Crochet Beholder Amigurumi

Hello! One of my resolutions this year is to actually post on my blog, so here I am! I'm going to aim for at least one post a month, but if you want to see more of my nonsense, do feel free to find me over on Instagram.

So, in my last post (from JULY 2018! Far out I've been slack!) I talked about how Scott and I have been playing Dungeons and Dragons with a group of our friends. We're still doing that and when I asked Scott what he'd like for his anniversary present this year, he requested a Beholder, which is a monster from D&D.

I found a great pattern by Aja Moniz on Ravelry and used that for the base of my Beholder, but I did make a few changes.

The pattern picture shows a Beholder with six eye stalks, but Scott wanted his to have ten, so I made a few extra stalks. I also decided to use safety eyes instead of using embroidery. The mistake I made with the safety eyes is that I decided to do that after I'd finished crocheting the eye stalks so if I made another one, I'd crochet the rounded bit of the eye, stick in the safety eye, and then continue to crochet the stalk.

I also wanted the Beholder to have more teeth as the official D&D artwork shows that they are very dentulous. Instead of crocheting the teeth, I cut out strips of fangs from white felt and then used a felting needle to attach the strips to the mouth area.

I intentionally used some different types of safety eyes, but I wish I had have had even more variety in eye colours. I think that since each eye of the Beholder has a different power, having different colours would be a cool way to indicate that.
 

Scott picked out the yarn for his Beholder and the purple that he chose for the body is some that I actually dyed myself! I liked how the colour come out, but the wool itself was pretty stiff and scratchy so it went into the stash box instead of being used for the scarf I originally wanted to make. It was a good yarn for amigurumi though, and it wasn't rough enough that it hurt my hands to use. Unfortunately I don't actually know any of the brands I used for this project as they have all been in the stash box without their labels for a long time!
 

I don't think he's as scary as the "real" Beholder, but Scott likes him anyway!

- Lisa xx

Imperial Eagle Cross-Stitch on a Crochet Dice Bag

Hello! If you've been reading this blog for a while, you've probably heard about the elusive creature that I call my husband, aka Scott. Scott is very, very patient with me as I constantly promise him things and then take ages to actually make them so his presents are quite often late. But, a strange thing has happened! I promised Scott a dice bag for his birthday this year and it's finished ... two months in advance! I think this means I better make him something else to give him on the actual day, what do you think?

I used this pattern by Geek's Dream Girl to crochet this bag, but made a few changes so that it could accommodate Scott's largish dice collection, which he uses (along with *a lot* of tiny, hand-painted army figurines) when he plays Warhammer 40K. The pattern suggested doing five rounds to make the base of the bag, but I did eleven. I did 21 rounds to make up the majority of the bag, and then seven rounds to make the bit that ruffles when you close the drawstring.

I used a DK weight wool to crochet the bag, and a thinner acrylic yarn to be the drawstring. For the drawstring, I just threaded two lengths of yarn through the trebled section of the bag (that will make more sense if you take a look at the pattern!), knotted the ends, and added a toggle.

One of the other advantages of making the dice bag bigger was that I had room to test out a technique I'd been keen about giving a go; cross-stitch over crochet!

I made a pattern for a very simplified version of the Imperial Eagle (which you can grab from my Google Drive here if you'd like to!) and cross-stitched it onto the bag, using the lines of the crochet as a guideline. It's certainly not as easy as cross-stitching onto Aida cloth, but I'm pretty happy with the result! 

Here's a kind of action shot, with Scott's Space Marine Centurion and Chaos Space Marine Maulerfiend looking on. Open ...

... and closed!

I'm currently working on some ~secret things~, which I absolutely can not wait to share with you, as well as a couple of gifts ... I think I better whip up something for myself too so I have something to show you next week! ^___^ What I'd really like right now is a bathtub to soak my skating-induced aches in, but I think that's a little beyond my abilities ~____^

- Lisa xx

WTNV mountains painting and a cussing awesome cross stitched gift

Ok, first of all: the Get Geometric KAL starts TODAY! Eeeep! I've got my needles and yarn out and I am ready to knit! But, first, I want to show you the final Christmas gift that I made last year (it still doesn't feel like it was last year though!) which was this Welcome to Night Vale inspired painting for Rebecca ^____^

 

This was really easy and fun to do! I was inspired by this mountain mural; the first time I saw it on Pinterest I thought of Night Vale and then I simply *had* to make this painting for Bec ^____^

 

I started off by painting the entire canvas with a thin layer of spearmint green. Then, I used a pencil to lightly plan out how my mountains would look. This is not accurate to any set of mountains at all - I just scribbled along going "uppey bit here .... now a downey bit ... time for a plateau ..." until it was done ~____^

Next I poured out a generous glob of "tropical water" by Kaisercolour and painted in the first mountain range. I gave it three coats of colour to make sure it was properly opaque. I have a wet palette which means my paint doesn't dry up between layers. It's probably one of the more awesome crafting supplies I have. Once I was happy with the first layer, I added three drops of black paint to the blue and mixed it all together. I used this darker shade to do the three layers on the second mountain, and then I darkened it again to make the next mountain ... you can probably fill in the rest of this explanation ...

 

Once all of the mountains were done, I painted some chipboard letters white and stuck them on to the bottom on the canvas with PVA glue. Then I used a teeny tiny paintbrush to add in the first part of the quote. So tiny!

And here's Bec with her gift! Isn't her hair awesome?! I'm always slightly tempted to try a pixie cut, but I'm really unsure if it would suit me. It looks so good on Bec though! And even though Bec is a seriously talented artist, she still liked my painting! Isn't she sweet?

 

And this is the Christmas gift Rebecca made me! I think is the most awesome hoop I own ^___^ I love it so so much! The photo above makes me look very serious about it, but all of the outtakes are more like the one below ...

I can't laugh with my eyes open, apparently! I've hung this little beauty above my desk so whenever I'm testing my blood sugar levels or doing an injection or treating a hypo I can look at it ~___^ My diabetes birthday was two weeks ago ... hopefully we're another year closer to a cure! That would be the best diabetes birthday present ever.

- Lisa xx

P.S. I've been thinking about what I'll make and blog about this year, is there anything you particularly would like to see on here? Do you have any favourite parts (or non-favourite parts!) of this blog? I'd love to hear from you! ^____^
 

Needle felted Piranha Plant and other gifts

Hello! It's time to show you some more of the Christmas gifts I made! I have a couple more to go, but they haven't been gifted yet (I believe in a very extended holiday period) so I'll show you those next time ^___^

For Scott I made this needle-felted Piranha Plant, of Super Mario fame. To make this, I used a very similar technique from when I made Oscar the Grouch. I used my scalpel to cut out a wedge from a large styrofoam ball which was to become the ... head (???) of the plant and then covered the ball in sheets of red felt. I needed felted the felt together where it overlapped to create a tight casing of felt around the ball. 

 

I cut out small triangles of white felt and used my needle tool to attach them to the mouth area. I also used my needle tool to ensure the bottom of the mouth was more sharply defined.

 

I rolled wool fibre into loose sausage shapes and felted them onto the ball to become the lips. I didn't felt the tops of the lips much, but was sure to felt the edges to create a more rounded shape.

 

To create the spots, I rolled fibre into loose balls and then felted them on. The balls are slightly 3D because I really wanted them to have solid colour so they are made up of a few layers of fibre each.

 

For the stem I used regular sheets of felt. I cut out a long strip and wound it around a wooden chopstick, needle felting where the sheet overlapped itself. I used a scalpel to cut a hole in the bottom of the head of the plant and inserted the stem. I needle felted where the stem met the head so that the felt wouldn't come loose and expose the chopstick.

The leaves were cut from the same sheet of green felt and needle felted only at the bases onto the stem. This gives them a nice curved shape, which I think helps make them look more leafy.

Once the plant was done, I hot glued the bottom of the stem into a paper mache flower pot that I had painted green. Then I stuffed the pot with variegated green chunky wool; this stabilised the plant so it doesn't wobble around but it's also very light. Scott really liked it and my parents thought that I had brought it. Two lovely compliments for any crafter! ^___^

My dad, Kevin, is pretty difficult to craft for since he mostly likes trees (I really should just stick to buying him a new tree every year). However, he does also like camping and happened to mention that soap on a rope would be useful for washing in the desert.

