Mario Tree pt 2

So crafting is full steam ahead for the Mario tree. I have collected the styrofoam balls I needed, cut them and covered them in mod podge, and sanded them smooth for prep for the painting.  I was going to paint a flat white acrylic paint for the base coat, but there's a lot of them, and I think spraypaint will give a much more smooth, even coat to work with.  Off to the store for spraypaint...




Jenn had purchased 2 new crafting mediums I haven't had any experience with, Pluffy and Crayola . Both are super light and airy, so they have very little weight and will hange from the tree very well.

The down side to this is that their lack of weight makes it rather difficult to mold them. When I try to adjust one side of a piece, the entire opposite side deforms. It requires the delicate touch of a child. Or maybe just not my brute force method of solving physical problems.

Left : Comp Chain head. Right : Beetle.

Jenn came home last night after a night with her friend Cat (not Kat, Rich's girlfriend), and came home with a couple new pieces for the tree.  She had fashioned a Beetle and Chomp Chain head from the Crayola craft foam. It looked really good! I never even considered adding the Beetle enemy as a possible ornament. I was impressed.

New Project : Mario Tree

Last year I tried to make a Super Mario-themed tree topper; a yellow star made from vinyl and LEDs. It was a failure.

This year, Jennifer proposed making Mario ornaments for the xmas tree. I told her it was a fun idea, and I was okay with it. We talked it over, trying to decide which characters, enemies, and items would be best for this project. Eventually we decided that the best way to do this is to decorate the tree ENTIRELY with Mario ornaments. Mostly, "we decided" involved me badgering Jenn until she relented, but I digress.

So we went to Michaels and gathered some supplies. Styrofoam balls, Paint and brushes, airy light craft foam, plastic beads for pixel art, etc.

The craft foam/clay and styrofoam bits are still being worked on, but the plastic bead crafts were very fast and easy. Plastic pixel art is super fun, and we warned each other not to get too crazy with it, or else we might just forget the other projects and just fill the tree with these.

Well, here's what we have finished so far. We just need to add hooks, and a tree to hang them from.

Starring in this line up; (left to right)

Mario
Fire Flower
Cape feather
Spiny
Lakitu

Aviator Headphones Pt. 2

So I had my materials, and it was time to try to figure out how to color the lining. The sheepskin fur was very long and shaggy, which I was initially super stoked about. I though coloring all of it may be an issue, as the base of the strands was very thick and dense. Alternately, the faux sheepskin I got from Joannes was MUCH easier to deal with, but it was polyester, which Rit dye isn't fond of.

Additionally, I still hadn't decided which method to use for coloring the liners; Fabric dye or hair dye. So I decided to experiment with both to see which came out better. I cut 2 bits from the sheepskin and 2 from the faux liner, and separated them into a matrix. Each of the 2 types of lining would be treated with each of the 2 types of coloring.  Like so --->

oops. Sorry Jenn.

I didn't take a picture of the hair dye on the liners, but here's me ruining Jennifer's cooking pot. I thought it was fine after washing it several times, but the next time we used it for pasta, the water was red and I could taste the dye residue, so I trashed it and promised to replace it.

Here's how they turned out. It was obvious that one was the clear winner. I was quite surprised by the results, as the other three combinations failed so completely.

Once dried, the skin side was very wrinkled, but not so much that the total surface area had shrunken significantly. The wool was an awesome crimson color. I was super excited. Now to do it to the other pieces.

I modded a fabric pattern for a hunter/bombers cap from Threadbanger. You can check out the video for that project HERE.  I used to love that site and their video projects, but the original people who ran it aren't there anymore,  and the new ones, while fine crafters, no longer suit my style. Check them out anyway, you might find something you dig.

I cut out all the pieces out of the sheepskin and leather and started sewing them together. I started to become worried that I may have misjudged the necessary seam allowance for this project, as the leather outer shell was becoming increasingly tighter as I was assembling the pieces. By the time I finished the outer leather shell, It barely fit on my skull, and I needed to force it to fit at all. There was no way I could wear this hat as it was, not to mention the massive bulk of the dense skeepskin liner. I considered tearing up up and starting over, or splitting the seams and adding spacing strips. Fortunately Rich offered to pay me to finish the hat as it was, add the faux liner, and sell it to him so he can give it to his girlfriend Kat. I agreed. This was the more labor-intensive option, but it let me recoup some of the costs of the project. I put the shell aside and started over.


The second shell was much better, and there was plenty of room for liner. It was a good thing that Rich wanted the faux liner, because I didn't have enough sheepskin to cut new pieces. I also was out of Dye, so I had to make do with what I had. This introduced a new problem. My original pieces for the sheepskin (already cut, dyed, and dried out) were for the original size of the hat, not the newer, larger version. There was no way I could sew them together and make them fit.

I made my way back to the Leather Factory to consult the experts. They were very patient, but it was clear they were amused by my problem. I was obviously not getting something basic. Finally they asked "why don't you just glue the sheepskin to the leather rather than sew it together? It's so dense no one will notice that they are separate pieces." I honestly hadn't thought of that. I was still thinking about the fabric bomber hat I was basing my pattern on, which was sewn rather than glued. But leather can be glued easily. I bought some leather cement and went home.

I finished my outer shell and carefully glued the sheepskin liner pieces to the inside. This was messy at first, until I thought of reversing the hat and stretching it over one of the leftover pumpkins we never carved. That made things much easier. Once the glue was set and the hat was ready to be modeled, it was clear I had another problem; it didn't fit on my head. The sheepskin was so thick that there was just no room in there for anyone's head, let alone my big skull. Despite my eagerness to keep the long fluffy wool, I was going to have to trim it down. And down. And down some more.

