My First Proper Home Movie :)

Hi, I am in a very good mood. You know why I'm in a good mood? Not because another stressful school term started, amazingly. Because I made my first proper, 4 minute long, home movie! Of course, I couldn't have done it without three of my awesome friends (sorry, that sounded a bit TV talent show) who came over yesterday, and who had this masterful brainwave of filming a spoof news programme. And the rest was history. Well, not really, seems as I still had to do minor movie editing today (was in huge rush to finish Spanish revision :)). But I guess it kind of was history if you're optimistic, because the only other home movie I've ever made was a 30-second clip starring my parents about an Innocent smoothie attacking preservatives for an advertising contest on YouTube. Not surprisingly, we didn't win. Or even get in the Top 10.

Anyway, you are probably more interested in this video. Like I said, it's a TV news spoof, called Scramble News, hosted by an array of pun-named characters (no, I'm not spoiling, watch it for yourself!). Basically everything that could possibly go wrong goes wrong in our reports of already ridiculous news stories. But I'm not going to ramble forever, I'm sure you'd much rather watch my video than hear my summary of it. So I'll leave you in peace to scroll back up.
-DP :)


(N.B. We use the BBC theme tune in this video. I am not asserting that I own it. I do not own the BBC theme tune, nor do any of my friends in the movie.)

Hope you enjoyed my video! What did you think? Don't hesitate to comment!

My Christmas Decorations - which is your favourite?

Hello trustworthy blog followers, considering the success of the quizzing poll, my next sidebar poll is to decide which of this year's decorations in my house are the nicest (i.e. which should be used again next year). There are five to choose from, so here is the selection (rather traditionally, this poll ends on Twelfth Night, the 6th January, when all decorations must be taken down!):

1) Christmas Tree
My Christmas tree is quite alternative this year, a genuine (dead) tree with its summer leaves taken away from it in winter. I spraypainted it red to get in the festive spirit:

I also decorated it with some stars I made years ago:

And also with some very cute birds!!!

2) Advent Calendar

This year's advent calendar was hand made, which makes a difference to the usual chocolate ones. Each day is an envelope hanging from the tree with an embossed (see earlier post) Roman numeral, and each gift is a decades-old, collectible Christmas stamp from a different country every day! I can never wait to see what will be next!

 Here are just some of the stamps we've had so far (sorry for the poor image quality):

3) Christmas Display Cabinet

This is a display cabinet of Christmas trinkets, new this year, and is in some ways a collection of unusual Christmas goodies from many time periods and countries. It includes several Santa Claus figurines, both fun and scary, various Japanese ornaments and even a rather amusing horse (4th shelf down, far left)!

4) Glass Birds

Also new for this year, I have a set of elegant glass birds, painted in tasteful purples and greens (not together though!). There are lots of different sorts of birds in the set, but the prettiest and rarest is this purple pheasant - great as a table centrepiece and very cute!!!

5) Christmas Card Display

Last but not least, in my bedroom I've put up a line of Christmas cards along my bed head, as much a display of my popularity (joke) as a great decoration idea! Some of them have great designs, too.

So, I've shown you all my decorations, so what are you waiting for?! Vote!!!
- DP :)

P.S. I have great news for history buffs - your trivia subject of choice won our recent poll with 33% of the votes. But bad news for sport, music or film fans - your category came last with no one voting for it!

A Little Quiz For All Of You...

Sorry I haven't blogged for a while, as I have just started a new school so made a conscious decision to stay off my blog for a couple of months while I settled in. Anyway, to come back with a bang and as you might soon be planning a winter trip, I made up this personality quiz for you:

What Type Of Holiday Should YOU Take?

The ultimate planning tool!

Q1) Which of these gadgets do you have or would like to have?

A: An All-weather camera

B: An iPad with a sparkly tiger striped case

C: DJ designed headphones

D: A corporate BlackBerry with no games

Q2) Which of these Red Letter days (company-made days out) would you take?

A: Abseiling down the Shard

B: Celebrity cookery class

C: Private art gallery viewing

D: Pamper session

Q3) What sort of music do you like most?

A: Something with a strong beat that I can run along to

B: Rihanna

C: Some random Eritrean music no one's ever heard of - I still like it though :)

D: Frank Sinatra - that guy never gets old!

Q4) You've got a night in to yourself - what do you do?

A: Watch (and perform to!) an exercise video

B: Write a new song

C: Watch an arthouse film

D: Curl up with a great book

Q5) Which of these sports is your favourite?

A: Zumba

B: Gymnastics

C: Croquet

D: Ping Pong

Q6) You decide to go out for a meal. Which of these are you most likely to do?

