios, alas this may of been the crux of my down fall but man that badger was fucking sweet!

Ok Ok! this is the less child friendly version (obviously)

5 Reasons a European Bison is Better than a Nintendo DS

1. A Bison is More Useful around the Home.
Bison's are bloody huge, in fact they are the largest land based (terrestrial) mammal in Europe, these guys are huge, and are strong as hell! And they have MASSIVE horns, usually they use them for ramming each other  at the bar whilst making quips abbout one anothers maternal figures, these features make them brilliant around the house, they can carry your shopping, help nan put away the shopping and make fantastic door stops!

2. Bison Don't Run out of batteries
No more will you have to make the mad dash for the nearest power outlet ripping out the tv power cord from its electrical abode causeing hysteria throughout the household, you wont even need to spend hours hunting the illusive power cord. Bisons dont need any of that shiz, they run on more obtainable fuel that they find in their woodland abodes, preferring a diet of leaves, moss, and when times are hard will even settle for a cheeky gob full of bark, in fact they'll eat any old shit they find laying around, unless it has a face (unlike the Japanese)

3. Bison Love to Go on walks
Man they walk all over the place looking for food and love nothing more than bombing about the woodland in doing so, infact they get really pissed if you construct some form of barrier in their way, they hate that crap! Luckily because Bison love roaming around in groups, they'll even take you too!, it will EVEN carry you if you ask really nicely (they are a stickler for good manners!... A DS doesn't do any of these things, you just sit there and balloon in weight as you shovel in all those doritto's as you level up your Charizard, and when you need to go some where you have to CARRY IT!

4.A Bison Will Keep you Warm in Winter
I'd Like to see a DS do that! In Winter the European Bison Grows uncomfortable amounts of hair which is warmer than the inside of a microwave, they radiate heat! You know when it snowed so much the whole of England stopped for a week? The bison were all like 'Dude did someone leave the door open?'
'But what happens when it gets hot?' i hear you say? well they even have that covered, they shed their winter coats, meaning they are all ready for the beach as soon as the sn comes out... and the left over fur? its perfect for making high quality hair pieces!

5. Bison are Uber Rare, some people haven't even heard of the things, and get them all confused with normal cows and stuff, meaning that if you have a Bison your are roughly a billion times cooler than a DS user.
Like 80 years ago there were no bison in the wild, zilch, zero, nada they got hunted because they make the coolest hats, people cut down their houses and deer ate all their deer (greedy cunts) even the Russian kings were like 'Dudes don't kill my fucking BISON' then the first world war came and the bison got royally screwed over,
after which some clever bloke decided to pool together the remaining captive bison to start a new population (this consisted of 12 individuals).
In the second world war even Hitler protected the remaining Bison and even killed 3 of his own soldiers because they killed one, that's right even Hitler stuck up for bison, the fucking nazi chief stuck up for them (and he hated everything!, That's how cool they are, you can't say that about most animals!

Nowadays there are about 1800 in the wild but they arn't the happiest bunnies ever they all get STI's because their genetics are all crap, so they all have cock rot and so breeding isn't the easiest thing in the world...

But hey id Rather have a European Bison any day!

From The Archives

My mum had a total clearout and has discovered a once thought to be lost box of nostalgia, containing an array of reports and pictures from school, although the reports themselves do make for interesting reading, the best finds were the Drawings which are actually brilliant, the subject matter is a little simple, but as they say :

'A picture is worth a thousand words'

So tell me, what the hell do these say?

I tell you that is one BADMAN mouse, its so awesome in fact it looks more like some form of Indian rat/zebra hybrid, but at the very least its smiling, so its clearly not aware that its an abomination of nature.

This is Sam the technicolour dog with empty eyes, this one i find a little creepy, but at least his name doesn't make him sound as dead inside as he looks, also it appears I've been having issues with my letter 'a's.

