Year 3 of the 52-Week Illustration Challenge, Week 50

Week 50: Festive.

Symmetrical collage and freehand white opaque Signo drawings and black pencil and Sharpie shading, mounted onto Quill Metallique card.

52-Week Illustration Challenge, bonus round

Bonus: Advent (Days #1-24 compile)

Flickr Slideshow:

Click HERE!

52-Week Illustration Challenge, Week 50

Inspired by an egg carton sleigh (with eight reindeer) I saw at a craft ideas website (The Well Nourished Nest) a few weeks ago, here's my own reinterpretation: Santa's sleigh being pulled by the Six White Boomers! Uses an egg carton, card, handmade and watercolour paper, some star stickers and wiggly eyes. Each kangaroo has different facial features, but it was hard featuring all their tails. Maybe that's why reindeer have small tails?

Week 50: Christmas

And as a table decoration:

Update:

Quick and silly cartoon, in Sharpie inks and watercolour pencils. "He was pining, so I suggested he decorate for Christmas."

Week 50: Christmas II

I drew the broken bauble's outline in black Sharpie, with no idea what creature would inhabit it. I'm still not sure exactly what it is. Watercolour on cartridge paper. Pine tree needles in green and red Sharpie ink, with white Signo highlights.

Week 50: Christmas III

My friend Santa holding my naughty Christmas elves, based on my Santa photo I had taken last year. (Long story). Green, red, black, gold and silver Sharpies, white Signo pigment ink and watercolour pencil on green Origami paper.

Week 50: Christmas IV

A White Christmas, made to order

A White Christmas with my penpal, Olivia Lynn Bottum! This week's humidity and 40+ degrees C (aka 105 degrees F) temperatures have been enough to remind me I'm very definitely in the Southern Hemisphere this December! Thank you to all my wonderful Blogger readers and, increasingly, my Facebook Friends. Thanks for sharing your (and my) moments of triumph, joy, hilarity, irony, frustration and sadness throughout 2013. This is a great (still-newish), supportive and growing community. You make me laugh, commiserate and think deeply every day!

After the continuation of the dusting of snow from the afternoon of December 24, Christmas Day in Ann Arbor, Michigan, delighted me in that every time I looked out a window or door, lovely, feathery snow was falling. I think it fell for about three days non-stop. Delightful, and as if it were made to order.

Day 3 photos:

An Andorian sock monkey enjoys the snow while it lasts.

Olivia's Peruvian-themed Christmas tree, complete with... Peruvian Barbie.

A meeting of two traditional desserts: American pumpkin pie shares a plate with an Aussie Christmas pudding.

The vacuum packed plum pudding, from Itha's Puddings & Gourmet Foods, Sydney, traveled with me in my hand luggage and is from a 100-year old English recipe from the maker's own family.

The sock monkey cavorting with the angels. The Christmas angels were made by Reed's Mom,
Dorothy Lenz, using pine cones, acorns, milkweed pods, long wooden golf tees and pipe-cleaners!

After lunch, we investigated screening times for "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey", which had been running in the US since my birthday, but was about to premiere back home in Sydney. Luckily, the venue we chose had the 3D (and HFR) version of the film plus the 3D trailer for "Star Trek Into Darkness". Later, we discovered that our alternate choice of cinema venue was not running the "Star Trek" trailer. Lucky! Serendipitous!

"The Hobbit: An Unexpected Andorian Sock Monkey"

And lo, it was good. But long!

'Tis the season to be meerkat!

Christmas meerkats

Update:


Who can resist adding to a meerkat family, especially when they are at bargain prices?

Beware aliens bearing gifts!

Ambassador Shras of Andor meets Kang and Kodos. The other Kang and Kodos.

Or indeed, Smurfs!

ALF's Christmas wish

Dear Santa,

I have been good.

For Christmas I would like a kitty.

Love ALF (2011).

Christmas 2011 approaches!

I put the Christmas tree up. Decorating it was quite carthartic after the eventful weekend. Even though I collect and date two new ornaments for the tree each year, I realised how many extra ornaments I have, tucked into my Christmas gift by my Mum.

Of course, last year, it was impossible to put up a tree when the lounge room was full of dog cage!


Christmas 2011


Closeup on my customised Spock angel tree topper

This year's new ornaments are:


Wild Thing and Max


Mary Poppins' umbrella


Hallmark View-Master ornament from 2008, not a normal size View-Master!

