I can't seem to stop...

I mean.... I just wanted a Sailor Moon wine glass. That's all I wanted. This one wine glass I found on Etsy. If that seller had just responded to my messages and sold me the wine glass, none of this would have happened. I never needed a massive collection of nerdy wine glasses! Even after I did the pirahna plant glass, I felt satisfied with what I'd done, I didn't feel like I needed more. But then the idea of a nerdy set happened and I felt that fire in my stomach of a really good project, and it's really just gotten out of hand. I just lost control of this somewhere along the way.

I have three more glasses to show you. And a fourth in progress. Aaaaand right this second as I type this I just got ideas for like three more that I desperately want. I'm gonna hold on to those ideas though, we're gonna let them sit a bit before moving on them. Let's focus on what's done.

The first two are their own set. I had a set of plain wine glasses I wanted to paint because I really wanted a set of galaxy wine glasses. So while hanging out with Shannon one night that's what I did. Just to be clever I did a layer of glitter paint, a layer of silver and then a layer of black, so the interior of the glass is shiny but the outside is galaxy. You can find a hundred different tutorials online for painting galaxy, I'm not going to go into it here.

When I was done I liked them, but I really wanted them to be nerdy somehow. Suddenly I realized I have multiple fandoms based in space! I looked into the idea of getting vinyl stickers for Serenity from Firefly and the TARDIS. I had some trouble finding ones small enough, since usually people buy these to go on the back of laptops or car windows, not wine glasses, but I found a few I thought might work. Maybe. I did still have concerns about the durability of the stickers on things that were going to be washed frequently, but I figured it was worth a shot.

And then. That moment. You know the one. I realized what I really needed was to sculpt Serenity and the TARDIS out of clay around the base if the stems. It was a risky plan, I wasn't at all certain if I could make something that actually looked like Serenity. I knew I could do the TARDIS, that was easy. So I started with Serenity, figuring if I was gonna fail it was better to fail right away. And things went better than expected!

When making the TARDIS I did my best to keep the clay unattached to the stem of the wine glass, I would have loved it if it could have been loose and spinny on there, just like the real TARDIS travelling through space. But unfortunately it stuck during baking and I didn't dare try pushing too hard on it to get it loose out of fear of breaking something. But it still looks good. There you go:

They're less clay intensive than my others, but I'm pleased with them. They make a nice little set and I'm not unhappy with my slightly awkward looking Serenity.

So, to make up for the last clay intensive wine glasses, I decided to do the MOST CLAY INTENSIVE WINE GLASS YET. The thing was, I'd finally come up with my Final Fantasy wine glass idea. How great would it be if my wine glass was. Moogle, with the glass being his head? I could get a spring to put his bobble on so it would bounce around and it would be so damn adorable. It took one quick hardware store trip to find the right spring, so I went and got me another big brick of white clay.

Stu and I had recently finished the Final Fantasy 13 series, and I loved Mog in that, so I briefly considered making my moogle that specific Mog, but I eventually decided I didn't necessarily want to represent one specific Final Fantasy alone, I wanted a general Final Fantasy glass, so I needed a more generic moogle that would be my Mog. His face took some tweaking to get right, I wanted his round little cheeks and I realized pretty quick he needed a jaw to go with it. 

I made his nose and his bobble out of Sculpey Souffle clay to keep them light and less likely to just droop. I made his body out of clay all the way through, which I knew wasn't a great idea but I was worried about getting the shape right with a foil core around a wine glass stem. And it did give me a nice stab-able object to push the wire I built his wings around into to keep them supported.

I had a little trouble deciding on how I wanted to accessorize him, I couldn't choose between having him hold a book or wear a shoulder bag, so I actually created a Facebook poll to get my nerdy friends' opinions, and book won by a landslide. So I made him a little book, anchored his bobble as well as I could, and he was ready to bake.