This is the most terrifying of them all all, a greedy cat of death eyeing up a seemingly unaware mouse, i guess i goes to show I already had a good grasp of how nature works even at the ripe age of 5, also im not really sure if the mouse has no tail and 5 legs or the one in the middle being a tail, which is in my defence longer than the rest, which if this was the case would mean i already had a half decent sense of perspective, with the mouse looking over his shoulder (hence the one eye)

                                            'Here is a Zebra' (covered in an array of  coloured paint)

I can't specifically remember ever owning a peacock (let alone 3) but apparently i loved them very much :D

The next one is legendary within my household, and my mother has always refered to my 'masterpiece' that had been cataloged and put into storage, and here it is in all its glory:

The greatest thing about this is not the sheer complexity of my artistic prowess, but the fact that i did this at school, on my own accord, and even got a qualified educator to state EXACTLY what it was, it wasn't just a whale (apparently i was pretty adamant about this at the time) it was a 'Sperm Whale' and to be honest I sincerely doubt any primary school teacher (well in the early 90's at least) ever expects to write the word 'Sperm' on any child's work, especially on a picture, which as my friend Luke so eloquently put it 'that looks like I outlined a dildo'. 
It seems I've always had a half decent knowledge of animals, which is probably the result of mountains of books supplied to me at an early age.

So the moral of the story is: if you want kids to draw entertaining pictures at school and create a talking point later on in life, supply them with ample amounts of literature beforehand.

I respect old women, and despise meat thieves

That's it, I've taken the plunge, i now am the proud owner  of a 4.5 cm crochet hook and a shit load of wool and all i can say is that i have a new found respect for old women crochet is frigg' hard!!
My haul cost me 2.59 with a free (!!!!) booklet thats meant to make me a pro, and although it tells me how to make certain 'stitches?' it fails to teach me what the stitches actually do... all i want to do is make a scarf or something!

 I've been playing for about 3 hours now and my progress is...well minimal 

i have a very shakey foundation chain, but I can cast on and make my chain on my own now... but if i try to single crochet... well this happens

That's right, an abortion! I'm taing a tea break and having a brief reflection on my dismal performance, and will hopefully, by the very least be able to string a couple of chains together by the end of the day, this is my mission.

Also sainsbury's have apparently had a spate of meat related thefts of late:

 weird...

SALT DOUGH!

I have no idea where the urge came from, but it surfaced with such excitement that nothing would quell my desire  to make some form of creation from the medium that is salt dough. Salt dough is a medium usually linked to poorly formed 'tot sculptures' which beg the question 'mate, seriously, what the hell is that?' a question which is instead twisted and reformed by professionals  into 'sooooo....tell me about your sculpture'. The child involved will then offer an exclamation so lucid that even an LSD seems dull in comparison, after which the child's mother involved would demand that it sits pride of place on the mantelpiece to advertise to any visitors that the child of the household has the artistic ability of a lemon. Bless
Basically i just wanted a play, and i broke Anna's room plaque that her niece made because it was shit I was drunk, so i totally owed her one. so as usual I over stocked on salt (i bought 5 times more than i actually needed)
and used this recipe

SALT DOUGH
1 cup of  table salt
1 cup of water
2 cups of flour

Throw the salt and flour in a bowl, then gradually add the water  untill it makes dough, of it's to sticky add flour and if its too dry add more water...
And I don't mean American cups either, I just mean A cup (obviously the bigger the cup the more you will make)

And this is what I made...

with the dinosaur being my favourite...OBVIOUSLY!
You can leave it to air dry (takes a day or two  or cook it on low heat, what i didnt realise is that it still takes a billion hours on low temp (50-100 Degrees C)  so i did it for an hour and then left it to air dry for the remainder of the time :D

Dinosaurs!

So this week i went to Annas, and revelled in the joy that is a partnership, i'm not one for public affection, but we had a snazztastic time :D
on our travels around the ever so popular tourist destination that is Maidstone, a place renound for for its classy inhabitants, beautiful architecture and pristine river water... well maybe not, but I digress. SO in TKmax we hunted for some suitable winter attire, however after feeling swamped with unsuitable clothing for nearly an hour, i tugged on the rope tied to my waist 3 times and was returned to the the surface.
And then i saw it, its surface distorting the surrounding space, glinting, as if flaunting its brilliance, dancing its seductive dance...

Yes its crude as hell, but it's DINOSAURS FOR GOD'S SAKE!!!!!1!!!!!oneone!!!1eleven, admittedly it drawn in a style similar to medieval bibles and for 30 quid I'm sure i could get a decent scientific etching for that, but still it filled the world, for a second with glee of that found only within 5 year old's.

Obviously I am easily entertained and a randomly, well placed dinosaur related object is all needed to make my day, so here i am cheerfully beaming in the fact i have seen this monstrosity of an art piece (i love the grumpy triceratops in the centre of the painting XD ) and i go nect door to hobby craft where i manage to pick up this little fella for a few (3) quid...

