Who knows If I'll Update?

Warning: Cthulhu Ahead! - Rehashing a Popular Design

2010-01-17T20:00:00.001Z

Long time no post...

I've not posted here in an awfully long time but I've had something of a busy year, lets hope I manage a bit better this year.

So, to kick things off here's a look at the two most recent designs I've posted to Zazzle.
My best selling design by far in the last year was the same "Eat Sleep Cthulhu" design I posted about before. Where a be-tentacled Elder Thing breaks loose from the confines of its box putting stick-men in peril.
As you can see the most interesting part of the image takes up less than a third of the available printing area. I wanted to recycle the design, taking more advantage of the space available to me and making my Great Old One the centerpiece.

I still wanted a box or border for the tentacles to spill out of, as well as a text block to break off. Since I've been learning to drive I took inspiration from hazard warning signs. A big red triangle for tentacles to spill out over and an information board to rip off and flail about.

I created the new design elements and since my original design was a vector graphic, simply rescaled the monster to fit. Then it was a case of minor adjustments to the positioning of the elements, changing the colour scheme and adding a few more tentacles here and there to balance it out and fill white space.

While the red triangle is almost universally used throughout Europe other countries (such as the United States) use a yellow diamond to indicate a hazard. Yellow diamonds are also used in a broader context as warning labels. So, a variant design was born. The thin black border on the yellow diamond was too narrow to give good contrast to the tentacles, for this reason I decided to preserve the rounded box 'border' from the original design.

T-shirts, mugs, stickers, etc. with these designs "Warning: Cthulhu!(UK)" and "Warning: Cthulhu!" are available through Zazzle.com.

Paracord Hammer Grip

2009-02-10T20:00:00.001Z

The grip on this rubber mallet is a 10 lead 3 bight 'long turks head' based on this tutorial. The knot is tied and doubled, then interwoven with a second identical turks head to create the pineapple knot before being dressed and tightened into place. The ends are heat sealed and buried under the weave.

The material is 550 paracord in black and purple.

Carry loop/lanyard for a Sigg bottle

2009-02-09T15:30:00.014Z

I've seen a few designs recently for water bottle carriers and nets (A couple from Stormdrane and one at Knifeforums). In that vein, this is the carry loop I made for my SIGG water bottle.

Based around a jug/jar sling knot (ABOK 1142) it uses ~6 feet (2m) of paracord. The Jug Sling knot is ideally suited to grip a bottle with a lip or collar on the neck (like my Sigg bottle).

Create a loop in the middle of the paracord using a knife lanyard knot.
Cord the standing and working ends together for 10-11 inches(25cm) (this will form the carry loop).

Tie another lanyard knot.

Tie a jug sling. Adjust the knot so it is slightly larger than the neck of your bottle. and leave a little slack between it and the lanyard knots.

Secure the ends together with another lanyard knot.

Trim and finish the ends. I looped them through a snap hook before doubling them back on themselves, so I can clip it to a belt loop, backpack or whatever.

Drop the jug/jar knot over the neck of the bottle. and pull the ends apart until the knot grips the neck.

Pass the loop on the corded end through the ring in the bottle cap, then pull the corded part through the loop to create a bight. The lanyard knots at each end of the corded part should pass through the loop and keep everything in place until you want to remove it.

Your bottle now has a wrist loop.

This design will work on any bottle or jar with a ridge or collar on the neck. Since most bottles don't have a ring in the cap you can secure the wrist strap through the loop of material between the jug knot and the final lanyard knot.

Zazzle Featured... Sea Serpent - Reusable Travel Mug

2009-02-06T21:14:00.004Z

Busy days bring the rewards out. I took time today to make 'travel mug' versions of most of my existing mug designs.

The 'Sea Serpent' wraparound mug design from my Terra Incognita gallery won a "Today's best" award.

This means it will be featured on the front page of both Zazzle.com and Zazzle.co.uk for the next 24 hours, as well as being added to the Todays Best Award Showcase.

Zazzle Featured... Past Award Winners.

2009-02-06T20:00:00.012Z

Over time I've had a few Zazzle product awards.
Here's some more of them.

Zazzle Featured... Eat - Sleep - Cthulhu Mug

2009-01-28T20:15:00.005Z

I just got a notification. My Eat-Sleep-Cthulhu Mug Design got a 'Today's best' award.

This means it will be featured on the front page of both Zazzle.com and Zazzle.co.uk for the next 24 hours, as well as being added to the Todays Best Award Showcase.