A: Get a table outside, whatever the weather

B: Invite 30 friends and sit at the head of the table

C: Go to a resaurant specializing in an unfamiliar cuisine and try something you've never heard of

D: Go to a restaurant you go to all the time and order the same thing as always

Q7) Where do you go to buy a new top?

A: Outdoor/climbing shop

B: The high street

C: A quirky design outlet

D: Charity shop

Q8) What's your favourite soft drink?

A: Green smoothie

B: Fanta

C: Espresso with biscotti

D: Hot chocolate with marshmallows

Q9) What sort of hat are you most likely to wear?

A: Bandana

B: Fascinator

C: Panama hat

D: I don't wear hats

Q10) Which animal do you most identify with?

A: A mountain goat. Living in the mountains would be great!

B: A leopard. They're fierce, just like me!

C: An eagle. Seeing the world from up there would be amazing!

D: A tabby cat. Oh, the joy of being loved by a caring family...

Results!!!!

Mostly As: You're an adrenaline junkie, and love the wild. Your ideal holiday would be rugged and off the beaten track, independent and away from tourists. Your days would be full to the brim with adventurous activities like mountain-climbing, abseiling, skydiving, surfing and so much more! Just don't forget to pack the hiking boots...

Mostly Bs: You love to be the centre of attention, and are both fashionable and creative. This means your ideal holiday destination would be extravagant, luxurious and exotic, somewhere that will stand out among the crowd. Staying in a luxurious riad in Morocco and browsing the souks would suit you, or perhaps learning to ride horses in spectacular Patagonia or seeing orang-utans in the wild in lush Borneo! Or if you really wanted to push the boat out, try the beautiful coral atolls of the South Pacific!

(BTW, this is what I got when I took this quiz)

Mostly Cs: World culture is your thing, whether it's art, music, films or food. You also enjoy contrast, so the ideal holiday for you would definitely not be a package. You would eat and sleep in the coolest places in town, but in the daytime you would visit interesting reminders of your destination's history while, of course, experiencing lively international culture. However, your trip would have to be just a short city break, because you have (or should have) an enormous schedule of exhibitions, gigs, festivals and restaurant trips planned!

Mostly Ds: You seem to have a strong idea of what you would like to do this winter, but most of it is best done at home. You may have a hectic life, so perhaps this winter you should relax and take a staycation this year. After all, there are many things I'm sure you haven't yet done in your hometown, and remember that you really don't have to travel a long way to have a great time!

By the way, if you are undergoing holiday or Christmas stress, here is #2 in my Shower Era series to cheer you up, a Dimetrodon with a dish cloth for a fin...

- DP :)

The Shower Era #1: The Brachiosaurus

You might do embossing, or knitting, or whatever more obscure craft you care to name, but I guarantee you've not done a weirder craft than towel origami, which is exactly what it says it is but with a lot more safety pins on a much bigger scale . I've seen it done in hotels across the world, but would never have thought anybody would think to write a book about it. But that's exactly what Alison Jenkins has done, the fourth of her towel origami books being Jurassic Towel Origami, the prehistoric theme of which inspired my next series of posts, where I aim to create all 15 megalosauric creatures in the book and blog about them. Jenkins' creations have inspired me to think about how these towel dinosaurs etc. would have survived against the force of the real ones. Perhaps they would have clipped their many safety pins together as swords and launched an attack on the real creatures, using several towels packed together as inventive shields. OK, before I get carried away, here is my first one, the gigantic herbivore Brachiosaurus, with his technically challenging drooping tail and easily collapsing legs. I even creased a mouth and put a grape leaf in for authenticity :).
 - DP :)

I'm Back (Really This Time)

Apologies for the lack of posts in May, it's one of the busiest months of the school year, what with exams and the madness surrounding them. Anyway, I'll start blogging again on a high by mentioning a new craft technique I learnt today, a version of embossing called heat embossing or in Dramatis Persona language "draw it, cover it, tip it, gun it", which if done well can produce fantastic glossy designs (I've even provided a video to help you). And it is easily done well. What you basically do is sketch a reasonably simple design (do it quickly - it won't work if the pen has dried for too long) in a special embossing pen - "draw it", then pour embossing powder (available in most colours - I chose my favourite colours, red and green) all over the paper - "cover it".  Next "tip it" by gently shaking off the excess powder (only the powder over your pen marks will stay on the page) and finally "gun it" by carefully giving the powder a hard finish by waving an embossing gun over it. Oh, and if you're wondering where I get all the fancy craft stuff from, there's a handy stamp store on Bury Place near the British Museum called Blade Rubber Stamps. Altogether a much more enjoyable way to spend Sunday afternoons than doing some of the homework I've been having.

N.B. This technique only works on ordinary paper, and NOT on newspaper. I learnt that the hard way...