I couldn't resist buying one more this year! This is a teeny, tiny Hallmark limited edition Keepsake ornament from 2008, not a normal size View-Master, but the 3D specialist mail order firm I deal with found a few in their warehouse. They are sure to vanish quickly, though. The three reels feature "A night before Christmas" in 21 stereo pairs.



And this powder blue Andorian koala turned up in the mail from an old "Star Trek" friend on Friday!

Hip hopping into the festive season

Year 4 of an annual tradition.

2D scans of old Nimslo 3D photos!

With Rhonda Williams, California. Christmas in USA, 1983.


"The Wizard of Oz" wax figures at Movieland Wax Museum, January 1984.
The museum used to be opposite Knott's Berry Farm in Los Angeles, USA.


Our award-winning costumes from the gala premiere night of "Ghostbusters", 1984.

The signs on our backs read "Rent-a-Ghost". I'm holding a red fly-swat, but included in our winners' goodie bag was... an official logo "Ghostbusters" ghost-swatter.


"Cometcon Blankety Blanks" (1986) with guest panelists, T'Pring, Spock and a Peoplebuster.

Ghosts of Christmases past presents

I raced around the house today with my iPhone, snapping pics of Christmas gifts I remember receiving over the decades.

I've dated this little woollen golliwog (above) as being from Christmas 1963. Not so PC in the 21st century, but I recall watching my grandmother make a similar one for my younger brother; it is a similar method to making pompons. The golliwog just gets tied off differently, and then is cut free from his cardboard frame. While looking around today for something to give a sense of scale to the photos, I remembered how we often used to beg for a spare paper patty case, when Mum was making cupcakes, so we could allow our golliwogs a little crossdressing freedom.



Predating the popular "Barrel of Monkeys" by at least a year, this wooden monkey (above) came to me at Christmas 1964. I remember seeing chains of them hanging from the shelves at an import gift and caneware shop in the Imperial Arcade in the Sydney CBD. Their curved hands and feet allowed them to be contected, just like the plastic game pieces in "Barrel of Monkeys". Some of the monkeys had long, curvy, cane tails (and mine does have a hole where a tail would have originally been inserted). My brother had a matching monkey, in a slightly darker colour of wood stain, but the elastic holding his monkey's limbs in place perished many decades ago. My grandfather repaired his, to an extent, with rubber bands.



A hand-knitted red and yellow gonk (above) from Christmas 1965. His name is Messy Hair and he has a few moth holes these days. My friend at school, Jean, had a sewn one, made of red, white and black satin fabric, and I pestered my Mum and paternal grandmother - for months! - for a gonk of my own. My brother received one in reverse colours to mine, and our younger brother received a similar, hand-knitted Humpty Dumpty. I think it must have been in the same pattern book. My grandmother knitted our gonks in secret (and sent them off to Santa to bring back on Christmas night).



This "monster" (above) was given to me at Christmas 1982 by a friend who'd heard I was "into The Lord of the Rings". She bought it in an Australian giftware shop and it carries a label underneath, "Made in Canada". It appears to be made of clay, and is studded with coloured "jewels", but it is actually carved from some kind of plant root, probably azelea (I have a carved wooden tiger which is definitely azalea root - and I just realized it seems to be the same texture). It's almost as light as cork; some sections are polished smooth, while other parts are the natural surface of the root. The plain corrugated cardboard box it came in was crudely labelled in felt pen: "Sauron".



"The Herculoids" was a classic animated series from 1967, but these very cool Toynami retro action figures are from 2003. You can bet they were brought to licensing life by some guy who loved and wanted such a set in 1967. I bought the "Zok the dragon with Zandor" boxed set (#1) new, and only ever saw one other of those sets in the shops. No locations near me ever imported the other two huge sets. I found all three sets, loose and second hand, in Brisbane at Christmas 2008 - and bought them all as a gift for myself. This gave me a spare Zok to take to the school library, where he continues to enthrall little kids, and a spare Zandor who may be useful customizing fodder some day. When you open up the blobs, Gloop and Gleep, there are unopened packets of a white, Pla-Doh like, compound so that one can emulate the creatures' stretching abilities during play.

Watchu tolkien 'bout?

Framed Middle-earth map in my school's new BER library.

Hahaha. A friend just compared me to the Valar of the JRR Tolkien books. Tolkien Gateway, the Tolkien wiki, says: "The Valar (like any of the Ainur) have no fixed shape."

Especially after Christmas, methinks.

I do like the sound of Irmo (aka Lórien), "Master of Dreams and Desires".

Something to keep in mind for the new year.

Christmas in Sydney, no, make that Nowra!

