kgms_hylian's workshop

I was quite busy making new items which I would like to show, since I am quite proud of them. :) They may be not perfect, but I am on the way to improve still. For example my tangos are looking waaay better than before.

I also bought new clays, having way more of a selection than at start. So I don’t need to paint the items into “bronze” or “copper” looking ones, because now I just make them out of Fimo Effect clays. :)

For example the Healing Salve needed paint back then.

I went into making smaller items too for fun. They are not accurate, but then again I think they are more cute this way.

This is the Support Set bracelet I made for my shop. Contains Iron Branches, a Ward and a Dust of Appearance. Had this idea for a long time because they share color, so finally I made it. The ward is a bit ugly though, but it took ton of time to make it, didn’t figure it out how to have it more simple yet. D:

I got way more accessories to work with even. I ordered some basic ear studs from Etsy and made them with tiny tangos. They turned out quite well too. Glad I bought the right glue for them. :)

There were projects which ended up “in the bin” as well, so to say. I attempted to make a small cute version of the items, making them into an Aghanim set bracelet/necklace, but the Blade of Alacrity (green agility dagger) turned out quite bad and after taking pictures I realized that I forgot to make a Point Booster. -.-’

They probably will get separated and used in other projects, since I still like how the Ogre’s Club (axe thingie that gives strength) and the Staff of Wizardy (staff on the right which makes you smart) turned out.

Anyway besides all these I had my very first custom order on Etsy! It was the item: Phase Boots. Even though I think after some clay mixing the colors still were off a bit, it looked awesome and was incredibly fun to make. The customer liked it (luckily).

I made the details very carefully, found a simple video of how to make scales, and apparently it worked out really nicely for this one. :)

I had a few attempts at making items in a more festive way. They look nice but weren’t popular after all. (According to my page views.)

Set of golden Tango necklace and studs. Still available in my shop till the listing expires. After that, I may consider renewing, not sure yet though.

The last thing I wanted to show off is a bottle I filled with Dota 2 items. Moba in a bottle, basicly. :) I hell enjoy making shrinked items.

This one contains Iron Branches, Magic Stick (actually the tip of it even glows in the dark, since that clay had the right color, lol), Healing Salve, Town Portal Scroll, Point Booster, Energy Booster, Vitality Booster (to make it all three), Tango, a Staff of Wizardy and a Clarity. Yes, they all fit in there. :D

You can see the Staff and the Boosters more on this picture.

The coin on the next picture shows how small they actually are. They are also not fully accurate, but then again, it’s not so easy to make them correctly in that size. D: You also can spot the tango at the bottom and the Magic Stick at the front. :)

This actually also did not sell yet. I think the red string on it was too much, needed to leave it empty or make it differently. I may change it later. It is glued though, so may not be able to do much with it after all. >.>

Well that is all for now, I still have some ideas I want to shape and also got interested in making some Don’t Starve thingies, since their style is awesome. :) Will see what can I make into the next post.

So as I mentioned in my previous post (ages ago, whops) I made some geek coasters for my friend’s birthday. The basic idea was to make something embedded/engraved, have it in blue/silver and not too colorful after all.

The result is something like this:

I am kind of proud of them, since they turned out exactly as I wanted. :) I don’t have pictures of the process, but will show them one by one and tell a bit of it anyway.

The making:

Basically I bought a set of wooden coasters in the local hobby shop besides a dark- and a light-blue acrylic paint. I took some icons I liked from google, printed them out and copied them with an indigo sheet (is that how it’s called in English?O.o) onto the wood. After that came the engraving. I have a Proxxon rotary tool for that, which did a nice job. The coasters are pretty thin, so the engraving was minimal, but still noticeable.

Then I rinsed them with water and dried them so no sawdust is left when painting. The whole thing got the dark-blue paint as a background (slightly watered) front and back (the back got just pure blue, without adding any water). On top of that I made some pattern which looks like “space”. Most likely wanted to make it look like random universes, but just with 2 colors still. :) I made a watered washed-off base on the parts that I wanted to fill in with stars wannabe (very light blue dots) using the light-blue paint. After that, I just ruffled the brush and “spread” some dots also with the light-blue paint, just without watering it.