I used the instructions in "A Little Bit Crafty" by Frankie Magazine for these but they didn't turn out as well as I had hoped; they are a little bit bumpy and a little bit cracked.

 

If I were to make them again, I would ensure that my soap was in much smaller pieces before attempting to shape them into balls. I think the chunky flakes that I started off with didn't assist with the making of smooth soaps.

 

I braided cotton string to use as the ropes, which worked out well because all other actual ropes that I had turned out to be way too big. So, another suggestion: either make bigger soaps, or buy smaller ropes! 

 

For my Nana Alma and my mum, Anne, I made some lavender sachets using vintage look (but not actual vintage) handkerchiefs, ribbon, and lavender (bet you guessed that last bit, huh).

 

To make these, I cut the handkerchiefs in half, folded them in half again, and then sewed around three of the edges. You could hand sew these, but I used a sewing machine because it is so much faster (and I'm pretty lazy!).

 

Then I filled them with lavender and tied them closed with a length of ribbon. Easy peasy!

I also made these ink smudging tools for Anne; they are apparently used in scrap booking. I started off with two lengths of pine, one wide and flat and the other not so wide and not so flat, which I glued together.

I used Kevin's bench press to cut them into smaller segments and then stained them with wood varnish. I originally tried to use a saw and failed miserably. Power tools, people! They rock. I used stick on velcro dots cut in half to attach lengths of felt on and around each segment. They were a little time consuming, but once I had a little production line going it wasn't too bad.

My next post won't be until next year ... which starts in one day! OMG! It's time to start thinking about a whole 'nother years worth of crafts to create ... but, until then, Happy New Year and thanks for sticking with this little blog of mine for another 12 months. I hope we can do it all again next year!

Catch you on the flip side!

- Lisa xx

Skeleton hand necklace and Nerdvember

Hello! I haven't yet finished my biggish project, but I realised that I also haven't shown you my skeleton hand necklace! So, here it is ^___^

My hair is looking a little different, huh? This is actually a wig! I don't think I will wear it to my brother's wedding since my dark red hair is looking pretty good, but I think this wig will come in handy for cosplays and costumes. You may have also noticed that I'm dressed kinda like Wednesday Addams, this is because for the last couple of days I've been doing #nerdvember, which is basically where you dress nerdy during November ^___^

 

As you can see, I've been repping for Alice in Wonderland, Star Trek, LSP (in my skating gear), Hermione Granger, retro video games, and Adventure Time. You can also see that my hair has been lightening over the days ... ~___^ Honestly though, while I find this fun, I'm probably not going to keep with it this year. I don't down a lot of nerdy clothing, so I feel like mostly I'm taking photos of my jewellery which I think kind defeats the purpose of a fashion challenge. Also, I kind feel like my outfits are all a bit boring! I think if I do this again, I'd keep the Instagram photos to a once a week round-up kind of thing, and make sure that I had enough time to craft a few things to fit the challenge. As it is, I feel like I'm overwhelming my feed with too many selfies and I most definitely need to get a tripod so I don't have to bug Scott or rely on my bedroom mirror! ^___^

 

I've been working on a crochet project and a furniture re-do which aren't finished yet, but jewellery is something that I can actually complete! ^___^ I brought a couple of packs of wooden shapes from Typo which I believe are meant for papercrafts. However, some of them are a great size for brooches!

 

I covered the heart with washi tape, but left the others as they came, and just glued the brooch pins onto the back. Easy peasy!

 

The skeleton necklace was made with more of the plastic Halloween skeleton hands (no, you don't say??). To make this, I glued pendant backings to the middle fingers and joined them with a jump ring. 

 

The wrists of the hands are connected to the necklace chain via a piece of wire that has a loop at the end and which I have completely forgotten the correct name of. Hmm. Well, you can see what I mean in the picture below anyway.

 

I was pleasantly surprised that the necklace sits quite well! It doesn't flip itself over constantly, which was what I was most concerned about.

I simply can not believe it is almost December. I really must get a move on with my holiday crafts! I don't craft for many people anymore, just the people who I know appreciate it ^___^ And the ones that don't mind if their gifts are a month or two late ~___^

Are you crafting for anyone this year? Also, would you do Nerdvember? I think I'm going to make sure I stock up on nerdy clothes so I can make a better showing off it next year!

- Lisa xx