Week 30 - Dragon at the Wood Show

This weekend we went to the Sydney Timber and Working with Wood Show at the Olympic Park, Homebush.
There were some Serious woodworking machines there which would qualify for the Extreme Woodwork category in anyone's olympics (big smile)

I've never seen so many drills, files, planers, sanders and assorted attachments in the one place before.

Needless to say, Himself had a good day while I was starting to go a little gah-gah at it all.

I did come That Close to joining a wood carving group but restrained myself for the moment.

Dragons were being carved at several club tables and I thought this one would be a nice inspiration if I should ever find my wood carving tools (I know I have a set somewhere)

 apologies to the artist as I did not get a name to go with the carving 

(and that brings me up to date with my postings, sorry if you have been seeing what appears to be old earlier posts popping up, I back dated them so they would be in order)

Week 29 - The Keeper of the Cottons

I found this little dragon about to take a nose dive into my jar of thread offcuts.
After swooshing delightedly around the jar, she climbed out and appointed herself the Keeper of the Cottons.



I do hope I won't have to ask permission to use my threads, she seems to have claimed them all.







The Keeper was first sewn in felt, then merino wool was needlefelted onto her body and wet-felted to help mat it together.  Her wings were wet felted then mohair was needlefelted onto the wings and spine.
She also received some trim from the thread offcut jar, which is probably why she enjoyed diving into it.

Week 28 - Darwinia the dragon from the top end

My friends have been travelling the outback - first to Uluru (Ayers Rock) then they hopped on the Ghan railway to Darwin in the Northern Territory, and then across to Broome in Western Australia.

I'd already warned them about the Dragaroo, so was surprised when they managed to capture a little outback dragon for me.
Her name is Darwinia and despite the cold Sydney winter she has settled in very well with the other dragons (she says she is quite comfortable as the desert can be very cold)

 





A lovely souvenir, thanks Marilyn and Di (and GB)

Week 27 - Hidden dragon at Hawkesbury

This weekend our miniatures group displayed some work at the Hawkesbury Hobby Show at Richmond Showground NSW.

On one of the woodwork stalls we met David Stanley who was carving a wonderful relief of a dragon hiding in leaves.  He also had the same dragon beautifully worked in pyrography and coloured.

David is from western Sydney and has a web site called Whimsical Wood where he very generously has the pattern for his dragon available as a download.
His talent was obvious as we watched him working but I was blown away when I went to his web site and looked at the rest of his art, he is a brilliant illustrator and woodworker.

so.....I know this is a bit  of  a cop out, but will you forgive me if I Promise Promise to make something from David's pattern and show it here later?

after three weekends of showgoing I'm wearing down (and I caught a 'flu thing at Katoomba) oh excuses, excuses.....

here is Davids "Young dragon hiding" and here is the link to his pattern - I'd love to know (and see) if you use it.

Week 26 - Winterfest the felt dragon

Why, because Winter Is Coming and we all need a warm dragon to snuggle up to.

I played around with a new dragon pattern, hand sewn in felt, then covered in merino wool.
First  a little needlefelting to attach the wool then finished by wet felting.
The wings were wet felted and attached later.

Week 25 - Angus the Winter Magic hatchling

On a very sunny, clear, brilliant blue sky and cold winter Saturday we went to the annual Winter Magic solstice festival at Katoomba in the Blue Mountains just west of Sydney.

The first of these festivals we attended was in 2006 and we've gone each year since but I felt maybe this year was not as good as others, the variety wasn't there in the parade even though you could tell those taking part had put a lot of effort into it.

 

 This year also the crowd seemed thicker than ever, which I wouldn't have thought possible and we had trouble finding a good spot to take photos. 
Maybe that's part of the problem, I want to see everything through the camera lens, *IF* we go next year I might just leave the camera at home.

The traffic also didn't help, roadworks have been going on for the last goodness knows how many years on the highway leading into Katoomba, and the railways decided to choose this Saturday to do trackwork on the main line.  It took our family 3 hours travelling from the central coast to meet us up there.

