Nnnnnnnow, we can talk about it.

It's that time again, ladies and gentledudes. Thanksgiving food is digesting in your bellies (if you're American) and you're pretty much sick of hearing out Thanksgiving and people playing Christmas music too early (if you're not... or even if you are.) that said, I'm ready to get this shit started! If anyone wants to give me shit for starting this before December has even started I have one thing to say to you:

Since this is technically a Thanksgiving post, here are the things I'm thankful for:

• The opportunity to become so much closer to many of my friends, and make new ones of old acquaintances 
• A healthy and only mildly dysfunctional family (although, what family isn't)
• communities of people who accept me and my insane pursuits
• the opportunities to continue and find new brilliant and terrible pursuits.  

That said, lets get this show on the road. The following is almost completely copypasta'd from the old post but I've made new friends and fussed a bit with examples. But just in case, read and get yourself a refresher.

Presenting the 2014 Holiday Wishlist Project!!!

So here we go: 

A few years ago- probably around 2009 as I was poking around DeviantArt, an artist I followed came up with this project. Here's how it goes:

The Basics:

You write a wish list, other people write wish lists. You peruse their wish lists and see if you can grant any of theirs, and others do the same. It's about making someone's holiday a little brighter, not OMFG GIVE ME PRESENTS. It's a nice feeling to give to others and grant their wishes, y'know?

Step 1:

Write a Christmas/Holiday wish list of 10 things. It can be any 10 wishes you'd like to have granted, no matter what they are, possible or impossible. They can be simple and fun (I'd love a drawing of my favorite fandom pairing) to medium (I would like a copy of Black Swan) to big and over the top (I want a new house/computer/mini motorbike) to kind of technically un-grantable. (I want to ace all my classes this semester) Just things that you truly wish for this holiday season.

Post that list on the Holiday Wish List Event Page as a SEPARATE POST. Let me be clear, EVERY WISHLIST GETS IT'S OWN POST. That way people don't get confused with who's wishing for what.

Step 2

Poke around on the event page to see what other people have wished for, and here's where the magic happens: if you see a wish that you can grant, do so and make someone's wish come true! Perhaps you have an old leather jacket that you don't want anymore or a gift certificate you don't use- or who knows? Maybe your cat just had kittens and someone needs a furry new companion! Are you an expert at Physics and someone wished for a good grade in PHYS 101? Why don't you offer your hand at tutoring?

Remember, the key to this project is not to put people out, it's just a chance to help people who you might not have known you could have helped in the first place. Gifts can even be made anonymously if you'd like.

---

And that's about it. There are no super specific rules, no guarantees, and no strings attached. Just wish and send it out and maybe it'll come true. Give and you might receive and you'll get the joy of knowing you made someone's holiday special!

And if you'd like to know: 

My holiday wish list:

1. To pass all my classes this semester and graduate in the spring
2. An internship and eventually entry-level job that asks me to use at least some of the skills I've studied here at Uni.
3. to learn to drape
4. More ballet shrugs and other dance clothes
5. a goddamn silicone mermaid tail (or at least the time, energy and space to make my own.)
6. Holiday parties. Lots of them. The dress up kind. Also just more get togethers with lots of my good friends
7. A new garment rack that is small enough to fit in my tiny bedroom
8. Time and funds for new costumes!
9. A banjo... and maybe lessons.
10. A mistletoe kiss. (traditional at this point)

the project event page is linked here so if you for some reason are reading this and aren't my friend on facebook: here you go!

https://www.facebook.com/events/529627010473706/?ref_dashboard_filter=upcoming

With DIShonor!

Oh my God, it's like I have a blog or something...

So now that we're a little past halfway through July, life has calmed down... It's calmed a bit too much down... But I'll live. I really should appreciate the quiet moments.

But really, there is a balance between having a lot of work that needs to get done and not enough time to do it and blog about it and having absolutely nothing to do and right now I'm in the latter camp which means all the old projects I keep wanting to do start looking realistic. (I'm looking at you, mermaid tail.)

Oh yeah, there's a point to this post.

So THIS IS NOT in honor of SDCC because my Facebook feed is practically nothing but posts of people who are there, posts from people who are hanging out outside of there, post from people who wish they were there and posts from people who wish they were but are pretending like they don't want to be to save face. It just so happened that since it's summer, I've been growing my collection of sunglasses. And also because it's summer, I've been headed to the beach more. Also I happen to have a blonde friend who really likes Black Canary and I happen to be a brunette who likes Huntress and we went to the beach on friday because she's back in town and this idea came to me a few days before and I also enjoy Disneybound so sometimes I like to incorporate other pop-culture references into my wardrobe and this sentence is becoming a run on so I'm just going to get the point...

