My goodies

I have recently made a few purchases from some lovely online shops and now that they have arrived I can show them off! (Ok so they arrived a couple of weeks ago now but I've only just got around to taking a photo :P)

My first item was purchased from the lovely Barbara La Bosco. She runs the cute little shop "All About the Buttons" found here on zibbet at http://www.zibbet.com/allaboutthebuttons or you can find her on facebook here. When Barbara uploaded these adorable fingerless gloves I immediately fell in love with the colours! She was able to whip me up my own pair in just a couple of days. I only wish the cold lasted longer here so I could use them more!

Next comes my purchase from Kumacrafts. They can be found on etsy here http://www.etsy.com/shop/kumacrafts or on facebook here. I purchased a heartsy voucher as soon as I saw that kumacrafts were selected to be one of the featured shops (I even stayed up till 1am to make sure I got one). While I probably could have bought out their whole store and overloaded myself with cuteness however my bank balance sadly disagreed with this :P I was quite fond of their lasercut acrylic designs and the red panda won me over instantly, red pandas are cool. I love the kawaii designs of Kuma and you can see they put a lot of effort into each piece. 

Needless to say I am very pleased with the items and service from both stores. So I advise anyone to go check them out! 

I finished a game.

Well what did I do on the weekend... admittedly not much haha. For the past few weeks I have been chipping away at this game, Eschalon book 1 to be exact. I had picked it up in the Steam midyear sales after I saw Nick fire the game up when he bought it.

I was immediately drawn to it's old school look and feel. I am a sucker for these old grid/turn based RPGs, so if you are a fan of the old Ultima or Might and Magic then you will like this (Although I have never played either of them haha).

That game stared out ridiculously hard as I had a hell of a time trying to kill anything without having to sleep for a few days to recover. This is when saving is your friend. I died and reloaded A LOT in this game.  So much so that I almost gave up on it. However I ended up having a day at home when I didn't really want to do anything, so I sat down and ended up playing pretty much day till night... Needless to say by the end I was pretty tough and end boss didn't really pose as much of a threat (I did still die a couple of times) as the tiny lizards at the beginning of the game haha. According to my steam play time I sunk about 29hours into it, which is a pretty good length for a little indie rpg I thought.

The game had some real annoying features (Oh man did the character walk too slow - I think this is fixed a bit in the next one) it was still rewarding. So I did utilise a bit of a cheat in the game's programming to help me along the way but that's ok because I may have given up on it otherwise. While the story wasn't deep it had enough in it to keep me going. I won't go into much detail about the game as such if you have ever played this type of game you know what to expect.

While games are becoming more flashy and fancy it's nice to know that there are still people out there who appreciate the old :) I am looking forward to picking up book 2 next sale and book 3 once it is finished. In the mean time if you are interested check out Basilisk Games http://basiliskgames.com/ and pick up a demo :)

I am loving the indie game scene at the moment and the creativity of some people is amazing. My next game to finish is Limbo an awesome looking side scrolling platformer, more on that when I'm actually finished.though. ;)

The evolution of a Market Stall

I was sifting through a bunch of photos I took on the weekend of a Community Fair market I attended and was admiring my little stall. So I went through a few of the other photos I have of my stall which I have taken over the past 6 months. What a sight to see! I have come a long way since my little square table I first used.

So I compiled all the shots I could find of my table's progression so you can see. You might need to click on it to see it better.

I feel a little bit proud :) 

Stamp CRAZY!

So this past week I have gone a little bit crazy on the stamp front. I got a little bit hooked into just sitting here making a mess and carving these awesome things.

A few friends asked me to make them a pipboy stamp. I was ashamed to not know who pipboy was but after a quick google search it all became clear. I must get around to playing fallout...

Anyway here is a little collection of the recent stamps.

Tripod logo, Space Invader, Boosh Face, Super Meat Boy

Evangelion Nerv Logo for a friend, Max, Kawaii faces, rhicreations

Making the rhicreations logo was a bit tricky that small but I managed to get it in the end. I really loved how my meatboy and max stamp turned out.

In other news I finally got around to finishing a custom order someone made for a Commander Keen set. I was very excited to get to work on these being the avid keen fan that I am.

Dopefish and other keen 1 monsters 

I decided to go with sculpey for the earrings/ring and shrink plastic for the necklace. For the necklace I was able to experiment a little with this new gloss I had been sent from a friend in the USA, "magic-glos" by Lisa pavelka. It was great and worked real well at giving the necklace a little more dimension. It is supposed to be similar to diamond glaze which I have seen many people talking about online. This one sets under a UV light or in sunlight. I was real pleased with the final result.

I had lots of fun with them!

More adventures! In craft and in the outdoors.

