Showing posts with label Crafts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Crafts. Show all posts

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Ohio Renaissance Fair 2012


Jousting


Finally attended the Ohio Renaissance Festival (~45min north of Cincinnati), which has been a big hit for many years.  It lived up to its hype.  Tons of crafts, hecklers, music, entertainment…turkey legs being eaten.  And live jousting, of course! In fact, there is a show on the History Channel called "Full Metal Jousting" and many of the participants have roots to Monroe OH and appear here.  Very family friendly, yet still welcomed the die-hard fans who were compelled to dress in full-plate armor, pirate gear, or druid capes.

Their Entertainment Schedule was buried on their site (linked here) and is useful to plan a visit; the schedule is available at the front gate but it is nice to plan your route first. We were particularly interested the crafts and enjoyed watching one blacksmith and glassblower (images below).  Great place to have your fortune read, purchase armor, or buy a nice leather artifacts (leather bound tomes, capes,etc.).

Glass Blower

You can even ride camels, horses, get trapped in a maze, throw knives, shoot bows, and even mud wrestle…I think.  See my daughter and wife below pretend to be the archer Katniss from the Hunger Games (image).  Highly recommended autumn fun.
Archery

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Halloween Crafts: Spooky Apple Head Creatures

Crafting Prototype Creatures
image from: Apple Head Dolls & More!
I am designing creatures for the sequel to Lords of Dyscrasia and am exploring possibilities with tangible prototypes.  This process yielded an easily reapplied Halloween craft!

Animating Manikins: The dark hero Lysis reanimated the skeletons and armatures of Doctor Grave's Dissection Theater to form his undead troop, the Red Horde (image below).  Motivated to integrate the mysterious fruit/orchard themes littering the book (the presence of which will be explained in the sequel) with this Horde led me to literally mix (1) apple-head crafts with (2) art manikins.  The results are...

Simple Spooky Apple Head Creatures
Appledolls.org is a nice resource for creating traditional dolls (as seen on Martha Sterwart :)).  Below is my modified method: 
  1. Skin an apple; for a spooky effect, leave some slivers of skin on the face to mimic scars
  2. Carve into a shape such that, when dried, will resemble a head
  3. Ensure it can be mounted to a doll or art manikin; for the art manikin route, carve a hole in the under side of the apple so that it can become a "helmet"--for a tight fit, allow the apple to dry on the manikin head.
  4. Decorate with paint, needles, toothpicks, etc. ; Simple PVA glue makes for good drool!

The Red Horde: reanimated armatures, skeletons, and art manikins from Lords of Dyscrasia
The Next-Generation Red Horde?