Crafty Crap: Painting Edition

Taking a completely lateral leap, I have been PAINTING!

I had a Girls’ Day Out with some friends in January, and we went to one of those drink-cocktails-and-paint-canvases studios. I was being a bit of a Bad Elitist Hipster about it at first - the entire website looked like it catered to Soccer Yoga Pinterest Minivan Moms, and...well, I have a degree in painting - but I ended up having a lot of fun!

(Okay, I did go a little bit hipster, and brought my own paint. Look, the studio works in acrylics, and acrylic paint is the most evil of all paint media. My jam of choice is water-mixable oils, which get me all the flexibility and blending capabilities of oil, without the need for nasty, dangerous, hard-to-dispose-of solvents and thinners.)

So, this was my result:

Some Random Craftiness

Playing catch-up and catch-all in this post!

For Christmas, Pieface’s generation has finally grown to the point where we started implementing a gift exchange (she has seven cousins on her dad’s side, with #8 on the way  arrived on the 6th!). Pieface was paired with her youngest cousin, G. Now, a few years back, one of my sisters-in-law had made craft aprons for all the nieces and nephews, but little G wasn’t born at that point. So her mom asked me for an apron, and, when asked about colors/patterns, she said “Well, she likes red…and my nickname for her is Piglet.”

Bickety-bam, inspiration.

The apron is fully reversible, with a pocket on each side, and ties made of double-folded bias tape. 

The striped fabric is Graphix Stripes in pink and burgundy, from Fabric.com; the pink is solid broadcloth from JoAnn. 

I used measurements and the pattern from Aesthetic Nest (found via Google searching) – it turned out way too big for an 18-month-old, but at least there’s room to grow!

I also made a little Calcifer for my Taeyang Howl:

Calcifer, Howl's fire demon sidekick/servant/friend, is made of Translucent Sculpey (with a hint of orange mixed in). He's bowl-shaped - his inside is hollow - and I bought a pack of mini LED lights from Michael's to put in his innards.

I painted on some flame accents and his face with acrylics. If I were being completely book-faithful, Cal should be mostly blue-green in color, but he just wasn't reading as "fire" when I made a version in blue-green. (The final Cal was version #4 or #5...I went through a lot of unsuccessful prototypes.)

He sits quite nicely in Howl's hands, if I do say so myself!

I have quite a bit of crafty catchup to do - hopefully I can get pictures edited and posts up soon!

Quickie Update

Just popping in with a few items of note:

First, I'm clearing out a few doll-related odds and ends on AGPT, to help free up space and finance costume stuff. Sale thread is here. 

Next, the Rapunzel dress is 95% complete. I am now in the arduous process of attaching the lace appliques to the skirt, which means that every night this past week, I have been sitting in front of the Dollcave's closet door (where the dress is hanging), hand-stitching away while listening to Pandora.

(Pandora likes to rickroll me while I'm trying to untangle knots. It's slightly evil.)

This is a shot from earlier this week:

The lace now extends about 1/3 of the way around on each side. I'm nervously eyeing my stock of appliques and hoping I have enough!

And, just so I can say "I knew these skills would come in handy", I have successfully worked on office clothing. See, a while back I bought this skirt from the Prabal Gurung for Target line:

It is the cutest skirt, but just a wee bit too short for my liking. I can get away with wearing it at work, but I find myself smoothing it down constantly to make sure it covers enough. So today at Hancock Fabrics, I took advantage of a 50%-off sale on trims and bought some wide lace to attach to the underskirt:

Cute, and adds just that smidgen of length I've been wanting!

NEXT TIME: I have just begun work on the Elinor dress from Brave. Let's see how this goes!

Doll Stuff, For Once

Well now, I'm posting about doll stuff. I...honestly wasn't expecting that.

For those who haven't seen it, Doll Diaries posted a lot of photos from the soft opening of the new American Girl store in Columbus, over here:

http://dolldiaries.com/more-new-ag-items-at-columbus-store/

I live about 2 hours away from Columbus, so I've obviously been looking forward to the store opening. And some of the new stuff? I am dangerously close to having a SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY moment, and I honestly can't remember the last time I had that reaction to an AG release. SCIENCE KIT. BENTO LUNCH. GREY STRIPE HOODIE. Robin wants it ALL. :D

I'm just about ready to walk into AG Columbus and walk out without a doll, which is a thing that seemed unthinkable a year ago. The truth is, I'm at a point where AG is my lowest priority when it comes to fun-money spending (costumes are #1 right now, lol), and I'm quickly running out of space for new dolls. (I really want to get another shelf up on the wall, so the Small Dolls can have their own space, Team Historical can be properly displayed, and I can rotate the dolls in the Team Modern display.) Right now, it seems like a far better idea to just get accessories and clothes!

