December 24th and 25th

YIPPEE!!!!! I've completed the whole advent animation! I must admit it was a bigger task than I first imagined it to be but still very much worth while. As I hoped to, I learnt a lot from making all of these and I think it is clear that as the month went on, the animations got just that little bit more complex and detailed. I'm so glad that people have been watching and enjoying. It really does mean a lot to me that you have. Oh deary me! This is beginning to sound a bit like an acceptance speech now. Next I'll be saying that I just want to thank my mum and dad for believing in me etc.!! I'm posting the 25th one on today as for all those living in dipsy land, it's christmas tomorrow!!!!!!!!!!!! I can imagine that you people will have better things to do than checking my blog. I wouldn't blame you at all if this was true because it's ditto for me from a posting on blog point of view! Well I wish you all a very merry christmas! I hope you have a brilliant day whatever your doing xxxxx

December 23rd

Pudgy the Snowman!

My sister and I have been busy all morning making this snowman!!

Originally, what with plenty of snow about, we were trying to make it as tall as possible but we couldn't get it tall without the proportion going all wrong. In the end we settled for making this roly poly little guy. The hat is made out of solid ice which we tipped out of a bucket!

I'm yet to find out if it was ok to use my Dad's tie as he's gone trekking out to the shops with Mum to do the Christmas food shop. They've gone out with huge rack sacks because we can't use the car at all. Yesterday, it took them two hours to get home from Asda when normally it takes about 10-15 minutes!

So what do you think of him?! Pretty 'cool' huh! (Groan!)

December 22nd

puppies walking..but not in the snow!

This is a short video that I shot whilst with the puppies yesterday. I wanted to get some footage for my blog to show you all that they can now walk! This little guy was so funny because he was so determined to get on top of the pile. He manages his epic struggle in the end finishing with a contented sigh! So cute! Also, whilst I was there, I discovered that the teeth on most of the puppies are now coming through! This means that the weening process will be starting very soon. What a busy christmas it's going to be in their house eh! It's been snowing where I live whoop whoop! This is a picture of the view outside my bedroom window. It's so picturesque isn't it. (click to enlarge it)Gorgeous! It's hard to believe that a month ago we were confonted with floods! It's pretty deep but very powdery so no snowmen have graced the scene of any gardens as it won't stick together! It's good weather for walking Peppa our dog though! She's a cocker spaniel with a very long coat. When the snow's very wet, it all sticks to her legs! It looks very amusing as by the end of the walk she tends to resemble a white poodle with these huge clumps of snow forming like cotton balls! Nightmare to get off her though as they stick hard and fast. She's there for the rest of the day shivering bless her! This time though, the snow hardly stuck to her at all which was good. I took her out for a walk along the river and down to the church so we could meet Mum and Dad coming out of church.

December 21st

December 20th and puppy update!

The puppies have grown so much! Must be at least double in size now! As you can see, they've opened their eyes now and news just in is that they are now walking on all fours around the pen! I'm going to see them again today to see this! They should be getting weened anytime now too because lots of little milk teeth are going to begin showing which I can imagine would be pretty painful for Mollie if they bite whilst suckling! They're all so gorgeous but don't half make a lot of noise when they want to! They've all got temporary names which I'll list to you now: Minnie, Caspian, Sooty (now Eva I think), Milly, Mickey, Fudge, Hazel, Holly,

December 19th

December 18th

Er...sorry about this one! It's one of my Dad's jokes that he wanted me to do!

December 17th

December 16th

December 15th

December 14th

December 13th

This one isn't too clear because when I showed it to my parents, they didn't get it. But then again, they're Dumbos so! JOKING Mum and Dad please don't ground me lol! Basically, there's a hand coming in and it's pulling at the ribbon on the present trying to open it. I come in and slap it away!

December 11th and 12th!

YES!!!!! I've cracked my uploading problem! What I've done is create a YouTube account and put all my animations on there. I then copy the embedded code and paste it into this post! I'm so glad that it's sorted for definite this time (touch wood!) and plus, all my animations are in a set place where millions of people use the site every day. With a bit of luck I should attract at least some of that audience! You can see all my animations there by typing FUNNIMATION into the search engine. It would be amazing if you checked it out and spread the word by mouth! If you could tell as may people about my animations a possible then I'd be awesomely grateful!

