Butterfly Brain

Butterfly Brain is the personal portfolio of Leah Davies, a freelance creative and general crafty geek... From time to time creative projects actually get finished and might end up here or for sale on Etsy, you can find them at: www.etsy.com/uk/shop/8utterfly8rain Or, you could contact me through the facebook page.

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Alice in Wonderland - Felt Mobile

This mobile was made using a lovely pattern, taken from "Everything Alice: The Wonderland Book of Makes" by Hannah Read-Baldrey and Christine Leech.  (Seriously, this book is an absolute must for any crafty Alice fans out there).  

I made the mobile using bamboo canes wrapped in ribbon, felt, stuffing and beads.  Each character / item is hand-sewn and hung with embroidery thread, they are; Cheshire Cat, White Rabbit, a cupcake, a heart, a mushroom and a crown.  

To see the full mobile, please click on the picture and it'll take you to the Flickr set Alice in Wonderland Mobile.

I would have liked to have made Caterpillar, but there was no pattern for him. That's now another project on my never ending list...

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"Kenco" - A2, pencil sketch, pet portrait by Butterfly Brain.

I drew this for a work colleague, as a leaving present.  He gave me the photo about 4 years before he decided to leave, (I've always been so-easily distracted), but I never got around to it.  When he said that he was leaving, I remembered the pic and thought I'd better get on with it!

This is the first and only pet portrait I've ever managed to actually complete; Kenco the Labrador puppy...

If you like this, why not 'Like' the Butterfly Brain Facebook page?

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What to expect...

Hi, I’m Leah, the wobbling attention span behind Butterfly Brain. I set up this blog originally as an experiment that formed part of my Masters Dissertation research, (...another thing I haven’t finished yet), into how easy it is to use blogging software.  Once I got the hang of it, I blogged fanatically for about 3 months and then, regrettably lost interest for a while.  But all that’s changed now, oh yes, ah-ha!  

I’ve always been a nature fan, a keen craft hobbyist, a total movie geek and, more recently, a casual gamer.  I’ve made and drawn stuff since I could wield a semi-liquid foodstuff and though I haven’t really improved that much since, my knowledge of social media has gotten better, so now I can inflict my artistic meanderings on everyone, mahahaha and, also, I really like to write stuff.  

From 1st August, I’ll be playing catch up and updating this site with only items “Made by Butterfly Brain”, (until I exhaust my reserve of picture folders and go back to obsessing over other people’s creations).  After I’ve posted all of my stuff, I promise to carry on posting links to other people’s awesome geek crafts and items of interest from around the web.  All links to the work of other artists will be fully acknowledged and referenced wherever possible.

www.butterflybrain.co.uk is a blog for sharing creative ramblings online and for me to keep track of my craft projects.  I start so many things and finish so few, but all Butterfly Brain art work and creations can be seen on this site or on the Flickr photo stream.  If you like the site, but do not use Tumblr, you might like to follow Butterfly Brain on Facebook or find me on Deviant Art.

If you want to comment on or share any of my work, please feel free!

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Blog revamp

It's been ages since I've done anything with this blog, apologies.  It's getting a bit of a make over at the moment and then there'll be some serious updating going on.  Normal service (and hundreds of pictures) to follow shortly...

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Pirate ship 3 on Flickr.

Kitten Pirate Ship, a set on Flickr. Aboard the Good Ship Smeagol... Another time-consuming project I've been working on over the summer, the cat pirate ship play station... I made this for my two 1 year old cats to amuse themselves with when we're at work. It's still a work in progress, but this is how far I got with it before getting sidetracked by other projects and falling off my bike. It was still quite warm so, though I'd planned to attach sides to it, I thought they could wait until the colder nights. In fact, it's so cold now, we've had to bring the pirate ship into the living room (it was previously in a much colder room) so now the cats are loving it even more because they get to snooze on it and keep an eye on everything going on at the same time. Anyway, I've been working on putting sides on it today, but haven't taken any pics yet. I will update the Flickr page as I go though...

