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I was starting to worry I overreached a bit with the Homemade Heroes Contest. Oh, there have been some absolutely fantastic entries, but just a trickle compared to the other contests. Part of this I realize is that this contest was a little more skill-specific. Far less inclusive than “ward something” or “take a picture of yourself with a book”. Even the Fan Art contest had a lower bar for entry. I tried to keep it as inclusive as possible, but I knew Homemade Heroes was going to demand more of its participants, in sheer hours and material, if nothing else.

But damn, I thought the idea was cool. I still do.  So I made the prize the rarest and most valuable books I had to give, a complete signed worldwide first edition set of The Painted Man, The Great Bazaar, The Desert Spear, and Brayan’s Gold. I figured that would help make the extra effort worthwhile.

But then I think I got a little greedy, asking the winner to send me their creation in exchange for the prize. It felt… mercenary, and didn’t sit well with me. Why should I ask people to give up something they had spent so many hours working on? You people already gave me a prize. You read my books and visit my website. The pictures of people’s entries give me SO much joy, I don’t need anything else. So for the record, Whoever wins the contest gets to keep their creation. This Thursday is American Thanksgiving (and the last day to submit your contest entries), and I already have plenty to be thankful for.

But regardless, competition in the Homemade Hero Contest has officially become fierce, with not one but TWO spectacular entries that came in today. The first from French Jess, and the next, just a few hours later, from Yelie:

Peat,

I love your contests and love seeing what everyone comes up with!  I have said every time that I was going to enter but never actually did.  When I saw this contest I knew this was the one I had to enter!  I had about 20 ideas that I really wanted to do but alas, I did have to make a teeny bit of time for studying.  I figured that most people would do Arlen all warded up so that one was out. I decided to get my husband in on the fun and made him help me narrow it down.  His only stipulation was that he got to use Legos at some point in the process (I really think he just wanted to ward the itty bitty spear!).  I really wanted to do Leesha with her warded cloak and Rojer with his fiddle so since we couldn’t decide on one, you get both!

For the Lego part I knew we had to put the sandbox to use!  One of the most memorable parts in the book is when Jardir takes the spear from Arlen and leaves him in the pit to die (I mean really, what a chach!) so thats what I decided to recreate.  Jardir standing above the pit with the warded spear and Arlen having to face a sand demon with Jardir’s crappy unwarded spear he threw down to make himself feel better about leaving his friend to die.

Next came Leesha and Rojer.  First I had to convince my 6 year old daughter that her Barbies would look amazing in the clothes I was going to make and that Ken didn’t really need all 5 fingers…It took lots of coaxing (and I am certainly not above bribery) but in the end she decided that as long as I would make some clothes for her other barbies, she didnt really need them back 😉    I had the best time drawing the wards on Leesha’s cloak and making her apron with lots of pockets full  of blinding powder.  I should mention that my sewing machine decided to crap out right before this contest so I had to find ways to make clothes with no sewing at all!  Thank goodness for fabrics that don’t fray when cut!

My husband was the genius who made the rock demons and woodies.  He also carved out Rojer’s fiddle for me.

The scene I was going with is Leesha and Rojer walking along the path back to the cabin with lots of demons around them but the cloak keeping them away from Leesha and Rojer’s fiddle keeping the rest at bay.

Anyways I hope you like them!

-Yelie

Posted on November 22, 2010 at 1:44 am by PeatB
Filed under Contests, Craft, Desert Spear, Fan Art, Fans, Homemade Heroes
Comments Off on Homemade Heroes: Legos and Barbies

Usually, I laud the awesomeness of my readers before showing you their entry, but sometimes, when the reader is as awesome as French Jess, there is nothing I can add that competes with her own words and pictures. You will see therein that her boyfriend is awesome, too. This is good. I wouldn’t want her dating some chump.

Just a quick reminder, there are only five days left to submit your Homemade Hero Contest entries, so finish up the paint jobs and take some pix! Competition is fierce, but there are lots of prizes.

On to Jess:

Hi Peat,

I finally finished my entry for the contest. It took me a lot more time then I thought, but this morning, seeing the closing date approch, I decided to take all the morning to finish it and here it is!

Here is how I made it :

-It’s my boyfriend who gave me the idea, certainly exhausted to go every week end in search of hold toys in the bric-a-brac trades near our appartment. He is a great fan of role playing games ( he even succeded to recruit me for several Live action Role Playing games next summer! ) and figurines games (like Warhammer) so he told me he had a Balrog figurine from the Lord of the ring game he wanted to use in his warhammer game but he changed his mind so he had this Balrog and nothing to do with it. Like he told me, One Arm, on the cover of the french version of L’Homme Rune, his really alike a Balrog. I decided to do One-Arm, and we search in the Game Workshop website what could make a fine Arlen or Jardir. I remembered the warriors of Harad from the Lord of the Ring, so we want to the store and bougth a box of this warriors. One made a fine Jardir and I decided to make some Sharum as well.

