Something to warm you up

It's bloomin horrible weather so here's a reminder of something warm and sugary to cheer you up.

Blackberries covered in sugar...

 brought to the boil...

and roll-boiled...

 but not boiled over until it cools and...

gets made into one of the most beautiful milkshakes ever! It's like a scene from outer space.
Enjoy the sight without the calories  = )

Spiderman in Metal

That's the answer to yesterday's question... or at least that's what I made. 
here is the picture I started with, courtesy of Google images.

I flipped it over so it was back to front and taped it to the piece of soft copper sheeting with a magazine under it so the pressing of the tool could sink into the magazine to give a better impression.

 

Rather than using the embossing tool (a metal ball ended top to a a plastic handle) i used a Bic Biro. I find that really smooth and easy to control. I traced over the picture from top to bottom and left to right.
The finished sheet is de-bossed (pressed in)where I have drawn...

and embossed on the other side (raised). The weird thing is I got so used to the back to front pic while I was drawing that the right way round one seemed odd!
Here it is...

  and again with seriously funked-up lighting

and lastly in its frame ready to be given to one of the hardest working, concientious (and spiderman obsessed) young youth leaders I know.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

What can you make from this?

For Christmas lovely husband bought me a soft metal kit like this.

The contents were these...

a brush, an embossing tool, wire wool, latex gloves and some weird chemicals and most importantly some VERY soft copper sheets.

I have done some metal embossing many, many years ago on much harder metal, but not done any for quite a while. He was a little sad that I made the Robots and didn't use it at all but it was too soft for them at the time.
However I used it yesterday and will show you the result tomorrow. Until then... what would YOU do with it?

Tiny Fruit, Veg and CAKES!

Back to the Sculpey! I do love that stuff although I confess it's been a while since I dabbled so I'll have to check it hasn't dried up in my absence.

Here are some bits of fruit and salad I made doll's house size a while ago when a shop near me wanted bits to sell in their range. Not a great market for them so I was left with a packet of each type.

They are cute and yummy looking.

I should make some for my good friend B with 2 little holes in the back so she could sew them onto her Hambles' hands... um... paws!

https://www.facebook.com/HambalsAndFriends

London Eye at Night!

A while ago (New Year) I told you we'd gone up to London to go on the London Eye at night and I'd show you some of the pictures ssoon. Well now is the time.

I love the blue structure of the girders and the soft yellowy amber of the famous landmarks around. It makes a lovely contrast.

And this looks so glamorous, more like Tokyo or Las Vegas than our traditional old city.

This is one I tried to take to compare our night trip to our day trip. Not quite the same angle but not bad.

We upgraded Legoland tickets (bought with Nectar vouchers and BOGOF offers) in the summer into Merlin passes for the year and decided THIS was our year to GET ON WITH IT! Boy is much more amenable to trips out (Autistic troubles in the past) and girl is nearly 18 so who knows when she'll decide to do these things for herself rather than with us? 
Carpe diem! So we did!

Happy New Jack Sparrow!

(CAPTAIN! Captain Jack Sparrow)

You know I have a Pirates of the Caribbean fixation and that Jack has been my muse for SO many arty projects.... and you know that I have a VERY talentented friend who makes wonderful woolly stuff (and much that is not woolly besides). 

WELL when you combine the two facts, as she did this Christmas, this is the result!

HE'S ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS!!!
(And she hadn't given him to me till this week cos she wasn't sure I'd like him... WTFlip???)
Size-wise his leg is about the length of a 50p and, having put his pic on her Facebook page (which I was banned from looking on till he was finished and received), his clone brothers now retail at £30 if you can't live without one.
https://www.facebook.com/HambalsAndFriends

Here he is getting to know his other incarnations: made by me, market sellers, Disney and Lego.

Rubber Ducks!

Have I told you that among our son's many obsessions is an enduring passion for rubber ducks? Well this Christmas (and every Christmas/ birthday/ shopping trip etc) generated a few new ones to join the ever expanding collection so all the previous ones had to come out and be spread over the living room floor so they could all 'meet up' and be counted.

Voila! The right flank...

  the centre

 the left flank...

the close up...

and the aerial shot!

In total there's two hundred and... oh drat, I've lost count. One... two... three...

Moustache Cake

I'll keep this one short and sweet but I can't let my neice's birthday pass without showing you the fantastically luxurious moustache cake she had, made by her mum. 
So here it is!

It almost makes you want to sing  "Go Compare!" even if you don't really want to!

Happy Birthday!

More Robots

The robot-making bug did not stop at one. That very same day I used an old corned beef tin (clean and washed of course), a broken alarm clock, more of those pipe holding thingies, washers, buttons, the clock innards, rolled brass sheeting, split pins and 2 wooden earrings to make this cute little fella.

He looks very wistful and innocent with his bead and washer eyes, his button nose and his rubber ring mouth. The beads on the head and the large flat feet are both wooden but coloured over with a gold Sharpie. The ends of the arms are pinched together with a long split pin with a little clippy thing threaded through the middle (like the ones you clip keys on with but much smaller). He had to have a golden stick added at the back to ensure he didn't topple over.

If you're wondering what he was standing next to when the picture was taken, the silver thing is a Christmas  tree decoration and the blue is the Tardis Tree I made and showed you on my blog for Christmas day. If you missed it try this link
http://socklet-world.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/tardis-tree.html

 All Christmas decorations are now taken down but the robots remain in a kind of space age display of metal and aliens. I'll show you sometime if you're interested.

Making Robots

For years I have collected broken bits of junk in various pots and boxes, waiting for the right time to make them into robots or steam punk labs or something of that ilk. This Christmas was that time!
Here are the ingredients of the first robot:

 Broken bit of a headtorch, two washers and the plastic lantern-y bits from some dead Christmas tree lights...

Twiddly bits from some posh crackers and a copper thingy for holding pipes in place

 and a 'heat synch' possibly, from a dead computer? (if you know otherwise and it bothers you, feel free to let me know... I just know its a bit of dead interesting machinery I have had for years).

Here's the head I made after curling the wire over a barbecue stick, stretching it out and then glueing the little bobbles into the ends of the little lanterns, which were in turn glued into the sides of the head. The washers outlined the eyes.

The head was glued onto the body, a steam punk scrapbooking accessory stuck onto the front and that coppery pipe thing onto the side like an arm, to match the one that already exists on the other side, and it's done!
 

And here it is in situ on the mantlepiece among the Christmas stuff  for a metallic season.
More robots to come!

Update on the Dr Who Lenticular Puzzle...

It was an intergalactic flippin' nightmare!!!

But we conquered it in the end. The main problem, you see, is that much of jigsaw puzzling is done by colour and these pieces change colour depending on the angle, and you don't know which way up they should be anyway! Added to that the cutting of the thick plastic of the lenticular bit meant that no pieces laid flat against each other for you to check they were smooth and in the right place.

 One picture was a poster advertising K9 as a useful robot of your own to be purchased

and the other a Dalek propaganda poster for ultimate victory.

Of course if you trap the picture between the two parallel dimensions you get a Dalek riding on K9!

However, after all that effort, 'tis done and was a worthy foe!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

On 30th December we, as a family, went up to London in the afternoon to go on the London Eye in the dark (pics from that sometime in the future) and while waiting in the queue this was the light show on the building opposite that kept us entertained.

So from Boris, Vodafone and also from us here at Socklet- World... HAPPY NEW YEAR and if it threatens not to look like one, then (like John-Luc Picard) make every effort to make it so!