Yuletide Gift Exchange - anyone interested?

[Ursus]

Well, I got home and finally opened the box under the tree and found this very pretty (and SHARP!) camp knife waiting inside for me. (it's about 7.5" long in total) Such a fancy blade, and the chunky handle fills my hand quite nicely! Thank You Eric C!

Truly some inspiring work there Eric! I've got some cable lying around but I'm not brave enough to attempt cablemascus just yet.

[Eric C]

Many people jump right into pattern welding - some with great results, some not so much. I've taken 5 or 6 years to actually produce anything like this. Take your time. When you're ready the cable will still be around.

[Eric C]

So, my wife checked the mail today and..... IT'S HERE!!!! I present t you Spider's bane:





This beautiful piece of art is presented to me by Manveruon. He was worried that I wouldn't like it. What's not to like. Each time I look at it, I see some new detail that I missed before. I will be very pleased to mak a frame for it and display it on my wall.

[Elleth]

I LOVE IT THAT IS AWESOME!

Waitaminnit.... Scrip....boots.... Is that you?!


(Also... Beautiful blade you made!)

[Mirimaran]

Awesome gift, Eric!

Ken

[Greg]

Mike, I've known you were an above-average artist for quite some time, starting from way back when you posted the concept art for your original Ranger kit. This is on a whole 'nother level. You seamlessly integrated every piece of Ranger kit that Eric has posted, and made it into a complete kit. It's beautiful.

I am a firm believer that finishing a kit is impossible without a plan, and it is difficult to have a plan visualized that all really fits together without seeing it all together to start with...there is so much 'stuff' out there for sale to reenactors, and it's all made by so many different people. When it all shows up in the mail in one place, each piece often looks out-of-place with the others. Seeing Eric's gear pictured here, with a few additions making it a complete kit, I believe, could be instrumental in inspiring Eric to keep pulling things together, and to come up with an end result which, I'm sure, will look as awesome as that drawing.

[Eric C]

Elleth: Yeah, that's me. He did a great job capturing my existing gear, or at least what it has been. I need to replace the shirts and am working on a deal for that.
And about the knife, thanks. It was a lot of fun to make. I just wish I could have made a cloak pin to go along with it.

Hopefully I can add a new bow this coming year and maybe get started on some new boots with a better sole and better water resistance. I also need a better quiver. Lots to work on.....

Ken: It is awesome.

Greg: This is an outstanding resource for me to start pulling things together again.

[wulfgar]

Sorry it took me so long to get this posted, but with illness and the holidays,,you know.
I now present a beautiful hand carved birch drinking noggin from Udwin. Enclosed I also found a letter detailing the year of Aistan Bear-foot. I know that this noggin will serve me well in my travels and aid in quenching my thirst.

[Greg]

That's awesome! Love the letter; I can make out some parts of it.

[Udwin]

Glad to hear you're feeling better, wulfgar : )

[Elleth]

Wulfgar, Udwin - that is LOVELY! What a delightful treasure from the wild lands.

[Manveruon]

I completely forgot to respond to this thread when it was still active, so I hope you will all forgive my reviving it, briefly.

Firstly, I wanted to give a little more info on the drawing. Yes indeed, that is intended to be a depiction of our very own Eric C, and you all picked up on pretty quickly! I had to sort of dig around his Photobucket to find as many garb references as I could, so Eric, I hope you'll forgive me for that little bit of Internet stalkery, haha. I am pretty happy with the end results, but there are a few areas I had to cut corners or straight-up cheat. For instance, I had originally intended to draw his full face, and I even did a quick study sketch in which I think I captured at least a vague likeness, but for some reason, when I went to draw his face in the final image, it kept coming out all wrong. In the end, time was running out, and I had to make a quick decision, so I opted to cover his face with a mask. I'm afraid was something of a cop-out, but I think the end result actually looks kind of cool and mysterious, so it wasn't a total disaster, heh. Otherwise, I tried hard to include as many little details as possible, such as the boots, the sounding horn, the sword, the patterns on the belt and haversack strap, etc. Then there were some artistic liberties, like the bracers, the bow, and a few other bits. I added the border and the text later, in Photoshop, and then printed the whole thing onto high-quality parchment paper. Eric received the original drawing, done on plain paper, without the border or text, as well as the final print, and also the facial study sketch I did, just for fun.
The last thing I wanted to mention about the drawing was Eric's mighty foe - because when he said "no spiders", I simply couldn't resist. And that's why it's "Spider's Bane," haha.

Anyway, that's basically the gist of that. I also wanted to say, once again, how blown away by everyone's work on this (that noggin is really cool!), and I can't wait to do it again next year!

[Rifter]

Great looking items