The icons themselves got simple silver paint to make them stand out compared to everything else, since the engraving wasn’t enough deep. Luckily the wood’s pattern helped here and there on top of all that, making it look like under-painted and stylish (you can see that especially on the last picture). :)

When they all dried I coated them with decoupage glue to have them water-proof, since they supposed to have drinks on them. :) It also gives a shiny finish I like.

Beside making some polyclay items that I already have (and "polishing" them), I always have fun making a few new ones. This post will be about the ones, inspired by Team Fortress 2.

I made several different ones (mostly hats of course) including: Triboniophorus Tyrannus (aka brainslug), Bill's Hat, Team Captain and a Black Box. These names only make sense for those who play the game, but I will post the pictures of the items so it may help to imagine what I tried to base it on. :) Let's see them in this order then.

Triboniophorus Tyrannus

  This was far the easiest one to make. Although I didn't manage to mix the clay enough well, therefore some parts are left with a "cracked" look. Since I used translucent and green clay to make the "jelly-ish" look, it pretty much stands out where I had those mixing problems. It ended up cute though, at least..

Bill's Hat

  After some tries I figured it out, that I cannot make hats which have a hollow inside. Shaping was horrible in a small piece like this with hollow and it never kept the "walls" of the hat right. Bending here, bending there, just couldn't touch it without making it stay in shape at all. With a bigger and thicker model, probably would have worked out.

Anyway, this also was an easy one to shape, only the small shield-looking badge was "complicated", because I didn't have a clay with the right color, so some mixing was required here as well.

Team Captain

  I'm not entirely sure I got the shape right with this one. It looks okay from the front, but then from the sides too long.. maybe. Although I extremely enjoyed making the front winged badge for it, painting included.

Black Box

  Now THIS one was the complicated piece. Didn't quite get it right, but you may still be able to recognize it. :)) The handles on the bottom part of the "box" were brown, but when I placed it the whole thing just went mixed with the black clay, being so small and all.

After a few tries I gave up on fixing it, fortunately not noticeable enough. Both handles got secured with a tiny metal inside, so they won't break off (not so easily at least). The band was tricky, managed to rip it when I was attempting to roll it "plain", but after that it was quite easy to wrap it around. Even managed to add some of the gray clay to make it look "damaged" (or something like that:)).

Overall it was fun to work on something different than I did before and fiddle around with mixing colors. Next post will be about something different than claying though. I made some geek coasters for a friend's birthday. Since she is really into Star Trek, that is the theme I used. They ended up pretty funny, so I think they are worth to be seen.

Apparently got more time on my hands now than usual, which is very pleasing. I had time to develop my polyclay skills a bit and try out new things. If anyone checked on the previous articles, the pictures I used there had some more items in the background, which I didn't wish to explain there, so they will get their place here instead. These items were: Orb of Venom, Iron Branch and Dust of Appearance (I'm not mentioning the Slippers of Agility, because those came out really bad and so far I didn't even try them again).

The mentioned items were tricky enough to make and took some time to get the idea of how-to. I am quite satisfied with the result for now. Pics below:

This one was really fun to make. Challening on the "sculpting" part, means making it to look like a snake (though some individual identified it as a dragon, I'm not quite sure, but I will take it as a compliment).

Branches were the most problematic one, since they didn't want to stay as I wanted them to. I also messed up the holder of the whole thing, so it looks lame-ish on that part.

The painting on this one.. phuh it is made by using acrylic paint and brush, but I need to think of a better way to do it. Don't really want to use pens/markers or anything like those..

What I only found out in the end is: cannot bend the pins (metal holders on them) to the right way, because the tools are not fitting there comfortably anymore, so it was a risk to damage the item itself if I would have tried to put the hooks more closer to the item's surface. That was a good lesson to use eye-pins for the next time instead of head-pins (I didn't even have them unfortunately).

About the news.. in the first place, I can try shading my items now, since I got some materials for it. Very excited to try out. :) In the second place: I finally opened up my etsy shop (again) this monday with some of the items I made and which came out good enough to be sold. Not much yet, but I am working on it, now that I have time. If interested: www.etsy.com/shop/kgms

Also I'm planning to make some Team Fortress 2 items as well, but those are for later.

So.. The story is, that I attempted to make a tango (from Dota 2) and I kinda liked how it came out, so I made another one.. and another one.. and erh.. more. Tried different color of clays together, different painting, etc. After all, the normal green clay had won, with a bit of transparent white.

