The Making of: Mario and Yoshi (Super Mario World)

We got a Wii some weeks ago and surprise, surprise there was Super Mario World on it. I've been playing it some time now (Valley of Bowser almost conquered) and thought that it would be awesome to make my favourite character: Yoshi. Because Yoshi shines only when he's with Mario, I decided to make them together. Sprites are from spriters-resource.com, I just had to combine them myself.

As I have already made Mario with cape once, let us start with him. Whites and blacks first. I put Yoshi's there too already.

Next Hama burgundy (no. 30).

Hama yellow (03) and pink (06).

Hama blue (08), Photo Pearls yellow (21) to the cap, PP light grey (10) to the face and added also some whites I missed earlier.

PP no. 27 for the brown parts, PP yellow (21) to the shoe which I missed earlier, PP no. 23 and 28 for the blues (for some reason there was a lot of greens with the blues in the no. 23 bag).

Hama claret for Mario's arm and cap. Then I made a small adjustment to my earlier colour selection. Previously I had used Pyssla pink for the pink in the cap and in the arm. Pyssla beads however are thinner and taller than Hama or Photo Pearls so this time I traded it for Nabbi no. 18 which I got just recently. The Nabbi number 18 is about the same colour as Pyssla pink. First use for Nabbi beads. Let's see how it turns out.

Next Yoshi. Yoshi has three shades of green and I decided to try PP dark green (09) for the darkest, Hama green (10) for the middle and PP light green (22) for the lightest. Another viable option would have been PP green (16) instead of Hama green, but as it is really hard to separate PP geen and light green when they are next to each other, I decided to try Hama green as the middle one.

Almost there. Only feet (or shoes?) and hand left. The feet are easy. Just add red. Hama no. 05 for them. Unfortunately I don't have exact colour for the yellowish orange that is Yoshis hand. After some debate I used Hama teddybear brown (60) for it.

Here is the final product.

Iron Man

Yay! Got the iron back. To celebrate I made an Iron Man. It is a fridge magnet and a gift for a friend.

Just hanging here

I don't know whose the design is originally. If you google "iron man" and "perler" or "hama" there will be plenty of those. All the colours are Hama.

Creations of my better half - Part II: Some flowers and more owls

As promised, here are more of my wife's creations. First some flowers:

...in sky with diamonds?

I'm not sure if the last one is supposed to be a flower, but maybe it's close enough. It's nice and psychedelic anyway.

Then some more owls. There used to be about a dozen of these on our windowsill, but now all I could find were these two. I wonder what happened to the others.

The right one is also a badge:

These are all for today, hope you enjoyed the photos and perhaps got some inspiration. Maybe I'll do part III in some distant future.

Creations of my better half - Part I: Darth Vader, Bernese Mountain Dog and Huge Owl

My better half left for this school practise... internship... thingy to another city and won't be back until March. And she took our iron with her. So as I can't do any new beadsprites, I thought to show some of the work she has done.

First what I think is the coolest thing she has made out of beads: Darth Vader coaster!

Just needs a storm trooper coaster for companion

Next there is a head of Bernese Mountain Dog. Can be used as a coaster as well. Man we do a lot of coasters...

Last piece for this post is Huge Owl.

I think this is the biggest piece she has done. And it is actually pretty cool. Especially because you can see it pretty well from outside.

She got the ideas for these from the Pinterest, I think.

That's all for to night. Some more of her creations in a couple of days.

Christmas presents: CS: GO and Tappara logo

Handmade Christmas presents this year (except for the picture frame of course). First a CS:GO logo for a CS enthusiastic:

And for another relative a logo of Finnish ice-hockey team Tappara:

I especially like how the logo of Tappara turned out. Both pieces are few beads under 60 in height. A program called Perler was big help when I was creating these as I didn't have any model for them.

Magic the Gathering coasters

A friend of mine is a huge Magic the Gathering enthustiatic so I made some Magic the Gathering coasters for him as a birthday present. One coaster for each land.

The design is half mine and half copied from different google image search results. Searching with words "Magic the Gathering", "coaster" and "perler" gave plenty of different results. The coasters are 19 x 19 (if you ignore the rounded corners). One reason for tweaking the existing designs was that most of them were too small. Something along the lines 16 x 16 beads and I wanted to make a bit bigger coasters. Another reason was that I didn't like the designs of the already made coasters. Don't know if mine turned out to be any better, but it was fun to try.

The swamp (i.e. black) and the island (blue) coasters were the easiest to make. There was nothing too complicated about them: easy shapes and simple colours.

The forest (green) and the mountain (red) were quite simple also. Their shapes and colouring demanded some thinking though. For example: should use white as background for the mountain? I ended up with the Creme (Hama 02) because some of the land cards have that colour (sort of anyhow) as the background and because I didn't have good light red. If I had used another red that coaster basically would have been just red ...or pink and red.

The plains coaster was the hardest one. Nothing hard about making it, but the designing... Oh man that was annoying. Below are some runners for the final design:

And these are just the final five

Colouring was a problem, shape was a problem, shadowing was a problem... In the end I copied the colouring from one of the google's image search results and the shape, with some small modifications, from another. It is farthest one from the originals, but I guess it turned out to be recognizable.

The friend liked his present and I liked making them and that's the most important point in the end.

Vault Boy from Fallout series

So vacation is over and there isn't as much time for hobbies anymore. =) I've done some characters from Super Mario World. I'll show them all in a bunch one day.

Instead of all the Marios, here is awesome Vault Boy magnet I made the other day:

I don't know whose the original design is. If you google "Vault Boy" and "perler" or "hama" you will found plenty of these with some what different colouring and design. I shortened the "toes" of my Vault Boy from what seemed to be the general consensus. In most of the designs Vault Boy's feet are one bead wider. To me they seemed a little bit too wide. =)

Vault Boy is almost too big for a magnet. It still works, but probably won't hold more than one or two papers on the fridge. Looks nice though.

Colours used are all Hama:

Light blue no. 09,
Yellow no. 03 for the hair,
Pastel yellow no. 43,
Grey no. 17,
Beige no. 27,
and Black.