the paper mache pig that was not

so i've been to two caleighs in the last week - at some point i ended up taking a balloon home...obviously it got paper mached! it was to be a piggy bank, a beautiful work of art with loo roll tube feet and nose and a plucky, optimistic expression. it went badly wrong when i realised that i had run out of white paint - i thought that perhaps if i paper mached a white layer and then painted very watery red it would come out pink. i was wrong, not about the pink bit - the colour was fine, but i had to make the red so watery that i had to do many layers, i was impatient, it got soggy, it fell apart, i was sad.

so i made a very quick homage to that piggy bank in the form of a cardboard box covered in ripped up origami paper, paper covered bottle top nose and pokey up card ears. he still has quite an optimistic expression and he holds money, so it could be worse : )

strangers with drink-carton wallets

it was my last day of work last saturday. one of the customers during my last shift took out her wallet to pay and i went "o! that's an interesting wallet, i think i was drinking the juice that comes in that carton last night!" i think she was rather amused at my reaction to her purse as she gave me a spare that she had on her, one she made form a soya milk carton. it was very sweet of her : ) and following her pattern i made my own:

there are a few different examples online of carton wallets (there's even one with instructions by the people at disney which made me smile) but this one looks like it is simpler than all the rest - simply flatten a carton, letting the sides fold inwards, cut a flap at the top and fold the rest in half. then all you need to do is use two paper clips to hold the two halves together, puch a hole in the flap and attach something stretchy to it - the lady used an elastic band, i used gold strechy thread. i modified her patttern slightly as i noticed that the cardboard bunches when it folds at the bottom as the card is quite thick and there are essentially 8 bits being folded together - so i cut out a strip of card on the inside of the major bottom fold, a sort of drastic kind of scoring a fold if you get what i mean. it made it a bit neater anyway, though it will no doubt only last a week or so i am very much looking forward to using it and having shop people comment on it like i did. 

bird earrings!

these's something of a theme here and that is mostly because i have lots of left over bird beads after starting a bird themed charm bracelet. i wasn't going to do much with them but then i found a load of earring wires that i thought i'd lost forever- thrown in the bin by accident or something. but no! they were under my bed:

there's beads and feathers and bits of kinder egg toy that i had to drill holes in with an electric nail file, all good fun : )

dress 3 of 7: dalek dress

torcher parade tomorrow night and we're doing a dr who theme so a philosoc friend and i are at the sewing machine and glue-gunning dresses into awesomeness!

we added a strip of black fabric to the bottom, a hoola hoop to that, and painted ball-pit-balls all over : )

although i should warn that sewing and using a glue gun when in a rush is deadly on the fingers!

dress 2 of 7: firefly dress

you'd of thought i'd have learnt not to mix water with fabric paint....but i had this cheapy spray bottle and the fabric paint was just too thick for it. so i mixed white with water to do a sort of star effect on my black dress....with a stencil of serenity from firefly that i made while watching the apprentice:

now there are a few things to bare in mind when makeing the stencil for one of these spaceship dresses (there's some very good examples on etsy) the first is that it's meant to be a negative stencil - which is the complete opposite of what you would normally do. i totally forgot about that so had to spray my normal stencil to fill in the details, then place a cut out of the outline on top so i could spray the stars aroud it without messing up the ship. it kind of worked out, apart from the glaringly obvious A4 outline from the outside of the normal stencil, and the fact that i made the fabric paint too watery so the stars kind of look like they've been rained on....i'll pretend it was all on intended...a sort of grungey tantrum at the show being canceled.



venetian steampunk

i'm back! was starting to have something of an identity crisis due to the uncharacteristic total lack of motivation in the making department. i've been ill, i've been to venice, i'm back at uni.

venice was beautiful and lovely and everything it should be, despite bringing a fair amount of dosh i somehow managed to run out by like the second day.....so instead of buying a wonderfully tacky touristy mask, i got a blank one for €1.99 and did this to it:

so i was going for a sort of steampunk, paneled, robot thing. it was really easy to do but did take a while and a bit of patience is required.

the mask was plastic, so i paper mached (i think that's how you spell it in past tense) it with loo roll so stuff would stick to it. then there was LOTS of cutting up of pizza boxes to make  all the little panels, i used a hole punch to do the riveting effect. after everything was dry i slathered it with black-gold paint, for some reason 'antique gold' paint costs about twice as much as regular gold, so i just mixed regular

gold with black and to make the same colour. anyways, it was lots of fun, now all i have to do is persuade someone to host some sort of steampunk event so i can wear it : )

dress 1 of 7: you can't dye with watery fabric paint

yes, that's right, i have 7 dresses to play with! 5 nude, 1 red and 1 black. they are all the same style, cotton, and cost £1.99 each from H&M. to begin with they all look something like this:

(only there's also a red one and a black one). my first attempt met with some set backs when i found out that emptying a pot of purple fabric paint into a bucket of hot water does not in fact produce fabric dye - it just made the dress a bit pinky about the edges : ( but pinky goes well with green! so i  replaced the belt with a skinny green one i picked up for a pound at primark, and i doodled flight related stuff in green paint all over the dress,  and all is well with the world again. Here's some of the doodles: