I've been sharing a lot of yarny things lately and I thought I might switch it up a bit. These were part of a birthday swap package I sent out a year ago, so it's high time they got their moment in the sun. My partner and I both really like Placebo, so I thought I'd do some playing with GIMP and glue.

This is a large magnet, made from a photo print and glued onto large slabs of magnet (the center of one of those magnetic photo frames actually). The image is the lyrics of one of her favourite songs, and the album cover the song came off. The album art only shows up on the text itself, the spaces are black.

This is a small notebook I made with rainbow paper. The cover just has a picture of the band blowing bubbles, with quotes and little doodles on it. The same image is on the back cover. I left the spine black. I scored it along the inside, on either side of the spine, smeared glue along the inner spine, added the paper and voila. Simple, but effective, and one of a kind notebook.

So many times I've said these past holidays "Why thank you Captain Obvious" to my 8yo son, that I felt he needed a tshirt. An hour one morning messing around in GIMP (like photoshop, but free, and more powerful) and I had this design.

I'm planning on giving it to him for Summer Solstice in December, but in the mean time, I've made the design public for everyone else to enjoy. I sell these, and other designs through my RedBubble store.

A long ago craft, from one of my first swaps. I took 6 stills from the movie Dracula, edited them to allow for the the gaps between squares, and printed them out on photo paper. Then I painstakingly cut them out, and superglued them to an old Rubik's Cube that had had all it's stickers removed. I was quite proud of this piece actually, though I can't remember what my partner thought of it.

Sassy Book Lovers are having a giveaway blog hop and yours truly designed the above button for them, along with the graphics you'll find on the hop with the clues on them. Below is a discarded button design, which was loved, but not quite as fitting with the theme.

There is a signed copy of Burn Bright by the awesome Perth author Marianne de Pierres, amongst other things, to be won, so stop by and check it out!

You've probably seen these around the blogosphere, seems all the geeky craftsters are making them these days. My major problem with every one I've seen so far was that they are all really bad at Tetris. I'm a little ocd about things like that, and I knew that if I was going to make a blanket, and have it around permanently, it had to be of a well played game. So I went into GIMP, and made myself a little 10x20 grid, drew up the Tetris pieces, and "played" a perfect game, where I could choose what piece I used next. Here's what I came up with.

To be fair, this is generally what an in progress game of mine looks like, only with more clashing of the colours and less pleasing composition of the individual pieces in the big clump on the side.

Now all I have to do is teach myself to crochet and I'm set. 200 squares to go. I'll keep you all posted. I can already see the need for weekly updates on this to keep me motivated to actually do the darn thing. And I'm already dreaming of other 8 bit crochet square projects, like fire flower cushion covers and final fantasy dragon wall hangings... ah, the world of 8 bit possibilities!

Here is a series of banners and matching sidebar buttons I made for a blogging friend who wanted to run a series of losing weight blog parties during February.

I made three different banners, each with a matching button.

Except for the final design, which had two buttons to choose from.

I liked the purple ones best, but Mumma_Rat ended up using the gree button, and the grey banner. She was happy with them at least.

I spent a few hours tweaking the header image that came with this theme into something a little more fitting. It took almost an hour, and the mastering of a new (to me) filter, to get the sky to look like the dragon was knitting it, but I'm pretty pleased with the result. Mind you, it's a little misleading, since I can't knit, but I am open to learning, and it just made such a darn cute picture. It's a little hard to draw crocheting in action, and that's the next big project I'm tackling... shh! More on that soon.