How not to make a 4 panel skirt

Start off by buying a steampunk corset during a really good sale. Fall in love with it the instant it arrives. Spend a few minutes feeling pleased with your purchase before realizing you have no place to wear it, and nothing to wear it with. Combine this with a sudden and unexpected fascination with cosplay and historical costuming. Start following a 16 year old cosplayer who makes her own costumes. Think to yourself 'How hard can this be? She's 16! Her brain isn't even done developing! I'm 30, have a master's degree, and total control of my fine and gross motor skills!'

Force your fiance to teach you how to use his sewing machine. He made you those Katamari plushies, after all, which makes him like an expert.

During your down time, sketch pictures of what you want the end result to look like. Completely ignore the fact that you don't know how any of the individual items are put together.

Wait until your local fabric / crafting store has a giant sale. Spend way too much money on fabrics. Eventually listen to your fiance when he convinces you to also buy some crappy cheap fabric so you can make practice versions of everything you want to make.

Get home and decide that the first thing you're going to make is the floor length four panel skirt. Except you're going to make a short version with the shitty fabric first. Take some really inaccurate measurements. Waist, hips, length. Try to be off by at least four or five inches. It will add to the fun you'll have later.

Get out your large brown paper to draw the pattern on. The paper comes on a roll, so it will constantly fight you to roll back up. The only thing you have handy is a spray bottle, so lightly spritz it with water and put heavy things on it to weigh it down.

Realize that you can't draw anything on it while it's wet.

Come back a few hours later and draw your pattern. Forget to add seam allowances on the sides. Decide you don't want to draw it again, so just cut it out the way it is.

Fold the pattern in half and lay it on your fabric.

Pin it in place. Stab yourself multiple times with the pins. Use way too many pins. That will help you stab yourself more. Cut around your pattern and unfold.

Do this three more times.

Think about ironing the fabric to get out the creases. Decide it's too hot to turn on an iron. Instead, pin the long side seams together.

Sew everything together. Remember to remove the millions of pins you used. Get tired of being stabbed in the hands and arms. Try to make your lines straight, but fail.

Fail a lot. Once all the long seams are sewn think about ironing them to flatten the fabric. It's still hot, though, so don't actually do that. Fold the material for the waist over. Leave enough room to slip an elastic in later. Pin the crap out of it.

And sew! Leave an opening, somewhere, so you can get the elastic in. Ignore how the material seems to be bunching as you sew. I mean, try to straighten it out a little, but don't try too hard.

 Cut a piece of elastic to the measurements you took earlier for your waist. That guarantees it'll be 4 inches to long. Attach a safety pin to one end and slip it through the opening of the waist band. Use the safety pin to guide it all the way through, till it comes out the other end. Pin the ends together and try it on. Discover that it is way too loose. Cut it so it actually fits and sew the ends together. Do a really shitty job of sewing it. It's not like anyone will ever see it.

Put on your skirt and stand on a chair. Have your fiance pin up the bottom hem. Give him only vague instructions and forget that he's only ever sewn plushies, and doesn't know anything about making clothing. Start sewing. Realize that the hem is crazy uneven, but don't stop. Just keep going. Also, fuck up sewing a straight line again.

And you're done! At this point you should have developed a Stockholm-syndrome like affection for your skirt, so declare that you love it. Force your fiance to say nice things about it. Make it a part of your wardrobe.

Now that you are an expert on sewing, start getting ready to make the rest of your outfit! 

Chainmaille, bitches!

I have spent the last couple of weeks being entirely too excited about my new ability to make chainmaille. I'm learned to weaves: the European 4 in 1 and Dragonscale. As a girl who loves fantasy games, guess which one I'm the most thrilled about? I thought about posting a tutorial, but you really need it in video form to really understand (or, at least I did). So, I'm going to link the video tutorials I used. Here is the one for European 4 in 1 and here is the one for Dragonscale. Also, the website that makes these is amazing and sells every thing you need to try it out. I only bought their products for my first bracelet, after that I started making my own jump rings. But I still refer back to their videos from time to time.

If you'd like to take a look at what I've made so far, please check out my Etsy store.

My plan for this rainy Saturday is to put down the chainmaille for a day and to make some pairs of earrings. They were my best sellers last holiday season, and the peacocks have been kind enough to restock my feather supply.

oh yeah, it's July...

Happy 4th of July, everyone! I'm celebrating the best way I know how, by sitting around the apartment and pretending to clean. Yay!

I've hit a significant creativity dry spell. I blame increased stress at my job and my obsession with Skyrim for this. Seriously, it took me 150+ hours to finish the game my first time through. That game is designed to bring out my ADD. Luckily, when I went to replay it I quickly got bored. The job stress, though, that hasn't gone away.

In the (hopefully) near future I will be taking the LICSW exam, which will (hopefully) help me get away from my current job and into something better. Or different. At this point I'd be happy with different.

What all this means is that I haven't done much with my Etsy store. My current project is a set of peacock feather fairy wings. I got about halfway through my first set when I decided they were terrible and needed to be trashed. I felt bad and spent a long time wondering if I should forge ahead, despite their terribleness, so all the effort I had already put into them wouldn't have been wasted. The wings sat on my crafting desk in their half-completed state for weeks. Eventually I stopped going into my crafting room because I did not want to deal with them. Today I came to my senses and tossed the horrible things in the trash. I even smashed them a bit so I couldn't fish them out of the garbage later if I became overcome with guilt. I started another, smaller, pair. When their done they'll be a nice, child-sized, pair of wings.

