Princess Coiffe finished....

So, one head dress done out of three! Yay! I had gotten all the gold trim sewn on before Christmas, and let it sit until today to figure out exactly how to go about finishing it. It's like that for me when I have never sewn something before. I have to let it sit until a clear direction of going about it crystallizes in my head. The perks of being self taught, I guess. I have to figure things out, and whether or not I am doing it the "right way" as long as it turns out looking good and finished neatly, I just go with it.

I had initially planned to gather the bottom edge like human sized coiffes are finished, but for this size, that did not work. I pleated it with tiny pleats instead, and the hang was much better. I ended up finishing the inside with a facing, which did 2 things: hid the raw edges, and also gave it a better form for fitting the head. The top part of the coiffe I finished with a cream silk. I really am pleased with it. I had planned to add bead detailing, but I think I had better omit that on the white part of it before I make it too busy. I might add it to the cream though as I think it could use a little something more. After I got it finished, I held it up to all three of the dresses it is meant to go with to see how they all look together. They look great!. Its enthralling to see it all come together. :D Later on when the lighting is better I will do a nice photo session with the coiffe with each dress.

Confessions of a Crafter......

You know you really have a crafting addiction when the dreaded time rolls around for you to re-organize your crafting space and supplies. This is my weekend project, whether I want it to be or not.

I have too much craft supplies! It's not so much that I have an overabundance of one particular thing (the likely candidate for this is my fabric stash which has already been once again cut waaaaay down. I have to do this every year.) I just have so many kinds of things to store.

There's my polymer clay, which is stored conveniently in one of those flat square containers you get for scrap booking paper. (I have one of those full of mostly Halloween paper - god knows what I will actually do with it.) And now I have a nice little container of all the supplies I will need to go along with it. My tools, TLS, clay thinner, a couple of molds I can't live without (tiny ghosts and bats) and then my sealers. I'm thrilled to have it all together in one convenient place.

There's my catch all container where I have my MSC and other sealers, my punches and molds for making 1/6 and 1/12 paper plates, the scrap booking markers in metallics for edging said plates, the triple thick sealers for them, glitter fabric paint, mediums for various things and my stash of glitter.

Oh, that glitter. I love it. I have a good selection of holiday colors. You know the sample packs, the ones that come taped to card board backs in neat little plastic bags? Well, recently they were used for some Christmas decorating, and in the swirl of throwing out old storage things that simply did not work, that fine little glitter made it way out of those little plastic bags and onto literally everything. It is EVERYWHERE. All over the floor, all over my desk, all over everything.

Several hours later, and it is mostly under control. I have my embroidery floss neatly in its own container. Beads have been sorted and organized with my jewelry making tools and supplies. My buttons have been sorted and organized. :) The majority of the glitter as been cleaned, but its evasive, and I know I will be finding it for months to come in surprising places.

My brushes have a new home away from their stained up bag in the container my clay extruder came in. I swear I love that tool, but have really no good use for it. Its tucked away neatly in my clay tools waiting for that moment to shine. I really need to replace my fine tipped paint brushes. They are the same ones I have been using for years, and the fine tips have started to curl.

My liquidex paint I bought many, many moons ago has been mostly thrown out. Its so dried, and the white, blacks and medium brown are all used up. I saved the ones I will need for the princess crown I sculpted. I'd love to order another big set of them like I did before, but for now, I'll just get single tubes in the colors I need for face ups and what not. I've really been needing to do this for a long time now. I'll need another container for those when I get them.

I still have a ways to go. I need a container for my millinery supplies, as well as a few other things such as my knitting needles, tiny crochet hooks and closures. But, its taking form. And you know it has to get worse before it gets better. That's the only thing that helps one cope with the piles. Soon it'll become a visage of order instead of a constant state of mayhem where you cannot find a thing that you need.

(I'm not even going to go into my pattern disaster that has to be addressed as well. A blog post can only handle so much chaos.)

As I worked through everything I got to thinking how much more free of clutter my life would be if I had managed to hold myself to one or maybe two crafting hobbies, or really none at all. But, how boring! I can't help myself, I love to try many different things, and my creative ADD really doesn't help me out any at all. In reality, the majority of my crafting is because of my dolls. If I didn't have them, then I'm not sure what I would do nor not do. So many things I started just because I want to make everything I can for them. But, it's all worth it - the space it takes up and the arduous process of sorting, throwing out, and re-organizing. Once its done, one can sigh with relief, and get back to the fun process of creation. And hopefully do a better job of keeping things organized.....

Making Medieval Head Dresses for the Princess Project

This has been one LONG and complicated project. 9 dresses, and 3 head dresses. Head dresses should technically be easier than elegant dresses, but this is me we are talking about, and as I am not really used to doing  much head wear, I am struggling just a bit. I just dyed the final 2 pieces of silk for the final ball gown, and while the fabric is soaking (it takes a really long time to wash out the loose pigment when the dye is really dark. I find soaking saves the hands.) I am working on the pattern for the coiffe.