I was still trimming as Jenn was packing for the trip to San Diego for my birthday. I was excited to show off my new project and I was damned if I wasn't going to be able to wear it while I was out there. So I kept trimming it until the damn thing fit. It was still dense and so warm I worried about EVER being able to wear it in Phoenix (did, but I was sweaty the whole time. Worth it, though.).

Ace Combat Pilot "mad" Mike Mcgillicutty

 Here's Mike in San Diego modeling the hat with the aviator goggles. The edges aren't hemmed yet, but you get a really good idea of what it will look like when completed.

Next up...Completing the project.

New Project : Aviator Headphones

So a few days prior to my birthday, I decided to start a project I've had bouncing around in the back of my head for a few years.

Who doesn't love Jude Law? I don't not love him.

I totally fell in love with the movie "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow"(it's awesome, and if you don't like it, you're wrong). I wanted my own aviator hat and goggles, badly. I found a replica of the goggles easily, but I could never find an aviator hat that satisfied me. I didn't want an actual antique one, as it would fall apart or I wouldn't want to wear it and just keep it as a display item. I also couldn't find a aviator recreation that had the speakers included, as most were just for fashion and meant as hats.




So the plan then became; make an aviator hat and insert headphones. Easy enough, right? Well there were a few things to consider, namely;

- Whatever headphones I use will need to be removed from their headband, destroying them as usable headphones for any other purpose. They will also be very difficult to access to replace if they die out, so they'll need to be high quality, but not so high that I hesitate to take a dremel to them.

- I'll need a pattern, or an aviator hat to take apart. I have yet to find a pattern for an aviator hat, and if I buy an aviator hat to take apart, why dont I just add speakers to the one I bought?

- I don't need that much leather, and the leather shop sells garment leather in small batches for flimsy materials, or large sections for more durable leathers. So I either have to accept a lower durability, or a lot of extra material and cost.

- The aviator hats I found aren't lined in any way. I assumed that they were lined in sheepskin, like a bomber's jacket, but no. Jude Law's Sky Captain hat looks lined in some thin material similar in color to sheepskin. Lined hats I found look more like bomber hats or hunter's caps than aviator hats. This is probably a semantic issue at this point, but its a point. In addition, I would prefer not to have a white lining. I need something with more... Zazz.

With this in mind I headed out to find materials...

Leather - I went to my local Tandy Leather Factory and consulted with one of the workers there. I love going to Tandy because its such a specialized store that all of the employees and shoppers have a lot more experience in leathercraft than I do and they all have an opinion or some tips and tricks to pass on. I looked over the various leathers within my budget (kangaroo leather, while both durable and thin and supple, was WAY too expensive), and picked out a scrap section that fit about halfway between workability and price.



Lining - I found some interesting faux sheepskin at Joannes, but when I got to Tandy's, they were selling full sheepskins for 20% off. I immediately bought one. None of the workers or shoppers had any idea on how to dye the sheepskin. Some suggested Rit dye (its wool, after all), or Hair dye (it is sheep hair afterall).

Stitching - I tried machine sewing leather, to varying degrees of success. On a normal brother sewing machine, thin leather can be okay, but anything thicker is a huge pain. I needed something  for hand sewing. The Tandy employee suggested saddlemaking waxed thread. I was unsure about that until I saw that it came in bright red. Awesome.





Next time. experimentation...

Backdated Posts

I had a few posts I realized I had written and saved, but never published. I posted them at the time I had written them. Here they are for those keeping track;

Halloween costume 2010

Halloween night 2010

Pumpkinthulhu

New updates imminent...

Has there really been no updates since June? Ugh. I'm a terrible blogger. And I had projects to post too. That's my fault, and if anyone really reads this blog, I'm sorry.

New posts dropping soon. Promise.

Backdated Project : Halloween '10 Costume

 Klaus Nomi (left) and Iggy Pop as the Sovereign's henchmen in the Venture Bros. 2-part episode "Battle at cremation creek"

So for Halloween I decided to be Klaus Nomi. Originally I didn't really know of him other than vaguely. His appearance in Venture Bros. caused me to look him up, as I could easily recognize the other celebrities featured in the season finale, but not him, and he was much too weird not to know.

So it turns out the Klaus Nomi was a very interesting person. I quickly grew to like his strange 80's German operatic-pop music, his costume design, even his tv appearances. Unfortunately, Nomi died of AIDS in 1983, so there is not much of his work left to find.


The costume was surprisingly easy to create. Cardboard diamond-shaped top, covered in Black and white vinyl and hot-glued in place. The skirt was sewn from black vinyl. The whole thing took only a couple days.
 
 On Halloween day, it was time to put it all together. First things first, though, was to shave my eyebrows. It was not as strange for me as I assumed it would be. It was MUCH more strange for those around me, however. Richard would not stop making jokes about it, and his girlfriend Kat couldn't seem to look at it at all. That's all right. It was totally worth it.

 My hair was much too long for Nomi's triple-hawk, but I didn't quite understand how much longer it was until I tried to glue it up. It worked out to my advantage though, because hard, gluey hair is much easier to cut to a specific length on your own then loose dry hair. So I cut the sides of my hawk down further than the central section, and then the central section to a manageable length.

The makeup was easy. Black eyeliner, lip color, and eyebrows. Since I have had PLENTY of experience in applying black face makeup.

Here's the completed Nomi costume. It's awesome, I know.

Update: As of Dec 1st, my eyebrows still have yet to fully recover.