I did learn a lot from my first attempt. I constructed the wire frame in a quarter of the time it took me the first time. So, you know, silver lining and all that.

Hopefully this burst of motivation will continue and I'll start adding new items to the store soon.

In which I have fat wrists.

I have fat wrists. I actually have fat everything, but my wrists and fingers are the only things that concern me when it comes to jewelry. Necklaces and earrings don't care what my weight is, but things that are designed to go tightly around my parts do. For instance, when one of my favorite aunts passed away she left me her wedding ring. It's lovely and delicate. My aunt had tiny hands, well suited to quilting and lace-making. I love the ring, but I can't wear it. My fingers are too thick.

I am a firm believer that clothing and jewelry are designed to fit bodies. In fact, fitting on bodies is their ONLY JOB. I'm not about to try to change  my form so I can wear anything, no matter how much I love it. Mostly because it's impossible and partly because it's stupid. My body wasn't created for clothing, but clothing is created for bodies. I'm probably going to get the ring re-sized or hang it on a chain.

I made a bracelet today. My first, actually. I made it on an elastic band. I don't usually wear elastic bracelets because they usually make my wrist feel like it's being strangled. So, I made mine pretty big. Big enough to fit me comfortably, without leaving marks in my skin. I know I'm not the only woman out there who has this issue with bracelets, and I hope it will find it's way to a good home soon.

See the bracelet here.

How to make a peacock feather Barrette

First things first, here's what you will need:

The picture quality isn't very good, so here's a list: You will need two peacock feathers (just the eye part, actually, so if you have whole feathers feel free to cut off the ends), some rhinestones (amount may vary, I use 5 for this design), a barrette (purchase at any local craft store), felt, a hot glue gun with glue, and scissors. Optional: Pliers.

Now you want to cut some felt.

Place your barrette on the felt to measure how much you'll need.

Then cut to size

Now smooth out the edges of your felt square to make it more of an oval.

Don't worry if it's not perfect, you'll make yourself crazy trying to get it just-so. Put the clip and the felt aside and grab your peacock feathers. You want to cut all of the extra away from the 'stem', leaving only the eye. It should go from something like this

To something like this

Do this with both peacock feathers. Now play with your feathers to get a feel for how you want them to look on the barrette.

Grab your felt and one of your feathers. If your feathers are going to overlap like mine, start with the one that will be on the bottom. BEFORE adding any glue, lay it on the felt to get a feel for where the glue should go and how to get the feather to sit just where you want it. Once you put the glue down you're stuck (get it?). So, practice.

It's time for the glue gun! I don't know about you, but I've always loved these things, despite all the burns I've gotten from them over the years. Put down one diagonal stripe of glue roughly where the center line of the feather will be once it's placed.

You don't have much time before the glue cools, so place your feather fast! Press it gently to make sure it stays, but don't wiggle it around. Feathers are delicate, and you can get breaks in the eye pattern.

Now, do the same for the second peacock feather.

You are now ready for the rhinestones. Once again, before you glue anything, place them on the feathers to get an idea for how you want the pattern to look. I also like to use pliers to pick them up, as my fingers tend to drop things a lot.

Put a little dab of glue on the flat side of the rhinestone and place it on the feather.

Lather, rinse, and repeat for the rest of your stones.

Put your peacock feathers pretty-side down, so the felt is facing up, and grab your barrette. Put a line of glue across the barrette, put it on the felt and press down.

For added security, cut a thin strip of felt and slide it under the part of the barrette that sticks out, and glue the ends down.

And you're done! The end result should look something like this:

That's it! For nicer photos of the final product, check out my etsy store.

the metalacalypse

I am not a fan of home depot. Mostly because I have never, not once, found what I was looking for in one of their stores. Often I leave with nothing, although sometimes I will get an item just for the sake of getting an item. However, while looking into wire wrapping and finding more materials to wrap with I read that many people purchase wire at home supply stores. I checked online and it turns out they stock copper and steel wire in the gauges I use. Boyfriend and I went to the store and... couldn't find it. Had to order my wire online. Pain in the ASS.

Anyway, I ended up with some affordable copper wire, which I have been playing with. I like the contrast it gives to my orthoceras fossils and it looks very pretty on rose quartz. I made a few pendants and am feeling very proud of myself. I find myself wishing I had also purchased a thinner wire, so I could try using it to wrap my feathers. I'm also thinking about trying out some of the steel wire next time around.

coming soon... how to make a peacock feather barrette!

picture perfect?

I made a light box! Or... at least I tried to make one. I think it turned out alright.

The lights I'm currently using are too bright, I think. I tried retaking some of the pictures of my pendants. I've had no luck photographing them, the colors never look right, and there is always a reflection.  My hope was that the light box would eliminate some of these issues.The jury is still out on the results. Take a look here to see for yourself. A big thank you to Boyfriend, who helped with the construction.

This has been on my to do list for some time. Now that it's out of the way (mostly) I can get back to actually making things and posting new items.

Assuming I don't buy Skyrim.