Fluffy Bow Brooch-Clips

I've fallen in love with puffy fuzzy bow brooches, and decided to experiment a bit with making some of my own! I think even my first efforts turned out quite successful, and they're actually fairly simple and quick to make <3

These are basically just knit bows decorated with ribbon and flatback rhinestones ^o^ I made these out of a fuzzy baby blanket yarn I found at Michael's. I only bought this particular color (blue with pink/lavender/yellow flecks), but after trying it out, I'm definitely going to go buy some in their other colors. I created two, in slightly different sizes!





Second picture was taken in less optimal lighting - the colors are much more accurate in the first photo.

These don't have any clips/safety pins attached yet, because I just ordered a box of combination safety-pin/alligator-clip brooch backs that I plan to use on them. They turned out so cute, I can't wait to make more!!

Next up... Fuzzy brooches in more different shapes! (I want a poodle *o*)

Easy Bracelets and a Drawing!

Life's been hectic lately, with traveling around to conventions, and the school year starting up!! In fact, I just graded six tests yesterday!! Anyways, point is, I just haven't had time to start or complete any crafting projects TT_TT

However, I did find time last night (between each test I had to grade) to make a bunch of easy pearl bracelets. I've been really needing some for Lolita, maid outfit, various cosplays, and could never find anything really suitable in stores. Finally I decided it was just cheaper and easier to string them up myself!



So there you go, a simple but useful project ^_^

I also recently (well, as of almost 2 months ago) promised a friend that I'd draw a picture for him, and I finally finished and inked it last night! No color, because I'm not very good with Copics yet ^_^;;



Yaaay!!! Hopefully I'll get enough practice and accumulate enough colors soon so I can do another picture that actually has color!!

~~K

New Apartment!

I haven't had much time to craft lately, because I moved to a new apartment at the beginning of this month X_X;; I only recently finished getting all my furniture put together and all my stuff arranged. My room's finally coming together (just unpacked the stuffed animals today)!!

Anyways, since I don't have awesome crafting updates for you, I figured you'd at least get to see some of my new room ^_^

This is my bed - it has stuffed animals on and above it. Even Mokona is hanging out (literally O_O) with everyone else! The big grey thing you see is Flopper, my pet manatee. The smaller grey thing on top of him is Ariel, Flopper's little friend. :-P


This is my "cozy corner". It's got pillows to sit/lean on, plus even more stuffies to snuggle with! It's also got all of my Totoro paraphernalia ^_^


And this is my music corner! It has my acoustic guitar, my violin, and my brand-new bass guitar + bass amp ^_^ And more stuffies hanging above :-P You can see some of my bookshelf too, although that's somewhat less exciting XD


So yeah, that's a quick tour of 3/4 of my room XD The other wall has a bunch of cube shelves with random things including crafts supplies as well as extra bathroom things (shampoo and whatnot) on it :-P

WHEE!!! Hopefully now that I'm finally getting more settled, I'll have time/space to unpack my sewing machine, set up my crafts area in the living room, and get back to crafting ^_^

Black Highwaisted Corset Skirt

As promised, my most recently completed sewing project is a highwaisted corset skirt. I needed a plain black skirt in my wardrobe (all my other black skirts have either screenprints or embroidery on them), and felt like it wasn't really necessary to shell out >$100 for a brand version of such a plain skirt. Even Taobao seemed too expensive, what with the $30 shipping fee from China >_>;; So anyways, I decided this would be a good place to employ my own sewing skills.

The design of the skirt is pretty simple, just a rectangle skirt with bottom ruffle and high waist featuring ribbon corseting in the back. The waist is reinforced with interfacing, no boning (so this doesn't actually do any corseting, nor would I want it to ^_^;;).

Anyways, onto the pictures...

The Skirt!!!




Modeled by MOI



It's paired with a white blouse that I already had.

And with my maid apron over it, this outfit served as my secondary uniform!