The item I am talking about is tango from Dota 2:

The tangos, I made at first, looked something like these:

Yes, that is a horribly made first attempt of a Slippers of Agility in the middle. Please ignore it. D:

Normally baked and given glossy finish resulted in something like this:

But after baking them (as I mentioned before) I experimented with some paints. The next picture was taken after baking and painting. That was a shiny bronze/green paint on the right. Didn't work out nicely after all.. X.x

So about the process of the whole thing.. All of them started from just a ball of green clay. I sqeezed it to be plainer, then started to shape it into a simple leaf, similar to the spades on the french playing cards.

After I got the desired size, I started to make the details on the edge of the leaf. When that's done, I bent it to make it like a "palm" which can hold the "pearls". Then carve some lines into it to have the "veins" of the leaf. Then onto the mentioned pearls.

These were tricky, since I tried different ones. Simple green, green with translucent addition. But after all the marble looking simple green+transparent white combo won. (I took the simplest tutorial from the internet for making the marble pattern.) After some tries I managed to get the desired size of them and carefully placed in the middle of the previously made leaf. Also attaching their bottom part to the leaf with a toothpick (or some thin tool that can fit there) to make sure they won't come off after baking.

Then comes the baking and then the finishing touches with two layers of gloss varnish. The new ones (final choice of colors) I made are with the transparent white, their outcome is shown on the pictures below:

Before baking.

After baking and with applied gloss varnish. The holes are made for rings to be able to put them onto different strings, straps, or whatever the actual person would like to.

This is one of my crafts that I actually liked. It is pretty complicated to take "in progress" pictures, since you are covered in polyclay dirt and you may not wish to touch the camera with that, but if anyone needs it, I can make one just for the progress photos.

I hope if anyone wants to make their own, this post will help them how to start.

My second item I tried to make from Dota 2, was a Clarity potion. It was quite challenging, since I wanted to achieve the right outlook, but the top and the bottom was really tricky, mostly because of the silver lining.

To be able to get the idea easier, here is a picture of the item:

I tried different things, including shaping the glass part first and leaving a thicker bottom, so I can remove the not needed parts and make it into the lining's pattern, but the clay was too soft and it deformed the whole model instead.

After some frustration, I got the idea to roll some thin and tiny clay, make them into a wide "U" shape, flatten them out and carefully apply it to the clay-bottle. Then I just needed to basicly smoothen out the edges and it looked okay-ish.

The result:

Unfortunately it still seems like "after attached". Didn't make process pictures, because I wasn't actually putting down the clay for more than a second, most likely trying to figure how to make the right outlook.

Note:

The silver lining is not from a different clay, because it is easier to paint after being baked, than smoothening the silver-ish clay onto the blue one, trying to keep the borderlines of both colors. Also if I slightly mess up the painting while using two different colored clays, I may end up with totally incorrect colors after painting, than what they supposed to be.

A few more pictures here, one without the silver lining part (base outlook) and others with the lining on (the middle is from the top):

Thanks for reading!

This is an old one-day project I made and thought it is worth posting. The idea of it was when I was watching the internationals, and I saw many people with that pokeball, getting cute tiny plushies. I hell liked the Shitty Wizard concept, but getting those pokeballs to Hungary from the Valve online store.. fat chance. I felt so bad as well about that actually we cannot be there, and buy those in person, and trade, and watch the show live. It was so interesting even through streaming.

So then I decided to make myself feel closer to the internationals, I will make a Shitty Wizard by myself. It needed to be a low budget one, since I didn't plan to have a long-term project on such a small thing, also wanted to use up some of the materials I had left from previous ones. Unfortunately I didn't take pictures at the time, but I remember how it was made, and it quite looks simple.

Required materials:

Orange polar fleece (for the hat and the body)

White polar fleece (not much, just for the eyebrows and mustache/beard)

Black marker (to draw the nose and the eyes)

Small polystyrene ball (for the head itself)

Creme colored acrylic paint (to give the polystyrene ball the correct skin color)

Decoupage glue (for finishing the head ->put for later in explanation", so it is possible to glue the eyebrows and mustache/beard on without damaging the paint")

Needle and thread (for sewing the hat and body)

Superglue (for securing the facial hair, and the hat and body)

The list may seem a lot, but actually it's not so bad how it looks. Let's see a picture of the actual Shitty Wizard I attempted to make:

What you could receive as a tiny doll at the internationals looked like this:

It is cute, but somehow I wanted to go for accuracy at the face too then. Also it ended up a bit bigger than the initial doll. Anyway, let's see the outcome:

Basicly it starts with the hat and the body, because if I would have started with the head and then mess around with it while making the previously mentioned two, it may damage the work on the head itself. So it's more convenient to start with these ones. Both are similar, and need to be cut out from the orange polar fleece. The hat will be a shape of a cone and the body will be a truncated cone.