DIY Pop Culture/Nerd/Comic Book (Huntress) Sunglasses!

more appropriately called "how I DIY'ed a pair of sunglasses in homage to the coolest asskicker in Gotham.)

First thing is first, I wanted sunglasses to invoke Huntress' signature mask without being super obvious because if I was a superhero I'd totally do the same thing. I doodled out a few versions of what I thought it might look like but they all looked painfully weird and 80's. Also I can't draw sunglasses very well.

The mask in question. If you didn't know.

Finally I settled on cat-eye glasses because it invoked just enough of the pointy mask look without me having to break out the epoxy or resin.

If I had just found a stupid pair of purple cat-eyes, then I wouldn't have made a blog post about this but nooooo, I couldn't find cute purple cat-eye sunglasses that were qualified for Amazon Prime. SO:

Step 1:

Tape off the areas you don't want colored purple. Make sure to get both sides. Take lots of selfies.

And only post one. I've got class, y'know?

 Step 2:

Put on gloves and spray paint your sunglasses. Remember to actually listen to the instructions and hold the can about a foot away from your sunglasses or you'll get this weird bumpy texture from the bubbles. I clearly didn't listen.

Mini bottles of spray paint are my salvation.

 Step 3:

Go to Joannes or something while your sunglasses dry. Admire your work when you come back

I could have ended it all there and just had my purple Huntress-inspired sunglasses but I figured, in for a penny, in for a pound so I continued.

 Step 4:

Search online or through your copies of comics to find a good quote. One thing I like about Huntress is that she's very blunt. (and violent) Break out a your acrylic paint set you never use because you suck at painting, and your tiniest paint brush. (A lip makeup brush is just as small and or you can use a toothpick if you're clever.) Practice your lettering on a paper plate or something a few times before you apply your quote to the inside of your sunglasses.

"Gotham needs buttkickers..."

"...Not shining knights."

my hands shake so this step was fairly hard but I got it eventually. Overall it's not my best work but I'll get better with practice... if I ever try a project like this again.

I mean, I got what I wanted, which was a pair of purple cats-eye sunglasses. They just now have a quote hipstered away so that I can feel like this was worth the DIY.

For those of you interested in messing with your own sunglasses, here's the buzzfeed article with all the ridiculous ways you can fiddle with them this summer:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/pippa/diy-sunglasses-5ocb

Happy summer, Bitches.

Lets try not to make this a habit.

Also known as LoL is hindering LoJ

This isn't a post (again.) This is a "I have too much work to take pictures and tell you about it." apology. Take a drink.

Sorry.


To be fair, they are sewing projects. It's just, I also finished another year of school, dyed my hair mermaid colors, went to hippie camp, moved home for a few weeks, had an internship, left said internship, am headed to animation summer school and am prepping for Labyrinth of Jareth where I will be performing with Serenata.

Also I started playing League of Legends which is a little black hole into which time just evaporates.

I keep telling myself things will calm down mid July. I don't really believe it.

So that's what's up.

My hair has blue and purple and pink in it. No Egrets. Just take a drink.

With Apologies to the Costuming Communty...

You know, the ones who went to school for this shit (you'll understand down below.)

In which I spend far too long gushing over a fantasy show's costume choices:

So on Tuesday, my friend invited me to this Game of Thrones party at the SF Armory for that Saturday. As a full-time student, this is a problem. In general, costumes take a combined week of work but that is a week of having nothing else to do other than sew. With a full schedule of classes, making a nice dress that is worthy of that costume-porn they call a show.

Seriously, please look at those DESIGNS!!!!

Basically if you want to do a good last minute costume, you're shit out of luck. The show is just too damn good to half-ass one of Cersei or Sansa's dresses. For Godsakes, they have an official embroideress! THEY HAVE SUCH ATTENTION TO DETAIL THAT THEY GOT A SPECIFIC PERSON TO EMBROIDER THIS SHIT.

This work is gorgeous and terrifying and I want to embroider EVERYTHING now.

Was there a point to this?

Uhh what was I talking about? Oh yeah. Anyway, the dress problem. I was at a loss to decide what dress to make for the event that could be done quickly. I also had the challenge of making a dress or at least finding a dress for my friend as well. Thankfully, everyone's favorite character came to my rescue.

                                             

Emilia Clarke looks amazing in practically everything but the dresses she gets to wear as Dany are absolutely amazing. I've always admired the combination of metallic accents with gauzy materials and GoT simply loves doing this:

  

                             

This shit is my crack

                           

Anyway, I didn't have enough time for armor so I settled for one of Dany's easier to make dresses. (relatively) 

The pictures of her actual dress mostly show it as a pale grey crepe... linen maybe? (When I finished my dress I realized how wrong my fabric choice was. You'll see.) I I didn't set out to make an exact recreation of the dress, I just wanted a slightly similar look for the party so I'm okay with things not being exact.

