I had an old jewellery box I haven't had any use for for years. I was never a fan of the design, the colours never did anything for me. I decided to gift it to Tines. I was going to paint some doughnuts on it, but she insisted on a sunset scene, like the one I painted on my Moriah-inspired underwater scene.

So I looked up some design ideas, because I have no creativity of my own. I found this tutorial and pathetically tried to copy it.

The boys were given some empty hankie gift boxes, and as soon as I saw them, I thought: shadowboxes! It took a while, but I eventually finished one of them.

Technically, it was just head surgery. Gingerbread man moneyboxes don't have brains. I forgot to take a photo of it before the repair job, but what happened was The Chipmunk's brother threw the box and there were two big holes in the skull. I patched them up with airdry clay (I love that stuff!), filled in any gaps and cracks with more clay, and did a repaint.

After the second patch up and sanding:

I made some play food to go with our Tiny Teatime game.

Before painting:

Here are the savoury foods. Fishcake, veggie burger, vegan pizza, chips and chip sandwich.

Quick update:

The old flower hook just ended up as a sunflower. Boring, right? I didn’t even do any shading. Oh well. I stuck it above my bed and I use it to hold up my earphones. No more untangling!

I felt like making some dress up dolls for Tiny.

I had to do a bit of cheating here. I mean, I could have drawn it all freehand, but you know what my skill is like and I didn’t want to be here all day. Somehow, even though I traced it, the model went from front-facing to slightly turned. Oh well. It’s nothing less than you should expect from me. Anyway, I freehand drew the hands and face. The feet came out a little too chunky. Tiny said she didn’t want toes, which was a relief as I can’t really draw them.

I traced the sketch using my lightbox to create two dollies. I forgot to fix the right hand on Daisy. Yes, that is Tip-Ex under Stephani’s foot. Actually, even the naming was a happy little accident. When choosing the skintone for Daisy, I tested out the coloured pencil on the side, thinking that that part would be cropped out… It clearly wouldn’t. So I used washi tape to cover it, and thought I might as well turn that into a name tag.

I made these last July for the kids, but I kept putting off editing the video because I hate voiceovers. It was a nice experiment, but given how slow my computer is, I think I’ll just go back to blogging my projects. Anyway, I didn’t take photos of the process, but photos of the finished projects are shown below the videos.

Here are some things I’ve been working on (notably, here are some things I’m not working on: the mini dollshouse, Dreamsong chapter 6, Prescience).

A new baby, a new baby record book. I’ve run out of ideas for cover designs. All the kids have fruit nicknames. Tiny chose Kiwi Fruit for the new one, so I went with a green theme. I painted some kraft paper with gold kids’ paint mixed with copper to tone it down.

I made some origami flowers using the instructions from origami-instructions.com (note: this website is covered with ads). I made a trial flower with newspaper first, and it wasn’t hard actually.. Here’s what I made.

I used copy paper, and painted both sides with diluted acrylic. I didn’t really put enough thought into it. I was trying to go for a graduated look. The way to do it is how it’s done on the yellow one. A diagonal stripe down the middle. I then coated them with diluted PVA. To flatten them, I placed them in punched pockets and left them overnight sandwiched in a heavy book on a packed bookshelf.