While I've not previously seen this exposure translate into sales, it is nice to be appreciated :D

This design is also available on T-shirts and Environmentally-Friendly Reusable Travel Mugs

New Year & Rope making

2009-01-28T20:00:00.003Z

Over the last month or so I've spent a fair bit of time standing in outbuildings looking at cows, so I've had a bit of an enforced break from most of the projects I'd intended to work on.

But given time to stand about surrounded by little more than bales and straw, I experimented with rope-making. The first piece is a ~five foot length of 4 stranded rope(pictured right) that I made out of the twine salvaged from hay bales as I cut them open. Each bale provides two lengths of twine which I twisted together into a single cord. I then laid 4 of those cords together to make a rope with a diameter of about 1/2 inch. The ends are finished with a wall & crown knot.

I've now started twisting strands of straw into twine with the intention of making a similar piece of natural fibre rope.

I'm given to understand that my Great grandfather made harness' for cart and plough horses using rope made from marram grass. This is something that I will need to research, finding out whether the grass will need to be dried or should be used green etc etc. My initial thoughts are that the result will be significantly better than straw, since maram does not have the 'knuckles' that straw does and should cord more smoothly. Ultimately I'd like to make a few lengths of marram rope and make some woven knot mats (I suspect reference material for harness will be very hard to find).

As I get a bit more time to sit down and organise some of the things I've worked on into coherent posts/articles. There should be a more along presently.

S.

Projects - Updates and Previews

2008-11-13T10:00:00.000Z

Gaelic Alphabet Trees : I stopped making the daily posts on these as I wanted to wait until i have content to link to.

The series is going well, though I've been a little distracted over the last few days. I've gotten as far as muin (vine) at time of writing which is the 11th letter. That's 11 of 18 completed.

I've also made a couple of different borders so that there is some variety in that aspect of the design, once I've finished the branch drawings I'll be going through them and changing the borders.

Christmas approaches and I've been looking out materials. I've also got a wire work project in mind for the next few weeks. I intend to take photos as I go, so there should be a project diary of sorts sometime in January.

Zazzle Launches UK site.

2008-11-12T16:00:00.007Z

So Zazzle just opened up it's UK site. Which as far as I'm concerned is great news. Theres a few issues from the designer/creator standpoint but I'm certain these will get ironed out over the coming months.

All my products (with the exception of custom postage stamps)
are available for purchase in pounds sterling.

Everything is still being manufactured, printed and shipped from the US , but now you can pay in Pounds (UKP) and they've added paypal as a payment option.

As an added incentive, there's free standard shipping to the UK and EU on orders over £30! Use code: UKZAZZLESHIP

And all just in time for Christmas.

Gaelic Alphabet - Ailm (Elm)

2008-10-29T10:00:00.000Z

Elm: In Celtic mythology elm trees were associated with the underworld. They had a special affinity with the guardians of burial mounds, their dead and the associated transition into the lands of the dead.
Notwithstanding elm's legendary associations with death and the Underworld, people also looked to elm for medicinal cures. The inner bark was especially efficacious when chewed or boiled into a liquor to treat colds and sore throats, while the boiled bark was also used to treat burns.

Gaelic Alphabet.

2008-10-28T10:00:00.002Z

The Scottish Gaelic alphabet has 18 letters with each letter named for a tree

ailm (elm),
beith (birch),
coll (hazel)...

These trees have also been adopted and co-opted into assorted 'Celtic calendars' as the names of the months (this practise has little or no historical provenance)

This is my current 'drawing project'. A series of trees.
Rather than taking part in NaNoWriMo, I'm drawing an alphabet.

Given 18 to pick and choose from, I should eventually have the makings of a calendar of my own.

Since I had reference, I started with birch.

BIRCH: Sometimes called 'Lady of the Woods' the Birch Tree is said to have a protective influence and is symbolic of new birth, fertility and purification. It's association with fertility gave it strong connections to the celebrations of Belthane.

Zazzle, Squidoo, and promoting my Gallery.

2008-10-22T21:00:00.002+01:00

Right now I'm busy with my zazzle gallery
Frightful Designs

I've been doing a lot of work based on Celtic themes and imagery. And a little bit of advance thought on some Christmas card templates.

Just today I started building a dedicated zazzle gallery for the line of Celtic themed designs. I think it will work out better if I group those products together. More on that when it goes live.

I've also been working on building traffic and just getting the stuff out there.
So I've been up to my ears in rss feeds, google base and squidoo.

On the more is better front... I've taken a preliminary look at Redbubble as another potential outlet for my work.

The squidoo lenses are going to break down by product line, some flavour text with respect to the inspiration and a weekly updated feed of what's popular with that design on. the first one is at http://www.squidoo.com/salmonofknowledge.

Shameless Self Promotion

2008-09-26T17:00:00.003+01:00

Buy my Stuff at Zazzle