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Quite a while ago now I acquired an armchair. However, I didn’t have a room worthy of it. So we decided to make some changes: paint walls and rejig a few things.

Before

As you walk in you see right in front of you a bookcase and two desks behind it, one has computer on it, the other sewing machine.

My ‘working’ station

At the far right corner of the room, there is a tall bookcase.

Far corner of the room

If you look to the right there is another desk with mirror and various make-up, jewellery fancies.

My old ‘vanity’ station

Also, you can’t see it on these pictures but to the right, at the same level as you entering the room there is a built-in wardrobe. It contains a bookcase…

After

If you walk into my room now there will be a different picture in front you. You will still first see the desk. But only one with the computer on it.

Desk space

This time bookcases are behind the desk in a nice little corner. It has all my reference books, fiction collection and the beginning of a fantasy collection.

Bookcase galore

The far corner of the room now is occupied by the Throne. The centre of this whole space.  And of course there is the new colour on the wall.

The Throne

Where my make-up desk used to be now is a modified bookcase. Modified by Ryan (with some help from his dad). You can probably see it was previously the tall bookcase from the corner. Ryan and his dad built new inserts for it so it can be laid out on its side.

Modified bookcase

I’ve also changed the built-in wardrobe. Sliding doors were removed and I’ve put there a desk with the sewing machine.

Built-in wardrobe turned sewing station

What I still would like to add is: nicer lamp, so it doesn’t look so out of place near the armchair and a nice artwork on the wall behind it.

My new creation: McCalls 6608 (modified).
Another photo at: http://instagram.com/p/Wqz6ZRwvK0/

Experimenting with my vintage sewing machine and Instagram. What do you think?

Details:

Pattern: McCall’s M6559

Fabric: Organic Cotton Jersey (feels great!) from Bloom Fabrics

It is that time of the year, again, when frantic search begins for those special gifts. Similar to last year, I’ve gathered a few details about what’s going on around in terms of markets.

First up is Billycart Markets at Sandgate. This market is for those who are after gifts for children, for parents of young ones or those who are expecting. I can give you a little hint here, Kva Books & Albums – who made an amazing custom photo album for my niece – will be there! Don’t miss this opportunity to get something really special.

http://www.billycartmarkets.com/index.html

24th November, Saturday

3pm till 7pm

Sacred Heart Primary School, 92 Brighton Road, Sandgate 4017

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Next up is BrisStyle Indie Twilight Market, which is on the 14th of December. If you don’t feel like rushing in with gift shopping just yet, this one is a nice balance between too early and too late. BrisStyle is a collaboration of different Etsy sellers, so you can be sure there will plenty of handmade and vintage goodness at this market.

http://www.brisstyle.com.au/indie-twilight-market/

14th December, Friday

5pm till 9pm

King George Square in the City

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Another interesting destination this year is West End Twilight Markets. If you don’t like the pressure of one-night-only markets then West End is where you should head to. You will find market stalls there every second and fourth Saturday of the month till end of December. And there are live performances as well!

http://www.westendtwilightmarkets.com/

24th November; 8th, 22nd December

4pm till 9pm

Reclaimed Hangar on the Corner of Wilson and Boundary St, West End

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There are also plenty of twilight markets in the suburbs, so when you drive around pay attention to any banners near schools and churches.

And as always, for those not looking forward to spending time among crowds, online shopping is your answer.

Check out Etsy, Young Republic for unique handmade items or Biome and Oxfam for environment-concious gifts.

Kusudama is a Japanese art of making spherical models out of folded pieces of paper, which are then either stitched or glued together. Most often the folded pieces resemble flowers. In ancient Japan they were used as incense and potpourri.

The inspiration to make some Kusudama flowers came to us from Sandra Pearce, a Brisbane-based paper and printmaking artist. We met Sandra a couple of months ago at an exhibition of her work, while visiting the Mt-Cootha Botanic Gardens. We loved her art, especially her hand made papers and the little kusudama flowers she had made out of pages from an old Japanese book.

ABOVE: Sandra Pearce
BELOW: Some samples of Sandra’s work
(Click them to get a bigger, better look)

Since then, these things have happened:

- I’ve learnt how to make them watching an online tutorial;

- I’ve made about a dozen flowers for a Polish Library in Brisbane market stall at a local festival;

- We’ve found a great little shop with scrapbooking supplies, which has a wonderful range of colourful craft papers;

- Ryan modified the ancient way of folding (he does that…);

- We’re making more flowers!

Now, the first thing you may say is, ‘Why aren’t your flowers forming a ball?’

Then we would say, ‘It’s because we haven’t glued them together yet – and for most of them we won’t, because they look awesome as they are. Don’t you think?’

Then you may say, ‘Why are you making them in the first place?’.

But the answer to that is material for another story still to come!