Lesson learned from this project: Don't forget the zipper!!!! This was the first time I made anything that required an opening in order to get on. The one-pieces I made before just took advantage of shirring, and while they were difficult to put on, it was possible. This really required an opening, but I forgot to plan it in. I tried putting it on with just the shirring... close but no cigar... T_T So I just cut a slit down the side and inserted an invisible zipper there. It had to be sewn in by hand (I don't have a zipper foot for my machine), plus since it wasn't planned, the slit had a raw edge that couldn't be hemmed. I applied Fray Check to it, and it seems to be holding up just fine (I wore it all Sunday at Mechacon and danced and everything in it), but in the future... I WILL REMEMBER TO PLAN IN THE ZIPPER!!!!!

Overall, quite pleased, despite the zippertastrophe. It looks nice, and will be quite serviceable as the plain black skirt in my wardrobe!!

Polymer Clay - Bows and Bears!!

I had some extra time no my hands recently, so I made another batch of polymer clay trinkets. Specifically, little clay ribbon bows and some teddy bears!

Ribbon Bows

I made them with the original intention of glueing them onto ring bases, like these. However, I've got a couple of loose ones laying around that I'm considering doing something else with (turning into just a clip-on charm, or maybe earrings/necklace). Anyways, here are the finished rings - two colors: lavender and turquoise!





I'll be trying different styles of bows next (maybe ones without the trailing tails).

Teddy Bears

Aaaand teddy bear charms!! I actually came up with this by accident while trying to make something else... it ended up very blobby, and for some reason it made me think of teddy bears, so with some modification of the failed object, I came up with a bear design!!

These were not made from coloured clay, but instead hand-painted afterwards. I have dark pink and purple bears at the moment, all in the form of clip-on charms for versatility (or something). I might make some more and actually put them on necklaces as pendants, or on cell phone charm straps.






I had originally some white ones too, but the glaze I've been experimenting with is an oil-based clear polyurethane. I'm guessing it's something about the oil, but on the white bears, it dried sort of yellowish, which became really obvious in the more concentrated regions in crevices and such, so I decided to just leave those be (they can join my collection of failed clay objects).

I'll be putting these (and subsequent duplications/incarnations of them) in my Etsy shop soon ^.^ And next, I'll have yet another sewing post, since I just finished a skirt last night!

Maid Outfit

I was recently accepted as a member of a maid cafe, and I created this look for my character!

The entire outfit took about a week or so of on-and-off sewing to complete, and consists of a white ruffled underskirt, a black overdress featuring a scalloped hem layer and a sweetheart neckline, and a half-apron with a ruffled hem. Additionally, the traditional maid ruffle katyusha is trimmed with blue rickrack (because I am a member of the blue team), and coordinates with a matchingly trimmed ribbon choker. I did not take progress photos of this project, as it is actually quite similar to the construction of the Miwako cosplay dress (I used the same pattern with some sleeve and skirt length modifications for the overdress).

But onto the pictures!!

White ruffled underskirt:


Black overdress:


Scalloped hem with over a straight underlayer:


Sweetheart neckline (made by ruching):


Apron:


Katyusha and choker:


And of course, the dress modeled by me!!



The design of the underskirt/overdress combination was to have a cutaway style. Originally I planned to have just the scalloped hem, but with the apron, the lower half of the outfit just seem overly dominated by white in the front view, so I added the straight layer of black to lengthen the overdress a little bit. However it is only tacked on, and can be taken off or folded up when I want to wear the dress as not a maid outfit, since I designed it such that I could be comfortable wearing it as a normal Lolita dress.

The rest of the outfit is completed by black/white dotted stockings (with a white satin bow at the top, but it's hard to see), a long curly wig from Gabalnara, which I love. I'm not wearing makeup or my gray contacts in these photos, since I'm waiting for the contacts to arrive. The shoes are also just stand-ins, but similar to what I will be wearing.

The bodice is still somewhat loose on me, although I did try to use darts to shape the waist. I'm considering adding a crisscross of black elastic across the back to make sure the sleeves stay up during dancing. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the construction of this dress, although I've learned that I should make the side seams of my bodices straight, and not try to do any shaping through the side seams, since that just makes for some weird puffiness at the sides. Lesson learned. Also, my machine requires the needle to be inserted with the flat side FACING AWAY from me... I unnecessarily broke so many needles because I had somehow reversed it in my memory >_<

And even more pictures of me being silly!

