D20 Flower Hair Clip

I try to craft as often as I can. Doing something crafty gives me something creative to do, it gives me something that I can focus on for a little while and I have a finished product by the end of it. Totally beats surfing the Internet. So this past week has been D20 Flower Hair Clips. I came across the project and knew I wanted to create one.

The one on the left was my first run though. Armored Gopher Games was out of D20s so I had to pull some out of my bag. I settled on my blue with white numbering one. For the second one, which was a request from a friend of mine she wanted a red D20, but the moment she saw my black D20 with red lettering she said she had to have that one. So I made a black and red flower to go with it. By second run through was by far superior to my first. I can't wait until the Gopher gets more D20s in so I can make more of these hair clips.

Here is a the walk through I used to get these flowers completed from Swords & Stitchery on Youtube. For the 2 color flower, I added another layer of petals, stepping those squares down to 3/4".

Happy Crafting!

Growing as an Alpha

Saturday night was World of Darkness and I should have realized it was going to be one of those sessions when the first thing that happens is that Delilah gets challenged. After stress, trying to come up with something to do, and finally saying that now is not the time for this Cote, my Irraka drops out.

What he wanted was for Delilah to show control, say something and mean it, and show her dominance. This was a lesson that Delilah needed. After this Delilah and Cote got together and restructured the pack. While before we had stuck with the typical hierarchy of Delilah (alpha), Leila (beta), then down the list to Turtle (omega). The new structuring breaks the pack into groups that will eventually become natural.

First, there's the pack, everyone. When I say something it gets done. Then we can break into two groups with the two Cahaliths (Delilah and Turtle), a Rahu (Jimmy) and our Itheur (our newest addition Mickey). Delilah is the brains, Jimmy the muscle, and Mickey our stealthy. The second group would be our Elodoth (Leila, Delilah's twin sister and former beta), our second Rahu (Jayden my new beta), our Irraka (Cote), and our "short-hair-werewolf-in-training-who-is-really-a-mage" (Delta). This group has 2 brainy members Delta and Leila and 2 who can handle themselves in combat Jayden and Cote. From there the groups can be broken off into twos. Delilah and Turtle will stick together, we are the Cahaliths we need to know each other better and discuss our dreams and the muscle is covered with Turtle. Jimmy and Mickey are together and they can work on their own easily and move from group to group based on need. Leila and Jayden covering sneaky and brains. Finally Delta and Cote who also can break apart and work alone or go to a different group based on need.

The move to make Jayden my beta was well thought out. I had made my negative opinion of Jayden known but after hearing Cote out and giving him another chance I had started to warm up to him. Making him my beta would not only strengthen that relationship that was budding and offer an opposing view point when plans were being made but it would also give the rest of the pack the chance to give him another look. He had been not accepted by a good number of the pack and I take responsibility for fueling that fire.

With that in place it was decided that we had to take care of a ridden who was in our new territory, Dark Reaches. He had murdered Mickey's parents and been hunting Mickey ever since. It was suggested to us that Dark Reaches who is a death spirit would need an area of death to feed it most likely in our own territory. We began the hunt but we spotted a spirit, a hawk. It told us that this was not our land and that it had a message for us to leave. We sent a message back that this was our land, then proceeded to declare it with that oh so special rite that would make this land recognized by the spirits and other werewolves that this was our land and any werewolf that contested were to meet us and fight for it. 4 howls were the answer and we knew we had to deal with 4 Pure packs.

We waited, most of the pack went into hiding, Jayden and Delilah stayed out in the open. We heard then surround us.

Then the alpha of the alphas arrived in his Lincoln. He got out of the back seat and offered a deal. I realized that we were seriously out numbered, we suspected 19 werewolves surrounding us, their totems, and the spirits that Edmund had doing his bidding and agreed to a private talk with him.

I got in the car and while I was nervous, I sat tall with my head up. I was offered the choice of accept his deal or my pack would not leave these woods alive. We had to kill his omega pack, make it so Dark Reaches never came back, and later down the road Delilah had to do him a personal favor. My pack was in jeopardy... I accepted.

We got out of the car, he got out whistled then climbed back in and drove off. The other werewolves around us began to leave, leaving 3 behind and the fight began. One fell and I heard, don't kill them and I gave the order that we had to end this. My orders were followed as I fought alongside my pack. We killed the three with darkness growing thicker and thicker around us... then Dark Reaches began to attack. Mickey panicked and ran for the only source of light there was out there, the light at the barn. Turtle was hit first. Thrown through trees and I began to run in his direction following his smell. He was thrown into the barn and Mickey latched on to him. I heard Turtle get hit again and I continued running, desperate to help him. Delilah was hit next. A slash across the chest before being thrown into the barn too. Cote was the next one to be attacked. He was already suffering severe wounds from the omega pack and being thrown into the trailer that we were living in caused him to black out. Turtle told me he was down and we rushed towards him only to find that Dark Reaches had dragged him away.

Cote is gone. Dark Reaches is nowhere to be seen. We don't know what is going to happen now or even if we can find Cote.

Meet Horimono

So last night was game 2 of one of my friend's Marvel Heroic RPG. I spent the day before game putting the finishing touches on Horimono my super thief/super hero. (She's a bit of a klepto).

She is a shape-shifting mutant who found a horimono katana. She had to leave it behind, having almost been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. She remembered the design, it was the reason she wanted the blade. She had it tattooed onto her person and then weird stuff started to happen. It didn't take her long to realize that it was dark magic, from the beautifully named oni (demon). The only thing she knew about it was the name and that it was a hannya, her Japanese background told her that much. She buried herself in books of the occult trying to find answers to who this hannya was and how she could increase these powers. "The more powerful you are the more stuff you can take, y'know?" Here's what she looks like:

The snow white hair doesn't make it easy to blend in to the shadows, but she is all about flash. She does things with style and she likes shiny things. (One of her distinctions is Ooo Shiny). While she is better at working alone, she loves the team play. She gets an audience and potential tools to get her what she wants, purely selfish reasons. This is a character that I did a complete 180 from my World of Darkness Werewolf, Delilah, so it's a little jarring. I haven't quite figured out the game system either so I'm hoping once I get that down I can submerge myself into the character. Hopefully I can start coming up with more creative things instead of listening to the other players. I do have to admit, I was more comfortable with my Hunter character which required a lot of detective work, but that could also be because the World of Darkness system is easier than Marvel Heroic RPG, which is more story-based. You define your powers then you have to explain how you do it. I'm not much of a combat thinker, I've learned that from playing Delilah.

I don't know, I felt like I was holding the rest of the team back with my uncertainty. I haven't heard any complaints but that could just be people being nice. I think some more work on Horimono needs to be done before I can jump into this character's personality by next game. Maybe some short stories are in order, that is highly likely now that classes are over and I can start using my free time for game prep and fun stuff.