-First, I had to cut all the different parts of the figurines and glue them together. I cut some parts that had nothing to do with the characters I wanted to make. For One Arm, I had cut a lot of parts, and I decided to create some new parts to ressemble more. I cut some horns on warhammer demons my boyfriend hadn’t use, and stick them after creating a base in modeling resin. I also created some horns from the same resin to give One-Arm his horned back and tail.

-After a few days of drying, I spray all the figurines with an under-coat of black paint.

-After a day of drying, it was time to begin to paint all of them. I decided to had some touchs of fantasy for One-Arm (painted the horns in silver and gave him some green glow from the Core) to give him more relief.

-After that, I decided to had sand on the base of each figurine, by glueing it.

-Finally, I draw wards on the spears with a permanent marker.

And here is a little group with Jardir as Shar Dama Ka and his Sharums vs One-Arm.

Hope you’ll like it 🙂

I also hope all this is comprehensible, because I have to admit it’s not a vocabulary I’m used to!

Have a good day

Jess

Posted on November 21, 2010 at 9:51 am by PeatB
Filed under Contests, Craft, Desert Spear, Fan Art, Fans, France, Homemade Heroes
1 Comment »

Just a reminder that Thanksgiving is almost upon us, and that means 2 things:

1. Buy pants with an elastic waist (my wife also suggests overalls)

2. The deadline for submitting your Homemade Heroes looms before us

So take a break from midterms/pie baking/leaf raking/hibernating and start sending in those entries!

Dwayne from the UK sent in his (possibly) preliminary submission:

Hi Peat,
This has been a long hard struggle and a far cry from what I set out to do. I had set out to make a complete set of chess pieces for each faction (Alagai, Chin and Sharum). But alas I had not the time nor funds to complete such an ambitious task, with university lectures and essays and my time away to study in Germany. But after blood, sweat, and a hilarious incident with framing wire, I had moderately finished two of them: One-Arm and Jardir. I also managed to squeeze out my centre piece and largest piece: approx. 10″ of One-Arm (complete with wound leaking green ichor). In time I hope to finish the set but alas this is all I have to enter this time.

Jardir, One-Arm Mini and One-Arm Maxi.

Regards,
Dwayne.

Posted on November 19, 2010 at 6:28 pm by PeatB
Filed under Contests, Homemade Heroes
3 Comments »

Instead of fully writing this blog, here is my stepsheet for it:

This stepsheet written almost entirely from my iPhone on my 5 mile walk through the park.

Posted on November 18, 2010 at 2:24 pm by PeatB
Filed under Craft, Musings, Writing
10 Comments »

Hi, everyone. This is Dani, Peat’s wife. Those of you who know me are aware of my love of baked goods. French, Italian, Greek, Entenmann’s, Duncan Hines, you name it. So when Peat returned from his awesome trip to Portugal laden down with pure Portuguese Pastries, I was extremely pleased! (I mean, naturally I was pleased he was home at all, but even more so since he brought some sweets!)

So after we put Cassie to bed, we settled on the couch in front of three different delicious-looking desserts and a glass of Ginja, which is a delightful sour-cherry liqueur. (Peat also came home with a bottle of Moscatel Roxo but we haven’t opened that yet.)

We started off with the world-famous Pastéis de Belém, given to him as a gift by two bloggers who interviewed him, Margarida Cruz from Segredo dos Livros, and Patrícia Pessegueiro from Pedacinho Literário. Peat kept going on about how sweet Margarida and Patrícia were, and what a great time he had talking to them (we’ll link to those articles when they are posted).

The Pastéis de Belém were a delightful custardy-pastry sort of thing, kind of like a cross between a Napoleon and a cannoli in tartlet form. Sweet, light, and, well, custardy, which I love.

The next confections were queijadas from Casa Do Preto in Sintra. They were sort of like egg custard tartlets. Also delicious. These were picked up to commemorate his trip out to Sintra for lunch on the first day of his trip. Apparently he ate at a fancy restaurant full of famous Portuguese actors and musicians and then drove up to the local castle.

The last were Tortas de Azeitao, which are a regional specialty in Setúbal, where Peat’s host and editor at Gailivro/1001 Mundos, Pedro Reisinho, is from. They were kind of like a cross between a Greek pantespani and a rum-soaked sponge cake without the rum. Moist, dense, and sweet. Like a high-quality Twinkie, and I mean that in a good way!

So, here I am, 2 pounds heavier and wishing that I had gone to Portugal with Peat, if only for the fabulous desserts. Of course, Peat is still raving about the rest of the food, as well as how hospitable and friendly and welcoming everyone was. Maybe some day we’ll leave Cassie with her grandparents and go hang out in the Largo de Camões and get drunk on ginja with all the college kids. But only after gorging ourselves on Portuguese pastries!

Posted on November 15, 2010 at 11:40 pm by PeatB
Filed under Life, Portugal, Uncategorized, World Traveler
8 Comments »