The trees have Awakened!!!

Time for a sneak peak! (Because that is all the time I have had for pictures, nothing real yet.)

I have completed my costume and parts of my brothers ent costumes as well. That which I am not making for them they are making themselves. 

I made this hat (rather cut down a top hat and decorated) for my one brother. 

I also have made about 30 dreadlocks for my other brother.

My jewelry came in this week! It is beyond beautiful!!!!

I love it all so much!

I described the basic idea for what I wanted to a friend of mine over at Shealynns Faerie Shoppe and she did the rest.

We combined pine cone roses with copper wire, leaf beads and all sorts of other amazing stuff!

This ear cuff thing is one of my favorite pieces. (if it is possible to have a "favorite" with everything being to pretty!) It wraps around the back of my ear and makes it look like vines are growing out of my head. Perfect for an ent wife. And it also wraps around my glasses and makes it look like they are a part of my costume.

Yarn dreads for my hair...

The only parts I have left to finish before I am ready for the dance is hair and makeup. I am going to be putting in about 70 yarn wrapped dreadlocks on Friday.

I will have many more detailed pictures of the whole outfit all together after this weekend including a step by step as I put it on and put in the dreads.

Toodles.

Headbands and hair accessories

So I have been making a lot of fun headbands and hair accessories lately. I figured it is time to share them with you. I will be making tutorials for them and posting them here when I have time. I am currently working anywhere from 8 to 14 hours a day at the theatre as the stitcher. So when I have time I will make tutorials. And it will be as soon as I can make it!!!

This one is made from deconstructed pine cones. (Will make a tutorial for the pine cone roses.)

My Valentines one!

Sheet music flower. (Will do a tutorial for this one also.)

This is actually the one that got them all started, my sewing notions headband. It all started with a 24 inch measuring tape which I wanted to make into a headband and it just got random stuff added.

Kanzashi blooms and fabric origami. (I will do a tutorial for kanzashi flowers also)

I got a whole bunch of Reader Digest condensed books, so I have no qualms about tearing up books to make paper roses! (And I will do a tutorial on paper roses also.)

Duct tape flower. Don't you like my thinker who kindly holds my headbands for me.

This is the vintage record tilt topper that I made.

Random fabric rose/flower that I made testing out some different machine feet I had.

 Up-cycled plastic spoon rose. (It is pretty cool and I will do a tutorial on this also.)

This one took me a couple of months to make. It is an up-cycled Stride gum wrappers flower. Since I don't chew a lot of gum it took a while to collect the wrappers. (I will do a tutorial on gum wrapper flowers.)

And a duct tape rose of course! (And I might do a tutorial on this also, but there are so many already out there, so that will be way down on the list.)

Anyhow, here is what has been up in my crafting world with a promise of tutorials to come.

As to my normal life I am the stitcher this summer for the local theatre and am having a lot of fun. We are currently in the middle of The Wizard of Oz!

That is all for now.

Toodles.

Trying to get to the present

I am trying really hard to sit down and catch up on posts that I have gotten sooo far behind on.

I have the dream that some time this summer I shall catch up on all my past posts and be posting on current events. I want to be able to post about the current projects that I am working on and not all of the ones that I finished two to three months ago.

Well, I suppose that this quote fits me really well though.

"They say I'm old-fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast!"

-Dr. Seuss

I will be trying really hard to catch back up and be posting about my current projects and adventures. However, for a while here you (dear readers) shall be subjected to several posts on topics that you probably have heard all you really care to hear about.

Oh well, I am a cruel person and I am going to post them anyhow. (cue evil laugh)

So for roughly the next week I shall try to daily post an overdue entry.

To begin I shall not give you one of the posts that I have had partially completed and waiting to finish. Instead I shall share some pictures that I discovered which roughly chronicles the history of my hair.

This is actually kind of amusing...

We shall start back when I was just a little girl...

I was never allowed to have long hair. I always had a short chili-bowl type cut. I always wanted to be able to grow my hair out, but my parents would not let me. Finally when I was about 10 (2003) I convinced them that I was old enough to take care of it. So I grew it out and my hair got rather long. I had it down several inches past my shoulders by the time I was 13. A few months before returning to the U.S. for  my sisters wedding in 2006 I tired of my hair and got a bob cut. By the time of the wedding it had grown long enough that I was able to get an updo. So I decided to allow it to grow back out. When we returned to Botswana (yes, for those of you who did not know it I was an MK) it was slightly past my shoulders. I decided that I wanted to get a perm so that I could have curly hair like I always wanted.

Amusing right?

You shall all be disappointed to find out that this picture is not the result of the perm. The perm did not take... both of the times.

This picture was the result of sponge curlers so that we could prove to the hairstylist that my hair would take curl.

The perm still did not take...

I suppose I was just not meant to have curly hair... thankfully.

Moving on.

By the time we relocated to the U.S. in 2007 my hair had gotten pretty long. I got a long layered cut for the first time.

In the summer of 2008 I cut 10 inches off and donated it to Locks for Love. I then continued to let it grow. It had reached this length by 2010.

When it was long I would do all sorts of fun updos.

In February of 2010 I again had 10 inches cut off and donated to Locks for Love.

I thought about keeping it short and bobbed, but I went on ahead and let it grow.

