Cat Girl

This one is so cute and reminds me and my daughter of someone in our family, so I have given it to them.

She's probably off to some doll Anime convention

And here is the wool from whence she came.

Purply-blue with a hint of ginger, bought on purpose so I can make a doll that has my daughter's hair colour (the gingery-ness, not the purple). Still to come.

Princess Anime Dolls

Following on the theme of the last few posts and true to my prediction of addiction to craft that explores the little-anime-girls theme...

... here are the Princess anime dolls

Cute, sparkly and still ready to deal out sharp, sword-related death to any foes that cross their path...

... just what I expect from a princess!

and here is the variegated wool that spawned them

Wait For Me!

Here is little sister Anime doll that is determined not to be left behind.

She may be younger than the other two, but she is armed, dangerous and literally doesn't know the meaning of the word fear!

Like a medieval set of Charlie's Angels.

Even Cuter Anime Dolls

I said there'd be more. I felt a new craft-obsession coming on and here it goes

With attitude and sword! Yesterday's one was scared... today's one will be up and at 'em! 
The sword is from a packet of coloured plastic cocktail sticks in the shape of swords - the kind you stab cheese or pickled onions with at 1970's parties (only they were boring wooden ones then). It was longer but I cut the end off to keep it to scale for her.

They look like they are just waiting for their own story to be written about them.

Anime Dolls

I found this gorgeous wool the other day and just knew it was meant to be hair for some doll-like creation.

It changes colour from blue to purple and, with the addition of a large wooden bead, some smaller beads, wire and felt, like this...

Becomes this!

Ain't she cute?
I feel a surge of little anime dolls coming on! look out for more in the coming posts.

Shocked Pepper

A short while ago, we had the cross, the baby and the laughing peppers.

http://socklet-world.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/cross-pepper.html
http://socklet-world.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/baby-pepper.html
http://socklet-world.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/laughing-peppers.html

Now we have the shocked pepper!

Half peppers are such fun!

Planet Fence!

The photos that seem to come out the best when using this app (Tiny Planets) are the ones that might otherwise be very boring. Pics that are very flat and angular work especially well... like our garden fence

from this... to this

Groovy =)

Marmite on the Mantelpiece

It is Spring!
That means the sun shines more brightly (at times) and shows up the dust and clutter (perpetually) and I feel the need for a clear out and a rearrange.

All the beloved Marmite jars came down for a dust and then got given a new home in pride of place on the mantelpiece above the fireplace.

The central one on top is an old one from the late 70's early 80's that I found in a box of old tins I had collected in my youth. it still had the metal lid! The garland across the front is the one I blogged about making on my summer holiday last year
http://socklet-world.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/marmite-daisy-chain.html
and  where you can still see the original (and much smaller) Marmite collection before we hunted the house down to locate all these beauties and gather them together.

By the way, did you know the Marmarati are on the move again? I had the email! Exciting things may be afoot!

Lego Owl Face and Alien Eyeball

If you've tuned in hoping to see the face of an owl painstakingly made from Lego bricks and an exact replica of a real owl... then I apologise unreservedly. 

It is in fact, me messing about with the Circular app and accidentally arriving at what seemed to me to be the face of a weird and very spaced-out orange owl.

Here is the alien eyeball nesting in the pile of Lego bricks.

And here is the original (extremely dull) photo taken in the Lego shop, of their pick and mix pod of orange bricks.

Often it works out that the more dull the starting point with this app, the stranger and more interesting the results can become!

Experiments with Glo-Sticks

Have you ever cut the end off a glo-stick and flicked out the contents to see what happens?

Like yesterday, this probably needs some kind of safety warning... flick it outdoors and away from people and important objects?

"Why on earth would you want to do it anyway?" I hear one of you ask.
Well, 'Needs must when the devil drives' as my old Gran used to say, which means you do what has to be done when there is great necessity.

To explain, my autistic son loves ice skating and we buy a ticket on the Friday every week for the ice disco, but when they had a UV paint party on the ice, the tickets sold out in advance and he couldn't go. I don't know if you've ever had to deal with an autistic meltdown but its not easy. The solution we came up with was to dress in old clothes, wear our wellies, cut the top off glo-sticks (while telling him about the chemicals and being careful and it being a once-off occasion only) and flick them all over the patio (and each others' wellies).

There were only 2 but the effect lasted long enough to satisfy the need for excitement that had been denied.

Creative parenting needed often!

Crafting with Circuit Boards 2: Cute Robots

I'll start with a WARNING for safety's sake:

Some components on a circuit board can be dangerous and contain a liquid or paste that can burn skin. These are the capacitors (sometimes shaped like a small cylinder (like on the robots below)and sometimes not. In a camera battery they can be black, not cylindrical and deliver a vicious electric shock, I'm told, so don't mess with them.

If in doubt,  leave well alone.

I only found out the above information when halfway through when I texted someone to ask, and the final warning a day later when showing them to someone.

Warning over, here are the bits I used

 here are the resulting robots

The box they are in was an old wooden container that had come with craft supplies in, and I can never get rid of an interesting box.

So I took the photograph of the circuit board, printed it out and used it to cover the box, home from home for the little robots.

When they are all together, my daughter reckons they look like tiny robot students in their party house at Robot Uni.

The other bits and pieces to make the scene were not from the circuit board, but just found or acquired rubbish I keep in a box for making  whatever needs robot/ steam-punkish embellishment.

For a sense of scale, I suppose each robot is just taller than a 50p piece.

Crafting with Circuit Boards 1

I rescued this old circuit board from something so long ago that I can'e even remember what from. I knew it would be useful some day.

Today I'll show you the apps I used on it before I began to play, and tomorrow I'll show you what I made from the component parts.

If you've been on my blog in the last few days. you'll have seen the effects of me getting my photographic mitts on the Tiny Planet app. Then husband compounded my joy (and probably your boredom if you're not a fan of funked up photos) by showing me I also had one called Circular.

It does a similar job to begin with - either making a planet or a wormhole depending on which way it bends the image - however you can then play with various settings afterwards and get different effects on top of that. This pic is Circular but the following ones are back to Tiny Planets, but look out for both in future.

Tomorrow... ROBOTS!
(Not working ones, just cute)

Drawing on Eggs

This is one of the ways to use the pens I talked about yesterday (only ones with a much finer end, 

although when I have another go sometime I will paint the surface first as it was a little to absorbent and the ink spread out on one side of the egg after a few minutes

You live and learn.

Planet Sharpie

Love Tiny Planets App. Love Sharpies.
Combine the two and what do you get?
Planet Sharpie!

These are the big chisel-ended ones. Husband bought them for me as a surprise last week so I have yet to find a project for them. In the mean time here are some twisted photos of them.

And an untwisted one so you know where we started from before the app was applied.

Now I'm off to http://www.sharpie.com/en-US/creations to find out what I could do with them in the real world.