While you wait, have a look at these gems:
Sandra Pearce website
Kusudama on Wiki
Scrapbooking Sanctuary on Yellow Pages

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Once upon a game day recent…

This past weekend, we were enjoying the hospitality of friends (exploring the intriguing world of marshmallow smores – unrelated to the story, but delicious), when something extra cool happened.  We scored ourselves an interview for Shelmertime.com.

Now, “game industry journalism” is by no means part of my regular schtick here at Shelmertime, and with good cause. You’re welcome. However, it’s no secret that I do love me some gaming goodness, the creating even more than the playing.

As such, when we found ourselves with the chance to catch up with Brisbane-based game designer Brendan Evans, we couldn’t resist interrogating him about his upcoming card game: Boss Fight. (Brendan was actually very obliging, making our bare room and spotlight approach feel slighty uneasy in retrospect).

Anna and I first encountered Boss Fight over a year ago.  At the time, we were hosting weekly Magic (MTG) evenings in Paddington, attracting a respectable crowd of folks with an obvious interest in card games.  On one such evening, a couple of our regulars brought along a friend – who happened to be dressed as a pirate – who happened to be a jolly nice fellow – who happened to be Mr Evans, and not a pirate at all by any legal definition. Before long we had been introduced to a collection of (lovingly) scrawled notes and hand-made game cards.  Playtesting was underway.

Needless to say, we were delighted to cross paths with Brendan again and were very excited to see what progress had been made on Boss Fight.  We certainly weren’t disappointed.  The game has recently graduated to a fully arted-up (albeit testing) edition. We played it. We had a great time. We’re pretty sure the two facts were related!

… now let’s see what it’s creator has to say for himself.

Could you tell us a little about your background in game design?     As a child, I devoured any game with a map editor and played a great deal of Magic: the Gathering.  As an adult I drifted, and was becalmed in a world of rental agreements and retail employment.  In 2007, my Nana told me she had heard from her wireless radio that ‘game design’ was an actual degree in an actual university in Brisbane.  I packed my bags.  In 2011, I completed my studies and my final year group project.  This was “Awien Ambush”, which received an award from Halfbrick for ‘Most Commercially Viable Game’. [The folks behind Fruit Ninja and other fun]. For those interested, Awien Ambush is available for free download.  Now, I make card games.

Which brings us to your current project, Boss Fight. Now we’ve just finished a game so I’m pretty up to date, but for the folks reading along, give us the elevator pitch.
     Boss Fight is a one-versus-many card game.  One player plays a dragon, with a fiery breath and huge teeth.  The other players play heroic fantasy characters – a fighter, a thief, a wizard, a healer.  They are less individually powerful, but they win through teamwork and co-ordination.

I think that really comes through in the gameplay too. Having played the dragon role, it’s a fun twist to watch the heroes juggle ‘protecting each other’ with ‘punching the bad guy on the jaw’.  Do you recall the initial spark behind the game idea?
     In 2010, I saw an ad for a Magic expansion called “Archenemy”.  It was six months away, and I was super impatient to find out what it was about.  I tried to brainstorm ways that it might work as a magic format.  All of my rules were clunky, and eventually I had the bright idea to scrap the Magic cards part and try to do something that wasn’t essentially fanfic for a game.

And Boss Fight has been in steady development pretty much since then?
     Since early 2010, yeah. So a little over two years now.

What influences has the game been subject to in that time?
It draws on my experiences playing: Magic the Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh, World of Warcraft the TCG, D&D, World of Warcraft the MMO, and I’ve probably forgotten a few.  In terms of people, I read a lot of writing by Mark Rosewater and I read some of David Sirlin.

Personally, I had nothing against the prototype cards,
but I’ll admit, the new ones are even prettier.

A lot of the creative types I know tend to have a mental rummage box of half-formed designs and toyed-with projects. I certainly know I do.  Do you work on several game ideas at once?
     I have at most two ideas at any one time, but so far they’ve tended to hit when I had huge assignments or I was very busy at work.  The initial designs for most cards were done at 1am in the morning when I was continually alt+tabbing between a card file and my ‘Communication in 3D Modelling’ assignment.

…at which point you started to think of Boss Fight as something worth dedicating a lot of time and energy to?
     I decided I really wanted to play the game, and prototyped it.  I played it with some friends, they kept the Dragon stunned for 12 rounds and proved that every number on the dragon’s cards were wrong.  I took it home, reworked the numbers, and tried it again.  This time, someone offered to pay me real money in exchange for a copy of the play test cards.  I thought he was crazy and I negotiated downwards.  Since then, I’ve been meaning to make this a real game so I can give them a real copy in exchange for their belief in the game.

The newly minted box art.  Shiny.

