Creatively Tinkering

   Today I grabbed my unfinished hats and Loot bags and went over to my parents' house. My mom finished putting the linings together for the Loot bags and came up with the brilliant idea of using paint pens to do the detail work on said bags. A big thank you to Justin for going out and buying the paint pens for me while he was on his way over to check out what my mom and I were up too. The pens will definitely make the detail work go much faster than hand painting them like I did on the very first Loot bag. Right now only one Loot bag is done and the others have been partially painted. Once they're all painted the linings can go in and the bags will be done.     Can I just say that I have an awesome mom, she knows this whole MAGFest thing is really important to me and is helping me to finish up the last bits and pieces of the product that has yet to be completed. Even my Grandma joined in by helping to stitch some of the hatbands on the Link hats that need to b...

   Oy vey, its been a long day... I got the last of the Mushroom bags painted. This means I now have 10 bags, four hats an two cat tails ready to sell for MAGFest. Tomorrow I'll be going back to my parents' house so my mom can help me paint and put together the Loot bags. I'm really starting to feel the pressure now, there are only five days left till the start of MAGFest. I feel like there's a lot left to do, however most of what needs to be done is the building process for the ears & tails, and the lacings on the hats. Speaking of ears, while making them today I realized that when I put the white ears together that I made 16 left ears instead of 8 left and 8 right :-( Luckily I realized this after making two sets of the calico ears, which I already fixed and completed the gray and calico ears in the proper left and right combos. Now I'm going to have to find time to fix the white ears... Here's hoping I can get past the stressful feelings and finish everyt...

   Hey again, so today was a rough day for me. I didn't wake up in the best of moods, spent most of the day feeling really bummy. So that made it hard to feel motivated but I managed to get myself out to the store to get those last things that I needed. When I got home it took me a bit to work up the gusto to tackle dying the rest of the feathers. Everything was set up in the bathroom but the thought of having to go up and down all the stairs in this townhouse was daunting and tiring to think about. Luckily I buckled down and got it done so now all the feather boas for the tails are dyed and drying in the basement. They'll just need to be braided and have ribbons and pin backs attached to them. Major plus of today, five of the mushroom bags are done, and I must say they look quite wonderful. Here's some pics:       If you've seen the original picture posted in an earlier blog post and in my etsy shop, you'll notice that I fancied up the bag a bit. ...

   Yesterday was Christmas, Justin made me take the day off :-p So while Christmas should have been the 7th day of MAGFest production, Boxing day is now the 7th day of MAGFest production. This morning I awoke to the sounds of sleet and snow falling from the sky. The plan for the day was to pack up my sewing gear and trek it over to my parent' house, granted the weather made me hesitant to actually do said packing. But work needed to be done and my mom graciously offered to help make things for MAGFest. After gathering up the bags that needed to be made and my sewing machine it was off to my parents' place, the roads were a bit slippery with the slushy mix on the roads. Luckily I arrived safely and in one piece and set to work unloading and setting up my sewing machine on the dining room table. Today was particularly wonderful for production as I can proudly say that my 10 mushroom bags are done and ready to have the Mario mushrooms painted on them. My mom got the outside of th...

   Well progress is definitely being made, while I still only have four Link hats and two cat tails officially ready to sell, there are many things nearing completion. On day five of my sewing room captivity I actually broke free, Justin and I went to visit his parents, I brought stuff along to work on. So with a giant bag of Link hats and the necessary sewing accoutrements, I set myself up on the couch in Justin's parents' family room. There I sat from about 1:00pm to 7:ish hand stitching the inside of the hatbands. When we got to their house there were 28 hats in that bag that needed to be done, through sheer perseverance 10 of those hats got their hat bands stitched. That, to me, is a good sized dent in the hand stitching to be done, now all those hats need are the ribbon lacings and they'll be officially done. Only 18 more of those hats to go, lots of work, next time I do this craft fair thing I'm going to make sure I plan out my days/weekends more efficiently. That...

So far today I have managed to cut out and sew together the four green hats, that I mentioned yesterday. My hands apparently were not fully recovered from the grommeting I did all day on Thursday. So while doing the grommets on those last four hats my hands were angry at me, but I convinced them to continue because those were the last grommets I would have to do. At this point you may be wondering about that blog post title. Well today I decided to start on some of the cat ears, since the white tails were ready, it seemed logical to start on the white ears. It became quickly and increasingly apparent to me while cutting the fur that working in a carpeted room was not ideal. Every ear I cut out would sprinkle a small explosion of white fur everywhere. So by the time I was done cutting out the ears there was a lovely coating of loose fur all over the floor. Thus requiring me to vacuum or risk trekking all that fur through the house. Granted my sewing room at this point needed to be vacuu...

   Today felt like it was unproductive, but it wasn't. Maybe its because so far all I have ready to sell are two white cat tails and four blue Link hats. Despite this I have made progress as all but four of the hats have been sewn together, all that's left to do is hand stitch the inside of the hat band and put the lacings through the grommets. There are four more hats to cut out because its been difficult to find more of the forest green fleece for the green hats. So I had to settle on a different shade of green to make the remaining four green hats. That will just my potential MAGFest customers a choice in which green they prefer their Link hats in. Some of the feather boas got dyed today, for the calico colored tails. By the way marabou feather boas smell weird when wet, its hard to describe but it definitely smells like wet animal. Well tomorrow is another day for progress, I'm trying to stay positive that I'll finish everything in time, despite the daunting task of...