Before I put him in, I had this thought. Hey, maybe I should fill the cup with foil to kinda prop up the bobble during baking. And then I dismissed that thought, figuring I was being paranoid. You already know what happened. He'd been in the oven for less than ten minutes and when I checked on him his bobble had completely flopped over and broken off.  So I frantically pulled him out, propped it up, added more clay and propped it this time.

I think I'm establishing a new policy where every time I think, "Hey, maybe I should..." I'm just gonna do it and see what happens when I actually listen to my intuition.

This time, I wondered if I should build a foil seat under Mog to keep his body from sliding, but what was definitely crazy, right?

So he went back in the oven. The bobble was propped, but when I went to pull him out of the oven, his body had detached from his head and slid to the base of the wine glass, which had also caused his legs to snap off. Abso-fucking-lutely perfect. He'd also formed a few cracks in various places, which didn't really surprise me based on the thickness of the clay in certain places. That's why you're not supposed to have such thick clay spots. So, I pulled Mog out, let him cool, and used super glue to put him back together. I then spent some time carefully smoothing fresh clay over his cracks to cover them. I was super meticulous while smoothing on the fresh clay, I wanted my patches to be as invisible as possible, but I figured I'd have to paint him to really cover them. I figured I'd have to do that anyways, it's so hard to work with white clay and not get it all linty.

So I rebaked him with the fresh clay. Nothing terrible happened this time aside from a few small reappearing cracks. I had to sand down the patches a bit, but otherwise he seemed okay.

The next step was painting him. I've been using acrylic enamel paints on my polymer clay lately, it seems to hold up better and still gives me a bit of gloss like I want. So I gave Mog a nice bright coat of paint and he looked great. I needed to put him back in the oven to bake the paint and I figured that wouldn't be a problem at all.

Sigh.

I open the oven when he's done and his damn cute little butt is back on the base of the wine glass and the bobble is 100% broken off and dropped into the glass. The only thing I can do is pull him out and wait for him to cool. I managed to tip him upside down and get his body slid back into place so that it would cool in the correct shape and I just set the bobble off to the side. When he was cooled his body was stuck in place again, but the lump of white clay at the base of the bobble had cooled in a bad shape so it wouldn't fit neatly anymore. I managed to solve that by heating the bobble up again and then mildly burning my fingers as I pressed the piece into it's spot on the back of Mog's head to make it cool back into shape. I then nearly super glued my fingers to Mog's head when gluing the bobble back in place, but I finally got it there. It wasn't perfectly neat, but I put a few thick layers of paint over the seam and figured I'd just leave it. Ladies dig scars, right?

I had no intentions of baking him again for the fresh paint. I figured it is possible to air cure the paint, and I don't dare put him in the oven again. His body seemed stuck in place, but I ran a ring of super glue over where I knew the crack was anyways just to be safe, since I knew it wasn't actually attached, and called him done.

He's perfectly darling, and I love the way his bobble actually bounces around because of the spring, but I do know that thing is going to dip into my wine all the time. I'll just have to make sure it's nice and clean. I've already dropped my Scuttle into my wine with my Little Mermaid glass, so it's just more of the same.

Like I said, there is also another glass in progress, but you're going to have to wait to see what that one is!

The Producers Dominate Rose City ComiCon!

So, I would say that my first major con was a success. It was a great weekend full of amazing costumes, brief moments with a few of my favorite celebrities, way too expensive merch, massively overpriced alcohol, and a very important lesson.

FOR FUCK'S FUCKING SAKE YOU FUCKING DUMBASS, STOP WEARING HEELS TO CONS.

Seriously. Are you stupid? That's not a rhetorical question, I really want an answer. Why did you think you could do that? Was your previous experience not traumatizing enough? You are now 0 for 2 on not destroying your feet at cons. Get a goddamn clue.

Now, to be fair these weren't quite as bad as Sailor Pluto's stiletto boots, but it was bad enough to finally drill it into my head. If a character wears heels, I absolutely must sacrifice accuracy for ability to survive. Unless I'm entering the costume contest, and even then, only wear heels for the contest itself.