Have you worked any specific mechanic or system into Boss Fight, that you’re especially proud/fond of?
     I’m proud of the game’s simplicity, and I love the feeling of co-ordination and camaraderie that conversations give you, and I love the feeling of the boss jealously eavesdropping to work out their plans.

In general, are there any specific principles of games design you always try to follow?
     I believe that games need to be as simple as humanly possible, and that they should be open-ended and quick so that good-looking and clever people can play them more than once.

Would you go so far as to say playing games makes you better looking and cleverer?
     Absolutely! At the very least, I don’t see how it could hurt.

That actually goes a fair way towards answering my next question: Who’ll like it?
     Anyone with prior experience in fantasy, or competitive gaming, or people with friends, or people who secretly believe they’re better at card games than other people.

Who won’t?
     If you strenuously dislike people and you’re allergic to cardboard, I humbly suggest that Boss Fight might not be your favorite game in the world. But you could channel that misanthropy into playing as the boss, and you would do really well!

We’re loving the new look and feel of the game. What should we expect as a release date?
     By the end of the year. I’m trying to work out the process of moving multiple copies from Wisconsin to Australia.

Sounds great. Keep us posted!
Will do!

Want to Help?  Want to Play?

As good as Boss Fight is, there’s still time for refinements before they hit it with the big rubber DONE stamp.  In light of this, team Shelmertime have put up our hands to co-ordinate some blind playtesting sessions (non-digital beta events, so to speak).  This was a spur o’ the moment offer on our part, so we don’t have any details confirmed yet.  Hopefully (I daresay ‘probably’), we’ll be able to conduct some of these session via the League of Extraordinary Gamers. (Who we’re quite fond of mentioning, it seems).

If you’re interested in participating, or would like to offer up another suitable venue, drop me an email ( Ryan at shelmertime.com ) or contact Brendan Evans via the official Boss Fight blog.

Thanks for tuning in!

Winter Retreat is a two-and-a-half-day event organised every year by the League of Extraordinary Gamers, of which we are proud members, at the Leslie Dam Recreation Centre in Warwick (this location for the last three years).

We missed out on this getaway weekend last year and we had heard so much good about the whole event, so this year we made sure we put our names down quickly.

We set off on Friday 23rd of June before lunch time to get there in the afternoon (it’s about a 3-hour drive from Brisbane). As we reached the Recreation Centre games were already being played, so we joined in pretty quickly with our first game being Agricola.

As usual the club library provided us with a choice of several hundred games. These are the games we ended up playing during the weekend (click on the names to find out more about them):

Ad Astra

Agricola

Citadels

Dominion Intrigue

Glory to Rome

Puerto Rico

Quarriors

Thunderstone Advance

The whole weekend was fully catered, so between games we had food, lots of it!  Also we slept, a bit.

More info about the Winter Retreat and LXG here.

We can’t wait till next Winter Retreat!

I’ve got confession to make. I have never seen The Godfather, nor the sequels.  But I imagine there are quite a few of you out there who have never had the chance to seen it on the big screen.  Well, the State Library of Queensland is giving us the opportunity next Sunday, 1st of April.

The library’s program, SLQ Flicks, in April explores the themes of family and adversity.  After The Godfather, there will be a showing of The Royal Tenenbaums, Incendies and for the 22nd of April screening the audience can vote between Warrior, Legends of the Fall and Animal Kingdom. Voting will open on 1st of April on the State Library website.

The movies are played every Sunday at 2pm in Auditorium 1, on level 2 of SLQ. These are all free events and there is no need to book.

Information about these events appeared in What’s On, the library’s printed newsletter. Their website is not updated yet, but watch this space: http://www.slq.qld.gov.au/whats-on/events/sliqflicks, for more info in a couple of days.

So who else is going to see The Godfather on the big screen? Shelmertime will be there!

You may remember I did this little workshop on screenprinting a while ago (if you don’t, here is the article about it). We got really excited about doing it ourselves at home. We found and amazing deal on e-bay, got all the basic equipment – screens, emulsion, nice range of paints and other bits and bobs. As soon as we got the gear, we set to experimenting with it.  We created a few designs, transferred them onto the screens and did some trial printing on old T-shirts.

This weekend, I decided to make a print on something I can actually wear in public.  (I’m not big on wearing old T-shirts to work, etc).

As you can see in the picture below, we printed our logo in dark blue on a grey top.  (This is first time that you can actually see Ryan’s creation. It will soon be on the website too!)

And wearing the top…

While we had everything set up, we also screenprinted a stylised image of a spaceship which Ryan designed for me some time ago. The spaceship is called Reddy – in the original pencil sketch it was red (yeah, I thought I was being clever). Here it is printed on some nice fabric that one day will become a bag or pouch. I’m still not entirely sure.

What do you think? We are especially curious about the logo so give us some feedback in the comments below!