Vivian

Vivian is the newest crochet plush doll. She ended up being a lot bigger than I planned.




I used popcorn stitch to make the spots. It's my favourite stitch (that I've learnt so far).



As you can see, Vivian is very glamourous, and very sassy. Her best friends call her Viv.

Pink stripe bows

More hair accessories. I really liked this fabric so I made some hair combs and also hair clips with it. I like the combs best, but my hair's too short to use them!

Eco Dwellings

I've finally finished the sequel to Intricate Dwellings and Futuristic Dwellings. It's called Eco Dwellings and it's got an ecological/botanical theme. Most of the towns/cities and set in some kind of garden.



As usual, there's a check list of items which are hidden in the pictures. I've tried my best not to make it too hard!



Intricate Dwellings, Futuristic Dwellings and Eco Dwellings are all available individually and also now as a set, in my Etsy Shop

Eddie

Been a while since I made a new crochet plushie. This is Eddie. He sort of looks like a cross between Olive and Laurence.



His glasses are a tad wonky. I think one of the problems with crochet for me, is that you have to do a bit of planning and stitch counting to get something like that very neat, and I just didn't put enough time into it.

This Way!

New zine that I've made called "This Way". All it is, is drawings of various things all moving in one direction, guiding you round the book and back to the start, where you can read it for a second time if you like.



It could be used as a colouring book I suppose. Other than that, fairly pointless. If you wanted a real challenge, you could count all the arrows. I bet there are hundreds!



"This Way" is available in my Etsy shop

White chocolate and raspberry cheesecake

It's been horrible hot weather all day, and who wants to cook stuff when it's hot? No-one that's who. So I made this cheesecake which is one of those "no bake" recipes. I say recipe, but actually I made it up as I went along. But if you're not baking something, it doesn't matter as much if you get it wrong.



Here's a vague outline of how I made it...

Ingredients:
white chocolate
butter
digestive biscuits (Any sort of biscuit or cookie will work)
double cream
cream cheese
sugar
raspberries

Method:
Melt some butter and some white chocolate. Probably around 50g of butter and around 8-10 squares of white chocolate. Crush digestive biscuits via any method you like. (I just put them in the bowl and smashed them up with the end of a rolling pin). The amount of biscuits depends on how thick you want the base to be and how big the tin is. I measured mine by laying them on the bottom of the tin to see how many would cover it. Mix the crushed biscuits and melted butter and chocolate together. Grease a tin with some butter before you tip the crushed biscuit mixture in and press it down with the back of a spoon. Leave to chill in the fridge for an hour.

For the cheesecake filling...
Whisk half of a small tub of double cream. In a separate bowl, thoroughly mix half a tub of cream cheese with three tablespoons of sugar and some melted white chocolate. At this point I also added some vanilla extract and three raspberries (which got crushed into little pink bits). Fold the whipped cream into the cream cheese mixture, spoon onto the biscuit base and smooth over. Chill for several hours 'til firm.

On top of the cheesecake I arranged some raspberries and chopped white chocolate.

Harry

Another plush guy that I've made. Houndstooth Harry.

More collage robots

These are the last two collage robots that I've made for a new set of greetings cards.







They are available either individually, or as a set of five in my Etsy shop

My Cardboard Life volume 5

The new volume of My Cardboard Life is now finished. Volume 5 of the My Cardboard Life mini-comics includes these strips...

Puppy
Kitten
Ice Lolly
Cardigan
Family Album

and also many more, but they can remain a suprise!



Volume 5 is available here in my Etsy shop




The full set of My Cardboard Life mini-books volumes 1-5 is available Here.

Uglloyd

I made this guy last week. You can see why I had to name him Uglloyd. He might be the ugliest thing I've ever seen. When I started making him out of that hideously ugly fabric, the idea was that he would be able to pull it off by having a cute face. Sadly, that plan backfired beyond belief.