Embossing dual pen

Red and green embossing powder

Embossing gun

How to heat emboss - in video form!

A 3D heat embossed cube

A design I made with heat embossed cartoon eyes and stars

The Unfortunate Incident Of The Panda And The Chopping Board

When slicing food on this chopping board (one originating in Denmark) earlier this afternoon, I couldn't help but notice the panda-face burn mark on the back. Although I only know this chopping board to have visited Denmark, I'm beginning to wonder if it's had a past in China's Sichuan forests. Just think, my imagination tells me, so this is the result of my instinctive storytelling ability. A small forest fire broke out nearby to the chopping board's location, and an unfortunate panda cub's burnt eyes, nose and face accidentally knocked against the board as the frightened animal scampered back to the safety of its clan. When the atmosphere became calmer, the curious panda cub and his clan ventured out to investigate the "effigy of our cub" that their cub had previously spoken of. The rather intelligent (for pandas) clan soon discovered the reasons for the strange mark, and had the excellent reasoning to think of it as a way to publicize pandas in the Western World. As it happened the religion of this particular panda clan was to always select things at random, in order to tell Luck that they supported her, and this principle applied to choosing which country the chopping board would be sent to. And the one selected was...don't all shout at once...Denmark! As pandas are generally not accepted on human public transport, the clan set off on an epic journey on foot, taking months on end, from Sichuan to Denmark, and then many more months to find a salesman that would accept pandas trading in a chopping board for bamboo instead of money, and then another forever to get back to Sichuan, until their short life in business was over. But back in Denmark, there was an unusual amount of demand for the chopping board, and somehow through the nature of trading the chopping board made its way into our house, therefore concluding the tale. Hope you enjoyed it!
- DP :)
P.S. The actual origin of the chopping board is not clear, but some suggest it was made by a panda clan living close to the subject of this tale, whose religion was not Luck, but Craftmanship.

The Biggest Plum In The World?

A shorter post this time, I just wanted to show you this enormous plum I received from Borough Market near London Bridge as a present after I passed an exam. I love plums, and this one was especially juicy and sweet. I later researched plums on the Internet (:D) and found out that this is probably an Angeleno plum, which is "a big, purple plum with yellow flesh" which comes from Chile. Your mouths may be watering at this post but there was only a small basket left at the market, which may have run out by the time you read this post (even if they haven't, hurry because they will!)
- DP :)

The plum with a massive bite out of it!

P.S. If any reader knows of a bigger plum than this, I'd love to hear about it!

Unknown Ways Of Spending Indoor Days

Snow is falling throughout the country and many neighbouring ones too, and it's not fun snow, i.e. snowman building and snowball throwing snow. It is, in our case, hard, icy, frozen snow, which greatly increases some of my family's and my reluctance to take a breath of fresh air. If you have similar difficulties, or are stuck at home because of rain, snow, ice etc., I've reviewed a fantastic, if slightly out of the ordinary, card game that is great for days like this, that I think many blog readers will enjoy if they're bored of Scrabble. 
- DP :)
P.S. Some of you may have realised that the prints in the snow were the mark made by a rabbit's feet and tail.

 Junk

When you hear descriptions of this now very rare card game, you'd think it only appropriate for those raring to break onto the antiques market and wanting to have some light-hearted patter practice while having fun with friends and family. However, antiques and flea markets have never been much of an interest to me (although they have been to my Mum), yet I took to this excellent game very well. Ever since my Dad received it for Christmas, my family and I have used much of our free time playing Junk, due to its extreme addictiveness. Its gameplay is very similar to an antique dealer's life; players sell their selection of thirteen different types of antiques (e.g. bureau, eagle table centrepiece, cabinet) in pairs to either a "museum" (really just the centre of the table) or the "public" (just the other players), and try to make a profit from what they've bought from other players in order to achieve the objective of having the highest credit at the end of the game. The catch is that the items are either "Genuine" or "Junk", and players don't know which until it's too late. Of course, junk items cannot be sold to the museum, and if an item isn't sold, the failed seller earns its price if it's genuine, and loses its price if it's junk. The tension builds high towards the end of the game, because every purchase counts and even the tiniest blunder can be the difference between winning and losing. The laughs, the opportunities for over-imaginative patter and the frequent light-hearted embarrassment at genuine-ness giveaways make this a wonderful game that's suitable for all ages and for lovers, haters, experts and novices of the antique market. The only things I have against it are that it can become predictable who will win and lose a little too early on in the game, and with 78 genuine items and 26 junk ones, Junk does take longer than most games and there's no real variation in play throughout the game.

Junk cards

N.B. No real money or antiques is involved in this game, only cards and tokens.

Junk box

Only available second-hand. Starting price on eBay: £1.99 + £1.75 postage