A last minute mercy dash to South Nowra - my mother had just come out of hospital and wasn't able to travel to the planned family reunion Christmas we'd planned for her, so I went down on the train to ensure she wasn't on her own - meant that I didn't get the tree out for Christmas this year. But that never stops me finding my two, new, dated ornaments. This season's two ornaments are:


A Hallmark gingerbread Noah's Ark (left), actually dated in very tiny, faint font as a 2009 collectible ornament, but I bought it the same week as finding last year's Christmas polar bear, which had a very prominent 2009 date on one paw, and was destined to celebrate the "Bear and Chook" picture books. So the ark went into storage, still in its box. The great SpongeBob Squarepants ornament (right) continues the "tied up with Christmas lights" theme already represented by previous years' Pinky & the Brain and Shrek & Donkey.


A closeup of Patrick, back-to-back with SpongeBob.

Previous ornament blog entries include:

Christmas 2009

Christmas 2008

Christmas 2007

Epiphany 2007

On the twelfth day of Christmas

On the eleventh day of Christmas

On the tenth day of Christmas

On the ninth day of Christmas

On the eighth day of Christmas

On the seventh day of Christmas

On the sixth day of Christmas

On the fifth day of Christmas

On the fourth day of Christmas

On the third day of Christmas

On the second day of Christmas

On the first day of Christmas.

Secret Spock 2010

Every year, the members of Playtrek, the listserv for collectors of Star Trek action figures, can participate in "Secret Spock", in which Star Trek related gifts are sourced and sent to each other, without the identity of the givers becoming known (at least at first).



Although I don't usually participate, one Playtrekker had difficulty sourcing a new, carded, Romulan action figure - and I volunteered to forward one to the intended recipient, sending it back to the USA. I'd ended up with at least one duplicate, in my attempt to ensure I didn't miss out on a Romulan, which was seemingly going to be tricky for many to locate. At the last minute, I realised I had a rare opportunity to make the gift even more exciting.



Using my own opened Romulan as the stand-in, I surrounded him with Aussie souvenirs ( which I later "carded" with Gladwrap onto the mint figure), created holiday snapshots in my backyard and even designed a Photo Peach slideshow. The slideshow requires that your volume is up.

Enjoy! I hope Secret Spock was kind to you all.

There's no business like snow business

Here's a Photo Peach slideshow from today's freak summer hailstorm over Penrith.

Penrith PS in December: a white Christmas

Surfing disco time!

Season's greeting, everyone!

My previous ElfYourself videos are HERE and HERE!

Ben presents "Where the wild things are"

I spent last Christmas with a young friend, three-year-old Ben, of Brisbane. I gave him a copy of the picture book, "Where the wild things are" by Maurice Sendak, but the festive season was so frantic he didn't get much of an opportunity to explore it until the New Year. It has become a firm favourite.

His parents have uploaded the following Youtube video:



Great work, Ben! I'm proud of you!

Easter foolery

The school was visited by the Easter Bunny today, coincidentally on April Fools' Day.

Meanwhile, Central Station's restored paybus has again been decorated for the season. A friend posted a pic yesterday before one of its ears went floppy:



Strangely enough, my friend, Jeff Campbell (below left), posted two Easter pics to his Facebook page yesterday: himself having an Easter ear malfunction, and the original version (below right) of what the Easter paybus was supposed to look like. Looks like the paybus went out in sympathy by the time I wandered past:



Archival pics:

Auction nostalgia

Green "Number 96" delicatessen jacket, as worn by Harry Michaels as Giovanni Lenzi.
Bought at auction after the series ended (in 1977).

Underneath the jacket, the red T-shirt reads "I'm quite ardamant about that", a Dorrie Evans catch-phrase from the show. Unused wardrobe item made for Andrew Mercado, TV1's "The Best of Number 96" (2000).


Raw footage of 1975 Christmas message by Arnold and Giovanni,
"Number 96". Harry Michaels wears the jacket I now own.

See the full Christmas message on the bonus features of the DVD "Number 96: Aftermath of Murder" (2010, Umbrella Entertainment).


Reg, Edie, Trixie.


Dorrie, Herb, Flo, Don, Dudley.


Jane, Norma, Gary.

See the full Christmas messages on the bonus features of the DVD "Number 96: Aftermath of Murder" (2010, Umbrella Entertainment).


A young, impressionable, trainee teacher, Ian McLean
(wearing Giovanni's deli jacket from "Number 96"), interviews Elaine Lee,
who was playing Principal Margaret Gibson in TV's "Glenview High" at the time (1978).