Snowflake earrings

These are just simple earrings I did for my friend's birthday. Wire, Ear hooks, some little crystals and a lot of twisting.

I guess this means I'm kind of a twisted friend...

Halloween Wizard and Princess 2009

This year for Halloween Jay wanted to be a Wizard, thank goodness. Jordi wanted to be a princess. Between their choices and Tali's I think I may just have to go as an Author to round out the grouping. Get it? lol

My kids have fun taste in fabric. It has made this process so much fun.

These are the concept drawings, though I have diverged greatly from this, as is my right as the artist (and the kids keep changing thier minds):

I love to use objects already on hand as patterns, hooded sweaters, t-shirts that fit just right, and my mother's old patterns from when I was a kid.

A word about my mother. My mom can do anything, and does do whatever she sets her mind to, no wonder I turned out the way I did. Sometime after USA Today ran an article on her and before she got her Doctorate level degree, she passed down her sewing patterns to me. I think I was the only daughter with kids at the time. Having watched in awe as she created incredible things all my life I was happy to have them. It was like she was passing on much more though, like it was my turn to be super-woman. I have never doubted that she knew I could do it, though at times she has raised an eyebrow at my methods, my mother has always believed that I could do anything I set my mind to. I only have to apply the thought, hard work, and love that she put into all her creations. I can only hope that the intangible legacy of creativity and tenacity that she left me is one I will leave my children. My mother doesn't expect me to follow her footsteps, I can make my own path, but she will tell you she expects me to surpass her someday. Nawh... we'll just be equals, sisters, like we always have been. (I love you Mom.)

Okay, back on track.
I used a combination of things as patterns for the cosutmes, sweatshirt hoods, t-shirts, patterns, and self drawn patterns. For Jordi's dress I extended and flared a t-shirt. Then the over layer is a big rectangle that I gathered, over-sleeves are gathered rectangles too. Jay's tunic is a large t-shirt extended, the cloak is a different take on the same pattern.






The over sleeve was machine gathered on the edge seam, so that it would lay right under her arm. You just do a long stitch, then gently scoot it down one of the threads.



Then with the skirt I attached it at the hem and waist, it hung down quite a bit, which was the plan. I pinned it up so that the hem was where I wanted it, then put in a few pins where I would stitch. Then I did a second round of the lifting and stitching so that I ended up with a fluffy skirt that has kind of bunched layers.



I did quite a bit of Applique on Jay's costume. If you have never done applique, this is what I picked up watching my mom. You pin well then sew a line right along where you want the edge. Trim very close to the stitching, then do a tight zig-zag over the top.


I think they turned out rather well.

(The Runes on the cloak read Magic Gift, Magic Wisdom, Magic Health, Magic Enlightenment, Protection, Victory, Joy)

For Jordi's crown I used a button, a few beads, and wire. I put the button in the middle of the wire and started twisting. It was a lot of fun. It's amazing what a girl can do with a few tools and a lot of love.

The finished product on the models:

Halloween Dragon 2009

I know it's not here yet, but I'm in the preparation stages (if in doubt why, read my other blog). I'm going to keep editing this as I add things, I have split this one off as it is so involved.
This year Tali is going to be a dragon. I like the challenge of doing a dragon costume.

So here are the fabrics for all the costumes:

And here is the concept drawing:


I have a personal rule when making costumes. "Do what scares you first." So I started on the dragon head right away. I'm also worried about how to put together the haunches and tail, but that's simmering on my mental burner and may be there a while before I make a cut. I need to get it fully figured out so I don't waste fabric.

For the dragon head I purchased a pack of floral foam for $2. I glued the blocks together to make carving easier.

Then I put some bamboo skewers in for strength.

I studied some pictures of the dragon head shape I like and sketched it out with a crochet hook.

I started carving (note: if you do this, wear a mask and goggles, you don't want that stuff in your eyes and lungs). This was done with straight edged knifes. Then I hollowed out an area to sit on top of the head and cut the skewers where they got in the way. Then I added some more skewers for more strength.


I cut a strip of the snakeskin looking vinyl and carefully placed holes for the eyes. I wrapped the head, pinning underneath and making notches to get the fit right. The pattern of the vinyl helped mask the edges where it overlapped in back and front. Then I stitched on the bottom.

I needed to finish the eyes, so I glued on a piece to the back of each eye, then painted the front with glue. The glue has a lower water content and keeps the paint from making the floral foam turn to mush. It also creates a good painting surface, which is why one should always get paint-able glue. After the glue was dry (okay, it was about a week, life got in the way) I painted over it with acrylic paint and sealers. Thankfully I paid attention in the one art class I took in high school so this was not a challenge. Thanks Mrs. B. Tali wanted red eyes, to match the red ridge and tail tip she wants, and I did accents in silver and black for obvious reasons.

