I hope you all have a very wonderful New Years tonight! I'm off to a party at a friend's place complete with Beatles Rockband! Woo hoo! I can't wait. May the new year bring you many new blessings.
In addition to spending quality time with family and friends this holiday season, I've been making ZOMBIES. Oh yes, that is one of my favourite new Christmas things to do, hehehe!
First, get a nice, Zombie-coloured piece of cardstock. Draw all the main shapes with the sharpie marker and use the thinner markers to draw in smaller details. You will need a main body attached to the head, 2 upper arms, and 2 lower arms. If you have room on your paper, draw the legs now too. I didn't have any room so my zombie legs will come a little later.
Roughly cut out the general area where your drawing is. Don't cut right up to the edges until later.
Flip it over and add glue all over it evenly. I like to use the purple glue sticks so that I can see where glue has already been added.
Paste it on top of more cardstock. This makes the cardstock double the thickness so that your jointed zombie paper doll won't bend easily. For my earlier paper dolls, I left the thickness at one layer, but I found that they couldn't stand as well. Sometimes I leave the arms at one layer of thickness.
Now you can colour your zombie. Mine has a candy-corn coloured shirt :)
If you haven't drawn the legs yet, do that now. I placed the zombie body on the paper before I began drawing so that I would have it as a reference for size.
You need 2 thighs and 2 calves with feet. Don't forget to double the thickness of this cardstock paper too.
Once it is all coloured, you can cut out all the pieces. The thick sharpie border makes it easy to cut out because you don't have to be as exact.
Place the different parts onto an eraser or styrofoam block and poke holes for all the joints. The eraser block helps you keep the paper flat while you're poking the hole.
Here is Zombie Hank with all the holes made at the correct joint places.
Now take your mini brads and join all the limbs to the body and each other. Experiment to see whether it looks better to place arms and legs on top or underneath the body.
Ta da! Here's Zombie Hank all finished up. I even gave him a bucketful of popcorn! Zombie Hank says that the popcorn is good, but that it needs more brain.
Here he is with his girlfriend, the lovely Zombie Thelma. Don't they make a sweet couple? *snicker* They're off to the movies.
This is our tree with all the presents underneath! It has been many years since we have had a Christmas tree. In my old house, there was no room to store one so we had given ours away a long time ago. This year there is PLENTY of room! Hurray! I love it!
I gave one Origami Wreath to each of my family members. This one is mine. I like the multi-coloured ones best, but each of them chose a different colour that I didn't expect. My dad, for instance, chose one made from different shades of red only!
One of our Christmas traditions is to see who can build the tallest present tower with their gifts. It's always a good laugh to see who can get the most creative in stacking to achieve taller results.
Here is Peanut (a LEFTZ by ArtTales) sitting with my finished tower. It's not the tallest one by far, but I got extra points for having the most artistic tower.
Here's a cute little Christmas hedgehog on the mantelpiece. I think he's from Purdy's or Brussels Chocolates.
For one day only in my shop on Boxing Day...
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Dear Sweet Readers,
Roll Bot has never liked to move slowly so regular Bot legs just didn't impress him. He asked his Maker to give him a wheel instead so he could speed along the roadways uninhibited and free. Roll Bot is daring and brave. Nothing can slow him down.
Roll Bot is about 6.5 inches tall. He is now available in the shop.
Uncle Bot is an all-round nice guy. He's a bit on the quirky side because he dresses old-school and has nerdy glasses, but he tries really hard to be a good uncle to his nieces and nephews. This often results in embarrassing attempts to dance or tell jokes, but he never fails to deliver a good present on Christmas.
Uncle Bot is approximately 5.5 inches tall. He is now available in the shop!
"Every Ninja Needs a NINJA STAR!!! ... now you have yours"
If you desire a different colour to accurately represent your inner ninja, just ask. I can also construct more as needed.
There is currently a set of the black and blue ninja stars listed in my shop. They are guaranteed to turn your enemies matching shades!
I'm poor this year so I have to be creative :P
Time passed by, I asked a couple more times, and nothing firm was worked out.
Finally exasperated, I turned to what I knew to be true - I could make them myself. Yes, this is the bane and gift of all talented crafts people. They secretly know they can make a lot of things themselves so it makes purchasing some items either an attempt at saving time, or an act of self deprecation.
Well, I dug into the old yarn stash. I was lacking in colours, but I picked out two that seemed to work well together and got to work. (My room is a cat's paradise right now!)
As you can see from the photos, my attempt was successful! Yippee! I don't know if they will fit her yet so I have my fingers crossed on that, but it's gratifying to know that it can be done - and easily!
In fact, it was so easy that I started on another pair. I can only show you one side for now as the other one is still in progress.
In case you're wondering how to make the fluffy one (you'll have to excuse my non-crochet pattern lingo), here's how:
Try on the glove to see how well it fits. It should fit perfectly if you compared it frequently to your own hand and arm size.
The one I made for my friend is a little bit trickier. Here's the general idea:
There could possibly be errors in this tutorial since I'm no expert at writing crochet tutorials, so this is meant to give you a general idea. If you're used to crocheting, you'll understand what you're supposed to do.