December 9th and 10th!

Yippee! Thank goodness it's worked.I was beginning to worry that all my hard work had gone down the drain because I wouldn't be able to show them to anyone!

Houston we have a problem!

For some reason, I'm not able to load todays animation on because it's not letting me. I've been trying all day but to no avail. I think what I'll do, is keep trying till I go to bed and if it still isn't working then I'll try again tomorrow and upload todays one with the tenth of December. Sorry about this guys but look at it this way, you'll have two animations to open up tomorrow... well that's assuming it will work tomorrow. If it doesn't then you'll have three to open the next day etc!

December 8th

Ok so this one didn't quite turn out how I wanted it to! The idea was that the stickman would rub a snowangel into the black snow type stuff. If you look carefully you can see an angel shape forming though it's just not as defined as I would have liked.

Puppies again...But this time in film!

Here's a gorgeous clip of Mollie with her newborn pups halfway or so through the birth. I think most had been born but she still had a couple more to go. She was getting pretty tired at this point and who can blame her!

December 7th

December 6th

December 5th

And pictures of the puppies as promised!!!!!

December 4th

And also... HAPPY BIRTHDAY Mum!!!!!

December 3rd

December 2nd

I also have some really exciting news to share with you aswell! Last night, my friend's dog who was pregnant went into labour!! She phoned me to come round because they had very kindly asked if I wanted to be there when it happened! So there I was at around 8pm whizzing round on my scooter so as not to miss the action. It was so amazing to watch the puppies being born and everyone took it in turns to look after the 'nursery' which by the end had 8 gorgeous little puppies in it each no bigger than the palm of my hand! I'll try to get some pictures to show you as soon as possible I promise!

December 1st!

Attention all viewers!

As you all know, tomorrow is the first day of December and thus meaning the first window to open on your advent calendars! What's that I hear you cry?! You don't have an advent calendar? Oh ok, you do but it's just the same old cardboard box with little chocolates in it that you get every year? You want a truly unique advent this year don't you! Well your in the right place for that because for every day of the countdown to Christmas, I'm going to put up a little 5-10 second animation which will hopefully depict all the things associated with Christmas! The idea of them is that they are loop animations meaning that you play them over and over and it looks like it doesn't ever stop. So this means I'm going to be pretty busy over this month as I've only completed a few of them so far. They might be a bit boring and short and so I apologise for that in advance but even a 10 second film takes me about two hours to complete! I'm hoping to learn a lot through this project so that will be really cool if I do! So please do tune in everyday to open up the windows on your animated calendar won't you!

Fimo space invaders!

I bought some Fimo the other day! I've wanted to get my hands on the stuff for a while now but haven't gotten round to it what with all the projects I've been busy with.

I thought it would be cool to make a little wall art piece with them. I love retro graphics especially space invaders so I thought it would be awsome to have a little renactment of the game playing on my wall! These are four of the characters that have been created so far. I'm not quite sure how many I'm going to be able to make as I only got one of each colour of the rainbow to start me off.

The idea I have is that I'll have the aliens arranged so that it looks like they've formatted in a 'b' shape but if that looks stupid then I'll just put them in a random pattern.

Crocheting!

For most of this week I've been learning to crochet! I've wanted to be able to do it for ages but everytime I've tried it's always ended up as a knotted mess on the needle! Thankfully my Nana was up to stay with us so I got her to teach me. She was a great teacher and I learnt it fairly quickly. The one in the picture was the first one that I made completely on my own so I'm pretty pleased with myself! I'm looking to make a cushion out of them with four squares covering each side. I thought that making a blanket straight off might be a bit too adventurous! I think I've got enough long term projects going on at the moment. One of which I'll tell you about in the very near future!

Film reel mirror!

