Creatively Tinkering

 Hey all, sorry its been so terribly long since I've attempted a blog post. At the start of this semester I had no idea how crazy my life would get. There was Senior Art Project, where I had to come up with an exhibit for the Senior Show at GMU. Then I also had two business classes as well as pilates classes (tying to maintain some sense of a workout routine). So this resulted in my time being occupied by lots of homework as well as my job and one day a week babysitting for a lovely family. Very little crafting went on this semester, there was mostly photography happening for my senior project. The schedule this semester hasn't lent itself to too much free time so it felt very chaotic and stressful. Luckily it has finally all wound down and I graduated from GMU on Dec 19th 2013.  Once graduation was done and over with I had little time to work on MAGFest product. Luckily I've been able to make six rupee pillows and now I have 32 hats ready to be completely finished. My han...

  Hey all, I finally got around to updating my listings on Etsy. My friend Lauren volunteered to be a model for me and modeled some of my geeky product. The photos turned out quite nice and Lauren was fun to work with. It was a first for both of us as I don't typically work with people and she hasn't modeled before. Through a bit of trial and error we got some lovely photos. Along with the updates to listings on Etsy I also added some new listings for some of the new stuff I made. I still have to do some new photos of the rupee pillows, so those aren't up yet. The delay there is mostly because I only have one rupee pillow left after the TooManyGames con, so I kind of need to make more. Speaking of conventions, Donna and I will be at MAGFest again the first weekend of January 2014. We're both pretty excited about it, after two conventions we're getting into the groove of making product and how to lay it out nicely on our tables for display.   This fall is gonna be b...

   So, hi everybody... I know I haven't written in awhile. The build up to the TooManyGames convention wasn't as exciting as MAGFest since I was making mostly the same stuff. Which is likely why I didn't write any blog entries, although I could have written about the new stuff. I made some new things which were hairsticks and giant rupee pillows.   Sadly I don't have any good pictures ready at the moment of the hairsticks or the pillows because, despite being a photography major, I got lazy about pictures.    Anywho this convention has been interesting. It is definitely smaller than MAGFest and there seems to be a lot more children here. Donna is doing fabulously well here, she made a bunch of 8-bit keychains, hair clips and headbands (I bought a rainbow bow headband). She also brought her 8-bit paintings which are equally as popular. My merchandise is intriguing people but I haven't had a lot of takers. Unlike MAGFest the hats aren't as popular, they're s...

    Wow! Its been a little while. Sorry not a lot of crafty stuff is happening at the moment because school basically consumes all of my time. On a brighter note I only have four more classes to take to finish my degree!! : -) I am so excited to finally finish college and earn my B.A.     While I may not be up to much crafty stuff there has been some action on my etsy shop. Someone finally didn't just look at or favorite one of my Link hats, nope they straight up bought one : -) So I finally made my first sale on etsy, which is awesome. Thanks to doing MAGFest and have a link up on the TooManyGames website I'm getting a decent amount of traffic in my etsy shop. In fact someone stumbled across my ears and messaged me to see if I could make them a pair of ears for their Necomimi device (Necomimi) . So I took up the challenge to make the ears, since the Necomimi store sells the foam bases for the ears, I'm also making a tail to go with the ears. Its been fun ...

  Well hey there! Sorry I haven't written in a while, the school semester started which has been taking up a lot of my crafty time : -( Any ways a friend of mine commissioned me to create a costume for her from the game Journey. She even brought her PS3 over so I could play the game, which is only 2 hours long. Let me tell you, this Journey game is one of the most elegant and beautiful games I have ever played. Wonderful music, artwork and the costume the character wears is wonderfully mysterious.    For the past month I've been slowly working on this costume bit by bit, my friend found a tutorial and pattern to make the costume, which can be found here: Journey Cloak tutorial/pattern . The tutorial and pattern were helpful, to a degree. It advises to cut the cloak out in a half circle shape, however for those of us who have shoulders, just cutting out a half circle doesn't work. I had to add some extra panels and put some darts in to act as shoulder seams to get the clo...

   Yesterday was the birthday of one of our rock climbing buddies, so I decided to make her a surprise birthday cake. This was only the second time I had tried making from scratch cake batter. The first time was around Christmas, when I made red velvet cupcakes decorated with cream cheese frosting and green icing wreaths. This time my creative mind decided to try and make something from on of my friend's favorite shows, Doctor Who. So I whipped together some white cake batter, dyed a portion of it blue, and made a blue marble cake in a 9" X 9" cake pan.  Since there was left over batter it got dispensed into a mini cupcake pan. After the cake was baked and cooled, I cut it into four small squares which were then stacked and iced to form what resembled Doctor Who's Tardis.   Now this was my first time trying to make a creatively decorated cake, which is why it came out a bit Seussical, what with its leaning curve. I failed to put supports inside the cake while b...

   Well yesterday was the end of MAGFest, my first ever adventure in selling my crafty fun things. The Link hats were very popular, by the end of the convention there were only six left. In fact there was one guy who sold his Link hat to his friend because he liked my hats better. :-) Clearly I'll be making more of those for next year, I'll need more green ones, they sold out in the first two days! Also there seems to be another color of Link hats that will need to be made, apparently in the game Four Swords, Link has a purple outfit. So there will be green, purple, blue, red and black hats next time. Sadly my ears and tails weren't as popular as I was hoping, lots of people liked them and were interested but only two pairs sold. There were a few requests for black ears, so I'll have to find some black fur to make black ears. My plan for next year is to make some Nyan cat ears and tails, our booth neighbor offered to make some poptarts for me, so I can add them to the b...

   Alright so this post is a little late, but to be fair I've been crafting like a crazy woman for the last three days. Its been three days of late nights, early mornings and non-stop crafting. On Monday I got all the ears finished, as in fur glued to craft foam so that they could then be stitched to headbands. Also the rest of the tails were braided in preparation for the ribbon and pin accoutrements. Tuesday it was off to my parents' house to pick up the Loot bags and Link hats my mom and grandma helped finish. The paint on the rupees and trunks was touched up and when I got home the outside of the bags were finally constructed since the paint was dry and the linings were pinned in place. Wednesday the linings in the Loot bags were sewn in and the laces for the Link hats were done. My mom came over to help finish up the Loot bags while I did the lacings in the Link hats, she stitched up the openings for where the lining was turned, did the detail work on the rupees and added...