Wednesday 22 August 2012

Bead butterfly

Beaded Butterfly
I made this a few days ago, for my Mum's birthday, so now it's safe to upload it. :) It's supposed to be a handbag charm (or similar) hence the little lobster clasp on the top.

It's based on the malachite butterfly, which is one of my favourites - technically, the brown and green is the pattern on the underside of the wing, the top is a rather more dramatic black and bright green, but I prefer the underwing colours.

When you pick it up, the wings fold up like on an actual butterfly; I'm not sure if it was intentional. XD (The instructions on how to make it were in a book, but I didn't follow them too closely. It was probably not intentional, all their examples lay nice and flat.)

I spent ages charting the pattern for this, and of course, the fact it's not "traditional" beadwork like peyote means the pattern didn't come out like I'd charted. Drat.

Edit: I just crossposted this to the craftgrrl LJ community - I've never posted there before, and it just took me about 45 minutes of editing and changing and editing and rewriting to pluck up the courage to actually click POST. XD

I'm such a coward. This is part of the reason why I never commission people, even when they're offering free drawings - I get shy and awkward about saying "OOH ME, MEME, PICK ME, NIGEL", and end up chickening out.

Edit2: Haha. I just realised: it's Whitesides, in butterfly form.

Tuesday 14 August 2012

Memento Mori, Chapter 30

I am getting SO CLOSE to finishing this, I can almost SMELL it.

(Click here for chapter 30) In which Blink manages the incredible, and actually gets into the Institute. OMG. And finds a little surprise inside.

Just fyi, "Hoo-dees" is the colloquial name for hooting deer. I've only just started to think about their names and things; I need to do a bit of worldbuilding before I edit the thing up. I don't really want to have to use the word "deer", for instance, it was a stop-gap so I didn't get too stuck. XD

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