That summer a lady in our church lost her hair due to cancer. So in July my mom and I buzzed out heads in support. My hair was long enough that I was able to again donate 10 inches to Locks for Love.

Having a buzz cut was fun and cool in the summer, however, I do not think that it shall be something I do every summer.

I let it grow until about November. Then decided that it was it was looking shaggy and got it trimmed into a pixie. I really liked this length.

I then let it grow for the next five months without cutting it at all. It looked really shaggy for several months, but thankfully they were the winter months and hats do wonders.

So this is what it was looking like come April. I am the girl on the left in black. Yes, these are some Seussical pictures.

Here is a back view. Yep, I am doing clown makeup.

My latest cut was here in the beginning of June. I had it all evened out and got a layered bob once again.

After taking tons of pictures I got rather bored.

So after some quick calculation my hair has grown roughly 50 inches since I was 10, and 30 inches of that has gone to Locks for Love. Forty-five inches in 8 years means 6.25 inches a year, or 0.52 inches a month, or 0.12 inches a week, or 0.017 inches a day.

For some final random notes, I love to style hair and that is why I am again working on growing it out so that I can do historical updos.

I also like using natural shampoos and rinses, thus avoiding using chemically loaded commercial shampoos and conditioners.

There you go.

More information then you could ever want to know about my hair. 

For those of you who are wondering about this post, I think a one sentence explanation clear everything up.

 I just saw Tangled for the first time this weekend.

 Yes, I enjoyed it. However, I am not a major princess movie fan.  

Hair Dying Tutorial (kind of)

So I have returned to Missouri and I am settling back in at home. I am now going to try and catch up on all of the posts that I have been promising to post and haven't.

Let us start as far back as I can reasonably remember.

May 2012

My brother decided that he wanted to dye his hair blue. He was going to be a Thing in Seussical and did not want to wear a wig. So he set about convincing me to do it for him as he slowly found all the required equipment and brought it home. 

Finally I agreed to bleach and dye his hair on the condition that he would shave his head as soon as the show was finished. He agreed with that.

So here is what we started with. A nice shade of dark brown.

I began the whole process by bleaching his hair. The theory here was to get a nice blonde base that would take the blue dye really well. My fear was that it would not turn a nice blonde but more of an orange.

As I had feared it did not come out as a soft blonde. Instead we had a nice vibrant shade between orange and straw yellow. I tried to recommend that we now give it about a week or at least several days of washing and conditioner to allow it to naturalize out a bit. My brother was positive that his hair did not need that and he could have me dye it blue the next day. So I yielded to his desires.

Like I had predicted instead of blue he came out with a nice aqua green. It was more vibrant when he first washed it out. This picture was after a few days of intense washing/conditioner.

As you can see it was a bit more of a dirty green in the front.

By this time I was ready to just shave him now and get a wig. But he was determined that he was going to achieve blue no matter how many times he had to color his hair.

So he bought a platinum blonde hair dye for me to use next hoping that this would provide a better base for the blue. So I went on ahead and dyed him blonde. This time he took my advice and allowed the blonde a few days of washing to naturalize out a bit. We then again tried for the blue. 

This time we had success. The front was still not quite right but it was easily fixed with a bit of hairspray before each show.

So here are my two brothers who were Things. I made a wig for the one on the left.

I used a cheap colonial mans wig for the Thing wig. I took out the ponytail and backcombed the whole thing until it was a poofy mess. I then gave it a trim so that it was shorter and even. To finish it I sprayed it with blue hairspray.

My mom and I found it amusing when my brother went out to mow the lawn during the week between the shows. It looked like we had a clown doing our lawn work.

So that is what I did to my brothers hair. I suppose that this is really just a detailed explanation rather than a tutorial. Anyhow, my advice is that if you want to dye your hair vibrant colors and want it to look decent, then go to a professional. Although I would love to try this again and see if I can do better.

(Now to find some trusting and clueless guinea pig. hehe)

Easter Monday

Happy Easter Monday!

Once again we celebrate Christ's triumph over death and the grave!

I hope that all had a lovely Easter Sunday and is enjoying spring.

We went to our church for Easter morning service and stayed for the Easter breakfast that followed.

We then had a family dinner late afternoon.

It was a pleasant enough day, despite the pouring rain.

A part of what makes Easter so special for many people is the new (or rarely worn) outfit that they get to wear. I made myself a new outfit this year.

As I mentioned before it is a 1950's inspired sun dress. I designed the pattern myself using a basic block pattern that I had purchased from McCalls.

It has a fitted bodice with a sweetheart neckline and four darts in front. The back is composed of four pieces and has a v neck.

The waistline is at my natural waist and the skirt flares out from there. It is a gored skirt with box pleats at the seams.

I also made a fitted jacket and belt.

I had wanted to go outside and take a bunch of cute pictures with the flowers and lovely foliage. However, it rained all day and we have rain in the forecast for the next week. Sigh... I suppose I shall have to be satisfied with these pictures.

Without the jacket.

I also made matching kanzashi flowers for my hair.

I made the jacket reversible to give it a more finished look and to increase its durability.

I enjoyed working on this and shall try and post latter more details into the shaping that went into the bodice of the dress. Overall the bodice had 16 pieces that made it.

Thats all for now. Have a great Easter Season and enjoy whatever weather you are having.

(Yes, there can be joys to lots of rain. It means no going outside. Thus lots of sewing.)