ACEN 2010 Cosplay - Miwako Sakurada [Paradise Kiss]

I decided to cosplay one of my all-time favorite manga/anime characters - Miwako Sakurada from Paradise Kiss *o* Not only is this series among my top two favorite series, this character is herself one that I especially like and feel like I can identify with.

Since it's my first full dress, I decided to go with one of her simpler looking outfits that doesn't require special printed fabrics. I also chose a very Lolita styled dress so that I could make good use of the tutorials floating around the Lolita sewing community on Livejournal, plus maybe be able to actually wear the dress for something other than my cosplay! Hence, I went with this outfit:


I couldn't find any actual colored reference pics, but based on previous cosplayers, the consensus seems to be that the dress is pink with a white apron on top, and then white socks and shoes. So that's what I went with as well. I needed a matching thing-carrying device as well, and Miwako conveniently has an adorable Happy Berry backpack to go with this outfit!

So there were four main parts of this cosplay that I had to do: dress, apron, wig and backpack!

Scallop-Edged Dress

This was quite a big project, since it's the first full dress I've ever made! I had to draft patterns for bodice and sleeves, as well as a skirt with a scalloped hemline. For the bodice and sleeves, I used this awesomely helpful tutorial from the Livejournal sew_loli community.

I decided to do a fully lined bodice, so I basically had to make 2 bodices (inner and outer layers shown):


And then sewed them together in the final assembly (front and back - with elastic channels):


The skirt was also fully lined (with polyester lining) and has 2 pockets. Just the outer layer (before lining was attached) is shown:


And the final assembled product?


Yaaaaaaaaay! Okay, so I had to dart in the waist because my waist is noooot as big as my bust, so next time I should just draft the darts into the pattern instead of doing them ad hoc. Also, I should've been more careful with the skirt gathering, because it's actually slightly skewed offcenter relative to the bodice, but oh well... Now I know.

Apron

The apron was pretty easy to draft. I basically just made a rectangle for the upper part, and a circle skirt (with a cutout in the back) for the lower part. Waist ties are attached at the waist and neckties run through the top of the upper part (to make the gathers).

Tadaa!!


This one also wasn't perfect. I should've used more like a trapezoid or something, because it tended to hitch up in the side/back and droop in the front. I fixed this on the fly by just safety pinning the top edge of the apron to the dress so it wouldn't droop anymore. Oh, and the neckties needed to be longer.

Wig

I started off with an "Innocent" wig in pink from Amphigory:


I took out the original ribbons + rubber bands and redid the ponytails a little higher with matching pink baubles:


And then proceeded to make a partial bun twist with each pony, and pin the remaining dangling curls into place over the bun part.


I'm actually really please with this! Yay for successful first wig styling!! Not that it was complicated, but, still...

Happy Berry Backpack

Aaaaand the part I'm most proud of... my backpack!! It's fully functional, with a drawstring closure and a hook to keep the top flap down (I'm going to switch it to something better soon), and is lined with silky pink lining on the inside! The green part is actually a removeable pin, if I ever wanted to remove it, and the wings are stuffed so they're actually 3D!

After full assembly with outer and lining, but before wing-stuffing and drawstring (front and back):


Ugly grommets are ugly, but hey, I did it! It was kind of a pain putting them in by hand, but it actually worked pretty well, and they seem sturdy enough.


Green thingy pin:


Made of 3 layers of green felt (top layer is lighter green than the bottom 2), and the spiral is yellow paint.

The adjustment buckle on the strap is made from Shrinky Dink (painted pink):


Aaaand the final product:



I am very very completely pleased about this backpack, and it was plenty roomy to carry water bottle, program book, snacks, 20 calling card goody bags, camera, makeup, and more!

Pics of it all worn!




I need to learn how to put on wigs better to hide my stupid sideburns, but other than that I'm pretty pleased since it's only me second time cosplaying!!