So, we got to Portland late Thursday night, and basically just hung out in the hotel drinking beers and doing the last minute costume touches that needed done. It was pretty chill, until the moment Danny reached out to poke Matt in the side, Matt retaliated and Danny took a fucking dive over the office chair at the desk, solidly bruising his ribs that he then complained about the rest of the weekend. But nothing party-ending. 

Friday the con didn't open until 1, so we had a nice leisurely breakfast at a cute little local place, and then had all day to get in costume. It was pretty quiet there that day, but we all looked amazing.

Saturday I started off dressed as Princess Peach for the prejudging for the costume contest. It was a lot of fun wearing that costume, everyone recognized it, and I felt like a Disney princess in Disneyland because all the little kids recognized me and were so excited to see me. I loved that. It took quite a while to get into the building, it was much, much busier that day. By the time we got in I was running late for the prejudging and starting to worry. I sprinted there only to find that I probably had another hour wait for my turn in the prejudging. I started to do my anxiety thing looking at all the amazing costumes around me, feeling like I didn't belong, and on top of that, realizing it was nearly noon and there was no way I was going to have time to do this prejudging and get back to the hotel to change to Ulla and make it back in time for my David Tennant picture. So I ended up bailing on the contest. It was going to cause too many problems. Cari and I sprinted back to the hotel to change and after that I was kinda relieved that I wouldn't have to worry about changing again.

So, I agreed to let Cari and Dante (our Gay Hitler) join me in my David Tennant picture to help reduce costs, so the three of us got in line. I realized we could see through the gap in the curtain and just barely see David, so we took a dorky stalkery selfie. It was at this point I started to fangirl a little about what was about to happen, I'd been to busy running before to think about it. 

When we got in there David was just everything I thought he'd be. Sweet and charming and friendly. He was a bit taken aback by Dante's Hitler costume, even when we explained he was gay Hitler from the Producers, and we'd replaced all his swastikas with gay pride pins. His exact line was "but you are still dressed as a Nazi." But Dante cranked up the fabulous to 11 and David thought that was pretty good. I have a distinct memory of David's hand on my back and I'm very happy about that.

Shortly after that we had to get in line for our John Barrowman picture, who was the whole inspiration for the costume. We got in line and absolutely thrilled the people around us who recognized us when Dante burst into song. When it came to our turn, we were informed that we needed a second ticket to have this many people in the picture, which none of us were aware of. So I sprinted off to quickly buy a second ticket. That took long enough that everyone else went through and they ended up deciding not to worry about it so we didn't hold things up, so I sprinted back and we went in. John was thrilled by our costumes, of course he knew who we were right away. He said no one had ever done the Producers for him before. He was more than happy to wear the hat we brought for him, as long as there were no symbols on it, which of course there weren't. And he loved Dante's pins.

We got recognized more than I thought we would, mostly by people loudly singing Springtime for Hitler at us, which was pretty great. But there were tons of people who had no idea who we were. It was fun anyways. Cari had some pretty dramatic bad luck Saturday though, it seemed like everyone in the world was out to knock her drinks out of her hands. I lost count how many she had spilled, it was pretty bad, especially with how freaking expensive the alcohol was there. But afterwards when we left the con we went out to karaoke and had a great deal of fun.

Most of our time over the weekend was spent just wandering around looking at cool costumes, getting our picture taken, buying too much merch, and paying too much for wine and beer. I'm now going to wildly spam you with pictures of the cool stuff we saw.

       

I also encountered a darling little girl wearing the same Princess Peach dress I had been, but I had changed out of it by that point. She's not my kid, so I'm not going to post her picture, but she was a perfect darling little doll and my biggest regret is not having a picture of the two of us together in our matching dresses.

In the end I had a great time, spent just. So. Much. Money. And determined that maybe celebrity photo ops are too expensive for what you get. But I can't wait for my next one!