For all of today I have been busy in my room measuring and cutting out black paper. I went out to the shops yesterday and got a big roll of it. I wanted to spice up my mirrors a bit and thought that to do them up in a film reel style would be pretty cool. The whole process took longer than I thought it would but I did go at a slow pace because I'm a bit under the weather with a cold at the moment.

All the squares you see were orignally white card that I lined up beforehand to get it perfecto. Once I was happy with it I then hand to cut out all these squares with a carving knife in order to get the see through effect. I was going to put strips going across the mirror so it would look the the frames in the reel but I had to take them off becuase when I looked, it made my reflection all break up so I wouldn't then have a proper mirror which was part of the point of this whole project...to have a cool mirror!

All in all, not a bad days work! Let me know what you think!

I'm melting, I'm melting!!!!!

As a certain donkey from shrek likes to say! Well, as I speak, half of Kendal is currently under water right now! It's so bad that I'm having to write this post whilst floating in a rubber dingy... ok so it's not that bad and I'm probably exaggerating when I say that half of Kendal in under too. Not far off I shouldn't wonder though!

Here are some pictures of Kendal where the River Kent has burst it's banks in true style! I think I heard somewhere that this has been the worst flooding here for 55 years. At the moment we're sort of stranded in Kendal as the road leading in and out of Kendal resembles more of a river than an eligible driving surface!

There's a spider web in my room!

I've been busy making this web for a couple of days and tonight I've finally finished it! It was suprisingly hard work actually because it involved me standing on my desk, moulding the wire into place and using a very tempermental stapler.

The most frustrating thing about this project though was just as I thought I had finished, I stood back to admire my handywork only to discover that I had stuck on the 'waves' the wrong way round! So that meant I had to untack it all and turn it round! SO annoying.

Anyway, after all that, I was eventually happy with the result. What I'm going to do with it is use it as a notice/display board. So I'm going to buy some little pegs and then put up my drawings and animation ideas!

Doctor who:Waters of Mars

Whoah! My mind is stuffed with the new episode of Doctor Who at the moment! Personally, I thought it was brilliant! I felt that David Tennant gave his best performance as The Doctor for a long time as well.

Have to admit though, I did get a bit worried that he'd lost his marbles at the end. But my trail of thought is that throughout the episode he was saying how important the Captain Adelaide Brooke was to history. Well I just wonder if maybe she was important not just for the reasons that The Doctor said she was, but for also getting him to snap out from his drunkenness of power. Just my little theory there!

The Christmas episode looks like a good'en as well! Bring it on!

Have you got the guts to do any of these things?

So these are all the annoying but I think rather funny things you can do in a lift... if you the guts that is! I dare you to try one of these things out next time your in a lift and if you do PLEASE tell me how it went because I'm weird and evidently have no life! Ok, so here they are!:

• WHEN arriving at your floor, grunt and strain to yank the doors open, then act as if you're embarrassed when they open themselves.
• MEOW occasionally
• SAY -DING at each floor.
• WHEN the elevator is silent, look around and ask: "Is that your mobile?"
• WHEN there's only one other person in the elevator, tap them on the shoulder, then pretend it wasn't you
• PRETEND you're a flight attendant and review emergency procedures and exits with the Passengers

Doctor who scarf!

Ok! So this is my latest project! As my Dad says, I don't do things by halves. I couldn't just do a simple short scarf with one colour oh no! I had to go and do a huge, drape along the floor length scarf! Specifically the fourth doctor's scarf which was Tom Baker!

Here's how it's looking so far. I'm not a particularly fast knitter so it takes a while for it to grow. But hey! I should have it done by next Christmas lol. I was thinking that in the summer months when it's too hot to wear it (although with the summers we get I might have to rethink that last statement... Oh listen to me! That was so typically british!) I might drape it on my wall as a sort of knitted display. It just seems a shame to spend so much time making it only to wear it for a sort time you know. Don't worry, I won't show you an update of how it's going every week cos that would be well boring and not too dissimilar to watching paint dry!

I'll just show it to you every now and again.

Room in progress!

Well today my Dad and I have been busy painting my room. I've been pestering him for ages to get round to doing it! The yellowy cream colour is from the camo wall so it will blend in well hopefully. I also wanted a fairly plain colour because I'm planning on putting lots of cool things up and have my artwork on my wall too.

