Plaster gauze dressform [final base]

Made the positive yesterday. Holy crap, that took longer than the negative, despite being 3 rather than four layers and technically smaller.

Lined the negatives with paper towel. Wet the strips of plaster gauze and put them in. With these I was extra careful to make sure all the plaster was smoothed out, so maybe that's what took so long...?

One of the many perks to it being so dry right now was that the positive was solidly dry about 24 hours later, so I went ahead and filed down the sides and put the two halves together using more plaster gauze on the outside

It was at this point I realized I'd made a mistake with the positive: it needs to be trimmed to the edge of the negative before it dries. This way it can more easily be shaped.

The greyish stripe from the gauze makes it disorienting to scroll up and down. It took me a minute to realize it wasn't my eyes

 

Hmmm...stand will be made when I get back from school this week. Or tomorrow.

Ah, and will add really, really horrible jewelry photos. They'll be updated with nicer ones...someday.

 Literally taken as I was packing them up to be sent out to Little Black Box. 5.19 priority shipping on a 2 lb, 11 oz box. Can't properly express how happy I am they're located in TX *,*

Plaster Gauze dressform [negative]

On a mission to make a dummy in my size. I've been picking the project around for about a year and a half now, though at that point it was going to be a duct tape dummy.

Things used:
-Plaster gauze. I bought a 270 ft. box (20 lbs) on Amazon for 50.00 As for amount....eh...I wrapped myself from neck to mid-thigh four times and used about a third of the box (5'2, 125 lbs, U.S. dress size between 4 and 6).
-A large bowl of hot water and access to a dumping point + more hot water.
-Strong, sharp scissors. Tested two pairs of scissors on a test-palette the gauze just in case.
-Mother, to wrap me
-Brother, to cut more strips of cloth when we realized we were running out of the right size.

Many of the sites tell say to put on a thin, skintight shirt. Maybe this works if you're only doing two or three layers, but, er, not so much with four layers. If I have to do this again (please god, no ~_~), pantyhose on my legs and a bra I don't particularly like. Nothin' else (the plaster peels off the skin painlessly). The shirt was not only a pain in the rear to cut through, but it partially stuck to the inside of the negative. However, the next time around, I'm going to attempt with just three layers.

So the other mistake made was using long strips at first. Mother thought it would be easier, like wrapping tape. No, no. Cut short strips (8"). A mountain of them. (Estimated amount by measuring bust, waist, hips, and body length, x3. Then, for good measure, a mountain of short ones.

Started with horizontal strips just below the bust and wrapped down, down. Then 'crossed the heart' and filled in the bust and shoulders. Repeated with vertical and slanted strips, then horizontal. Rub, rub, rub the plaster into the gauze.

I read to let it dry mostly before cutting it off or it wouldn't keep its shape, but I let it dry too much, so cutting was not fun.

But it's off, and we'll see the accuracy once the negative dries and I make the positive. *sigh*

I can already tell I 1. didn't stand straight enough and 2. moved around too much. Ah, well.

Cyber falls!

So I've been eying these for years, and I've finally gotten a chance to make them for a reasonable price.

Not quite done with them yet--I want to add more rexlace so there's greater texture and not just mountains of crin, but I want to trim what's there first (will do...once my hair dries), and I'm playing with the idea of stringing gears on embroidery thread and adding that to the mix. No, this is not 'steampunking' my falls--gears just make things more shiny, and shiny is good.

Now, Anachronaut's falls are the only ones I've seen that I would remotely consider steam...or Predator. Either way, they're gorgeous. (And you know what? There's not a single gear in them. Anyway, I digress.)

These took much longer to make an I anticipated, though a lot of it was me staring at the parts trying to figure out how on earth I was going to put them together, given the strange cuts I had.

Pictured: Brother-turned-mannequin

I'm going to test my theory about these being worn in a 'normal' setting, and not just for clubbing (would you consider school 'normal?'). Simple grey dress with feminine cut, tights, and boots. Personally, I don't think these are any 'weirder' than a headful of dreads, but we'll see.


