Monday, March 30, 2009

Mash Up

I bought some gorgeous wool the other day, it's from Artesano and it's called Aran wool. It's so lovely and doesn't seem like it would irritate my skin. The colour is twilight, a turquoise colour with some light flecks of purple and other colours. I haven't found a pattern I like yet, but I am going for a short cardigan style to wear when I visit Ireland in May.
lovely aran wool
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Here are two more sprites I made for Stephen. A koopa and Luigi, both from Super Mario World. I got the sprite images from this great site.
DSC01843
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During my father and brother's visit, we visited the small town of Stykkisholmur on the Snæfellsness peninsula, while we were there we took a guided tour of a new local brewery, that makes a beer called Jökull Bjór. Stephen and I had pre-arranged this tour through the companies website, having tasted their special brew for Þorrablot. We are not big beer drinkers, but we do like to try the new ones that come on the market, especially when they are local and mostly organic. From my perspective then, it is a nice light tasting beer, the seasonal one being a darker beer.
The woman who gave us the tour, is as far as I know, the manager/owner. They have such a small set up, so small, that two guys were in fact sticking the labels on by hand! They opened for business right as the kreppa took hold of the country, so as of our trip, they were hoping for expansion across the government owned wine stores. (my friend up North claims to never have seen them in her tiny store)
So I wish them luck. We also got a taste of some beer from their taps and along with a small fee of 500kr each, received some lovely branded beer glasses!
jokull bjor
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DSC01756
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Sunday, March 22, 2009

I've Got the Fever

That's the hama bead fever. I have got it BAD! Stephen and I went to the shopping centre on Friday and he bought me lots of bags of beads! There were just so many colours, even glittery ones. He wanted to buy me the 35000 bead box, but the thought of looking through that box for one colour was enough to drive me mental. So I opted for single colour bags.

So I am sticking with a theme for the sprites, this one is Super Mario World, which is Stephen's favourite Mario game. There are still colours I am missing, but I can do without them for now by substituting other shades.

Anyhow, here is the finished Mario in all his chubby little glory.

mario
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Here he is from afar
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This is the necklace I made my mother for Mothering Sunday. It is a natural coloured shell in the middle, with small lava stone beads on either side.
DSC01786
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Stephen and I celebrated 11 years together yesterday, so I made myself a set of earrings and a necklace to wear with the new dress he bought me :)
DSC01811
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The necklace was made with a how-to on cut out and keep.
DSC01812
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Monday, March 16, 2009

One more before bedtime

Okay, so I started another sprite tonight. Can you guess who it is?
guess?
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I would have had it finished, only I am missing a lot of colours, all shades of brown and many others that this sprite calls for.
I think a trip after work tomorrow to the book store is on!
Mario?
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Here are some of my new organizational items.
This is for my hama beads. I am going to need something much bigger soon.
beads
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This one is for all my jewellery making bits. I think it's my fave one too. Detachable boxes on the outside, a little removeable tray on the top and lots of space inside for wire etc.
jewellery bits
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This one was my best bargain, bought in Rúmfatalagerinn for 990kr. A double sided hobby box.
sewing
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doublesided
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I still have another box of sewing stuff, which is in an old biscuit tub. My fimo is in a big sweet bucket and my glue/glitter misc stuff is in the old hama bead tub! I need a whole room for all this stuff!

Hot Springs & Hama Beads

I have had an interesting week, I had some family over. My father and my brother, so I was busy showing them around Iceland. It was my fathers third visit and my brothers first. It was so good to see them and we all had such a great time. They hired a car and Stephen and I chose places for them to visit. We climbed a glacier, soaked in an outdoor natural hot spring, visited a local brewery and went horse riding.
This is where the hot springs was(the arrow marks where the spring is)
natural hot spring
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This is part of the glacier we climbed, Sólheimajokull.
glacier
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I cannot believe it is March already. I have been a bit lazy on the crafting front recently. Instead I have been re-organizing, I bought some new boxes for my sewing stuff, my jewellery bits and my hama beads.
I have been researching how to make bead sprites. I found out how to make an image I want pixelly, it's not very hard. You find the image you want and save it to your computer, then open it, I just used preview and zoom in until you get the right pixels. I made a few simple ones, but I need a lot more colours if I want to make more characters.

This first one is a band logo for my little sister, the band is Tokio-[sic]-Hotel. The clearer beads are glow in the dark! They glow a bright pink. I love them :)
tokiohotel
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This is Link, from the Nintendo games The Legend of Zelda, of which Stephen is a huge fan. I am not entirely sure which game this is from, but I am thinking it's from an early SNES game. He is falling in this image :)
link falling
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This is a coaster for Stephen, it's a fire flower from Mario games.
fire flower
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This one is for me. It is a kodama (Japanese tree spirit) head. I really wanted to make a full one, but alas I could not find an image small enough to make and I do not have any more bead boards to make a huge one. These are on my to buy list.
He is also made with the damn cool glow in the dark beads.
kodama
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kodama.glow
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He will just sit by me at my desk :)

There are so many things you can do with these beads, they are quite an addictive hobby, even if you don't do the whole pixel art with them, you can still be very alternative and make bead art. They are sold in one of the big dept stores here and a local book shop, so I can get my hands on them easy, but I am not sure they stock every colour, so I think I may end up buying lots on ebay.

I have one more item, but will not post it until after Mother's day next weekend.