Being the year of the dragon, the organisers used the dragon as their theme.  Shops had dragon art work in their windows, a big Asian dragon sat on top of the Carrington Hotel and lots of dragons in the parade.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As we were starting to wind our way back down the hill I spotted one of the craft stalls I've been buying from for the past 6 years.

Rod and Eryn Barnett live in Victoria and travel to Sydney each year for the festival.
Rod sculpts fantasy characters which they then cast in ...something heavy... and Eryn colours them.
You can see their work at Wee Folk Garden Art

I have about six of their sculptures and this year I came home with Angus the hatchling.

Angus is resting after having just broken out of his tough dragon egg shell.

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile back at the parade:

lots of bands and drums:

 

 

lots of dancers:

 

lots of large furry creatures mauling small children:

lots of small furry creatures being very cute:

and lots of steampunk:

follow the picture links to flickr for more.

Week 24 - The Jubilee Dragon

Once again my very talented friend Alison left me speechless with her gift of the Jubilee Dragon.
Not that I'm a Royalist but my roots are in the UK - particularly the top bit known as Scotland (big smile)  and I will always have a soft spot for the red, white and blue..... colours I hope will never disappear from our Australian flag.

Alison, you are wonderful, how do I ever thank such a generous friend?

Week 23 - Cordell the Dragon

 

Back in February I produced Cordelia (known as Cordy).
Cordy had evolved from a piece of freeform cord weaving which had already been started.

I wondered how it would be to use this technique again, starting from scratch, with a dragon in mind.
I have to say it was a lot harder than improvising as I had with Cordy.

I wanted to make a long Asian style dragon.  He didn't hold his shape very well so I finished up covering a piece of aluminium sculpting wire and feeding it through the centre of his body.

I did have fun though, with the stitching and shaping and had to stop myself from getting too carried away with him.

...and the name?
I thought the male equivalent of Cordelia would have to be Cord.

On looking up the meaning of Cord, I found it was the abbreviation of Cordell, an old french word for a rope or cord maker ... how perfect was that!  

 

Week 22 - The Tuesday Dragon

I belong to a little group that meets each second Tuesday. One of my friends used to teach doll making to the group until she decided they knew enough to dispense with her teaching and were giving her too much cheek!  She named the group The Tuesday Travelling Torture the Teacher, we've cut all the T's down to TT for short.
So... friend was travelling and stayed with another dollmaker who showed her a clever way to make a dragon. As soon as she arrived home we had a TT dragon day.

These are the dragons they made and brought along for our model:

 

 

He has egg-shaped styrofoam balls for his body and head, with smaller round styrofoam balls cut in half and added to the top of his head and nose area for shaping, and two halves for his feet.
We inserted pliable aluminium sculpting wire for tail and neck.

Before attaching the small half ball to the top of his head, we inserted nails to protrude as horns, you can see this clearer in the small finished photos above.
Then wrapped wadding to pad the body and neck.

 

Then we wrapped the whole dragon in strips of T-shirt fabric. This wasn't easy, the fabric I used was too thick and hard to drape. It needs some experimenting. I finished by unwrapping him when I got home and doing it all again.

We were then supposed to paint the whole body with a watered solution of PVA glue to stiffen this layer. Not many of us got to this stage, and those who did found their dragon was taking too long to dry so couldn't go any further that day.

When our dragons were dried and hardened, we wrapped them again in a very stretchy open fabric which was bought from the car supplies shop, it's sold as hand wipes. The nice thing about this fabric is when it is cut into strips for wrapping, each side of the strip curls over and forms a ridge.
Once again it wasn't easy to wrap, when finished it was also painted with the fabric stiffener solution.
I wasn't happy with the nail horns which by now had been lost amongst the wrapping, so I stuck a thin straw onto each nail to lengthen it.
..and realised that once again I'd forgotten the wings!  maybe I'll add them later, maybe not.