Put the Flags Out! Freebie and Contest

Flag Day!

Hiya! I hope you're all well and happy. "Long time no blog" I hear you say! I'm sorry for my absence, I've been getting over winning the Feeling Stitchy contest!  Yes it's taken me this long... winning something is rather a shock to my system, you see.  Oh and catching up on things that I've been meaning to do for a long time... like making some little printable flags for sandcastles!

The beautiful Carbis Bay... ahh, what I'd give to be there right now...

A couple of years ago, I made a few little flags for sandcastles on the train down to our holiday destination, the lovely Carbis Bay (pictured above) near to St Ives. If you like Cornwall, I thoroughly recommend a visit as the beach is wonderful, the sea so clear and there's some great walking on the easier bits of the coast path (I'm a real pussy when it gets a bit steep and rocky!). Anyway, here's some pictures of those flags in action:

Since then, I've been meaning to make some for you good folks to download and print out... Finally, I've gotten around to it!  I think this would be a good activity for children to keep them occupied when you're packing for your holiday. Then again, you might want to make yourself a little flag and wrap it around a pencil.  Click on the images or links below to download the flags (you have a choice of ready coloured, or blank for you and/or your little 'un to colour in)

Summer Pals' Sandcastle Flags - ready coloured
Summer Pals' Sandcastle Flags - blank for you to colour in


Joey's Dream Garden Sandcastle flags coloured in version_ not for commercial use


Joey's Dream Garden Sandcastle Flags_ outlines version_ not for commercial use

I made them with our little long-term visitors, Little Tiger (who else??), Cotton Carrot and Bunny Giraffe in mind. Of course, the ever modest Little Tiger demanded a flag with his "beautiful" fizzog on it and nothing much else... Cotton Carrot didn't really mind as long as there was a carrot featured somewhere; so I've put lots of carrots coming out a happy sun to reflect her sunny disposish. And Bunny Giraffe, the most musical and rhythmic of the pals, gets a singing bunny in a rainbow of music! Which he's very happy with. :-)

Health and safety note: please ensure young children are accompanied by an adult when using sharp scissors, and please keep craft knives out of their reach. If your youngsters are using bamboo skewers, please cut off the pointed end for them first.

To make the flags, you need:

A print of the flags

Scissors
Glue

Clean lolly sticks (or bamboo skewers, cut in half, or pencils)

Here's how you put them together

1. Download the sheet you want, and print it out. If it's the blank ones, colour them in and decorate if you wish.

2. Cut out along the dotted lines.

3. Get your stick ready. Apply glue to the back of one half of the flag.

4. Place the stick on the centre of the flag.

When I used a lolly stick, I decided to position it halfway up the flag, as it's quite short.

5. Fold the flag over and make sure that both sides line up neatly. You now have a double-sided flag, ready for some sandy constructions!

Unfortunately, I'm not going to the seaside this year... (sob!) But because I still want to see LOTS of sandcastles with these flags in, I'm offering a prize to the most impressive and imaginative sandcastle bearing one of these flags!  If you want to have the chance to win an exclusive Joey's Dream Garden brooch, here's what you need to do:

1. Make at least one of the flags

2. Make a sandcastle (it doesn't have to be on a beach; in a sandpit would do if, like me, you can't get to the seaside)

3. Take a photo of your creation

4. Add your photo to the Flickr group http://www.flickr.com/groups/sandcastleflags/ - if you've made lots of flags and sandcastles, please add as many photos of them as you wish! 

The closing date is Monday, 13 September 2010, 00:00 on Howland Island (i.e. GMT -12 hrs; click here to find your timezone's equivalent time:  http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html ) and I will contact the winner via Flickr soon after.

UPDATE 14 JULY: Blogger is currently having technical problems, meaning people sometimes cannot leave a comment. If you cannot leave a comment (please try first, I love getting comments!) please e-mail me and tell me what time you tried to comment. My e-mail is jramone@toucansurf.com.  Thanks!

Take care in the sun (and the sea, if you're going to the seaside!)

and Have Fun!

Joey x

The Cutest Lego, Ever!

If you've played the Nintendo video games Pikmin/Pikmin 2, you'll be familiar with the tiny part-animal, part-plant creatures that are the pikmin themselves, and the numerous monstrous beasts which attack the peaceful pikmin in many strange ways. The otherworldly designs of the monsters are inventive and beautiful; from frog-like spotty “Bulborbs” which munch up the pikmin like a quick and tasty snack; to the floating “Blowhogs” which puff tornado-like blasts to scatter the tiny pikmin into the path of other monsters which threaten to squash, burn, or poison them. In the game, the “Piklopedia” is the name given to the collection of pictures and information about the monsters, which you gather as you progress through the game and discover more, and weirder, animals.

