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Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Steampunk Fascinator

Happy New Year!

So this year while making one of my Christmas gifts I had the opportunity of trying a new craft out.
 I got to use wire and beads for the first time while making a Seampunk Fascinator.
I made my first ganutell flower. Also known as Wire and Floss Flowers.


I used bronze and copper wires and combined it with some glass eye beads and swarovskian crystals for bling. All the metal supplies came from Unkamen Supplies. Check out their Etsy store for all sorts of beads, wires and jewelry making supplies.


Unkamen make the twisted spaced coils specifically for me for this project. They are great! I went for the twisted wires on the spaced coils for a more steampunky look.


Vintage keys and chains are a must for anything steampunk related. Unkamen supplies also makes all sorts of jump rings for chain mail. My brothers made the chain for me. I wasn't ready quite yet to get that into metal working.


And of course you have clock parts and gears for a steampunk facsinator. Yes, that is part of a zipper as well.


I dug through my box of scraps and found some interesting steampunky fabrics, trims and laces as well. Just a lot of cool random stuff.


This was a custom order for a good friend as a gift for her daughter. Modeled below by the daughter/recipient.


I liked the pop of colour that the peacock flowers added and couldn't resist throwing them into the array as well.



I shall do a tutorial on the ganutell flowers later. 

That is all for now! 
Toodles

Saturday, December 8, 2012

Little Women the Musical Costumes

My latest costume endeavor was designing Little Women the Musical back in November.
I know, a month ago and I am just now finally getting pictures up... 
I am not exactly known for being prompt am I?

Most people know the story of Little Women.
The four March sisters as they grow up during the Civil War.
So my first period play to design set in the Civil War era! Yeah, exciting!

I want to first mention the set, designed and built by one of my many talented brothers.
Pretty impressive, right.


Amy, Meg, and Beth playing dress up.


Beth and Marmee preparing Jo and Meg for the ball.


Jo meets Theodore Laurence III at the ball.


Random ball goer


More random ball goers


Another random ball lady.


Meg meets Brooke. (With random ball people in the background.) Unfortunately I forgot to get pictures of some of my ballroom attendants.


Beth, Amy, Meg, Laurie and Jo swear to be loyal friends.


Jo cuts her hair.


Hags


Trolls and the fair Clarissa


An old knight with monks. (Yes that is real chain mail.)


The Rodrigoes, Clarissa and Villainous Braxton.


Meg and Brooke


Mr. Laurence gives his piano to sick Beth.


Amy returns home from Europe with Aunt March


Laurie has grown up as well.


Marmee, Amy and Meg as they prepare for Amy's wedding day.


Professor Bhaer and Jo


Finally, the entire cast at curtain call.


And there is a brief recap on the show.

That is all for now.
Toodles




Wednesday, November 21, 2012

The Ents and the lost Wife


So at last I have collected all the pictures from the Long Expected Party back in September. I figured I could share one last post about our Lord of The Ring themed Ent costumes.

 Let us start with the Ents.

Both of my brothers made Ent costumes. I designed them, found the fabrics and then turned the patterns, fabrics and sketches over to my brothers to create costumes of their own.


I was impressed with what they came out with, especially since they had neither of them sewn before. And they did these entirely on their own. (Well, they did have a bit of help...)


Love the tennis shoes right :D


This Ent was supposed to be a bit more of a bohemian piratical Ent. I like how how it turned out. (I did do all the dreads.)


Capes automatically make things more cool!


The lost wife has captured the Ents once again.


On to my costume...

My costume had 28 separate pieces all together that I put on to complete this outfit.



There were about 25 different fabrics used in my costume, between the corset, the skirt, the blouse, and the smaller pieces.


Then I hand knit the cape I wore. That took about a month, working off and on during rehearsals and shows. 


Then there was the hair. Yarn dreadlocks!!! There was about 10 or more different types of yarn wrapped into my hair.


It took 4 hours to wrap all my hair into the dreads. I parted my hair and had two friends working at the same time. It then took 2 hours to remove them 3 days later. I am working on a post dedicated just to the dreadlocks and how to put them in. They were really comfortable and I loved them!


I painted all my nails with black, brown metallic, and then a green glitter crackle top coat.



I made a wrist brace that laced up and attached to an arm brace above my elbow. I also made just an arm brace for the other arm.

Then there was the foot thong/sandle thing, laced to the ankle brace that wrapped around and laced to the garter. (Not really a garter, just don't know what else to call it.) I didn't get a picture of the garter. That part was covered by my skirt. And it kept sliding down while I was dancing, so I eventually tore it off and gave it to someone as a memento. (Not like you meet an Entwife on a regular basis.)

Here the Wife is with a lovely and adorable Hobbit!!!


I also wore 18 different jewelry pieces. All made by the amazing Shaylynn over at Shealynns Faerie Shoppe. Check her blog out for a more detailed description on the jewelry.


Here is the lovely Shaylynn of jewelry making fame in the dress that I made for her to wear.

Without her I would not have had the costume that I did! I would have probably tried making my own jewelry out of tree material, and that might not have worked so well....



It was great fun! And part of what I like about my costume is I am not stuck with an unusable costume in the end. I have lots of lovely jewelry that I can wear whenever. (Or when the outfit permits.) And multiple costume peices that can be turned into whatever other costumes I want them to be... within reason. But hey, I could be a hag, dryad (aka tree spirit... which is the same as an entwife, right? Same thing, just different names...), mermaid, witch... and who knows what else. But I like it best as the lost Wife.


Now time for a random little known fact. The reason the Entwifes ran away from the Ents and could no longer be found was because they decided it was way more fun to live with the pirates!!! True story.


And there you have it, the tale of an Entwife.

We are considering wearing these costumes for the premier of The Hobbit, but I am not sure I want to do that. It isn't exactly a warm costume.

I took none of the picture in this post. I borrowed them from friends. So for more pictures of the dance and others costumes check out these two, Caleb Royer Studios and Shaylynn. My mom and some other friends were also responsible for one or two of the photos as well.

Anyhow, hope you enjoyed it. As always, I appreciate comments and questions.

Toodles.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Tuesday Tutorial ~ hand painted totes

I am not sure this classifies as a tutorial. Rather step-by-step pics on some stuff I have done.

I decided to try my hand at painting as it was one of the few things I hadn't attempted yet. As I am very fabrics oriented I of course got fabric paints and some hand totes to paint on.


They are just basic canvas totes. (I cheated and got them from Walmart. But I was making them as gifts and needed them rather soonish.)


The first one I did was a horse head (for a horse lover friend.) I started with drawing the basic lines with a disappearing ink.


Then I added more detailed lines with the wash out pen.


Then I got out the paints. I used Tulip soft fabric paints.


I added the basic lined and shading with black.


Then I used brown for the mane and added dimension.


Went back with the black and continued to fill in.


Then I added some gold into the mane and as other highlighting. You can't really see it in the picture. But it is there.


Here it is without the blue and purple lines. I was happy with how it turned out.


Next I had a theatre friend whom I was making one for. So I did one with drama faces on it.

For this one I printed off the faces and used a scalpel to cut it out and then traced them onto the bag.


Both faces traced on.


Then I free handed her name in.


Painted it all with black.


Added gold shading.


A closer up on the shading.


That was my adventure into painting. Haven't done anything since, but I want to. One day I shall find time again.

I enjoyed it.

That's all for now.

Toodles