Here's how it's looking so far and also a plan of what I'm putting on the walls. This is only one wall of the design by the way just incase you think I'm living in such severe poverty that I can only afford a bedroom with one wall!

My DVD collection so far...

You may remember me asking a few weeks ago for some suggestions on what dvds you would recommend. Well, I've been on a little spending spree in a recent HMV sale and got all of these! I bet you guys are probably thinking, whoah! She certainly splashed the cash getting so many dvd's! But because it was the sale it meant that the most expensive dvd I got was about 4 pounds. Most of them were £2.99 so I got a pretty good bargain!

In there are quite a few that I've already seen but really enjoyed and therefore want to see again. I also have a few that I haven't seen but have got brilliant ratings so I thought they'd be worth a look.

I think you can tell a lot about people when you look at their various collections of dvds, music and books. You choose such things by using solely your personal preferences so it's like your printing a part of you onto the collection you compiled together. I'd be quite interested to see what you think my collection says about me!

You might not be able to see what all the titles are so here's the list of them all!

Equilibrium

The Island

Unbreakable

Mercury Rising

Million Dollar Baby

Ghostbusters

Seven

Phonebooth

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

Solaris

Flight 93

Mini monster...small but deadly!

But only I guess if your a prey made out of wool!

I actually made this a few weeks ago. As soon as I came up with the idea to do a mini version of the knitted monster, I went straight to it. I worked all the next day on it and finished it by the evening!

The reason I didn't post the little guy on sooner was because his petite size meant that he fell down the side of my bed out of reach. Only just got round right now to fishing him out with the aid of a golf putter so I could take his picture! I halved the measurements of the original to make him but you wouldn't think it when you see them together would you?!

I can tell you one thing though. Knitting doesn't half have the potential to give you a repetitive strain injury! My hands were quite sore after all the knitting I did!

Bird on Wire

This is my new animation that I've done in the last few days. As you can see, I've tried a different medium of animation this time; whiteboard animation! It was so much fun! I loved it! Maybe even more than working with the Plasticine models. I think it's because you can do so much more and interact with the work your doing. I can portray emotions more clearly and it looks professional without much effort. This is only a short little animation because I was just sort of having a test to see what I could do! I think for a first go it wasn't too shabby at all. So yeah! Expect to see much more of this sort of work in the future!

The RAF production line continues!

Now that I've got various projects done and out of the way, I thought it was time to start up my model plane making again!

So the dope came out once more to stink up the room and make the hamster high again!

Oh and speaking of the hamster, she decided to go on a little adventure the other day with the aid of my mother. Honestly, you can't get the staff around here anymore. I leave for a few days with Mum in charge of the hamster and she helps it to escape! When I came home I went up to see her only to find her gone! So anyway, after much searching we eventually found her under my bed all cosy in her makeshift nest of shredded bedding material!

So where were we... Oh yeah the plane. Well as you can see, I've applied half of the tissue covering on the fuselage. This took about an hour to do I would say. It looks quite fiddly but it isn't really once you get the hang of it. The plastic cone has been added on the tip of the plane too. I had to do a lot of sanding to get that to fit on!

In case your wondering about the title of this blog I'll explain. It's a big coincidence what with this whole thing about planes but the RAF is actually my initials! Cool or what!

Movie reviews!

I've been away for the past few days hence the reason it went all silent on my blog for a short time but I'm sure you'll all be relieved to hear that I'm back now and haven't fallen off the face of the earth after all. HEY! I heard disappointed groan of yours!

I went to the cinema a couple of times when I was on my little vacation. I went to see the new Disney Pixar film UP and also Fantastic Mr Fox.

There's been a lot of hype about both films; UP especially. I think when films get a lot of hype and positive attention like this they tend to make people go in with higher expectations than they otherwise maybe wouldn't have. I don't know if this was the case with me but I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would. The first half I felt was good with plenty of laughs and gaffs put into it but I found myself actually getting slightly bored during the middle of it. Nevertheless, I thought that all in all it was ok. Not amazing but not terrible either.

