Sunday, November 24, 2013

Needle felted Ponies!

These are done by hand using felting needles and pre-dyed merino wool from The Handweavers Studio & Gallery

Pinkie Pie
Pinkie Pie

Sleeping Fluttershy
Sleeping Fluttershy

JoPony
um... massive tail issue. maybe.

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Laptop Cover

Some heavy downpours of rain made me realise I really needed a somewhat waterproof cover for my laptop when travelling. Unfortunately my backpack is not the correct shape for a traditional backpack raincover.
I bought faux leather upholstery fabric years ago, and the snaps, to make weird softcover books.
The blue bias binding is leftovers from hackspace ovenmitt.
Laptop Cover

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Dress-up with Build-a-Bear ponies

Not much to say about this. Just using some scrap fabric. The tiara is a pound shop My Little Pony tiara.
Super fluffy pink cape Pinkie's crown & cape

Spike's Apron
Spike's Apron

The apron is modelled after the on in the episode Dragon Quest. Pinkie's dress is just Pinkie-ish.

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Dinosaurs from Foamboard

Based off of those wooden dino skeleton "puzzles", easily available from the likes of eBay. I'd punch out the pieces, then take a picture of the leftover "waste"... convert that picture to high contrast, trace lines in Gimp and make a cleaned up bitmap and printed it out in MS Paint over several sheets of paper. Pieced these together with tape and cut them out then laid them out on foamboard (foam coreboard).

Here's Stumpy (nicknamed that because the design and accompanying photo made him look quite short & stout):
Wooo Stumpy the dino lives! :D

and Pterri, who now hangs from the ceiling of London Hackspace
pterri hanging up at london hackspace

Friday, October 18, 2013

Cookery: Malaysian Goodies!

I can't even remember how I first found random Malaysian cookery things on ebay but it sat in my watch list for so long I finally decided to make a move on purchasing.
Luckily it was all fairly cheap things and the postage was very reasonable considering it was coming from the other side of the world.

I decided to buy a fish-shaped cake pan:
FISHIE PAN!! \o/

Better fishie cakes
These are Bahulu They're very similar in texture to trifle sponges here in the UK.

I also bought a mooncake press, which I've still not tried out.
mooncake mould/press

and a jam tart cutter/mould... which I did not read carefully on the size so it's actually the smallest jam tarts I've ever seen.
TINY! TART!

Saturday, October 12, 2013

Make Do & Mend - Creative Jeans hole repair

Make a problem into a feature.

My jeans sometimes wear out where I put my housekeys in my pocket and my purse/bag rubs against the lump of keys in my pocket. Strangely this never wears out the actual jeans pocket...

Anyway, I had this cute fabric I found in a store in Brighton last year and I thought it'd be cute to have it peeking out.
jeans patch
I made very very tiny white stitches, trying to match the natural weave of the denim.

It's held up pretty well and as it wears a bit more, more of the alien peeks out.
peekaboo!

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Sleeping Spike Snowglobe

I had this tiny jam jar around (from an afternoon cream tea) always with the idea of turning it into a very tiny snowglobe.

Sleeping Spike Glitter globe

I made this using fimo clay to make the little dragon, which I then baked. I added in a little detail using a super-fine archival pigment ink marker. I used some white sugru to build up a base that looks like a pillow and sealed up the jar with some water, a touch of liquid soap and some glitter.

Friday, October 4, 2013

Random Pretty Pictures #1

Double Ammonite!
Froggie
Sea Horse
AcerStreet Art
Street Art
Street Art

Cookery: Japanese Baking

This is kind of just a brain-dump/photo-dump post. Sorry for the lack of enrichment on this post.
Japanese Cream Puffs
Mmm Cream Puff...
With a cookie-like crust layer on top. It's from this recipe but tweaked a bit: http://www.littlejapanmama.com/2011/09/pai-shuu-cream-puff-recipe-like-beard.html

Japanese Milk Bread, using a roux base. This may become my new default bread recipe. It's lovely for cinnamon bread.
Cinnamon japanese milk bread minloaf

Related: Japanese Choco Coronets... Soft bread baked around cream horn moulds, filled with rich chocolate custard
Cornets of japanese milk bread

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream at London Hackspace Open Day (May 2013)

How to make ice cream.

Put some double cream, a dash of sugar and a few drops of flavouring into your trusty Kitchenaid Mixer bowl.

Slowly pour in Liquid Nitrogen while running it on low speed.
Liquid Nitrogen Ice cream making

Serve.
LN Ice Cream

Playing with fimo some more

Warmed up my old black fimo in the microwave (really briefly, a couple of seconds at a time) then mixed up some translucent + white sparkly fimo to make faux cameos and ammonite/snail things. Used a twist drill and wiregauge drill bit to drill the holes after baking.

Fimo "ammonites" and faux cameos
Close up of the sparkly translucent fimo stuff

Having recently been to a talk on Art & Food Through The Ages at the V&A, these now remind me of oreo cameos... Hmm...

Monday, September 30, 2013

LASERS! Etching my new laptop

(originally written 30 March, 2013)

Laser etched Laptop :D

So... I got a new laptop back in December. It has a black painted aluminimum lid. I have access to a laser cutter/etcher. What a perfect time to personalise my laptop.

Bronies will recognise the balloons - it's Pinkie Pie's cutie mark.

It took me hours of tweaking vectors and screaming & yelling at Inkscape. It took 17seconds to laser etch at 100% power, 100m/s speed. It was so fast there's no pictures of the process.

Close up:

Close up of etched laptop design

I'd really like to etch the inside keyboard surround but I'd have to take it off the laptop first and I've not bothered to look up how to do that yet. Definitely requires more pony.