He's too ugly to go on Etsy or Folksy, so he'll have to stay with me. I suppose at least he could be a friend for Sadney

Robot cards

Collage illustrations of robots for a new set of greetings cards I've been working on. Got some more to add later.





These first three are currently available in my Etsy shop.

Blue bow barrettes

I've been making some hair accessories, here are some barrettes. I think I like the denim one best.



I've made quite a lot of these, in various colours, fabrics etc. I will add more pictures soon. The reason I'm making them at all is because I've got a table at a local craft fair in about a months time. Not sure how many I'll sell, but I suppose I can put the remaining ones on Etsy/Folksy.

Crochet legwarmers

I had been working on these crochet legwarmers for so long, finally finished them last week. I think the reason they took so long was that I was only making them for myself, so there was no deadline of any sort. Plus they were fairly boring to make, I just did loads of rows of double crochet, and an edge of single crochet at either end.

Small things eating big things

A new website with some fun illustrations. Small Things Eating Big things is fairly self explanatory. I've contributed a few of the images including the one above, of an elephant eating some planets. Other examples include a baby eating a building, and an amoeba eating an airplane. have a look at smallthingseatingbigthings.com

Eco-dwellings work in progress

Working on a sequel to Intricate Dwellings and Futuristic Dwellings. At the moment, its going to be called Eco-dwellings, but not sure if I'll stick with that. It's sort of environmental, botanical places, with houses in them.

I'm about halfway through so far. This is one of the drawings. I wouldn't like to live in one of those houses, because I imagine the whole place would be crawling with bugs. Mostly those little maggot things you get in trees.

sketchbook pages

Haven't really been paying much attention to the old sketchbook lately, but I did this painting yesterday and I kind of liked it. So here it is.

It's the same sort of thing that I did for Futuristic Dwellings but in this case, instead of faffing around for ages with fineliners, I've just slopped a load of paint down and added some details with a big fat marker pen. If I did it again, I'm not sure if I would use so much pink. As it is, it looks less like a city and more like a disease.

yellow square

Made this with some leftover paint from another painting. I've got a terrible problem with squeezing out too much paint whenever I do any kind of painting, because It just dries and gets wasted. So I've tried to make use of it. I'll try and be more careful in future.

Review: More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon

Theodore Sturgeon's 1953 SF Masterwork More than Human tells the story of the next stage of human evolution, the homo gestalt. A group of people with unusual super-human abilities come together to act as one being. By coincidence, a similar theme was also raised in the last SF Masterworks book I reviewed Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon (but in a very different way).

Theodore Sturgeon delivers the slightly perplexing concept of the homo gestalt via engaging and emotive stories about the characters. This is not a book full of science-fiction jargon or large amounts of clarification.

The book is made up of three parts, which were originally separate novellas. Each part has its own unique angle and quality. Effectively, the first part covers the initial creation of the homo gestalt when a 25 year old telepathic simpleton called Lone meets telekinetic Janie, a pair of twins who have the ability to teleport and a baby with the mind of a computer. In the second part, the homo gestalt develops and suffers setbacks. Lone dies, and is replaced by Gerry. This part of the book is written from Gerry's perspective. In the final part of the book, the homo gestalt is completed via the addition of Hip Barrows, who acts as the being's conscience.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading More than Human. Some original ideas were raised and the story was captivating. Actually it made me feel like I would like to evolve into a homo gestalt. Shame I've got no super-human abilities to speak of. But I suppose it's never to late to learn.

Illustration Friday: Modify

Here's a strip from My Cardboard Life which I thought really suited the theme for this weeks Illustration Friday. Modify. Cardboard Colin's in a unique position here because unlike most people, he can modify his own head and body to serve various purposes.

Actually, now that I think about it, I suppose most people CAN use their bodies for other purposes for example, using your hands as a footstool/stepladder to help someone climb over a wall, or using your face as a sort of gallery to display some carefully applied makeup.

Come to the My Cardboard Life website if you want to see what else Cardboard Colin has been up to lately. mycardboardlife.com