Homemade Christmas Gifts: WIP

What I’m about to show is actually still a work in project and I don’t know just yet how I’m going to go about it. See, my boyfriend and I are tight on cash with the holiday season coming up. I just got a new job this month after being unemployed for a month and a half and he has a minimum wage part time job while being in college. SO. As you can guess, our situation + buying gifts for my family + his family of 8 + each other + paying rent and utilities wreaked havoc on our bank accounts.

I decided to compromise. I said we could get each other one thing and make each other something else that way it’s even and it’s cheaper. Since we just watched My Neighbor Totoro and thought it was the most adorable thing ever, I thought i’d make him a collection of drawings put together. I drew May, some soot spirits, Totoro and the little totoros. I still want to draw saplings and acorns to round it out but I’m not entirely sure how I want to take care of the background.  I was thinking about printing out the background to the opening credits and gluing them on that, but I also want the cardboard I’m putting this on to be round. I have just a few days to figure something out! Here it is so far:

Cosplay WIP: Lady Melisandre from Game of Thrones

For Emerald City Comicon 2015, I plan on making a Lady Melisandre cosplay. In a perfect world my brother would be Jon Snow (because he looks like Jon Snow anyway) and my boyfriend would be Stannis but they know squat about making costumes and I’m too rusty to sewing/new to cosplaying to make good armor. SIGH. I suppose it’ll be fine to be Melisandre by myself 🙂

I purchased the cloak already but plan on constructing and sewing the dress and making her necklace. Since I lack an iron, an ironing board and fabric, I can’t make the dress just yet (hopefully I will once Christmas is over) so I’m starting with the necklace first.

I’m going the cheap and easy route by NOT making an actual necklace; I’m using flexible cardboard and some paint and hoping for the best. If anyone has suggestions, I’m open to them! For now though, I worked on the pattern for the necklace by first tracing the general shape and then cutting out the pieces. I colored them in for fun. I still have to make the little bars in between each piece, but it’s coming together! I’ll be transferring it to cardboard soon.

Pictures below:

Animal Crossing Designs: Post Two

To those who celebrate: Happy (semi-belated) Thanksgiving!! It’s my favorite holiday and I have 3 dinners to attend spanning Thursday-Saturday and could not be more excited because STUFFING. I also recently got a new job and did a little splurging to celebrate. I got: Silent Hill: Homecoming, Pokemon Alpha Sapphire, and Persona Q. I’ll be busy for a while ! I’ll do posts on those games eventually, once I get a bit further into them.

I wanted to have another craft post up before Thanksgiving, but I actually ran out of paint and wasn’t going to walk 40 minutes in the freezing snow to retrieve 1 tube of paint. So I’ll hopefully finish this project by the end of next week assuming I get to the craft store (I start work on Wednesday). I wanted to make a little sign for our kitchen to spruce it up a bit. I ordered some craft wood panels and am going to paint them and stencil in: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme. It’s a nod to both my boyfriend and mine’s green thumb and his love for Simon and Garfunkel.

So in the mean time, I decided to post some more Animal Crossing New Leaf designs I’ve made! I pretty much exhausted all the Disney princesses, so I made some Marvel, DC, League of Legends, and Pokemon designs!

Using Leftover Craft Supplies to Redecorate

I recently moved in with my boyfriend and even after moving some of my stuff over, it still felt like his place. While I can’t do much about the furniture (which is all his), I decided I would tackle another section of the apartment: the walls. We can’t paint them, but we can decorate them, yet my boyfriend hasn’t invested any time sprucing them up. I, on the other time, spend a lot of time trying to make sure my living space is full of art and color. My room at home was covered: I had 3 large collages full of fashion editorials and ads I liked, a bulletin board that had pictures from cities I’d like to visit and all my Dad’s records (well, my favorites of them, and don’t worry – I got his approval for this).

Craft Post: Steampunk/Victorian Inspired Flower Pot

I know. You may be looking at this and thinking ???? Steampunk??? It looks entirely Victorian and not very steamy nor punky. I was initially going to stencil on some gears and paint those but I thought it would look too busy, so I left it as is. Overall, I’m really happy with how it turned out, but I do wish the red was darker. It looked like it would be brownish-red on the tube of paint but came out more red than anything. I would like to make another one with a darker color scheme and maybe add some more steampunk elements 😉

How it was made:

A Look Back on My First Cosplay: Trucy Wright

Even though I have been playing games since I was four and have been a big fan of anime, graphic novels/comics and cosplays, I have only been to two conventions. Both of which were this past year! I always wanted to go to one, I just didn’t think my parents would fully understand it and would want to control everything I did. I wanted to go to a con when I could afford it and than includes making a costume as well as attending AND BUYING SO MUCH MERCH.

That happened this year, my senior year of college. I looked at my bank account and asked my boyfriend if he’d like to attend with me because rain or shine I was finally going and no one was going to stop me! Once I got my tickets booked for C2E2 and Anime Central, I started thinking about what costume I could make. I knew I wanted to do something from my all time favorite game series: Ace Attorney, but didn’t know who. While I was flipping through my Art of Ace Attorney book, I came to Trucy’s page and stopped. She has SUCH a cute and fun outfit. It’s not a monochromatic suit, it didn’t look too complicated, it’s colorful and most importantly, looked like it would be a blast to make.

Then I started assembling my game plan (which I may have done during my classes when I should have been taking notes because WOW senior year was not easy).  I already had a black dress that looked like the one she wears, so I decided I would focus on making the cape, hat, buttons, and brooch. It was relatively cheap to make and since I’m new to costume making, it was done the only way I really knew how: with paint, markers & hand sewing. My sewing machine I had in high school broke and I hadn’t touched one since my sophomore year sewing class. It proved to be a bit of a challenge.