David's Red and Blue Dragons

David just loves dragons! When I asked him why, he replied because they are strong and intelligent, and also because they are both beautiful and terrifying! Here I will showcase David’s collection of Dragons. I couldn’t decide if this collection is more red than blue, so I’ve decided it is equally both, which is why I’ve linked this post with two parties, Blue Monday and Ruby Tuesday. If you’d like to know more about Dave, be sure to check out his cooking blog.

This red dragon ornament was given to David by his sister. It lives beside my Chinese Tea Set which my mother gave me, and is decorated with blue Chinese dragons. Its considered good luck to face dragons toward doors to scare away any bad luck or negativity before it enters the house, as the red and blue dragons are doing here.

David’s favourite t-shirt is worse for wear, it’s his favourite colour blue with a dragon on the front! I wonder what the Chinese writing means?

The other weekend when we went to the Rocklea markets on Sunday and picked up some cute trinket boxes, we also grabbed this red dragon box. I don’t know what’s going to go inside it, but David just had to have it!

Besides the red dragon box sits his collection of dragon books – the Eragon trilogy. I haven’t read it yet, maybe I will one day! We also own a copy of the Eragon DVD and are still eagerly awaiting the release of the sequel movies. This is a very special movie for us, it was the very first movie we saw together on our very first date on Boxing Day 2007! Awwww, isn’t that romantic?!

Last Valentine’s Day I made a gift using some cut out dragons. Should I tell you where these dragons came from? He had a couple of boxer shorts with dragons on them that were falling apart but he couldn’t bring himself to throw them away, so I had to recycle the dragon print didn’t I? LOL! I cut them up and made them into a bedside organiser! Hanging off the hooks are two dragon key rings he has been given, the one on the right I gave him a while ago now.

Another special dragon David owns is this red-winged dragon candle. I don’t think we will ever burn it, its just too special!

I bought this dragon pendant in 2008 and he loved it, wearing it all the time until he woke up one morning with it bent out of shape! So now it is a little memento.

Finally, below is a picture of a delicately etched glass dragon. I bought this for David from a shop in Toombul when we lived on the Northside of Brisbane in 2007.

I hope you liked looking at pictures of David’s red and blue dragons!

David has started his own cooking blog and is calling it “Dave’s Home Cooking“. If you like cooking, be sure to check it out!

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My selected highlights from this week’s Blue Monday party

• a fun and inspiring blog @ Homemaking in High Heels
• more wonderful poetry as usual @ Rinkly Rhymes
• find out about Blue Hour in your city @ Boogieboard Cottage
• beautiful pictures of my favourite blue flowers @ How Sweet the Sound AND Home, Garden and Adventure

My selected highlights from this week’s Ruby Tuesday party

• wonderful shots of garden flowers and birds, including hummingbirds @ Viewing Nature with Eileen
• amazing photography @ The Hidden Realm
• Taoist Temple photos and traditional ceremonies @ Everyday As It Comes
• traditional Ukrainian village house museum @ The island of the chanting Munchkin

Birds of Paradise

I made this mosaic hotplate at a community craft group about 4 years ago. It cost me $10 to attend and the materials were supplied. When my sister saw it she said ‘what is it?’ LOL! Why, it’s meant to be a bird of paradise, of course!

I’d like to try mosaic again one day and plan to keep shards of broken ceramic to use for it. I don’t see the point in buying over priced new materials to make things with designs that were origanlly intended to recycle scrap.  So if any of my nice coloured ceramic breaks, or should I say ‘when’ as glassware afterall is a consumable if you use it, I will try and put it aside.

Throughout the summer many clumps about our garden sprout spectacular birds of paradise. I took some photos of them to enjoy, some with our resident birds who hang around! Whenever these are flowering, we try and put some fertiliser on them regularly, liquid fertiliser should be applied every fornight while flowering. It encourages them to flower more!

I hope you enjoy my images of birds of paradise!
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Adventures in Glass Fusing

About 4 years ago I did some glass fusing courses as I just love the look of coloured glass.  It was very technical and a bit expensive but by the end I managed to have some pretty things I made myself.

I still have a yin – yang dish that David’s keys and change go into when he gets home, a drink coaster set which we don’t use, plus the 3 pendants that are left, the rest I gave to my father, I presume he sold them in his shop. These were made from 96CoE glass, some of which I still have left over. With some fibre paper strategically placed, I could turn the unfused glass into some pretty beads using the kiln my father gave me.

Recently, my dad found a new invention that simplifies the process of glass fusing so much that you can do it at home in your microwave! Each of the pendants below took at least 40 minutes while we waited for the kiln to cool down, which is only big enough for one small piece. We spent more than a whole day on this, plus three failures, making these 16 pendants not too bad a success rate but very slow going. This is the 90CoE glass, which can not be mixed together with the 96CoE. If the kiln lasts long enough, I hope to eventually get around to fusing all my left over glass into pendants and beads. It looks like you can craft glue recycled magnets to the back of these so they make pretty fridge magnets, but they aren’t strong enough to hold up a postcard. In the image below, the top 3 are a set that goes together, the second row is also a set I call “Peeking Kitties”. David made 5 of these pendants, 3 black ones in the bottom two rows, and 2 green ones on the right of the second bottom row. David has written more about microwave glass fusing on his blog.