What I Did This Summer

Man, I really feel like I lost this summer. I can't believe it's already September. How lame. I wasn't ready for it to be done yet. But then, I suppose I never am. There were a few notable things and projects that happened.

First of all, Blue October came to town. They are one of my favorite bands in the world, and I've gone to see them nearly every time they've come to town, which is almost annually. After the last concert Rachel and I promised ourselves we would do meet and greet passes, because we regretted not doing it that time for a band we always go see. So when they announced Boise on their tour we immediately bought the meet and greet passes. It was like $100 extra, but worth it to us.

The actual experience was kind of a mixed bag. We waited outside for almost a whole extra hour when we were supposed to be inside with the band, I didn't love that. When we got in, the meet and greet wasn't he band up on the stage and us down on the floor where Justin did his best to make it as friendly as possible, but there was definitely a barrier. We got early access to the merch table and they signed everything, and we got cool posters, but I was really hoping for something a little more... I don't know... Personal? I did get a pretty sweet picture with the band though:

And Justin kissed my hand and told me he was sorry that it takes longer for me to get new songs through Amazon than it does Rachel through iTunes. So that was pretty awesome. And then the show was freaking amazing. Justin had me in tears because he actually did "Should Be Loved"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9HvKXFf48c

Which you might not know, but that was my drunk song towards the end of me marriage and it was a pretty big moment for me when I realized I was singing that song at my husband. He followed that with "The Chills"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41s51Fanwh8

which has a similar message and was just amazing. And then a few songs later he did "18th Floor Balcony"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf4ffilenjs

which is my number 1 most romantic song and makes me think of what I have now in my current relationship. And I never thought I'd ever get to hear those songs live because they're not some of the more popular ones. So yeah, you add a drink or two to some of the most emotional music you can think of and I was wrecked and elated all at once. It was an amazing high. Despite the slight flaws, it was a fantastic night.

On the subject of concerts, several months ago my boss was talking about how his parents were one of the original major investors in the remodel of one of the major stadiums in town and as a perk of that, they got free tickets to every show ever at that place. If they're not interested they usually just sell them or whatnot. I had recently heard that Fallout Boy was coming here this year and my boss happened to mention that his parents didn't know what to do with those tickets, they didn't know anyone who cared. I immediately piped up, yo Fallout Boy fan, right here. My boss laughs and I figure that's the last I'll hear about that. A few weeks ago, my boss walks up to me, hands me an envelope and says, "This is for you." I open it up and look at that, two tickets to Fallout Boy. God, I was so excited. I wanted to go but the show was kind of expensive so I'd decided not to. Now I can! And for free! That's gonna be so great.

And now for something totally different!

I have yet another nerdy wineglass. Shannon wanted to have a clay night and I already had a plan for the glass I'd painted red some time ago. I planned to do the Cutie Moon Rod.

Unfortunately I don't have any progress pictures. I just wasn't thinking about it while I worked. It wasn't too complicated really.

I covered the stem in light pink, added a yellow crescent to the glass just like I did on my first Sailor Moon glass, made the wings out of some fairly thick triangles that I cut slits in and shaped outward,  made a pink heart at the base of the cup where the wings joined the glass. Added details like the stars on the stem, dots on the crescent, red band around the glass and so on. I had a thought about creating a cutting out piece reinforced with plastic or something to give the look of the crown sitting on top, but that didn't work out so it just sits on the rim. Honestly, it didn't really come out the way I wanted it, but I don't dislike it.

I'm currently out of the polycrylic spray I had been using to gloss my creations due to another project I'm just about to tell you about, so I'm going to try an experiment with this one. I do currently have a clear gloss enamel acrylic paint that I'm going to try painting this with and see if that turns out better. I'll let you know what happens when I get there.

So. I had one Really Big project I did this summer. It's one I've been intending to do for ages and ages. My kitchen table and chairs are hand me downs from my brother. They're good, solid pieces of furniture, but someone lost their mind at some point and painted them the most horrifying shade of green you've ever seen. I always intended to repaint them, I just never had the time.

So, on a whim one day, I decided Shannon and I should paint her dresser and night stand. I'd been wanting to do that too, to give her something more fun and colorful. It was a good time, she wanted rainbows so we went nuts with multicolored spray paint.

From there I kind of caught the bug and wanted to paint more things. So I did a stool. I have a pair of yellow wood stools that we mostly use as end tables and I decided I'd do a test run of my plan for the kitchen table and chairs. It went great. I don't have any before pictures, but this is what I got after:

The bottom is just plack spray paint, the top is a stain mixed with polycrylic that does not go on smoothly at all. So I decided the streakyness was an artistic choice.