So I have been rather productive this week for a change. I have finished a heap of things I was working on for my stall AND actually taken photos of them. Which is quite an achievement for me I must say. If you want to check some of them out they are on my facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/rhicreations. I am pretty pleased with how my new photos came out :)

In other news I have picked up some rubber and some lino cutting tools. I got excited when I came across some photos of handmade stamps. I immediately wanted to give it a go myself. So after much debate on what I wanted to try to carve for my first stamp I finally settled on kirby. Mainly because I can draw him without actually having to look at anything. Then after some careful carving this was this result.

Turned out pretty good I think for my first go. So now I want to go and make more stamps. Me and my habit of wanting to do everything...

That's all the exciting news in the craft world. In the outside world adventures were also had when we (we being Nick, Nick's bro and his gf). Did a trip to Wallaman falls. This is pretty exciting because I have actually never been there before. It was a 2hr drive there and back but it was so worth it. The falls were amazing! Next time we go we want to walk down to the bottom but we didn't have the time (or the health) that day. We still got to enjoy a little picnic though :)

Adventure Monday!

What better way then to spend a Monday then with a little adventure!

Nick's lil sis was up visiting from Canberra so his family and I did a little day trip up Paluma range for a picnic at Little Crystal Creek. I love Paluma, it's one of those things I would miss about Townsville if I ever moved. Unfortunately for me though the water was WAY too cold that day to get in. We had a lovely picnic and enjoyed chilling in the afternoon sun (well it was more overcast than sunny that day but it was still nice).

After we filled our bellies with a delicious lunch from Nick's mum we stopped by Frosty Mango for a coffee and cake. I don't drink coffee so I filled up on some chocolate cake Om nom noms. 

Our day was was almost complete but we still had a little adventure still in us so we stopped by Toomulla beach on the way home. There was a huge amount of coral washed up on the shore. It must have happened after the cyclone. I had never seen so much in one place. 

We found a cool crab shell leftover with awesome blue claws. As I was taking this photo though I was thinking to myself that it may have been a a little bit morbid trying to make it look like it was still alive sitting on the rocks haha. I likened it to the olden day pictures they used to take of the deceased propped up with slightly off putting faces. Lets not think about that though because it was a really nice day out and this little crab looks more cute than scary! 

Good times, good times. I think I need more adventures. I have been getting far too comfortable being inside all the time haha!

Time for something new

Ok yes as it happens I am doing what every other blogger does and procrastinating about doing an update...It’s been over a month and I guess I better do something about that again!

Anyway, so what’s been happening you ask? Well you know, this and that. I’ve been frantically working on my market stall lately. Last week was my first time at the Strand Night Markets. This is a very different market to the one that I do on a weekly basis. It’s held on the first Friday of every month and is much bigger. There is still a range of types of stall at this one, homemade food, handicrafts, small businesses promoting, some even travel from out of town to have a stall set up. So sure it’s bigger but then that also means much more pressure to stand out! So leading up to the date I was getting extremely nervous at having my table ready in time. Thank fully though my stressing and staying up late nights before didn’t go to waste as it was a good night and I had fun doing it.  Next time I will know what to expect so I shouldn’t be as freaked out.

We had to set up differently to how we normally do at the willows markets as our site is a slightly different shape and isn’t on a corner. The three of us sharing our stall made our tables into a U shape so people could walk into the area. You will also see that my table is evolving as I learn what works and what doesn’t. My dad being the awesomeness that he is made up the wire grate that I was able to hang my paintings off (There is another one on the way to for the other side). It also worked a treat for hanging my photo frame which I hang some of my earrings on. I had noticed that poor frame often got over looked on my table but this seemed to help it a lot more.

It was a massive change from the willows markets in types of people that you see coming past and looking. Two of the different types you see are lookers and buyers. They always have a different look to them when they are browsing around. Often you get people walk up and you can see them looking back and forth between items, sometimes their wallet even comes out early so you know for sure they are after something. Other times they will look around and point to everything they like, sometimes call over a friend they are with have a smile at what they have seen and then move on. I think to myself when that happens that hopefully they will remember me when they have something that they do need to buy. This is when it helps to have my card on the table as these people sometimes take it as the move on. Whoever it is that comes and visits I try and say hello and greet them with a smile (although during my morning markets it’s a bit trickier to do that when it’s 6am hahaha, I at least smile).

It’s been good though I’ve already learnt a heap doing the markets each week and this one was a massive change. I don’t think I will ever stop being nervous about it though because having all your work on display let alone for sale aswell you always wonder what people are thinking when they see them. It’s always nice to have people come up and get a surprise when I tell them I make everything on my table, especially the tiny origami cranes (I get a heap of “gee you must have a lot of patience” comments with them haha). So yeah back to my old weekly market now until next month :)