unloved monster

Hi All

I've been watching too much craft tv and there seems to be an upsurge in crochet on there so I decided to give it a whirl.  I've never so much as picked up a needle before, but very quickly got bored with making little squares, within a day I'd found this cuties pattern and a couple of youtube videos, around 50g of DK wool a 4.5mm hook for him and 3.5 for the eyes and days later I have this little fella.

 looking at the pattern site now I've gone a bit rogue with the ear placings and the tooth is a bit big but all the better to eat me with.

 Twerking it by the looks of how shaky the pic is, but he wanted to show off his tail.

the eyes I adjusted from a pattern here: the blog makes 3 different disks which you sew on top of each other, but they were too bulky and didn't look right with him being so small, so I just did them as one continuous circle, changing the colours as I went, 

when I stuffed him he didn't like sitting down, so i made a food free version of a beanbag, heavier than a polystyrene one, and stuffed it in his bum, he now sits and keeps me company.

Hope you like him and enjoy the rest of your weekend

Jas x

2. Matchbox Monsters

Thanks Lou for yesterday's fabulous post. I will be having a go at one of those pendants just as soon as the eyes hit the shops.

A really simple little project from me today - little matchbox monsters.

For this project you will need

• some matchboxes (obviously!) Mine were 5.5cm wide, 8cm tall and 3.25cm deep
• some paper to wrap around the matchboxes (I used some old Halloween scrapbook paper)
• images of your choice, approximately 1.5 x height of matchboxes
• glue
• ink pad
• marker or Posca pen (optional)
• Glossy Accents (optional)

I used Octopode images from some of the collage sheets available here as their bright and colourful style went well with my papers. Being digital images they were super easy to resize to fit my matchboxes. Stamped images would work well too.

Wrap your chosen paper around the outside of your matchbox and glue, then ink around the edges. Also, use some of the paper to line the inside of the matchboxes and adhere. Then, take two identical images and cut around them.  Place the first one centrally in the inside of the matchbox. As your images are larger than the box you will have to cut it to size by chopping off the head! Place the outside back one, leaving it about two thirds open. You can then line up the top part of your image with the inside part so that went the box is open you have a complete image as you can see below.

To finish off, colour with marker or Posca pen those parts of the matchbox not covered with paper. You don't want to use anything too rough as it will stop the slide action of the box. Finally, I added a little glossy accents to the eyes to highlight them.

These matchboxes make great little holders for some mini journals that I will be showing later in the month.  Fab filled with sweets to use as little Trick or Treat boxes or just stand alone little decorations. You can also play with them by mismatching the heads and bodies. I hope you have some fun with these, and see you tomorrow for Jas's project.

I've entered this is in the A Step in the Darkness challenge blog here, The Corrosive Challenge here and Divas by Design here.

Bex