And then, a strange thing happened. Stu had a bachelor party and a business trip end to end so he was going to be gone for three days. And at the same time Shannon was going to be spending a week with my dad. I was going to be all alone for an entire weekend. That first Friday night I was completely frozen with indecision on what to have for dinner, despite the fact that literally no one's opinion but mine mattered. I ended up at Paddles Up Poke, which was a good choice.

So, with all this free time I decided I was gonna finally do that. I was gonna haul that table and chairs outside and get them painted. And that was how I spent my weekend.

Before:

After large amounts of sanding:

It was at this point that I learned that there was a very nice dark green underneath this horrible avocado garbage. Who would paint over that? That looked nice.

Black paint added:

Various layers of stain:

Final product: 

I had a very good time hanging out outside, playing Fallout Boy loudly and drinking soda and eating junk food in-between sanding and painting. It took me the whole damn weekend and was physically way more draining than I thought it would be, but I got it done, and my kitchen furniture finally looks nice.

The top actually ended up darker than I intended, after two coats I was going to leave it and I started spraying it down with my spray on polycrylic, but what I did not take into account was the current 90+ temperature outside, which caused the spray to become sticky milky white dust. As a result I had to add a third coat of stain to cover that, making it much darker. But that not really a problem, just not what I intended.

The only other thing I did recently was a few simple skirts. Rachel, Cari and Sarah and I decided to go to a Harry Potter themed bar crawl, and of course we were going to dress up for it. Nothing complicated, we did skirts in house colors and attached house patches to them. Now, Rachel, Sarah and I are all Slytherins, and Cari's a Ravenclaw, but the patches came in sets with one each. So to reduce costs we decided that Sarah was the most Slytherin, and Rachel and I would go as our secondary houses, Gryffindor and Hufflepuff. I read feel more like a Hufflepuff anyways. But apparently I'm an evil Hufflepuff. The bar crawl was a lot of fun.

Look, aren't we cute?

I think that's all I have at the moment. I have technically started working on my Halloween costume already, but I think that's another post I think.

Luna P!

So, I actually attended my first convention recently.  It was originally going to be this really cool thing, I was getting my picture taken with Firefly actors, Rachel and Cari were going to go with me and maybe even dress up as Sailor Scouts with me, even though neither one of them really had strong feelings about Sailor Moon.

And then the Firefly actors cancelled. (Jewel Staite and Sean Maher, if you were wondering. Kaylee and Simon. Man, that would have been such a great picture.) So, I guess maybe I see James Marsters? Spike from Buffy? That's cool. Nope. He cancels. Leaves me with Jason David Frank, the original Green Ranger, which I suppose is something, but nothing to write home about. And then it turns out that that day is Cari's wedding anniversary. And Rachel doesn't have the money for it. And admission tickets are absolutely nonrefundable. (I know, I tried. Repeatedly.) Soooooo.... looks like I'm gonna solo it. I figure I'll enter the costume contest at least, I have all these fancy costumes after all.

I decided to go with Sailor Pluto. She was my first major costume that I finished, and I'm pretty proud of that staff after all.

So the thing is, I believe I've mentioned this before, I can't stand the thought of carrying a regular purse while cosplaying. It would just be so jarring, take you right out of the coolness of the costume. If you remember I have plans to turn a Toad plushie into a bag for Princess Peach, and I always intended to do a Luna P bag for Pluto. I know technically Luna P belongs to Chibi Moon, but she gets it from Pluto, so it works!

So, it's like three days before the con, I have exactly one evening to get this done, no more. The rest of my time is full. There's definitely no time for shopping for supplies, so I make up my mind that I'm going to dig through my stockpile of fabric and craft supplies, and if I can come up with the stuff to make a Luna P bag, I'll make it. If not, I'll just take my phone wallet case like I would for a concert, it's at least smaller and less obtrusive.

So, originally I had intended to actually sew a ball shaped back with maybe some kind of drawstring at the top or something like that, so that it would actually look like the "real" Luna P. I figured that might be a little complicated, and awkward to store stuff in, but I didn't really have a better plan until I found this:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B018ODZ4FU/?coliid=I1KA5RW96VMVN4&colid=WVV2QWR3H1GZ&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

Which is just darling, but like $40. Although I will admit, I did briefly consider buying it, if I could have gotten it here before the con.  However, it did make me realize I could easily do a flat circle bag like this and it would be much easier and much better for carrying things inside.