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Portal Birthday Card, a set on Flickr.

Something I made for my best mate's birthday back in June. Yes, she likes Portal to...

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Portal Papercraft (1st attempt), a set on Flickr.

Papercraft is another thing I started this blog to share information about - I seem to have been side-tracked a little by Portal though.... If you've got any portal papercraft pictures you'ld like to share please do!

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Batman Baddies 1 on Flickr.

After a Tumblr vacation, working on some other projects for a while, I thought I'd share some of what I've been up to.  I'm no artist by any means, but I do like having a go every now and then...the rest of the photo set is on Flickr :)

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Hopewell Studios brings us 'Where's Wall-E?' art from Geeking Cards.  This is a work of art and hopelessly addictive once you begin searching for all the beloved robot characters from you past and present.....wicked! :)

Spot the Portal characters!

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Portal 2: -Final- Updated by ~Cloudi5

Cloudi5 says:

"Maya + Vray. 

of course XNALara   Added GLaDOS, Wheatley;  Replaced Portal cores with Portal 2 cores and button with Companion cube; Added two more lights and made better lighting. Credits: Chell by tombraidergale; Franken Turret by robbie_rawr; Everything else by CarbinT. Older version - [link] Only P-Body, Atlas and Chell - [link] P.S. Sorry for resolution. It's smaller than before :S If you liked this one maybe you will like this too [link]"

We say:

"I know what my next background wallpaper is gonna be..."

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My 1st attempt at portal paper-craft.  Free pattern courtesy of Tubby Paws, thanks Tubby Paws!

If you're a portal fan then please visit http://butterfly-brain.tumblr.com/archive to see hundreds of other (better) portal items, artwork and crafts.

Also, please like us on facebook or follow the Butterfly Brain tumblr blog

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Portal 2 nails by *Celestial298

Celestial298 says:

"So I was really bored and got a bunch of nail polish and made Portal nails. From pinky to thumb it's (GLAdos, Glados's Emotion core, A turret, Wheatley, and The weighted companion cube) Granted my nails are SUPER tiny cause I bite them so this was a pain and they are a bit sloppy but I don't care it was fun. The other hand just says "Still Alive on the nails but it looks bad cause I cant use my right hand to paint for crap lol. Enjoy!

Portal stuff (c) Valve"

We say:

Oh my God!!! These are awesome, what an idea!  Celestial298, you may have been bored but you are still genius! :)

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Little Miss Portal by *Eniotna

Eniotna says:

"Little Portal suff, featuring Chell in my Stick Character style.

I really like the simplicity of those pictogramme character, added to numerous detail from the character itself."

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Portal 2: BOTS by *ghostfire

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Portal Pumpkin by ~Sk4yt

Sk4yt says:

"My Portal punkin.

It pwns."

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Portal 2 by ~xric

xric says:

"Made in Photoshop, took about 6 hours to draw

It's of Atlas and P-body from Portal 2 Co op  I also made a 'Making-of' Video to see how I drew it [link]"

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Relatively Portal by ~linkitch

linkitch says:

"Our first 4 week project at school, I used about about 5-6 weeks though, extra time both before and after the deadline. You can just keep adding so many details  When I was brain storming, I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to create something that required more texturing than modeling, since I was pretty inexperienced with that, so I had to incorporate that somehow. I found a picture done by Escher called "Relativity stairs" and since I was also playing Portal at the time I thought the project would be perfect to test my skills on. Everything you see in the picture was made by me, I took loads of reference pictures from within the game, but ultimately I recreated everything myself to get the style that you find within the game. This is the result, picture took approx 9 hours to render. Note: Added a picture that shows some of the different stages how I created this picture [link] Edit: I made a very large version of the image available for download (22mb). So people will be able to get their own print made. Just don't begin selling prints without my permission, or Valves for that matter."