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!

Final Christmas projects!

So, I finished up my last few Christmas projects in great time. There was no stressing over time limits, and it was so good after the clusterfuck that was Halloween. 

So, let's start with the Pikachus. I made two, one for my niece Alara and one for Shannon.

























The pattern I used is here: https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/bigger-pikachu-pokemon

So, basically what I did was I made the body and arms and legs in the blueish grey yarn. Then I kind of fudged a pattern for the ears and tail (not pictured) based on what I remembered from when I made a regular Totoro for my brother's old girlfriend, and later again for my daughter. I then made a white circle for the tummy, and a yellow one for the face, and after the face was sewn on, I picked up a ring of stitches around the face and crocheted a few times around to create a hoodie-type look. I think they're pretty damn adorable. I did make the face and tummy a little bigger for the second Pikachu because I felt like it looked better, but they're both pretty adorable. Getting the faces right was hard, though, and I still feel like I could have done better. But Shannon and Alara will love them, that's all that matters.

The other thing I had to do was paint my mom's tiles for her gift. I did five tiles, figuring if I messed one up I'd have an extra. I based the color scheme on the fact that she has one wall in her living room painted sage green, and worked on complimenting that. I took freshly poured and after dried pictures of each tile so you could see the way they changed as they dried. Dirty cup pours are so fascinating!

You can see the way the cells changed shape and new ones formed as it dried. Also, I have no idea where the purple came from. There was no purple in this mix, it was all greens and blues and one brown for contrast. That happened after I put the clear coat on top, and I'm completely mystified.

I like the way the dark blue lines twisted and bent on this one. Sorry about the glare on the edge of the dried tile, these things were so hard to photograph laid out on the table the way they were.



























I loved the big brown spot that opened up near the center of this one. Also, this was another one that had some mysteriously appearing purple.

I was super, super into that random dark blue slash in the corner, it was just so dramatic with all the lighter colors around it. I was a little sad that it kind of got smaller as it dried, but it still looks amazing.

This one basically just developed a lot more cells and circles, but it was probably the least changed when it was done.

So I decided to keep the third one for myself, since it had the least amount of green showing, and then I attached wall hanging hooks and felt pads to the back of each one, so these have the option of either being used as coasters or trivets or whatever, or being hung on the wall and used as art. They were super fun to do, and really quick and easy. The cool thing was I used the same colors on each one, poured in the same order in each cup, but each one is spectacularly unique. I want to make so many more of these, they're just so cool! And doing it on tiles that cost 46 cents at the hardware store, it's a pretty cheap hobby too. As long as you get cheap paint, since you're gonna burn right through it, haha.

The last Christmas project I had was Shannon and I wanted to make pajama pants, because new pajamas is a Christmas tradition. I usually just bought them from Old Navy, because Old Navy sold pajama pants that came in tall sizes, but apparently they discontinued that, so fuck those guys.  So Shannon and I went to Joann's and bought some cute polar fleece and made warm cuddly pants for ourselves, using pants we already owned as a pattern. There's dozens of tutorials for how to do that on the internet if you're interested, I didn't use any specific one. I just kinda figured it out. I also allowed Shannon to do her own sewing and cutting, so she made hers basically on her own, I was very proud of her. And proud of myself for resisting the urge to take it from her and do it myself because my perfectionist brain was dying a little watching her do it. But I let her do it, that's how she learns.  Unfortunately, I have neglected to take any pictures of the pants, so I'll have to get back to you on that.

When I bought the fleece, the stuff I picked out just happened to be near the end of the roll, so I got an extra yard of fabric for a steep discount, and now I have so much left over that I think I'm going to use it to make myself a new hoodie. I'll get back to you when that's done.

I have one more project that I'm working on right now, but it's not for Christmas, it's for New Year's. My friends Matt and Cari are having a New Year's eve party, and it's "Thrift store fancy dress". Which is a very loose guideline, basically dress fancy if you want, but keep it thrifty, thrift store purchases get extra points. And I decided that what I wanted to wear was my old junior year of high school prom dress, because with all the weight I've lost I was pretty sure I could fit into it. And I was right, with a little room to spare. So I'm overhauling the dress to make it more fun, and I have a whole outfit planned around it. But that is a project for another post, when I have pictures. 

It's gonna be amazing though. You'll see.

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.