The construction:

The day started with a trip to the fabric store to find the cheapest gauzy material I could find and was willing to work with. In the end I settled for a grey jersey with a layer of sheer... shiny... poly.... something vaguely lavender over it.

The right side of the sheer was SUUUUPER shiny so I chose to use the wrong side, simple enough.
 

I set to work sewing what was basically a long 2 yard rectangle of one layer of jersey and one layer of sheer together.

And it was a BITCH to do.

From there, I closed the ends of the rectangle together to form a long tube and across the top a ran a gathering thread to make it fit over my chest. Then I looked back at the pictures of the dress and realized there was more shape to the dress than I thought. I realized, if I wanted to make the dress look right with the crossed bust pieces, I'd have to take apart the fabric and re-cut it to fit a pair of bra-pads that I'd have to go out and buy. So I wracked my brain looking for an alternative solution.

Solution.

With a few seconds to think about how much I was going to regret it, I took the gathered dress-top and tacked it (pretty sloppily) my only nude bra. The result had the desired effect with the unfortunate side effect of being a little boobie-licious. From there I gathered the short end of two longer strips of leftover sheer and tacked them on to the outer end of each "cup." One of these fabric strips was threaded with an old belt-buckle I had purchased a while back as part of a my Scheherazade costume (more on that later) but wound up being too small. It's too small here too but I couldn't be bothered to change it now. Both tacked ends got crossed, and tied in back and this created the shirred chest treatment.

Not... Terrible? Seriously, I apologize to the professionals right now.

I used a thin strip and tacked it over the strap of my halter-bra and then cut two more scraps and tied them to my upper arms. Since there was some issue keeping them on, I hollywood taped them for extra hold. Overall because of my own size and the weight of the fabrics I chose, the whole dress is a little too puffy for my taste. That said, I think it's a pretty good... facsimile? Hey it worked for the event and that was the important part.

No, no it wasn't.

And then...

I still had to come up with a dress for my friend who had invited me to the event in the first place and gave me about 12 hours to purchase materials and make the damn thing.

And it still actually came out nicer.

 I essentially made a maxi skirt out of a taupe jersey to serve as a slip. I then took a few yards of pink sheer fabric and folded it in half, leaving a gratuitous amount for a train we'd then sew up. I turned the tube dress into a halter by cutting slit in the casing to hold the neck strap (which my friend had to be sewn into) and then I used some gold trim I found at Discount Fabrics for a belt. The back train was then threaded through a bracelet and sewn to the collar. The whole effect looked quite similar despite being so hastily thrown together.

conclusion

The event itself was mostly "meh." As someone who's been to a few big costume events and worked as many, I was generally unimpressed with the shindig. The set pieces they got were sort of half-assed and after the acrobatic troupe at the beginning, the whole thing felt like a glorified Bar Mitzvah... Which in the end wasn't that bad...

Considering, at the bar and bat mitzvah's I've been to, I was never allowed to get adorably schnockered.

So the night was saved, and after the first episode of the 3rd season aired, I was given a better insight into how Shay's dress was actually supposed to be done. So I will perhaps revisit that later. I still need to decide what to do with all this awful sheer purple/grey fabric but the bra is back to being a bra. Overall I'm going to say that I don't think I'll be doing a costume like this again for myself. I'm happy I was able to throw it together at all, although I think I would have been better off slapping a flower crown on my head and calling myself a Tyrell. It goes to show that sometimes you can't really cut corners and expect to be successful so y'know. You win some, you lose some.




EMILIA EYEBROW APPRECIATION GIF:

Next time, probably my new Italian dress. WHO KNOWS? To be honest, I don't usually remember what I put in this bit when I post stuff.

Speedy Alterations

About a day after Gaskells ended I proceeded to remove all the shiny things off of the Midnight Gown (also known as Pamina) so that I could convert it to a dress for Peer's Gotham event. The whole experience felt rather like being Jack and having to sell your beloved cow in order to feed your family/get on with the next thing. Except if Jack hacked his cow apart and the meat and wore her leather as a shorter, more useful dress.

(I've been watching a lot of the Escapist's Zero Punctuation and it's made me needlessly cynical.)

For the Gotham City Black and White, we were encouraged to go as the colorful citizens of Gotham so naturally, I defaulted to my favorite daughter of Gotham: Helena Bertinelli/Wayne otherwise known as The Huntress. (Btw, on that link you can choose which parentage you want to look up.)