A VELOCERAPTOR!?!?!! probably the most badass of all dinosaurs portrayed by film? yes please!
so i pick up this cheeky little gift to myself to entertain me for an hour or so whilst the bird is doing boring degree related follies...
After 15 minuites of quizzical brow scratching, eye strain and a spattering of dinosaur noises i begin to realise that this 'little model' isn't going to be so little after all...its FUCKING EPIC! its man sized!

That my friend's is the BARGAIN of the century!

YEAH ROY!:D :D

Paint'n plastic to look well...not plastic

In preparation for my (and my gf's) Halloween costumes, i cracked out the acrylics and had a bit of a play, I haven't got the goggles yet so i had a bit of an experiment with an old Tommy gun that was laying around (from a gangsta costume years ago)- I love how I have all these props and paints hanging about :D so for about 15 mins or so i had a play with silver, black and 'burnt seanna' brown and just mucked about for a bit. And these are the results...

To be fair for my first ever try at anything like this (things like painting war-hammer figurines I despise with a passion ) I'm pretty chuffed, admittedly i went a bit mental towards the back of the gun, but it seems that dry-brushing is totally the way forward... smudging and rubbing thinned layers seems to work for crevices (wipe the remaining paint of surrounding areas), but I'm not a fan for using it in other areas. I was contemplating using gold paint and giving a bit of a steampunk style to my goggles although i really like the gun metal colours :D 

So: 

1.rough up plastic with some sandpaper

2.Paint with a black undercoat

3.Dapple with a dark grey/silver with a dry brush

4.Repeat with lighter metallic colour

5.use dry brush and highlight colour to crate scratches

Unlike today i would totally let layers dry completely and probably use much less paint (thin them up with water or something)  and give my goggles some dents and scratches with some form of heavy duty tool...but for 15 mins I'm pretty chuffed

Vintage Ad's

I absolutely love 1950's illusration, its a cross between comic strips and information films, i love retro things, well old things in general really :D and so when i saw this ad campaign entitled 'Everything ages fast' by Sao Paulo ad agency Moma Propaganda i was in awe :D i love them
Vintage ads for cutting edge internet stuff :D 10 points for you good sir's

Download these snazzy peices of art work from here in hi def :D so you to can be awesome

Kid's Critique

You know when an adorable snot nosed little kid shows you a master piece formed from a felt tip with only a hint of ink and uncomfortable amounts of crayon and you think 'What the bloody hell is that?!?! but instead you grin and bear the monstrosity that is offending your eyes instead praising said kid for his artistic endevour?
Well THIS/ Guy had had enough and has instead decided to tell the world what he thinks of childrens 'master pieces'

''I am Maddox, a 32-year-old computer programmer and writer. I can spell, draw, and do math better than your kids, so I've taken the liberty to judge work done by children. I'll be assigning a grade of A through F for each piece: ''

''Ding Ding! Here comes the shit-mobile. I've never seen a fire truck that needed to be shaved. I would rather be burned to death than be saved by this hairy piece of shit. ''

 

Brilliant XD

Imaginism: Epic Creatures

Ok So im a massive animal fan, and have a soft spot for sci-fi and fantasy, been mucking about with 'stumble' and have found some really cool stuff :D this lot is done buy a handfull of artists and they are snazztastic

They are all available Here

nice stuff on the web

Couch Cushion Architecture; A Critical Analysis

this is wonderfull its achietects analysing kids forts designs, its lovely :D

and then i found this awesome idea

Brigada Creativa its proper awesome although has yet to be put into manufacture...shame

in other news i finally completed super mario bros 3, something ive been trying to do sincei was 8, only to find that the princess is a complete dick

the princess is in another castle, thats hillarious -.- after wasting hours of my life playing a brilliant (yet outdated) game, i expect a little bit more gratitude, i mean even solitare gives you fireworks!
well ive done it, its out of my system and has now reminded me about how much i miss my DS, and the pokemon games i had on it, speaking of which... i found out they have released an adults clothing line 'pokemon 151' geared towards the origional players, they are impossible to source outside of japan, which makes me a little sad inside.... alas
here are some pics ;)


i think they are epicly subtle, the perfect way to disguise the geek :D