As far as the body, I like to do mock-ups in paper towels. I know, professionals use muslin, but I'm not wasting money like that, lol. So I use papertowels and tape. I spent a whole day thinking, sketching, measuring, cutting, and taping. Then when I tried the mock up on her it needed some adjustments, but that is what a mock up is for. The initial sketching and tiny mock up:

The leg with the additional piece to make it stand away from the body, and the quill inside, because I love my quills:

The finished mock up(Why one arm and one leg? Because you don't need a full suit, just enough to try the fitting of each piece):

These are the outer pieces of the dragon costume, they were lined to give support.

This is it, sewed together:

I also cut 3" squares out of red fabric to fold in to quarter triangles and put along the back. The zipper goes down the back.

I decided to tackle the teeth one day when I had the morning off of work. I made them out of sculpey with an aluminum core, baked them, painted them, and screwed them into the head.

I think I make a pretty good dentist, lol.

I also decided to put eyelashes on the eyes, to compliment the tail, and because the yarn was calling to me plaintively from the basket, and who can resist plaintive yarn?

We found some gloves in the fishing department, and I hand stitched on some claws and skin backing. My fingers may never forgive me.

I would go into detail about how I made the feet slippers out of flip-flops, fabric, batting, and pins, but mylanta it was complicated. Thank goodness I paid attention to how my cabbage patch dolls were made. (See mom it was a good investment!)

The wings are fabric, wire, paint, velcro, and lots of starch. I poured it in our spray bottle undiluted and went to town on the wings as they hung outside. They dried wonderfully stiff and keep this shape when horizontal. The wire runs from the base of the end that attaches to the back up to the point at the wing top. The rest is all starch. They are very lightweight and will be gloriously in the way as she goes to the parties. I can't wait!

This is the candy bucket, she wanted an egg shaped one. I built it around a pumpkin bucket. I should have done a balloon as the base for the fabric-mache (not paper) but wouldn't you know I didn't have a balloon? Ah well, it works.

Here she is in the finished costume!

We had a knight attending the party at church, so they had a bit of fun, lol.

Dress-up-blocks

It's amazing what you can do with a few slices of 2x4 and a trip to the craft store.

I call these "Dress-up-blocks" but I'm sure the clever person who originally came up with them had a different name for them. I did one for a ladies meeting at church a few years ago and decided to make some to give away as presents this fall. When we made them before we had little stocking caps and scarves to go with the carrot noses.

I've expanded upgraded a bit from there. This group has 3 outfits each. They can be scarecrows all fall, ghosts for Halloween, and snowmen at Christmas. Back when I made my first I came up with the idea to make one eye wink, and this time added the full grin with squinched eyes look to one. All those hours doodling in class seem to have paid off. Once again I took someone's great idea and improved upon it. This practice tends to scare people away, which is sad because once you get over my creativity I can be a really nice person. Honest!

Okay, now for the directions. (Because I KNOW someone will ask.) I'm not going to step by step you through all the outfits, but I'll give you enough to get rolling.

You will need:

• Time, lots of it, and if you are making the ghosts they dry 24 hours... so no table for 2 days kind of time.


• A dime, in addition to the money you are spending on this.


• 2x4, and get a nice straight, smooth one for your own sake. (splinters stink)


• Acrylic paint: black, white, brown, orange, and CRACKLE


• Painter's pen, black


• Sculpey, for the noses. You can get different colors and scratch the colored paint from the list, or you can get white and paint after baking. Me? I have about... 3 lbs of white in my craft closet.


• The little cylinder shaped wooden pegs used for joining wood. Just ask the burly guy at Lowes. You can also buy a dowel and cut pegs, if you reaaaaaalllly want to.


• Paint brushes, toothpicks, sandpaper, hot glue & gun, table protection, tin foil


• A nice chopsaw for cutting the wood, or use your feminine charms to get the burly guy at Home Depot to cut your wood in 8 through 12 inch blocks, or con someone's husband into doing it. Personally, I'm in love with my miter/chop saw. It's hot, way hotter than the guy at the store.


• Drill and bit to fit the wooden pegs, and make a test hole on scrap wood, please.


• Half of the craft store for making the outfits. I used felt AND sticky back felt, 5 different fabrics, raffia, Christmas garland, fake flowers, cheese cloth, liquid starch, yarn... whatever makes your eyes twinkle and that wicked little grin cross your face.

The process (and you thought the shopping was fun)

Blocks:

• Cut up a 2x4, if you do not have a nice miter box chop saw, find someone who does. You do not want them toppling. Mine are 8-12 inches high. The shortest one is kind of hard to dress.


• Sand away the splinters. Dust off the sawdust.


• Paint them black, let dry.


• Put on a coat of crackle paint, let dry.


