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.

More Nerdy Wine Glasses!

Okay. So at this point I have a sweet Sailor Moon wine glass and an amazing set of Mario themed glasses. Now I'm getting into it. I'm loving working with the clay and it's probably one of my least expensive crafts I've ever picked up and I have so many other fandoms I'd love themed wine glasses for and I don't think I can stop.

So. What's the next fandom? Well, Legend of Zelda of course. And what's the new idea? A wine glass that looks like the hilt of the Master Sword. Genius. I love it. God, that's a lot of details and much more involved than the others. Are you sure? Do you have any other Zelda ideas? No? Master sword it is.

This time I do have progress pictures.

I did some research first, I had to decide which Master Sword I wanted. They're all similar of course, but there are some differences. Ocarina of Time is my game, but the sword in that one is kind of plain. So I went with a some what simplified Skyward Sword version. Sort of a merging of OOT and SS you could say.

So I started by wrapping the stem in a thick layer of aluminum foil to give myself a thicker handle, more like a sword hilt, and I wrapped some wire around the top of the stem and had it extend outward as a support base for the wing like hand guards. I was really excited when I found the idea to use foil like that, I wanted a good thick handle but definitely did not want to use the amount of clay it would take to do that.

This glass went much more slowly than my others, they were all single sittings, this one was in several stages over days.

The next stage was blending my custom color for the shade of blue I wanted, and then starting to cover things. I was using Kato Polyclay brand clay, and I mixed 1 oz of their blue with a quarter of an ounce of black and a quarter of an ounce of silver. It gave me a nice slightly shimmery metallic dark blue.

I covered the base, handle and about a quarter of the bottom of the glass with this blue.  For the wings, I basically rolled several snakes in various lengths and arranged them using the Skyward Sword picture for reference. In the future if I did this again I think I would use a clay extruder with a square shape and arrange them at an angle, point to point, for a more rigid angled shape, but I'm not unhappy with how this looks. I do sort of feel like I could do better though. 

If the colors seem super saturated in that picture, it's because they are. I had really bad lighting in this photo so I did some quick editing to bring up the contrast so you could actually see the shapes. 

After this it was mostly details, green straps around the handle, custom mixed color the same as the blue but with green instead, bands around the top and bottom of the handle, adding points on each side up from the hand guards with gold squares at the tip, the big gold jewel right in the middle, and of course, the Triforce front and center of everything. I had thought about doing a Hyrule Crest instead of just the Triforce, but I wasn't sure I could do it small enough in the available space and have it look good.

After that it was just baking and glazing, like usual. I tell you what, that bitch takes up some serious space on the shelf with those wings. I do think I could do better, but I am not at all unhappy with the result, especially for something with this many details combined with my relative lack of clay experience.

So, I'm still having a great time with this. Although I have learned using nicer firmer brands of clay leads to bruised palms, which was a new experience for me. I want more wine glasses. Of course I want a Final Fantasy themed one, but I can't come up with anything brilliant. I'd love to do more Mario glasses but I can't come up with any ideas that would really work on a regular wine glass. Boos, mushrooms, goombas, all would be awkward to build. Cari makes a joke about Boos to hold her booze and it gives me a powerful desire for this but I still don't have a good solution for this, it needs to be a very round glass to get the right shape and that's hard to find.

And then one day, I was at the dollar store with Shannon.

And we go through the fake flowers and whatnot section. There's a bunch of vases. And among the vases is a perfect bubble shaped container that is the most perfect glass I could have imagined to be a perfect little stemless Boo wine glass. I couldn't believe it. I mean, sure, it's technically a vase, but that doesn't mean it won't hold wine. I immediately buy three. One for me, one for Cari, since the booze joke was hers, and one for Rachel, because for just ages and ages Rachel's text message sound has been a Boo laugh on my phone.

I bought a giant brick of white clay, I had been gradually building a stockpile of clay colors so I didn't need anything else. Unfortunately, once again, I have no progress pictures.  So here's the description. 

(Also, just assume I'm doing all of these things three times, I worked on the three glasses simultaneously rather than making one and going to the next.)

First, I covered the entire glass with white clay. The whole damn thing. Next I made cones of foil with the ends turned up to look like Boo tails, and covered them in clay and attached them to the glasses. (You'll see pictures of this soon, you'll understand why in a minute) I made smaller cones for boo arms and attached them, turning up the ends a bit. I sketched the face out on a piece of paper to make sure I made it the right size for the glass. I had intended to do three dimensional tongues sticking out, but it just didn't look right so I made them flat instead. Added teeth, eyes, eyebrows, the whole thing. And this is how they turned out:

God, the lighting in my kitchen is so bad for taking pictures of these. I need to find a new place for pictures.

I love them so much. Cari and Rachel had no idea they were coming, so that was a fun surprise. And of course as soon as Cari has her Boo, she insisted she needed a shy faced Boo so she could have the set. I had no problem with this. So I went out, bought three more glasses and another brick of clay.

This time, I do have progress pictures.

So, same beginning steps. Cover the whole glass in clay. Make little foil cones and cover in clay. Attach. You'll notice there are bits of clay scattered around the foil cones, that is to fill in various dips and divots. I learned with the foil handle of my Zelda glass that (naturally) the clay forms to the unevenness of the foil and creates a rather bumpy surface that can be filled and smoothed from the outside, but is much easier to just avoid in the first place.

After this I made a custom pink blend, I'm afraid I don't have any idea what the proportions were, I just added tiny bits of red until it looked right to me. I rolled them out into very thin ovals and smoothed them on to the area where the face would be.

The regular Boo in the background was there for reference... and also to hold my wine.

The eyes and mouth were very simple, just little black segments of clay arranged in vaguely down turned curves.

The arms were a little bigger and thicker than on the original Boos, since I needed these ones to be partially hiding the face. I played with the shape until I liked it, then attached them.

I baked them, and then I spent an amazing amount of time trying to get the blush lines on his face just right. Those are hand painted on and were an absolute bitch to get looking right. Stu helped me, offering opinions and suggestions until it was right. They came out ridiculously adorable. And now all three of us have matching Boo sets!

I realize I have far more wine glasses than I need but I'm not sorry. I also have a blue, purple, and yellow wine glass all without specifically defined projects but the intention is to do something fun and clay related with them. I also have two other glasses I painted with glass paint, one is green with the intention of sculpting a tree around it, and one is red with the intention of attempting to make it look like Sailor Moon's Cutie Moon Rod. That's probably the next clay project. I tried to just buy a red wine glass for that but I had a great deal of trouble finding what I wanted. I found a set of red ones on eBay that had kind of an iridescent orange color too, but that was fine. They also had cool twisty stems and were made out of real crystal. The problem with using them for this Sailor Moon glass is that when I pulled them out of the box when they arrived, their beauty was absolutely breathtaking and I knew I could never alter them in any way, they were perfect exactly the way they were. Plus, they were crystal, which means that if you wet your finger and run it along the rim they sing. Clay would ruin that. So I just bought glass paint and painted a dollar store glass, it works just as well.

Okay. So, I do have one more thing I made, but I'm tired of typing, so that's another post I think.