I stumbled across Filip Felberg's Lego Piklopedia on Flickr quite by chance, and I'm so glad that I did. Filip has been making his versions of the wonderful creatures in Pikmin, almost entirely in Lego bricks, and has shared many of them on Flickr. I got in touch with Filip and he agreed to answer a few questions about his unique project.

I think I can confidently say that we all liked playing with Lego bricks when we were kids, and some of us haven't lost that love of the brightly-coloured, well-designed plastic blocks. For Filip, it was only by chance that he rediscovered them. “One day after I played the first Pikmin game and I was baby-sitting my little brothers, I started building a Red Pikmin with the Lego bricks they were playing with. Then I made the other Pikmins and started building some monsters; after I started uploading them on the Internet I couldn't stop!”

Filip told me that he's been working on this project since February 2009. “At the start I only used pieces that I already owned, I didn't buy any bricks at all. In this period I remember that I built pretty much every week. But after a while I needed more and more Lego in specific colours and began buying some “Lego Basic Bricks Deluxe” sets. Soon I started to buy special parts from Bricklink and because I had to wait a week or two till the packages arrived, it went weeks without any Lego building. But when I do get the packages, though, I can spend the entire evening building creations!”
The process which Filip uses to transform the designs from the game into Lego models is quite intuitive and playful. “Some of my models was made using a previous model as a guide, but only those that are really similar, like the Red Bulborb and the Orange Bulborb. Most of the time, however, I print out images from the net and use them as inspirations for my models. I don't make any drawings before I start, but I always think long and hard about what the model should look like before building”.

“I've had a lot of favourite creations from my project, but I must say that my Careening Dirigibug (pictured below) is currently my favorite, mostly because it is my most accurate creation yet (in my opinion), but also because it's very cool creature. Gotta love the Tingle reference! :P”
As well as making the models himself, Filip has also created instructions on how to make many of the monsters so that anyone else with a bit of Lego can have a go at making them. You can see Filip's instructions here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/39134527@N04/sets/72157622947948779/

and here: http://mocpages.com/home.php/23092

“There's only thing that annoys me about Lego, and that is that none of their bricks are perfect squares/cubes. It really annoys me when I try to make pixelated creations, and it would be a lot more easier for people to make something that is a perfect circle or something like that. But then again, I couldn't bear it if the Lego Group suddenly began to produce their Lego in perfect squares”.
Lego have brought out their versions of Star Wars, Spongebob Squarepants and Harry Potter, to name a few. I asked what else Filip would like to see made into Lego sets. “Besides Pikmin I would really like James Cameron's Avatar to be made in Lego. It could introduce some really interesting and unique new Lego parts seeing as the Na'vi people are taller than the people from Earth. It shouldn't be impossible either, seeing as the film is one of the most successful films of all time and I'm sure that the Lego Group would like to take a part of that success! Fantastic movie, by the way!”Filip said that if he had as much time and as many bricks as he needed, he might make the whole first stage in the original Donkey Kong game. He said, “it would require a lot of bricks but I think it would be cool. Perhaps I will do it in the future”.
Filip told me that what he enjoys most about building with Lego, “is to get comments on my creations. It's always fun when someone comments on my stuff, and it helps me to continue with this project”. So, if you've enjoyed reading about Filip's Piklopedia and seeing his models, please leave your comments below and on his Flickr stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/39134527@N04/

Official Pikmin site: http://www.pikmin.com/

Many thanks to Filip for his kind permission for this feature and for using pictures from his Piklopedia.


Warm wishes,
Joey x

Misaki the Pink bunny and her little friends

I finished another pink bunny brooch this afternoon and the light was just right for taking some pictures of her. I always take pictures of the small things I make on a south-east-facing window sill in our house, for the natural light. I haven't really sorted out a bigger space for things too big to fit on the window-sill yet. But most of the things I make are pretty tiny anyway...

The brightly-coloured plastic ladies you see pictured here are some of the collection of Unazukins we have. If you've not seen these before, they are interactive toys that will either shake or nod their head (just their face, really) when you ask a question. Or if you make any sort of noise... But the main things are that they're cute, come in lots of different designs and provide a lot of distraction at your office desk. The most popular question asked of the "oracle" sitting on my desk at work is, "will I ever get to leave this place?" to which the "oracle" usually shakes her head... Yes, she tells it like it is, and never shies away from giving unwelcome news.

Click this link to say hello to Misaki and her Unazukin friends on Etsy!