Note: These pictures are not the actual patterns, more like just to show how they may look like. To get an idea about the length of them which sits around the head, I used a string, to measure it, where it would reach the head. Same goes for the body at the neck of the head.

After adjusting them, by putting them around the head, the sewing starts. I roughly sewed their straight sides together (since I would most likely see him from the front anyway:)). You can see it on one of the pictures from below. Made a last check if it fits the head fine, if not, then adjusting till it did (not having a pattern, made it a bit of a longer process than expected).

Note: No need to sew the border of the cloth, since polar fleece doesn't rip that easily and keeps itself together nicely.

When the hat and body was fine, could switch to making the head. It got painted first with the acrylic cream colored paint, from the bottom half, wait till dry, top half, wait till dry, doing this 3 times in total. Making sure, that the polystyrene ball's pattern is not seeable anymore. Then after the last layer fully dried, I placed it between the hat and body, to have a reference while drawing the eyes and the nose with a pencil (taking into consideration that the eyebrows and mustache/beard needs space). If it looked fine, I carefully draw it on permanently with a marker.

After all this, with the decoupage glue, I made a finish for the head, 2 layers at least using a brush, then with a very waterish mix of the glue a last one to make it non-sticking. Doing this helps to preserve the eyes and nose, and also the paint, where the facial hair will need to be glued on (not even sure how would it work out gluing onto the pure paint).

The next step (after waiting for it to dry, obviously) was to make the facial hair. That was a rough guess too, looking at the pictures on the web, trying to imitate the shape of them. I made an outline with a pencil on the white polar fleece. Needed a few attempts, till I got the right shapes. Then I simply placed them on the face if they are okay, then secured them with a superglue, in this order: eyebrows, mustache and beard under (since it needs the mustache to see where it should end up to be).

Then needed to secure the hat and the body onto the head again using the superglue. That's basicly all what needed to be done, it also can stand by itself most likely, since the polar fleece is strong. However it is possible to use some wires under the body (since it is empty), to make it stand more stable.

Made a few more pictures from another angles to make it easier to see how it was made. Unfortunately I didn't make a donkey for him, but an Ikea ram was able to help out in the posing instead.

So I crafted many stuff already, but I don't think any is worthy to go back and take photos of, but now that I play DoTA 2 much, I felt like making something in that theme.

I also noticed that ordering nice apparels/items which are officially licensed, is hard. So I thought if I make something, I may try to share how I did it, for two reasons:

People who have experience, can tell how could I improve things here and there.

People can get motivated and get some ideas, to make funny items for themselves.

Anyways.. back to the basic reason of this post. This post is about my first attempt to make a Blink Dagger out of polymer clay. Why? Because it only needs 2 colors of "claycubes". Which means, if I mess up too much, I didn't waste that much on it.

The ingame item, which I am trying to imitate:

Pictures inc about the process:

A bit of explanation then:

As seen on these few pictures, first I drew the whole item's shape, and made the blade. I just made a thin page of white clay and cut it around, worked it into the right form. Then I rolled up some blue clay and bent it in the right way as it was on the paper. Did the same with a tiny amount of white, which I carefully put on the grip's end, trying to copy the shape of the ingame item. Also needed to make cut-ins on the grip to make it look like a band.

After having the basic parts, I rolled a long blue line for the motive on the blade's sides. This was kind of a hard part to push it onto it in the right way, so it will look similar. Couldn't make the same way on both sides, sadly.

In the end, I carefully attached the grip to the blade, and smoothened out some parts. Unfortunately I can't bake it yet, because I am lacking a measurer for the oven's temperature. Also considering to attach a "hook" kind of metal at the grip's end, so it can be put on something.

Will post it later how did the baking turn out and the finishing part of it. Thanks for reading anyways. :)