  Well today started out with me running errands: shipping off my school books that I sold to various places, picking up the grommets I needed and some more green fleece for 4 more green hats, and some buckets for dying the marabou feathers for the tails. I think now I finally have all the supplies necessary to finish everything. After returning home I set to work putting grommets into the Link hats, it took all day but all the hats now have grommets. Most annoyingly, even though I purchased more grommets, I still didn't have enough of the black or green grommets. So half of the black hats will have black grommets while the remainder will have silver, likewise half of the green hats will have green grommets and the other half will have brown. My hands are sore from using my grommet tools all day, when I went to sew hat bands onto the hats it was mildly painful to feed the fabric through the sewing machine. At any rate I'm making progress, there is still lots to do, but as Tim G...

 Well I've neglected the blog a lot in the last couple of months. Mostly because everything I've been doing the last couple months has been school related. However the semester is officially over now, my last exam was on Tuesday, Dec 18th. So now there's about two weeks till MAGFest and I'm finally getting the chance to work on my product. Today was productive, I got the Link hats halfway put together only because I didn't have enough grommets to put in the hats. So tomorrow its off to the fabric store to get the items I'm missing. Once I finish my errands its back to the sewing room to finish them up. I've got a lot to do in a short period of time, but I'm positive I can finish everything in time for MAGFest. So in short for the next two weeks I will be essentially living in my sewing room.

   So this is a little late, by almost a week, but I thought I should post something about it. I finally got the email I was waiting for, I will be at MAGFest in their marketplace selling all those fun things I mentioned in my last post. Also a friend of mine will be sharing the booth space with me and she will be selling her paintings and drawings there. Right now I'm trying to figure out pricing and how much I should make of each item. I've got to sit down and make myself a schedule so I can get my homework for school done and still have time to work on my MAGFest products. I am so excited and I'm pretty sure its going to be a bumpy road, time wise, to get everything done but in the end it'll be worth it. I'll post more pictures of items as I get them done.

   Alrighty I have here some photos of items that I plan on selling at my booth at MAGFest, provided my application gets approved. As of right now I only have pictures of one of the bags I'll be making, a few of my earring designs, and the cat/fox ears and tails. More pictures well follow of the other items I plan on making, such as Link hats, fingerless gloves and another bag design.   Here's my one-up mushroom bag, a cute little triangle shaped bag made out of cotton with a hand-painted mushroom on the front corner. Its a sturdy bag that can hold an Ipad or netbook and a few essentials like your wallet, cellphone and favorite magazine.   Here are my hand-beaded earrings, so far I've made the red mushroom from Mario, a tri-force and pokeball designs. I have plans to try and make the cake from Portal and the Minecraft creeper face.   Last but not least are my fox/cat ears and tail. The ears are made from faux fur with craft foam to keep th...

    Well it has been quite awhile but I've finally got some stuff to talk about. That silver vest I mentioned around the time I finished that Link costume has finally been finished. It turned out pretty well. I had a devil of a time making it though as the fabric wasn't exactly fun to work with. The vest was made out of a silver satin with a matching silver lining fabric so it was like trying to sew on a slip n' slide. It took me much longer to make it than it should have, mostly because working with the fabric was frustrating. Now that it's done I can start to work on products to sell at MagFest in January.     Over the past week or so I've been narrowing down the tons of ideas I have for products to potentially sell at MagFest. As of today I've narrowed it down to earrings, hats, cat ears and tails, fingerless gloves, bags and wallets. Whether all of those items make it into my repertoire of things to sell at the booth or not is the question. As of right now ...

   Well sadly my little dream of having an Etsy shop has severely floundered. Mostly because I have been insanely busy with school and work. Honestly I haven't stopped feeling overwhelmed since the beginning of the semester. I haven't even had time to make the vest my coworker wants me to make. Luckily spring break is coming up so I'll have time to do homework and that vest. I'm looking forward to the end of the semester in hopes that I'll be able to get into my sewing/craft room and play. I have been just itching to get in there and let the creative juices flow. Sadly I can't because my homework gets in the way, on the plus side some of my homework is fun since it's photography assignments. It's the english assignments that aren't any fun. In three semesters I'll be done at GMU, I am soo looking forward to being done. After I'm done with school I look forward to really getting into building my Etsy shop, till then I will use summer as my opp...

 Well so far, no such luck with my Etsy shop. I think that has a lot to do with the lack of items in my shop. Also maybe my necklaces aren't all that great. Anyway I'm not letting this sway my feelings about attempting to sell things I can make.  So there are many reasons why I haven't added any new items to my shop; lack of inspiration, increased hours at work, side projects and the holidays. All of this sounds like excuses I know, there is also that wonderful little thing that lots of people suffer from called procrastination. One of my goals for this year is to try and schedule more time to my little (floundering) Etsy shop. Also I recently went to MagFest (a video game convention, look it up it's super fun!) and inspiration hit me, I've decided that next year I want to have a booth at MagFest. I've been brimming with ideas to sell at my potential booth and I can't wait for it to come to fruition. Of course till MagFest rolls around I've got plans to...