• Slather on a layer of white paint, the thicker the coat, the better it crackles. Do not second coat, and try to go in one direction while slathering, let dry.


• Use a dime on paper to make a circle. That circle is the dark part of an eye, so move the dime up a bit and draw in the oval. Make a template of where you want the nose hole and eyes to go. Cut it out and transfer by tracing the holes onto the block w/ a pencil.


• Use a paint pen to draw the eye, let dry.


• If you want a wink, make a curve from 7 o'clock to 3 o'clock on the oval of the eye, extend to make wrinkles.


• Use a toothpick and white paint to make the twinkles.


• Draw on a smile.


• Drill the hole for the nose.

Noses:
Shape out of Sculpey, and insert the peg in back. Bake according to the package directions, paint.
Snowmen can have carrots or buttons, Frosty had a button, and I’ve never seen that IRL, so I do carrots.
Carrots: shape a cone, use your fingernail to put lines like the winkles in a carrot. If in doubt, go get a carrot out.
Ghost noses: Have fun, get a little crazy; ghosts get to have humorous noses.
Scarecrow noses: I opted for brown triangles, but if an evening on google image search leaves you with another idea, I will not be offended.

Outfits:
Okay, so this is really the hard part, and I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to describe it all. So I’ll give you this.

Felt hat:
Take a sheet of sticky felt, cut it in half across the width. Center a 2x4 chunk and trace. Cut a shape like this >-<>

Ghosts: Liquid fabric starch and cheese cloth. Just make the shape you want out of aluminum foil as kind of a hat on your block, put a layer of foil over it all to protect your painting, cover w/ soaked cheesecloth, let dry. It’s easier than it looks.
Good luck!

Halloween 2008

We had our trunk-or-treat last night with the kids, and a little festival inside.

This year was a little tricky. We started planning our costumes in July, and I made the kids give my their final orders in mid-September. I was going as a Satyr (or Faun, if you prefer the later Roman word) so the girls wanted to be something similar. They finally settled on half unicorn half human, to go with my half goat half human costume.
My son said he wanted to be a robot. Specifically, a broken robot, who's head has come off, with a spring coming out where the head was, and big silver arms. He wanted the head to be his candy bucket... something about having people put candy in his head appealed to him, lol. He's so brilliant.

(Quick note, please excuse my oldest daughter's expression. She fell asleep in the car on the way over and this was as close to a smile as she was getting. She is usually the best behaved little girl, while her sister is the wild one. One would never know it by the pictures, lol.)

The hardest part, by far was my hooves. They were kind of like high heels with out the heel. I made them out of the fiberglass material used to make casts then built the rest around them. I just slip my foot in and they fit like a glove. After an hour or so my feet hurt like crazy, but it was worth it.

Here are some pics of my hooves, and on one I shaded in about where my foot sits so you can see how I built this hoof around it. The shoe extends out to the back and to the front too. There is a balance point in the middle just behind the ball of my foot that gave me a little stability.

Leprechan and Faries

We take Halloween seriously at my house. Not that we are into scarey stuff, because I really don't even like horror films, I just like having once a year that I can make pure fantasy come to life.
We begin discussing costumes in the spring, my plans for this year a positively wicked, and I can't wait to have them done... but this post is to brag about the past.
DDs wanted to be ballerina fairy princesses, which in translation means "Go crazy with pink, and make sure I have a tutu, wings, and a crown." I'm not hot on pink, but I let them pick, they will come around to my pov on pink someday, I'm sure.
DS wanted to be something just as magical, so we discussed Leprechans and he agreed that a mischvious little person was a perfect fit for him. I wonder why? lol

So I started with my concept drawings.





Then on Halloween we were a complete sucess!

Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater

Can I just say that fake, carve-able pumpkins are the best invention of the last few years? Seriously, no more getting all glum that Halloween is over and my masterpiece is moldy and has to be thrown away!

I wasn't sure how well the fake pumpkins would work, I like to have translucent areas on my pumpkins where the pulp remains and the skin is removed. So I did a test pumpkin. This is how it turned out.




To say I was encouraged by my success is an understatement, I sat and stared at it for an hour, lol.

So the next chance I got, I took out my dremel and made my traditional tribute to Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater on a tall pumpkin, this time for keeps!





I spent hours on it, hours. The grass, the pattern in his sweater, the flowers, the folds in the curtains, her pregnant belly, and the kitty in the window, they were all worth it, because I get to take it out year after year!

Note: If you are even thinking about doing this you MUST have swimming goggles, a face mask for breathing, ear plugs, and an easy to clean room. The Styrofoam dust is painful in the eyes and lungs, and gets EVERYWHERE. The pumpkin SCREAMS the entire time you are carving it. Very Halloween appropriate, but hard on the ears. The sections that are cut out should be cut out with a drill bit in the dremel, then use the carving tools to do the shallow groves and patterns.