A timeline of her costume sort of reads like a reverse strip-tease.
(This image should be read from right to left)

For those of you who don't know who the Huntress is, she has two different origins, both of which involve her parents dying a la Batman. Sometimes this parent IS Batman (the other one being Selena Kyle) and I find this sort of awkward but it creates an interesting relation to fellow Birds of Prey member Black Canary. (Another super heroine who's parents dumped the mantel on them.) Also, if you are a female who likes the idea of the DC universe and has a high tolerance for the male gaze, check out Gail Simone's run of Birds of Prey. I enjoyed it and you'll probably not see a higher concentration of the big-busted female DC supers in backbreaking positions for a while. (Marvel does bring a cute BoP challenge with one of their current X-Men runs.)

And because this is the current X Men  title is just called
X Men, it is really fucking hard to google.

Also we won't speak of the train wreck that is Huntress in Arrow. Just... no.


I'm not going to get into why I like Helena so much, I just do and so I needed a 30-50's inspired dress that could be made in less than a week and look good (in general, I like to have a weekend of break between sewing engagements so that I can actually do homework and sleep and stuff. It also keeps me from buying so much fabric.)

Diatribe over, time to sew

So the dress design was done pretty quickly and worked out pretty nicely. I incorporated the colors of Huntress' outfit and considered playing off the cross theme a bit too. In the end, I designed a little black dress with a purple sash. The cross motif would be played out in a fascinator and in a necklace.

There were plans for a purple garter, they got scrapped.

Anyway, once the poor midnight dress came apart the next fun step was hacking off the bottom of the dress. I had plans for that fabric. I had a fairy godsister help with the length and chopping and the whole thing got overlocked again because I couldn't be bothered to roll the hem again.

I worry for the things that the Fairy God Sister sees. And I'm NEVER
using that particular petticoat again.

Odd foreshortening but I was colored "entertained" with
my SF in Winter boots underneath the dress.

From there, I cut out all the boning and proceeded with the first bout of dyeing all the royal blue either black or purple. The thing about dyeing poly fabrics is that you have to boil the everloving shit out of it and I just didn't have a pot that big.

but it didn't stop me from trying.

be sure to use protection

So the dress was crammed into a sad little pot that I purchased at Walgreens along with hot water saturated with iDye in Poly Black. (insert rant about putting "i" in front of words to make them seem futuristic.)

I was somewhat confused by the instructions and my own fear to get dye all over my inexplicably white kitchen and so the first time I dyed the dress, I brought the dye to a boil which took 20 minutes, maybe, let it do that for a few minutes, and pulled the fabric out and washed it.

after hand washing, I compared it to a wet un-dyed piece of fabric

I was INSANELY worried the dye didn't take (with good reason.) So as the dress was drying, I ran out and bought more poly dye try again.

Take 2 (and a drink):

So the finished dyed dress was shit. It looked black in some lights and blue in others and was 100% fucking frustrating.

deceptive bitches

Seriously, the fuck?!

Anyway, learning from my mistakes is part of why I made this blog, so I set the pot up and tried again.

EVERYTHING was covered in foil!

tasty

The second round seemed to take muuuuuuch better.

I was surprised (although I probably shouldn't have been) that the poly dye didn't touch the canvas lining of the dress at all. The effect was actually kind of nice and also kind of looked like I had no idea what I was doing when I lined it and accidentally chose the wrong color fabric... which made me sort of sad.

The kitchen-daylight test is the most important test.

A great side effect that I tried to capture here but then didn't work out as well as I thought, was that the silver grommets I used wound up getting a bit of a rainbow-oily look over them which compliments the design of the dress pretty well.

as usual, take a drink and ignore the messy-ass floor.

With the dress finished I took the spare dress material and dyed it all purple, it came out this beautiful rich color that I proceeded not to photograph. I then fashioned a big-ol' bow sash with a snap in the back so I could easily put it on and take it off. I then proceeded to have it fall off repeatedly throughout the night.

I did accidentally make a Rorsharch butterfly out of dye though :P

I didn't get any pictures of the process of the fascinator but I basically cut a circle out of felt, cut a wedge out from the circle and used a fabric stiffener (Stiffy) to form the piece into a very shallow cone. I then just hot glued the additional netting and white grosgrain fabric in a cross shape over the felt.

All hot and sweaty post dancing.

The cross necklace was a charm I found at the craft store that I just attached to a ribbon, also dyed purple in the same mess as the trim.

Overall the project was pretty simple since it was primarily a dye job. I don't know if I'd do it again, mostly because I realized I did all this before I got a nice picture of the the Midnight dress before I destroyed it. I am happy because this is a dress I'm more likely to wear more often and it is pretty great with or without the petticoat. Who doesn't need another little black dress?

Next time: possibly a breakdown on a fantasy faire outfit and how to fail at costuming research. Possibly the beginnings of my new Italian dress.