Materials: Tubular crin, foam, rexlace, plastic tubing, woven ribbon, watch parts, patience.

Decanting fun

Fabric will go up later this week--my first day with spare time (loosely speaking) was spent relaxing/decanting. Pretty vials...

Army of pretty vials.

Decanting is the process of moving liquid from one container to another, usually larger to smaller (yes, just like liquor)--in this case, moving perfume oil (note, NOT the same as perfume) from 5mL bottles into tiiiiny 1/32 oz vials.  I've been doing this since late '07 and now have a permanent bruise on my right thumb from capping so many of these. It's fun and relaxing until it's time to package *sigh*

Certain companies have limited edition lines that they don't offer sample sizes for, so some of us offer to decant it for others. I've been working most often with Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, Black Phoenix Trading Post, and Blooddrop Clothing and Fineries, though I do dabble in others on occasion, depending if I find anything that really piques my interest that others aren't already decanting for. The companies I deal with--and have dealt with--are well aware of what we decanters do, and they don't seem to mind. After all, we encourage people to buy more (since they don't have to buy a large bottle blind), we spread the word, and the companies have zero cost in this process: we buy the bottles, we decant, we ship.

No, this is not for a profit (though there's the perk of testing these for 'free,' if you consider donating hours of time 'free'), but we decanters do have to run this process like a business. There are so many of us, we really do have to compete to find enough people to fill all the slots in the bottles.

Each bottle = six people

Price per vial = price of oil/6 + price of vial + shipping from company/number of bottles ordered

Of course, those are the basic numbers. Then you have to worry about cost of label, teflon, ink for the printer, pipettes...So when each slot is 3.25 to 5.25 base cost, each slot really begins to add up. So when is it better to just eat the cost of several unfilled bottles in order to keep a few circle members from pulling out of an incomplete circle? When is it better to just drop a bottle? Then, of course, there's invoicing everyone, making sure they pay, and find the time to decant, finding time to package everything up and mail it. So much stress...

But damn, I can't stop. I'm slowly weaning myself off the whole thing. At my height, I was decanting something 100 bottles per large update (roughly every other month, with the months between having about 10 bottles). Now I'm down to...okay, still in the 70's and 80's.

Backlog

I keep telling myself I'll make this blog happen, but *sweatdrop* I never have the time, nor have I been regularly crafting since school started. Here's to hoping one post will set off a chain of productivity.

One of the older hats made summer 2010 to add to Oni-Con inventory that was an experimental piece, to be honest. I was trying to figure out the best order of assembly for the parts. It was a dainty palm size and sold the first day.

Materials include polyester fabric, dyed ostrich feather, glue, giant alligator clip, and only one or four curses.

Here was my attempt to introduce the children that attend Oni-Con to the world of tasteful color. For an experimental piece, I actually love the way this one came out, and it gave me zero grief during its creation. This one is a little larger than my normal hats--it's about 1/2 to 3/4 the size of the average headpiece.

Materials include cotton, ostrich feather (added later), glue, giant alligator clip, felt, buckram, polyester ribbon, plastic beads, and fake flowers (probably felt and plastic).

Red skirt and antique petticoat made for the Alice in Wonderland midnight showing because I thought it would be cheating to go as the Mad Hatter, given I dress like that on a normal basis.

Detail of the drape and petticoat. The petticoat was modeled after one I purchased in the summer with a minor adjustment. Definitely need to remake this poor thing.

The lovely lady to the right is my good friend Abi, who sewed her entire outfit plus the most gorgeous cloak in the the week before finals. She is a demon with the sewing machine (and I'm pretty sure her machine is possessed, so it's a good pairing, methinks.)

Materials: Lots and lots of muslin and elastic. And more muslin.


To come soon (this weekend? Hopefully??):
Photos of fabric available
Jewelry

Hats and skirts designed and created by me 

Corset by Damsel in This Dress

Photos by the devastatingly talented Shaoshao Chen.