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.

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.