So I get into my big plastic tubs of fabric scraps, and by an amazing miracle, I come up with two cut off pant legs from a pair of black cotton (twill maybe? I'm not sure.) pants. I have a whole stockpile of cut off pant legs, I never can just throw those out when I cut off a pair of pants into shorts. Hilariously enough, I don't even have the shorts that were made from these pants, I have no idea what happened to them. I suppose it's not really relevant. So I dig out my biggest pot lid that will fit on the widest part of the pant leg and we are off and running.

I think it's like a 9"-10" pot lid? I'm not positive on that, I didn't measure it. Probably less that 12" but not by much?

So I trace and cut out two circles in black, and four from a chunk of canvas I have left over from corset making. I wanted to line it in canvas for strength, and also to make some pockets in the inside.

Heh, the canvas circles look like tortillas.

I measured the circumference of the tortillas, it was 36", so I divided that in half and cut out two strips each of the black and the canvas (with a little extra for seam allowance) one for the top of the circle and one for the bottom. I cut out four triangles for the ears, and one really long strip for the shoulder strap. I wanted the bottom and top halves of the circle to be separate to create a seam on each side for the shoulder strap to be sewn into.

Obviously I ironed the hell out of everything, being stuffed in a plastic tub with a bunch of other fabric for years makes some amazing wrinkles.

Next came the face. I was going to just applique it on using scraps of fabric from old projects, I had plenty of that, mostly from my Princess Peach dress. My process for the face really wasn't complicated, I mostly just freehanded the shapes, the eyes were two half circles, the nose is an oval, the mouth was a rounded triangle that I cut the little curves at the top once I had the size right. A close observer will notice I'm missing a rather important detail of this MOON cat face that it took me an embarrassingly long time to notice.

I made a different mistake here, however, I used fabric glue to attach the face pieces before sewing, and the stuff I used ended up soaking through and looking all blotchy, which I wasn't happy about, but I left it for the moment hoping it would clear up as it dried. I basically just satin stitched around the edges of each piece, and for it being basically the first time I've ever appliqued I think I did okay.

I stitched the ears in place, and took a piece of the bottom hem of the pants since it was already a tube, stitched it a little narrower and attached that for the antenna. I left the end open, since I was not yet sure how I was doing the little bobble at the end of the antenna.

So after that I took two of the tortillas, folded and stitched down the top third or so, and on one of them I added a strip of elastic across one of them, sewn down in several places for things like pens and chapstick. After that I sewed those to the full tortillas. I then stitched down the middle of the tortilla just across the folded portion to make some pockets. Once those were attached to each other I sewed them to the black tortillas.

This picture was taken after the bag was fully assembled, but you can see what I mean.

This bag is definitely not as pretty on the inside as it is on the outside. As you can see, I also made liberal use of my serger, both the canvas and the black fabric loved to fray.

At this point, I sewed the ears together and set them aside, I added a layer of pink satin so that they'd be pink on one side, I serged the top and bottom pieces to their canvas linings, and got the strap ready to go.  For the strap I just folded the edges into the middle and then folded the whole thing in half, like a giant strip of bias tape, and then just ran it through the sewing machine down both long sides and serged the ends.

The next step was getting the zipper installed in the top piece. I didn't mention this previously, but do you remember that sweet biker jacket Stu's mom got me for Christmas? The one I had to add cuffs to the waist and sleeves so it would be long enough for me? Well, the shirt that I got from the thrift store to do that with had this sweet rhinestone zipper on it that of course I couldn't throw away, it was an amazing zipper. So I cut it out and saved it. And this was the perfect project for it. What better use of unnecessary rhinestones than a Sailor Moon bag?

So here's how it went. I took the top strip of fabric and I made a long lengthwise cut down the middle the same length of the zipper, with two small cuts at each end, like this:

This allowed me to fold the long flaps under, serge the edges, and stitch them down. Obviously this left those short cut ends raw and fraying. So I smeared those ends with fray check and then folded a small piece of ribbon over the end and stitched it down. Installing the zipper was as simple as lining it up with the nice neat rectangular hole I'd just made, and stitching it down. Easy peasy. I'd never had such an easy time installing a zipper, I should do them all like this! If only that were possible.

Again, this is after assembly, but you can see what it looks like.

At this point I carefully lined up the top and bottom strips with the tortillas, making sure everything was straight and carefully lining up the seams on the sides. Once I had them lined up I was able to insert the ends of my shoulder strap into the seam and sew it down. Everything was pinned all to hell here, I stabbed myself brutally and repeatedly trying to handle this and manipulate it so I didn't sew anything that shouldn't be sewn.

Very VERY carefully, I worked my way around the edges sewing them down, making sure I had opened the zipper beforehand so there would be an opening to turn it right side out, otherwise I'd seal the thing shut since the zipper pull was on the other side.

Once that was done, I was basically finished, aside from a few finishing details. I turned it right side out and started trimming away loose threads, and only now did I notice that I had managed to forget to put the crescent moon on LUNA P. IT'S NOT LIKE HER NAME MEANS MOON OR ANYTHING. WHY WOULD THAT TRIGGER ANY THOUGHTS OF MOONS?

I was so annoyed.  Luckily I still have that gold puffy fabric paint from Princess Peach's dress, so I just used that and drew a crescent on there. At Stu's suggestion I put a straw in the antenna to make it stand up better, although it still has issues, I need to mess with it. I then realized the face was still going to be blotchy, so I took the fabric paint medium I bought forever ago and made some fabric paint in those colors and basically just painted over to cover the blotchyness. It helped immensely, although I think I may do a second coat, I think it could be even better.

So, for the bobble, I wasn't sure what to do. I was planning to go to Joann's with Cari the next day for a different upcoming cosplay (that you will be updated on soon) so I thought maybe I'd buy a pom pom or something. But then I thought, No! I haven't bought a single thing for this whole damn bag, I want it to stay that way. I want this to be the bag that didn't cost me anything I hadn't already spent.  So instead I stuffed a small wad of tissue in the end of the straw and then just globbed on a massive amount of gold puffy paint. And it worked perfectly. The puffy paint has shape so it was still round and it didn't weigh the antenna down too much.

And the result:

She's so damn cute I want to use her for my daily purse. I love how it turned out. And I'm super proud of the fact that I managed to not spend a single extra penny on this bag. And I've made up my mind that whatever alterations or tweaks I may make to it, that's the rule for this bag. No shopping. Use what I have. I'm so thrifty!

She worked wonderfully too. I'd made her wide enough that I could easily fit my phone, sunglasses, portable charger, a water bottle and several other small things in there. I don't have any pictures of me holding it in costume, I set her down for the few pictures I have.

I had a great time at the con, even though I was on my own. I had a little trouble actually getting into the con, for some reason when we pulled up to the building and it was time for me to go in, I had a sudden crushing wave of anxiety, I was positive I was going to look ridiculous and I wanted to just go home. I came very very close to having Stu take me home so I could change into normal clothes and come back. But after a few deep breaths I knew I'd be annoyed with myself if I did that. I think the hard part was that I was going alone. I really wish I'd had someone with me. But once I got in there and saw other people dressed up I felt much better. It took me a bit to calm down, I was shaking and sweating for a bit, but luckily they were serving drinks, so I got myself a nice cold hard cider and just chilled for a second. Then I went shopping.

I explored the center, had my picture taken like a thousand times, visited the celebrity area, saw Jason David Frank, Thomas Ian Nicholas (Rookie of the Year), and Charisma Carpenter (Cordelia, Buffy the Vampire Slayer). I went to Brent Spiner (Data, Star Trek the Next Generation) and John De Lancie's (Q, Star Trek the Next Generation, Discord, MLP) panel, and then watched the Nerd Off panel to extend the sitting time. I tell you what, I regretted those boots like nobody's business. I knew it would be bad, but I severely underestimated how bad. I will not repeat that experience. If I take Pluto to another con I'm going to have some nice comfy flat boots for walking around, and the heels will be only for the costume contest. Which I didn't win, by the way, but I didn't really expect to. It was only my first con, and I'm still very much an amateur. But I enjoyed myself, even though I was alone. I'm glad I went, and I'm glad I went dressed up.

There's me, right after the con wearing my sweet new Wonder Woman tank top I bought there, completely wiped out, but happy.

Nerdy Wine Glasses!

So, I love cool glasses. A while ago I went on this cool coffee mug kick where I just wanted all the cool coffee mugs. Let's be honest, it's really still going on. Cool unique glasses of any kind just grab me. I have dreams of my kitchen dishes being this awesome, unique collection of quirky colorful handmade wonderfulness. Matched sets are boring. So of course, this fed into my love of wine and I obviously needed pretty wine glasses. I'd already half started down this road with the Sailor Moon wine glass I've already posted.

I'd always had this idea of cool painted wine glasses, I had found a picture online of wine glasses painted to look like Pirahna plants from Mario.

Now, those look pretty cool, and I've had the intention of copying them for ages, but I kinda wanted glasses shaped like that to get the same look. And I wasn't a big fan of how flat they looked, but figured there wasn't much I could do about that.

Then it hit me.

Polymer clay.

There is no reason in the world why I couldn't recreate that in three dimensions with polymer clay. I already knew full well wine glasses did very well covered in clay, and those were some pretty simple shapes. I'm not a sculptor, but I pulled that Sailor Moon glass off just fine.

So I bought myself another dollar store wine glass and some red, green and white clay, total running me less than $10, and went to work.

Unfortunately, I didn't take any progress pictures so you'll just have to deal with a vague description of what I did.

First, I divided the red in half and rolled it out into two fairly thin ovals. The idea was the oval shape would give us the rounded upper edge of his lips and the sharp Vs at the corners of his mouth. I just laid it out over the glass and trimmed off the extra where they overlapped. It did take almost the whole package. After that I covered the stem and base of the glass in green, and then shaped two fairly thick leaves that I lightly carved veins into and then joined to the stem as firmly as I could. I'm not gonna lie, those leaves seemed like a weak point to me, and I continue to be very careful with them, I'm very afraid of them snapping off.

The spots were done by rolling several small balls of white and smashing them flat, then placing them randomly. The teeth were made by rolling out a long narrow rectangle and then cutting in zig zags all the way down to make a bunch of triangles. Originally I had teeth placed end to end in the mouth, but there were so many teeth it looked like a freaking Stephen King Langolier. So I took out every other tooth and it was perfect. With the remaining white I rolled two fat snakes that gradually decreased to points at the ends. I placed those right over the border between the teeth and the red clay and joined them at the corners, smushing gently, enough to make sure it was firmly attached but not losing the nice round shape.

I had vague intentions of trying to make a clay pipe around the base of the wine glass, but in the end I wasn't sure how and didn't have much green clay left anyways. So I mixed the green that was left with the bit of red that was left to make a different shade of green and just rolled it and laid it around the edge of the base. If I ever redid this I would definitely figure out how to do a pipe, I think that would be awesome. But I'm not unhappy with what I have. I baked it and glazed it and there you are! I named him Petey (obviously) and I super love him.

So, I had my Petey, and I loved him and everything was good. I didn't really see any need to do anything else.... And then I had a thought.

Wouldn't a matching Chain Chomp be adorable? They'd be an amazing Mario wineglass set!

Well crap.

As soon as I had that thought I couldn't get it out of my head.

So, once again, for less than $10 I went and bought another wine glass and more clay.

My friends and I decided to have a crafting day, as we do from time to time, so I decided this would be my project for that. Once again I don't have any progress pictures, so words will have to do. I really don't know why it didn't occur to me to take pictures as I went along, I always do that! I love documenting my projects! I guess since these were pretty quick I didn't think of them as projects.

So the Chain Chomp started the same way as the Pirahna Plant, two thin long ovals laid out on the glass to make the rounded lip and the V at the corners of the mouth. His teeth were made the same way as the Pirahna Plant, just much wider. The eyes were the same as the spots, rolled up balls of clay smushed flat and then layered to look like eyes.

I guess there were actually a lot of similarities in the techniques for these two glasses weren't there?

The base was covered in brown clay, as Chain Chomps tend to be attached to wooden boxes of some kind, and then with a pointed tool I divided the base into panels and carved what I hoped would look like wood grain texture into them. The stem was intentionally left uncovered and clear. For the chain I rolled out a thin silver snake, cut it into segments and joined those segments into loops connected to each other, like links of a chain. I attached one end to the base, spiraled around the stem and connected the other end to the head. I could see immediately that the weight of the clay was pulling the chain links flat, but I wasn't sure what to do about it. Then Rachel gave me the idea of sticking little rolls of parchment paper through each link to hold it open while it baked, and it worked like a fucking charm. Although I think in the future if I did this again I would make wire shapes to cover in clay to make more rigid shapes. After it was baked I washed some watered down black paint over the base to try and add some weathering to the wood look, which sort of worked I guess. I was happy with the texture lines I drew though. Got it glazed and we were done! The chain links are great to fidget with, they're exactly the right size to stick my fingers through and I just know I'm gonna break one someday, haha.

Anyways, this guy's name is Charlie, and he's wonderful.

One other thing I did recently, while browsing through random clay ideas on Pinterest since it was on my mind, I found this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9_xEvUc_lk&t=2s

That is a pen covered in clay to look like Sailor Moon's Crescent Moon Stick. Obviously I had to have it. I turned it into a girl's night thing with Shannon and we made them together. I'm not giving you a description of the process, because it's all broken down very clearly in the video, we just added crystals to ours. Here's the results:

And yes, if you're wondering, it's incredibly awkward to write with, it's so top heavy and unbalanced. But I love it anyways. Plus the ink is easy to remove and replace so I don't have to worry about my cool pen running out of ink.

So, I'm by no means done here, but I have a lot of things to update on, so I think I'm going to do this in a few posts over time so as to not overwhelm both myself and you, dear reader.

Crafty Things and Christmas Projects

So, I've been crafty again. I mean, it's nearly Christmas, so that makes sense, I'm exactly the type of person that loves to DIY Christmas presents, and not just because I'm broke! It's just what I do.

First of all, this isn't strictly a Christmas project, but it led to one. I learned recently about acrylic pours, or dirty cup pours, or whatever you want to call them. Basically it's where you mix paint with water and a little silicone, and then combine several colors into a cup and dump it onto a canvas or whatever and let it spread and mix and see how it comes out. (Also, for some reason I totally just typed 'color' with a 'u' in it, which is the weirdest typo I think I've ever made. Apparently I get a little British when I'm sleep deprived. Might need another cup of coffee today.) I thought these dirty pour painting looked amazing, and I also thought it would be a great thing to do with Shannon. So I picked  up a bunch of cheap acrylic paint and some silicone power tool lubricant and we tried it.  Here's the result:

The one on the left is mine, and the one on the right is Shannon's. Initially mine came out really muddy, I think I overmixed or something, so I actually added in more orange and turquoise and used a swiping technique to spread it and mix it, and in the end I was fairly happy with it. Shannon's was just beautiful from the beginning, she was very proud of herself. However, after drying for some reason the orange in mine faded to almost invisibility, making the whole thing look rather dull, and I was not happy with it. Shannon's stayed lovely, and was left alone. But I decided to do a new pour overtop of mine and try not mixing quite so much.

The second time I chose a different color palette. 

This one came out super, super cool and I was amazingly happy with it. Look at all those cells! And it dried just fine too, which I was also happy about. However I had too much paint mixed up for pouring, so to avoid wasting it I needed something else to pour on. I ended up using a smaller canvas and an old clock I had from years ago, which I intend to buy new clockwork for, because it looks so cool now.

Here is the small canvas:

This one came out super amazing, I love the way the cells form in the middle of the paint. What's really fascinating about these pours is that more cells and shapes will form as it sits, making it look cooler and cooler as it dries. I'll show you here with the clock I painted, the one on the left is right after I poured the paint, and the one on the right is after it had been sitting for a few hours.

You can see how there are a lot more cells and swirls in the second picture, it's so cool! 

One of the youtubers whose videos I watched to learn how to do this does all her pours on six inch ceramic tiles, which gave me the idea to do a set of them as coasters for my mom for Christmas. I haven't done them yet, but that's coming, you'll get pictures when I do.

The other thing I decided I wanted to do as gifts for people was etched glasses, wine glasses or beer mugs, depending on the person. I got the idea because I wanted to get one for Rachel with the homunculus tattoo from Fullmetal Alchemist, but even when I could find a reasonably priced glass, the shipping would cost twice as much. I knew that Danny, Stu's roommate, happened to have a bottle of glass etching cream he had used for something some time ago, and had told me previously that I was welcome to use it, since I've been curious about glass etching before. So I decided to make my own glass for Rachel. And then the decision I made to go with Stu to his parent's house in Arizona for Christmas led to me needing gifts for them, which led to more custom glass ideas, and then that led to a set for my dad and step mom, and then my brother, and then birthday presents for some friends with an idea I'd been wanting to do for ages, and then one for Danny for letting me use his etching cream since I know that stuff isn't cheap... and well, I etched a lot of things.  

I bought a lot of beer mugs and wine glasses from the dollar store, which was pretty great, because I knew it would be cheap and easy to redo if I messed something up. I also bought some stick on shelf liner from the dollar store because it would make perfect sticky but removable stencils. I printed off all my different designs at work, and then I would tape each design to a piece of shelf liner, cut it out with an xacto knife, and stick it to the cup. It worked really well, with only a few small instances of etching cream seeping a bit under the edges.

  I started with the glasses for Stu's parents. 

Simple monogrammed glasses.These were just stickers and tape, no shelf liner here. I got a little fancy with borders, but I kept it pretty straightforward since this was my first time doing it. But they came out really well, and I'm happy with them. Nice, simple gifts for my boyfriend's parents, since I'm spending Christmas with them.

Next I did Rachel's glass, but the placement was bad so I decided to redo it, and it came out much better the second time.

Photographing etched glasses is so hard, the flash brings out the etching but creates so much glare on the glass. Plus, with this one, the design was a bit big to easily capture. But it looks really cool.

After that I did my dad and stepmom's.  Wendy loves dragonflies, so that was an easy choice. For my dad, I chose to do his crest from his persona in the medieval recreation society he's part of, basically it's the symbol that he paints on his shield and things like that to represent himself.

See what I mean? Glare. Uhg. But they both came out really well. My dad's was a challenge with all those little details, the dots are actually supposed to be stars, but I tried to cut out two stars and realized this was never going to work. Luckily one of my dad's shields does have circles instead of stars, so this is totally legit.

Next was my brother Josh's gift. My family always just does a name draw for Christmas presents, since I have four brothers and that's a lot of gifts to buy. This way we each only have to buy one, and I got Josh.

This is another one where it was difficult to capture the full image. Josh is a Denver Broncos fan, so it's just a Broncos logo and his name. Pretty simple, although cutting out and placing some of those thin lines was a challenge. I nearly put his name as 'Doshie' instead of Josh since that's what I used to call him when I was little. It might have been funny, but I decided against it.

The last actual Christmas glass I did was for Danny, to thank him for letting me use his etching cream. I wanted to do the sign of the Prancing Pony from Lord of the Rings, because Danny is super into LOTR. But goddamn, did that have some fine lines and tiny details. Just getting it cut out was a challenge. I was not sure it would work. After it was cut out I actually placed a second layer of shelf liner over it to hold everything in place while I took the backing off and then stuck it to the glass, and then very carefully removed the top layer. It actually worked pretty well.

There's a little bit of blurring of lines around the horse's front legs, but it wasn't a complete disaster, and I'm pretty happy with how that came out. Not that I want to try something that detailed again, haha. That was a challenge.

After that, I did two wine glasses and a beer mug with a phrase I'd seen on etsy and wanted, but didn't want to pay nearly $30 a glass.

It says "Because Kids" if you can't read it. I did two wine glasses because one is for me and one is for my friend Cari, and the mug is for her husband Matt. I already have a Christmas present for Cari, so these glasses are going to hang around until their birthdays, I think.

So that's all the glass etching I did. It was quite a bit, but a lot of fun to see the designs come out. It did make me wish I owned a Cricut or a Silhouette cutting machine so I didn't have to cut all this stuff out myself though. I still own two other plain wine glasses that I think I may try to come up with something for before I return the etching cream though, because cups with designs are just so much more fun. 

Speaking about fun glasses, some time ago I found a wine glass on Etsy that I just had to own.

I mean, it's the goddamn Crescent Moon Wand from Sailor Moon in the form of a wine glass. I just... I just didn't understand a universe in which I didn't own this glass. Sadly for me, this one was already sold. So I immediately messaged the Etsy shop owner offering just all the money for one of these. This was in April of this year. And I got... crickets.  Nothing. No response. I investigated the seller's shop, all the reviews were good except for the most recent one from December of 2016, where the shop owner basically stopped communicating with the customer, never sent the ordered item, and ended up just cancelling the order with no warning or reason. There had been nothing since then, despite the fact that the seller's shop appeared to still be up and running. I realized for some reason this seller had dropped off the face of the planet.

I continued to wait for a bit, hopeful. But I eventually realized I wasn't going to hear anything. And then I had this idea. I mean, I'm a crafty person. The decorations on this glass were made of polymer clay, and I may not be a sculptor, but these were really pretty simple shapes. I bet I could do that. So I bought an extra wine glass when I was buying stuff for etching, and got some pink and yellow Fimo from the craft store. 

I used this image for reference, along with the picture of the original wine glass:

To start with, I made a long, fairly wide yellow oval and pointed the tips. I cut a slit a little further than halfway to allow me to wrap it around the wine glass stem, and then shaped that to the curve of the glass.

It actually ended up being slightly too far to one side, so I just rolled a small snake of clay and pressed that into the too narrow side and smoothed them together, using an xacto knife to neaten and straighten the edges. 

After that I covered the stem in a thin, but not too thin, layer of pink clay, and covered the base in a layer of yellow. I rolled a thicker snake of yellow that went around the seam between the pink and yellow at the base. Then I made a ball out of the pink clay, just sort of eyeballing the size, cut it in half, and then, lining it up with the direction the crescent was going, smoothed that into the top of the stem.

In the end, I got this:

For the decorations on that round part, I made two small yellow disks, slightly smaller around than the pink part, made two smaller red circles out of the clay I still had left from my Sailor Pluto earrings, put those on the yellow circles near the top, made small crescent moons and the little wing/ribbon things that come out of the top of the circle, and a dozen tiny yellow balls. Put them all together based on my reference, and got something that looked pretty damn accurate.  After that was done I added two small pink stars just under the round part. Obviously since I was making two of everything I was mirroring each side so they'd both look good no matter which side you looked at the cup from.

For the record, my version is more accurate than the Etsy glass, she just did a sparkly ball with some weird wing things that don't look anything like the real thing. I modeled mine after the details on the actual Crescent Moon Wand.

I was terrified of the baking stage, I was so scared that the wine glass would shatter. I baked it for two hours at 230 degrees. When it was done, I turned the oven off, but didn't open it, let it sit for a half hour, then cracked the oven open and let it sit for another half hour, and only then would I remove it from the oven. I let that thing cool nice and slow to avoid temperature shocking the glass.  This is what I had when it came out:

Picture made larger so you can see the details at the top of the stem.

Upon retrospect, perhaps I should have expected the pink clay to darken like that, I didn't pick the lightest shade of pink, really. But other than the too dark pink, that looks pretty damn sweet. I was so excited at this part. I knew the pink was wrong, but I also knew I owned some pearly pink paint that I had bought for yet another Sailor Moon project (Makoto's pink rose earrings, freaking forever ago) that would be exactly the right color, and I know polymer clay has no objection to being painted.

So I painted. And painted. And painted some more. It took like freaking five or six coats to cover that dark pink.

This is like three coats in I think? And look how blotchy it still is. Geez. But I did eventually get it smooth. I also ended up doing like three coats of yellow over the yellow parts, there were some bits of lint and things in the yellow clay that I didn't like the look of, but since I wasn't actually changing the base color it didn't take as many coats as the pink. 

Partway through this process, Rachel had just the most amazing idea. You know how partway through Sailor Moon using this wand it gets the silver crystal planted in the crescent? Well, obviously with this wine glass the glass itself is kinda being the crystal, but what if one were to buy an actual round crystal and glue it to the bottom inside the glass? How amazing would that be? I promptly became obsessed with this idea and started looking into it. Obviously I couldn't just use any old glue and crystal in something I intended to pour liquid into and then drink, that's just asking to get poisoned. So after exhaustive research I located a food safe waterproof silicone adhesive that was meant for things like aquarium repair, which sounded perfect, and a nice safe non-lead poisoning glass crystal. Goddamn, did I search hard for that crystal. I didn't want to order it online because I didn't want to wait, but after hitting every damn craft store I could find and getting nowhere, I broke down and ordered one. 

Once it arrived, I glued it in, added the red, yellow and green gems to the red circle, (which I already had from some other project, I don't even remember what) added a coat of clear Minwax Polycrylic, (god, I love that stuff, I use it on everything) just on the clay parts to protect the paint finish, and then my Sailor Moon Crescent Wand wine glass was complete!

Oh my god it's so pretty, I love it so much. So, if I had ordered it from the Etsy seller, she had been selling them for $40-$50, I believe, and I don't know what shipping would have been but for something like this it's gotta be minimum $10, and I'd count myself lucky if it was that cheap.  I spent $1 on the glass, $4 on the clay, $4 on the glue and $4 on the crystal. And I don't really count the glue, because I used such a small amount, and now I have the tube to use for whatever else I might need it for. It'll be handy for things like dish repair, if it's ever needed. And obviously the paint and gems don't count, since I had them from a previous project. So, even if you count the extras that I already had, this still cost me less than $20. And really, only cost me like $13. I'd say that's a pretty damn good deal, and I can't wait to drink out of this glass. 

Okay, okay, I swear I'm almost done here. There's just one more project to mention, it's not done yet, but I'm working on it. I decided I wanted to just crochet something for my niece Alara, she's only one, so crocheted toys are perfect, and I was gonna make her a Totoro. But then I found this image on Pinterest:

Oh my god, isn't that so cute you could die? Shannon saw it and immediately demanded one, but there was no pattern for it, just an image.  But after thinking about it, I realized it was really just a pikachu pattern done in grey with a yellow face and a border around the face to make it look like a hoodie. I could totally do that. So that's what I'm working on. Once I get it assembled I'll get some pictures. And yes, I am making two, I couldn't really just make one for Alara when I knew Shannon wanted one too that badly. I should have plenty of yarn, I hope. 

Okay. You tired of this post yet? I totally am. And I'm out.