Odin Sphere Mercedes - Headband

I ended up making this headband completely different from how I originally intended, which was to get wrap green ribbon around flower wire sticks, and to glue on silk flowers.  But using resources at home I ended up using different methods and didn't come up with a 100% replica, but actually something fancier.

Flowers

Using the air dry clay I made three white flowers.

I used by sleeve to give the flower middle some texture Only attempt if using none sticky clay that won't stick and ruin  your clothes.

I used cake flower cutters normally used for wedding cakes to product my flower petals.  I squeezed the bottoms of the petals to give it a curved shape, and let all 15 pieces lay on tops of crumbled paper to give them some realistic non-uniformity.

While not completely try I pieced 5 peta;s togeter and placed the yellow piece in the middle

On to the headband

Instead of creating my own headband which i wanted to oringally do because it has a curved pattern i originally wanted to emulate, I started out with a flower garland that I had in my stash.  It's already got wire in it so it's got some structure. 

The beadings is alittle  fancy, but it can make my outfit pop more, but I did snip off the white flowers because I didn't want to contrast against the large white clay flowers I have made.

Because I'm going to be wearing the piece over a wig I created a loop and hood so I didn't have a fixed size to the headband.  At the time of putting on my costume I can clip it tighter or looser.

Final step:  Glue the flowers onto headband.

Can't wait to see me wearing it with my outfit.

Want Some Fries With That?

A little Friday office humor from the Help Desk...

The witty response from Application Support (a.k.a. me):

Heh heh... looks like I even got the font right. :)

Tip: to make paper curl, press it between your thumb and the sharp edge of one blade of a pair of scissors and pull down the length of the paper pinching at an angle... but not hard enough to tear the paper.

Baby Gift: Plush Lion

My cousin is preggy with her first child. YAY, so I wanted to make her a plush Beaver (since we're Canadian) but I failed. So my second choice was a lion.

I'm going with this simple design (because limbs start getting compliated and can look just not that great without much practice). I'm using fleece because it's a very forgiving fabric, and very soft. It can strech to give you curves without having to pattern out just for curved shapes.

Two humps for the front and back, with a cute mane. The mane was made by cutting a donut shape, and snipping frige off the outter edge. I'm also layering two donuts to give me depth.

I also wanted a little fluffy tail. Doesn't it look a bit like a candle.
I cut a strip of frige from the fabric, rolled it up, and sewed it to the end of a tail.

Using a Zig Zag stitch to attach the main and nose to the front side of the animal.  It's pretty trendy to allow seams to be show, gives a very home made organic look.  Instead of having a flat base, I made it curved to give it character.  It's cuter when you hold it, but now I realized it's got trouble standing cause it wobbles.

I went through different button combinations to figure out which eyes looked good on the lion.

The Finished LIon,  It's it CUTE

And of course it's got Paws ~giggle~

Just a thought

In the craft store flower department, why isn't there an organic section?

Tutorial: Golden Book Repurposing

So you might have seen people starting to sell old children's books remade into journals.  Well I'm here to show you how to do it :)  To be honest if you dont have the equipment it might be cheaper to go ahead and purchase one from a crafting seller.

Here we start off with a classic Golden Book.  Ok this isn't that vintage, but I really liked the cover art for this Cars Book.

Now to cut off the spin,  I like to use a circle blade cutter (on a cutting mat of course).  It runs pretty smoothly on the crease of the spine of the book.

See spin comes of pretty straight.

And it comes with pretty pages inside with all the same line cut.

Using a sprial bound hole punch to cut the holes.  I've purchased a whole stack of books, and I've noticed that GoldenBooks are the thickest cut my punch can go through, so some of the older books from the 70s just dont work out here.  But you also dont want a flimsy, just cause sturdy books are well, just more sturdy. 

Here's the more expensive piece of this project. I happen to have a spiral bound hole punch sitting in my room, not everyone has one and they are pretty pricey. 

The sprial bound punches ususally also come with a handy feature which stretches out the plastic spirals so you can slide your pages in.

Here we can include blank paper for drawing, line paper for journaling, or whatever else you desire.  I like to slip several pages of the original book in the middle to both section off chucks of the book and give back to the wonders of the story.

In my case the plastic spirals (purchase and the office supply store for pretty cheap) is too long.  But no worries, any handy dandy scissors cut those down the size really easily.

Yay now you have your own little self made journal.






WARNING:  Please practice using the sprial bound punch.  Here's some photographic evidence of my many botches.

Party Hats

My aunt had a great idea for something to do on New Year's Eve while we were waiting for the clock to strike midnight. She brought out scissors, glue, cardboard and leftover Christmas wrapping paper, and we all went to town making...

PARTY HATS!

OK yeah I went a little overboard and ended up making a boater hat and a mini top hat.

My sister modeled my hat for me. She is actually a professional actress, model and photographer in NY.

Tiny top hat!

Chewbacca approves.

Monopoly Cards

This was a fun project.  Ever though about reusing odd findings for your new cards?

Here I used a old Monopoly game set to create some new pieces.

Used a Die Cutter to cut out a tag from the monopoly board.  Can still write a special message on the backside which is blank.

In this case instead of using expensive paper I cut out a flower from Monopoly Community Chest cards, and instead of little flower stamens or a bead, I used the Monopoly House.

Kokeshi Drawings

Kokeshi are a wooden Japanese dolls .  They use to look a thinner and taller, but these are the more common versions now a days.

I wanted to do some drawings, becuase I thought they were quite cute

Here I was trying some different techniques with shading, and I ended up really liking the Flat Paper Doll look

So I continued to experiment with different characters

Euphemia from Code Geass

I tried playing with the outlining, and got some textures for the background to make it not complety boring

Voicaloid Rin and Len

Trying the paper shadowing again, and making my own texture, because I didn't feel like using other's people work for the textures all the time.  But to be honest, I think the background is rather ugly.

Inner Scouts from Sailor Moon

My favorite of the series.  Even though in the cartoon they mostly look like the same character with different colours and hair styles, following the manga instead gave me more variety to make the characters more unique.  At this point I like the simplicity of the background, doesn't distract from the characters.

Harley Quinn from Batman

Because not everyone is an anime fan, I did one of my favorite comic book characters.  I didn't know what I wanted to do for the background and was just going at random shapes.  Than using the colours of "Mr J" aka the Joker.  I ended up loving this combination, it really enhances Harley's connection with the Joker

Crafters In Disguise - SmallRiniLady and Ava

It's US, aint we cute