I’ve had this little Dollzone Leo BJD for a while now, and when I realized he’d make a great Tyrion I spent a week of evenings putting this cosplay together. I’m pretty pleased with my tribute to everyone’s favourite game of thrones character!
And the reference…
A good session, I really enjoyed the quick loose drawings. I need to move beyond just the lines and work on tone I think.
On Sunday I indulged in a bit of old school crafting and used the charming Marimekko newsprint catalogue to make some rolled newspaper beads. Long triangles of paper make rather sweet beads. It was actually rather relaxing to see how the patterns created different effects! Pretty but not rain proof.
Tonight I ran my first D&D session as a dungeon master. After playing at the mercy of Steve and his epic campaign I was a little nervous, I was keen to make the story engaging, not too constrained, bring out some plot twists and interesting mechanics. In the end I decided to go for the lols, and have them fight Big Fluffy. This is Big Fluffy.
Big fluffy is basically a re-skinned owlbear, a mech wolf mount from an entirely different tabletop game, but I had him be a constructed war machine owned by an evil queen in a messy custody battle with her ex husband over their daughter. Their daughter is called princess Melba, she’s 8 and she likes pink things. Hence the bow.
I managed to get a skills challenge, a puzzle and a battle into my session, which lasted a respectable five hours. The four PCs got to stretch out a bit and explore their characters, and I’m looking forward to Chris’ session in a few week’s time. It’s nice to see things from the other side of the screen, and a great feeling when the story carries the characters along. Huge thanks to Steve, Chippy, Chris and Phil for bearing with me!
Steve’s player character managed to ride Big Fluffy into the sunset. Well played.
Makie doll plus arduino pro mini plus sound sensor plus servos plus sugru plus lipo battery plus cyberpunk back-of-neck switch. Phew! Really pleased with how she’s come out! Also new hoodie made from an old Dresden Dolls Tee 
Arduino code after the jump…
There was a real feeling of weighty honest design, authentic materials and bright, joyful colour at Tent London this year. Here are few of the things that really made me smile.
Venus of Cupertino is so round and smooth, I couldn’t help but give her porcelain back a little stroke. She’s gorgeous, her heavy breasts resting against the glass of the ipad as it charges.
Laura Smith showed her submerged series, I love her bright turquoise coral inspired glass.
The clever Za stool from miso soup design is in two parts which come apart easily.
AOI cycle showed some almost indecently good looking bikes.
Sarah Turner creates ingenious sea-creature like lighting out of waste plastic bottles
Wooden keyboard from Oree! Sorely tempting and gorgeous to type on.
Bubble tank by Psalt design. So lovely and weighty!
Bamboo Smartphone from Adzero. This thing is so gorgeous I want to lick it.
Cozy Shelter by Lambert Kamps is an inflatable den – a wonderful childlike space.
Dennis Parren’s CMYK lamp threw bright shadows across the space
Duhovich‘s lighting is wonderfully characterful and steampunky – his other work is well worth a look! I’d love to do a photoshoot with these things.
Coworks Creative shared their mathematical and well considered thinking behind their geometric me-far bowls – each one progresses in the number of sides on each face and the shapes fan out proportionally as a result.
And finally the colours in this “bliss” fabric design by parris wakefield made me grin like an idiot. Look at that turquoise!
I had a great chat with Chris Haughton of Made By Node at 100% Design today, he’s the founder of a brilliant initiative connecting illustrators with a fair trade Nepalese rug weaving group. It’s also possible to design your own rug pixel by pixel for £250 – I’m dangerously tempted. Beautifully simple and soon to be in the design museum shop. Brilliant bear rug pictured designed by Nadia Shireen.
Follow the project here: @MadeByNode ,
Website here: http://blog.madebynode.com/
Chippy, Steve and I have worked out a way to gamify our attempts to do this thing called exercise. It involves an exercise bike from gumtree, a large amount of star trek and this map:
It’s 283 miles to paris according to google so I made this vaguely accurate map to track our progress. When we get there we’ll get some croissants and show off our epic iron legs. 10 miles down so far!
If anyone is interested in a copy of the map there’s a download below:
