Last year YouTube ran a rewards program called YouTube High Five. A select number of creators were chosen to take part in this rewards program where you get free food, cinema tickets, days out, YouTube merch as well as discounts and more. This lasts a few months. If you want to know more about last years I have videos and shorts on my YouTube channel.
This program has returned and I have been lucky enough to be included in it again. This year it's called YouTube partner perks. There's no way of applying for it, you have to be invited by YouTube via email.
I was rather chuffed when I opened my emails and saw it. It's very early in the program so all the perks that will be available haven't been listed yet, just the perks from this first month and one YouTube merch item which is a clapper (limited amounts available like the neon light, first come first served).
It's actually more like 1.25 years but it's close enough. So one year(ish) later and my books are all listed on lulu and my website is all set up. www.retrofaeriebooks.weebly.com
I have sold a few colouring books and notebooks. I haven't done much promoting them lately so I wasn't expecting mega sales. Anywho I am still designing low content books but I have also moved on and guess what ......
I have started writing children's books. Back when I was in high school I kinda messed around with an idea of a village of colourful sheep for a comic like thing then left it for years. I decided to go back to it and turn it into children's story books. I have kept the look of it the same but the couple of rough stories I did come up with weren't very original, I have gone with stories with a subtle lesson like learning manners and sharing but not in an overly patronising way. Some characters also stayed. This series of books are Tales Of The Little Sheep From Garwood.
My first 2 books have already been published and are ready to order. A third is finished and will be published on the 4th June, also on the same date the first trilogy book comes out, it's all three books together in one book. I will be doing this after every three books get published.
Here is a sneak peek of the cover of the trilogy book
Ebook versions are also available for my books, all links for these are on my website.
There will also be other books available. A second series I am working on is all about Piggy. These are light hearted rhyming books. One is already available both in physical form and ebook. I have quite a few ideas for this series but only one book is complete so far.
There will also be some random books that don't fit in with these serieses. I both write and illustrate my books. I start off old school with pen and paper before using my drawing pad to make draw on my laptop and put it all together. I admit my first book had a few drafts before it was right but I have learned a lot from that process and think I have a good way of doing things now.
I have plenty of ideas to work on so there will be plenty more to come so watch this space.
This is another YouTube High Five post. Nothing else has popped up yet but I have claimed the ones that were already available to me (the ones I was interested in anyway).
On to the pizza, as mentioned in my previous post I was offered a free small pizza from Papa Johns. I had never had one from there before but though why not try it as it's free. I had to look up where my local one was, it was a 30 min walk away but at least it was a nice scenic route.
At the beginning of the year I had a go at designing low content books to be sold via Amazon KDP.
How it works: You design a cover and interior of a book like a notebook or planner, upload it through Amazon KDP and it gets listed on Amazon and people can buy it. The books are printed to order by Amazon. After designing the rest is left to Amazon though you may want to advertise your book and share it on socials to get noticed as it's a very saturated market and it's hard to get your books seen. You choose how much profit from each book you get by setting the price. You can also buy the books yourself at cost if you wish to sell them yourself through other means.
This is not a crafty post but it is about my YouTube channel. I received a email from YouTube about their High Five rewards. This is going out to a small selection of YouTubers, it's pretty much just some goodies you can claim that's going to pop up every so often over the next few months.In this first email there was three rewards, it was said there would be more over the next few months. First was a free Greggs vegan or meat sausage roll, second was a neon play button light which was limited and was first come first served, the third was a draw to win one of 50 places to a YouTube meetup where you go to meet other YouTubers, listen to talks to help you grow your channel and of course some free merch too.
I needed to get back in to doing tutorials for my YouTube channel and with autumn on the way, what better way to start again then with a crochet witches hat. I made a mock up of a hat which was fine, just a classic straight line hat but I wanted the one for the tutorial different from others that are out there so I moved the increase stitches about to create a wonky look. It took a bit of testing and frogging to get the style right but I came up with a pattern and I'm happy with it.
I chose a nice variated yarn, it says its aran but is more like dk yarn, I used one and a half balls of yarn so roughly 150g. The hat goes wonky from start so you can see it taking shape straight away.
I wanted to make another crochet dress but this one was going to be a bit different. It's going to be another skater style one but with short sleeves. I will using the classic granny stitch for this dress and it will be worked up differently then the other one. Instead of making the back and front separate I will be making it in one piece. Starting with a the neck and working down just using the granny stitch, nothing fancy. This time I was using a nice soft bright yarn.
I am attempting to make a crochet net for a window. This isn't going to be any normal net, it's horror themed. More specifically it's going to feature Ghostface from the Scream movies.
I will be making it using the trusty fillet stitch. Just a nice simple design using just chain and double crochet stitches, it's quite large though so it is going to take a while to make.
This is the design I have came up with for the net.
Like the Batman Patterns from a previous post I have made pentagram diamond versions. These work up the same way with the same stitches. This one just has a couple more rows so it is a tad bigger.
The finished piece made with DK yarn and a 4mm hook looks like this
Like any other pattern you can use what yarn and hook you like depending on what you want to do with it. Like any granny square you can do so much with these, make a blanket, a dress, or use 100%cotton to make a dish cloth. There's so many ways you can make something unique with these.
The pattern can be found on my Ko-Fi store here https://ko-fi.com/s/dac486eaad
More patterns will be added over time but at the moment I have other projects I want to work on.
I haven't filmed a tutorial for YouTube for a while but I need to start uploading regularly again. I still had footage of a really simple makeover I did ages ago and finally decided to upload it.
The footage was already edited, all I had to do was add sound and intro/outro. It is just a really simple makeover where I took a £1 phone shaped moneybox and painted it like the old school batphone from the 1960s Batman. It's only a couple of minutes long and I just quickly painted it, nothing fancy.
I wasn't overly happy with it, that's why I didn't upload it sooner. I wasn't sure if I was ever going to upload it but as I hadn't uploaded in a while I thought I better upload it so my views don't suddenly slope off because I've been inactive.
I will be getting back to filming proper tutorials soon hopefully but until then you can check out my makeover video
I have produced a new crochet pattern for a Batman logo square. It's beginner friendly as it only uses 2 different stitches, just the chain stitch and double crochet. It's done using the fillet stitch method so I decided to make a chart for the pattern as its the easiest to follow, in my opinion.
The charts I make are pretty basic so hopefully even beginners wont get confused. Here is an example of the chart type.
I brought a new tablet and so I needed a new cover too. All the ones I liked were out of stock so I decided to get a plain black one. I don't like plain accessories so I brought it with the intension of decorating it to make it more unique.
What I eventually want to do is make a granny square cover and sew it on the plain cover but I want to do that using thin thread so it's micro crochet granny squares. This is going to take quite a while so until that is completed I am going to make a simple granny square envelope sleeve. It's a really simple project and works up quick so it's perfect until I complete the proper cover.
I hadn't planned on buying yarn for it so I went though my stash to see what I had. I found a ball of Marriner Mermaid DK yarn so decided to use that. I only have one ball of it so couldn't use it for any big projects and the company that made it has gone out of business therefore it would be harder to find more so it seemed perfect for this project and it looks very pretty.
I decided I was going to create a merch store for my YouTube channel that was going to sell t-shirts with my logo as well as some general crafty t-shirts.
I got designing and came up with a few designs quite quickly others took longer and I have a few ideas still to come. As with my other store I went with Teemill though I am considering other more global companies as most of my views come from abroad so it maybe better to use somewhere with multiple fulfilment centres across the world. For now though my Teemill store will do.
I am planning on making a dress made up of crochet granny squares. I managed to come up with a simple pattern for it and decided to share it and make a tutorial for my YouTube channel.
Hopefully is should be beginner friendly. It only uses 6 different stitches and they are mostly variations of the same stitch so they are pretty easy to remember. You can use any yarn to make this, all it does is change the size of the finished product, if you used a thicker yarn and larger hook it will end up being bigger.
Part 1 shows rows 1-4 making the main part of the spiderweb.
I got some shawl yarn but I don't wear shawls so I was looking to make something different. It's the same yarn I used to make that light weight granny square hexagon cardigan from a previous post.