 In costume news, the Rapunzel dress is frighteningly close to finished:

Side Quests in Cosplay: Prop Making!

Over Memorial Day weekend, I was going insane - I had all my costume pieces cut and ready to go. But the lilac thread, the same thread I'd used for Pie and which has been hanging around uselessly for the last two years, was nowhere to be found. I was dying to work on the outfit, and had no way to do so!

So I went off on a side project - making my prop frying pan. Now, the easiest and most accurate thing to do would be to buy a cast-iron skillet and carry it around, but cast-iron is heavy, and excess weight gets very old very fast in a crowded convention center. So I started thinking of ways I could have a frying pan to carry that wouldn't add a lot of extra weight, and would pass muster with convention security.

Yes, I am still alive.

Ugh, I know, I know, it's been ages.

First, I'm beginning to suspect that post-holiday Doll Burnout is an annual thing with me. Too many new shinies at one time = not wanting anything to do with them for a month afterward.

Also, this thing has been ruling my evenings for the past few weeks:



Summer is nearly on us. Convention season is nigh. "Be the chubby cosplayer" is not on my to-do list.

Pullip Princess Customs - Merida

When it came time to customize Merida, her eyes were by far the most challenging.

Costume Time!

October = Halloween, and Halloween = COSTUMES!

 Look, I'm 30, or as close to as makes no difference. The only times I can wear pretty froofy costumes are a) at a convention (see previous entry) and b) Halloween, so I live it up with I get the chance.

 But before I had fun, there were others who needed costumes!

Saturday Craftnernoon Adventures: AG Pets!

Continuing the backlog clearout...it's Saturday Crafternoon Adventures, featuring Make Your Own AG Pets!

Okay, I'm pretty sure all of AG fandom had a simultaneous squee moment when we saw McKenna's hamster, followed by the biggest unsquee when we realized it was bundled with a bed that costs more than my monthly student loan payment. Like many others, I went for the DIY route.



Yep, it's a goldfish! He was inspired by my late Fishsticks, who was won in a carnival fishbowl toss game, and led a life of more longetivity and adventure than most fish.

Clearing the Backlog: Sculpey Food Fun

Okay, I'm pretty sure this is the last of the backlog!

After I found that awesome little cookware set from my last entry, I had to make some Sculpey food for the girls. I'm not terribly good at making fake food (at least, not realistic-looking fake food like I see on AGPT or Etsy), but it's a nice way to make some doll stuff during those times I just can't stand to look at my sewing machine. :D




Three meals for three dolls.

Two Crafts: DIY Doll Hangers and a Kid's Play Crown

One of the unexpected bonuses from The Pie's Springfield Collection dress was this:



A thick cardboard hanger that was used to put it on the store display.

Now, one of the things I have a serious shortage of is hangers, and I have never quite been able to bring myself to shell out $8 for a dozen AG-brand hangers (which probably cost next to nothing to manufacture, I've seen "How It's Made").

So I thought, "Cardboard, eh? I can do that." I found a piece of mat board that I scrounged from art school years ago, and set to tracing:



After cutting them out, I gave them a couple coatings of ModPodge for extra stability.





And here they are, doing their duty in the modern girls' wardrobe. And for anyone reading, have a freebie template:



Print at 100% (should be roughly 7" wide), grab some board, and set to tracing!

My second crafty endeavor was a play crown for The Pie, who is in full-time Princess Mode. (This is mostly adorable, but I could do without the bits where she refuses to wear pants because "princesses don't wear pants, Mommy!")

I got the instructions from this tutorial at Bitter Betty Blogs. Basically, it calls for coating a length of lace trim in gold paint, coating with ModPodge, and shaping it into a circle.

The needed materials:



The finished product:



And now Pieface has a princess crown that isn't plastic, and doesn't snap if I accidentally step on it!

New Home, New Stuff!

Now that we're settling into our new apartment, the girls are settling into their new home:



And as soon as we unpacked boxes, new doll stuff started arriving!

Playing Catch-Up

So, uh, it's been a while, and things have happened.

First, a farewell: my Karito Kid, Eva, has gone to a new home! She's a lovely doll and I loved the character I gave her, but she was hard to sew for and I wanted to narrow my collection a bit. She's now with beast'sbelle over at Never Grow Up, and seems to have found a happy home there!

Second, some squee: The weekend before Ash Wednesday, I was browsing eBay before giving up doll spending for Lent...and sniped three auctions in two days.

Non-Sewing Crafty Crap

AHOY MATIES! Barmy Wee Jen here, celebratin' International Talk Like a Pirate Day!


...ookay, that's enough of that.

Anyway, I've been doing a lot of non-sewing crafty stuffs lately (mostly as a distraction from the sloooow going of Elizabeth's mob cap), and thought I'd throw some pics up.



Beadwork!