Fantastic Mr Fox is of course based on the book of Roald Dahl's. You can definitely feel the crazy vibe of Dahl seeping through the movie! It's wacky, witty and a little bit odd! The film has been done in traditional stop motion which was brilliant and very interesting for me, the budding animator! Personally, I really liked it but I don't think it's for you if you don't like films that are even the tiniest bit kooky.

So there was my attempt at being a movie critic! These are just my thoughts on the films so don't let me put you off if you wanted to see them. Go and have a watch of them and tell me what you thought!

Funnimation strikes again!

You know that animation I was talking about a few weeks ago and said to look out for?! Well it's finally finished! I completed it yesterday and treated my family to a premiere of it last night. This is the first animation I've done to a soundtrack in the backround. It was a bit of a challenge getting it all in sync but it wasn't too bad once you got used to it. The trick is to just keep checking every little section you've done so you can edit it to make it fit. Have to say though, the tune is terribly catchy and I would find myself humming it everytime I had done some which didn't half get on my nerves! Please please let me know what you think of it. It took me ages to do so it would be nice to get some reception on it!

Waving Away!

This is a pastel drawing I did the other week. It's the first time I can remember doing proper work with pastels like this and I really really enjoyed it! I loved the fact that I could really get stuck in with my hands to get all the desired effects. I managed to get it all on my face at the end! I think I subconciously scratched my face forgetting my blue tipped fingers! I don't think I got any in my hair although that would have been pretty cool to have blue streaks in wouldn't it!
To see it better just click on it and it will enlarge for you!

More family (possibly book) characters!

I finished the rest of this family ages ago but I've had so much to show you in the last week or so that they sort of got but on the back shelf! Poor little cartoon characters!

Here I have the Mum, Dad and Grandad. They don't have any names or have a surname yet so any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. After all, as the saying goes; two heads are better than one!

I think my favourite one is the Grandad one!

My little pumpkin dude!

A friend gave me a pumpkin that she grew in her allotment the other day! I've never carved a pumpkin before so was pretty eager to try it! In fact, I got straight to work on it as soon as she left!

Had a bit of an accident whilst hollowing it out though! I now have a thumb nail that is sliced in two and a tiny bit of it hanging off! OUCH! It hurts a lot especially when I catch it on something and it pulls the nail even more. When I showed it to my Mum it turned her stomach and she rarely gets squemish... well, that's what she says!!!!!

Regular followers of my blog may be getting a sense of de ja vu right now! No?

I've based the pumpkin on a character I drew a few weeks back. I put on the painted cardboard pieces so it would look even more like the drawing! What do you think?!

Knitted monster's have wooly roars!

Finally finished my knitted monster the other day!!!!! I think it was a few weeks ago that I told you I was going to make one now wasn't it! Well here is the little guy who now takes pride of place on my bed!

I decided to use buttons for the eyes instead of crocheting them on because I don't know how to crochet and it would have taken ages! This is the first thing I've ever done and completed in knitting that wasn't a scarf so I'm feeling quite chuffed with it actually!

Not sure if I'm going to knit another one yet. OH! An idea has just struck me! The poor guy looks a bit lonely all by itself doesn't it. I'll make him a little buddy - quite literally! Well there I go. Off now to make another knitted monster! BYE!

I-AM-A-ROBOT... WITH-DVD'S!

I got these really cool prints yesterday for my room. I spotted them and love them straight away. I don't know why I'm drawn to them so much. Prehaps it's because I love building things and seeing how they work. It's also pretty retro too and I guess a little quirky especially when you think that it's for a 17 year old to have in her room!

It was a bargin too! They were only £3.99! I'm a stickler for finding those bargins out there. Today I went into town to buy some DVD's and got some of the ones I wanted off a market stall for two quid each! I had a good laugh to myself when I went into HMV and found the DVD's I had just bought for more than double the price!

I'm on a quest at the moment to create an awesome DVD collection... well, awesome for me! My collection might be someone's collection nightmare! I seem to be getting a lot of Sci-Fi and action/thriller ones at the moment. If you know of any cracking DVD's that fit those genres then please let me know! Tell me the films that you consider to be the best films ever!