I didn't want to make another cardigan, I wanted to try something new. I decided I was going to attempt to make a netted dress. I don't have many summer clothes so there's more chance of me actually wearing it.
I want a skater style dress but with long sleeves, I've been looking for one of those for a while and haven't found one I like so even more reason to try this dress. My first problem was deciding on what stitch to use. I don't have a lot of experience in crocheting clothes and only know basic stitches. I am not planning on following a pattern I am just going to wing it and hope for the best.
I felt like getting my paints out and doing a painting in my new A3 sketch book. I hadn't painted for a while and I normally do miniature paintings, 7cm or 5cm canvases or using A7 or A8 sketch books so this is a lot bigger but I thought I'd give it ago.
The only larger canvased I've painted have been pixel art and I wanted to try and paint a more realistic landscape painting. I knew it was never going to be anything special, just a quick painting and I was going to film myself doing it for YouTube and when I have done more hopefully I see an improvement in my work over time.
I went for a late evening sea scene. I added a bit more colour to the sky then what I normally do in that sort of scene. I just kept adding paint till I thought it looked ok which actually never happened and I gave up on the sky and moved on to the sea.
The rest was pretty basic, didn't really have any plan I was just adding paint lol that was probably a mistake and I should actually have an idea of what I want to paint next time before I start.
When I got to the point of getting fed up I just stopped and that's it, I was done with it. I wasn't at all happy with it but felt there was nothing I would be able to do to make it look good so I left it as is. While editing the footage it hit me what was wrong with it. I feel so stupid, it's such a silly mistake. I painted the sea flowing in completely the wrong direction, it's so obvious now I've noticed it and that's why it looks so wrong. I also should have left out the glow round the moon, It would have looked better without it.
Even though I hated the end result I still put the video up on YouTube like said to record my progress. I don't know when my next large painting will be. I feel a lot more comfortable painting on smaller canvases, but I'm sure it wont be that long before I try another.
So here is the video, I sped it up because even though it didn't take long to do it still wouldn't have been boring to watch.
Just a short post to show you the new granny square pattern I made. I am aiming to design a few patterns similar but I wanted to show my first one straight away.
It's pretty much a solid granny square but I use the fillet stitch method to create a pattern in it.
This is my first one and it features 4 Pokeballs.
I used DK yarn and a 3.5mm hook and it came out 33cm tall. This pattern is suitable for any thickness of yarn, just the thicker the yarn the bigger the square will come out.
You could make a nifty blanket using this design and more designs are in the works.
I had a PS2 controller that no longer worked and rather then just chucking it away I thought I would do something with it. It was a clear one so my first thought was to put some lights inside it to create a nice lamp and that's exactly what I did.
The first thing I did was open it up and take out everything that was inside. You need a really small screwdriver for some parts but overall this was very easy to do. The next important thing to do is clean it, you wouldn't believe how much dust hides in these things.
This blanket came about because I was having a conversation with my sister (who is a horror fan) and she said I couldn't make a horror themed baby blanket. I took that as a challenge and started working on a design.
Working with pixel art a lot I decided to do it in fillet stitch as it would be easy for me to make a design. I was going to make it in white so it still looked like a baby blanket even though the theme was horror. I then chose the film to base it on, IT!
It crosses the baby theme (clowns/balloons) and the horror theme so I thought it would work really well.
It actually took longer to map out the design and make the pattern then it did to stitch up, which I now see is the case for most of the fillet stitch projects I make.
Here is the blanket...
Do you think it works as a baby blanket? I do. No one I knew was having a baby so I decided to make three more different designs and put them together to make an adult size blanket. Off I went to design 3 more.
Part 3 of a crochet Christmas is what I received as presents that are to do with crochet this Christmas.
First is this Nightmare Before Christmas Crochet set. It includes everything to make Jack and Sally but also includes a book of patterns for a lot of the other characters too as well as an extra pattern for a wall hanging. I think I might have a go at making Oogie first, I already have a yarn I think will work nicely for him and it looks like a nice simple pattern to start off with.
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