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Go play with THIS!

Meeple Bag

In getting ready to teach my favorite board game, Carcassonne, at Nuke Con last week, I decided that I needed a new bag to draw out the tiles.

I have one bag that came with one of the expansions, but this bag was for the new 10th anniversary edition that I had to have. I could use the current bag as a guide for size. 

First, thinking of material, I thought of Spoonflower, and maybe I could make some meeple cloth. If I had time I could, so maybe will put that idea on hold for another time.

So I decided to use the bleach splatter method, and got some nice black material. When I told The BFF that I'd really only be a couple minutes in JoAnn's, this time I really meant it. Straight to the remnant bins, there's always plain black remnants in the bin. 

I spent one whole evening cutting little meeples out of freezer paper, and another spraying the bleach. Does anyone else have a problem with the smell of the bleach? I should have used a face mask!

Anyway, I think it turned out pretty good. It's always interesting to see how bleached out something will get, and I was pretty happy with the coloring I got with this material. Good thing it was a big remnant, I'll make something else with it.

Meeple bag front

Meeple bag back

Meeple bag with guests visiting

Bryan the Master Control Zombie

Zombies love their Brains!!!

One of the birthday presents I got for The BFF for his birthday yesterday (Happy Birthday Bryan!) was a Monster By Mail zombie portrait of him at work. (all those television monitors to keep track of would surely turn anyone into a zombie!)
So keeping with the theme, I made brain cupcakes for him to take to work to share. (for more info on how I made them and more photos, see my recipe blog) Creativity comes in many forms, you know. ;p
Mixing frosting colors is, in some ways, very much like mixing paints, but of course, presents it's own challenges, paints aren't usually going to get too warm to work with. The color-in-color sripes that can be achieved by using different colors in the same bag, is fairly unique to frosting.

Pincushions

Pincushions
Originally uploaded by seeshells

There is sooo much cool stuff on Craft Stylish, I'm sure I miss half of it! Luckily, others share when they find something cool! Crafty Pod pointed to an awesome tutorial for tiny pincushions made from bottle tops. They are so simple and quick, I cranked out four on my breaks at work, even on a week that I took one day off!
Of course, I had to add beads, and some sequins, too! If you click back to flickr, you can see each one closer up!
As I was making them, I decided one of these would be for my mom, her birthday being the last day of July. One just seemed to be specifically for her, and when I was working on that one, she happened to call from their vacation! So that clinched it for me. I'll still let her decide which one she likes best, I wonder if she'll pick the one I think she'll pick...(OK Mom, make your pick!)

And knowing me, I can't just make cute little pretties. As I was stitching the top on one, I thought, 'hmm this feels like it could be a brain' and the zombie pincushion below was born! I think he ended up looking a little like Bert, but that wasn't intended. That one is mine, of course!

Zombie Recognition

AND I almost forgot to share: my Zombie bag got featured on Feeling Stitchy!!
How awesome is that?!

Zombies!

Zombie Dice Bag Teeth
Originally uploaded by seeshells.

As I mentioned earlier, I took some felt and thread to the gaming convention to have something to work on. While there, I only got the eye socket sewn onto the dark green, but the next week, I got the whole project done.
When I started, I only had a couple Zombie faces in mind, wasn't sure what they were going to end up being. RawkStar suggested a dice bag, which was the perfect idea!
When I finished both Zombie faces, I sewed them onto a felt piece, after folding down the top and stitching to make a tunnel for a gathering string to go through.
"Teeth" is a Zombie who's face is falling off, and his teeth are showing through his face.

I'm not the only one embroidering Zombies these days... This awesome Zombie gal has been shown on some top blogs this week, and this guy is also awesome!

Zombie Dice Bag Brain
Originally uploaded by seeshells.

This side of the bag features the Zombie "Brains". I did the brain stitching in backstitch, and did the whole brain randomly.
When it was mostly done, ExtreemeArtist gave me the idea to make a dangling eyeball. I'm very happy with how that part turned out. One strand of grey embroidery floss, and three of red, connected the eyeball to the face, and I used a macrame weave to make the cord that attached the dangling eyeball.

Gamey Vacation Report. The Final Chapter

Skeleton Miniature
Originally uploaded by seeshells.

Here's the other miniature I painted. I learned that skeletons are super easy to paint if you use two techniques: a wash, and drybrushing. First, you wash the whole mini in dark brown or black (I, of course, can't follow directions and had to use dark purple), using a wash of miniature paint and water. When that is completely dry, you drybrush your cream or white (or in my world, orc flesh green). The trick to drybrushing miniatures, and I think this trick goes for any kind of drybrushing, is to make sure you don't have too much paint on your brush. This means you have to go over it several times, but that's better than too much paint.
Keeping my eyes peeled for creativity and artistic ideas, I noticed the beautiful fountain the campus had. The campus was in general very beautiful, and it was way cool to be outdoors in the middle of the night after gaming into all hours, and walk through the campus.
I was also very inspired by being able to join in some playtesting of new games. Games that may some day have beautiful bits, while in playtesting mode are just on index cards with self-laminated chits. Very fun to play games while they are still in their infancy. I am inspired to work on my own games soon.