Stick em up!

Hey guys! Do you like my stickered laptop?! These are the moo stickers I was talking to you about a few weeks ago. I had to order another pack of stickers to fill the whole thing so whilst I was waiting for them to come, I had just a border of the stickers round the edges.

I think it looks really cool especially where the dell logo has been cut around. It's unique to me and I bet no one else has the same stickers on their laptop. Actually I would be surprised if they did because a lot of the stickers are actually my own artwork in sticker form!

It took ages to stick on all 138 stickers but it was worth it!

I have to big up MOO here because I messed up my first order so they gave me a voucher for a free pack! This means that I only payed for one pack of stickers and I have two! I would really recommend you go there if you ever feel the need to pimp your laptop like mine!

Got a few stickers left over so just debating on what to sitcker up next! I'm thinking maybe my E-reader because the back is getting rather stratched so the stickers will help protect it.

It's a memory Stig!!!!!

Because of all the artwork and animation that's saved on my laptop, I've been getting quite worried about losing it all of it. Wouldn't that be just be pull out your hair awful?

My Dad encouraged me to get a memory stick as soon as possible. But who wants to get a plain looking memory stick? BORING! So I searched the net for a fun one and found this... A memory STIG!

How cool is that!!

cartoon family!

These are a few characters I've been working on in the last few days. There are a few more to the ones that I'm showing you but I haven't got round to colouring them yet! What do you think? I think that they could make good book characters if I worked on them a bit more!

Bus Stop Antics!

Ok so this is an animation that I made ages ago now but have only just been able to put it into a presentable state. This animation was done before I got better software so it's not the best. For some reason, it won't play very fast at the beginning but then goes to it's normal speed afterwards. This was my second ever animation so it has a lot of flaws but hey! I learnt a lot from it because of all the mistakes I made. I'm in the middle of making another one at the moment so hopefully it should be a bit better than this is!

Real life drawing!

I decided to try my hand at a bit of real life drawing the other day so I drew a part of my room that I could see from my bed. And I don't mean the bed that's featured in the picture! That's just a pull out bed that was out at the time because we had my Nana up to stay therefore my sister had to sleep in my room.

It's the first time I've done drawing like this since for years so for a first time I guess it wasn't too bad!

(You may need to click to enlarge it in order see it better because the photo isn't very good!)

More drawing!

Ok. So I don't even know if people saw the first lot of my drawings because no one commented on them but hey! I'll show you some more... so here they are!

MAJOR drawing fest!

In the past few days, I've been very busy drawing! Inspiration struck me so I took full advantage of it and got all my ideas out. Thing is though, I've drawn so many things that I can't put them all onto a single post! I think what I'll do is put a few on now and maybe post some more later.

What spurred on the drawing fest was that I was designing some stickers for my laptop and thought that I would create some pictures of my own to go in the mix. It's a site called MOO where you can personalize cards and stickers. It will take a while for them to be printed and then sent but when they come, I'll let you know!

My drawings are meant to be random and quirky by the way! Thought I'd let you know just in case you think I've taken permanent leave of my senses!

Cookie Bouquets!

For most of the day yesterday, whilst everyone was at the Great North Run, I was very busy baking with my Nana acting as assistant chef!

It took a lot longer than I was expecting but in the end I was happy with the result considering the novice I am at baking! Making the gingerbread went fairly well except it was a bit dry so we had to splash a bit of milk in. Even today, when you enter the kitchen, you can still smell the ginger emanating from the cooker!

Icing was... eventful! FOUR piping bags later and all the icing was done. The first one broke so I made some rather unsuccessful homemade one out of greaseproof paper. In the end we nipped around the corner and borrowed one from a friend. It was SO messy too! I swear that more went on the table and my hands than the actual cookies.

Dad and Ellen completed the GNR in a good time of 2 hours 29 minutes! So as you can imagine, I presented the bouquets over to some rather tired people! My Dad gives the cookies a thumbs up! Not to hard or too soft which I was really pleased about!

What do you think of them?!