This is the intended look:

http://www.echoppemedievale.com/upload/photos/femmes/coiffes/coiffe_medievale_moyen_age_i.jpg

I love it. I plan to do the end in cream silk, the rest of the fabric will be white cotton (way easier to work with for tiny things than silk.) I have bought some thin gold trim to give it a lattice effect, and some tiny brown seed beads to go where the gold trim crosses. Since the doll has magnetized removable ears, I will need to leave off the beads where the ears stick on.

The pattern should be simple enough. I did my first draft a little earlier today, and we're not quite there yet. I've been looking for some coiffe tutorials, and while I found one, it wasn't very helpful as it was a different style of coiffe than the example above.

Here is my first attempt. The gathering needs to extend further, and the basic shape is off, but it's a start.

Aimerai Enfield Horror came home today!

Finally, the day arrived. After a frenetic week of frantically checking my tracking, practically gnawing my fingers when the fedex page came up "Cannot track your package, please try again later," and finally, today he arrived, safe and sound.

I brought along my Aimerai Mr. Snowman to help me open his new friend. (Not that he was much help, with those twig arms!) I did the pointless "Ooooh! The box!" photos. Not sure why we bother to take these pics, but for some reason capturing that box is like a moment of pride for us BJD owners. So, here we go:

Pretty much just like all other boxes, where all you can see is bubble wrap and papers.

And look at the papers! Isn't he adorable!!!!

Inside all that bubble wrap was the zippered pillow that he came is, made of a gold shiny fabric. Very nice and soft for safe doll travel. I'll be keeping that one. Taking him out was so exciting. He had wrappings on his tiny little arms and all three of his legs. :D And here he is! Look at that face!

Here is the side profile. You notice that the magnet is a little wonky. That happened when I put his head cap on upside down, and it pulled a magnet out. This has since been fixed by another happy accident.

I didn't order the fullset, so I did not get the 26mm eyes that would have come with. That's okay, as I didn't want to pay the extra for the face up, and the eyes weren't my favorite any ways. The largest eyes I have here are 20mm, which you see here. I love them actually. I think the glitter fits him, and I do like the buggy eye affect. I am still looking for some bigger eyes. (Bad pic below. Lighting is atrocious at night.)

I found 2 options on DoA. One is 26mm and in black. I do want the size, but I am not sure if I want the black for him. I do like the thought....They aren't too much, so I can get them and if I don't like them in the end, I can buy some more. It would go for a nice Halloween effect, but I really like the glitter eyes! 26mm are not the most common size to find, though maybe its because I haven't really ever had the necessity to look for some, so perhaps there are more options than I presently realize.

Okay, I love him. I really do. I am going to do a quick review on him, pointing out the good and the bad. One problem that I am also having with Mr. Snowman is it is SO HARD to get the head cap off. The resin is slick, and there isn't anything to grip. With Enfield, I am pushing it off through his eye holes. With Mr. Snowman I am carefully prying it up with my finger nails, trying to not A) chip the resin and B) bend my nail too badly, but there is no other choice.

Another thing about him that is strange is his stringing. I hadn't thought about it before I got him home, but he doesn't has a separate head, meaning that his joints must have a completely different method. And that they do. You get a second set of arms with him. I am not going to try and take the present ones off. The arm holes go straight through his chest, so you basically have a loop of very thin string that each arm hook onto with very small hooks that do not come off of the arm string. His 3 legs are done the same way. Its a loop that goes through the sides and back of his body, going through the leg joints and hooking on the feet. I don't really see much trouble in the sense that he isn't super poseable any ways, and I probably will not ever need to re-string him. But, it is odd.

These aren't really criticisms, more like observations. I adore this doll. His resin color is a very nice pale purple, a color I don't have. He is cute, unique, and really not that expensive to begin with. I'm just thrilled to have found a monster BJD! Now, what to do with his face up?

The Enfield Horror approaches....

Though I don't think he is actually mailed out yet. I just paid him off today on layaway with Mint on Card, but I should be getting my shipping notification in the next day or so. I am so excited. I've been dying to get this doll from the instant I saw his photo on BJDcollectasy. He is just perfect. I love that type of monster (Uglydolls anyone?) so owning a resin one is really exciting for me. I had been waiting for him to go off of preorder at MoC to in stock. He finally did probably at the end of August, maybe the first part of September. I for some reason didn't immediately jump on him. Mainly because I had a layaway already with my Mr. Snowman (who came home recently. Will do a blog on just him later.) and then I sort of forgot he was in stock.

After paying on my Snowman and my DollLeaves Royal, I figured I would definitely get him next. I just needed to get in my payment for the commissioned boy dress, and I was good to go! I got on MoC to make sure he was still in stock to to see make sure I wasn't working myself up into sheer disappointment, Sure enough, he was in stock, but only one left without the face up! I quickly put him on layaway and waited on pins and needles for a couple of days until they processed my order and took the money out of my account.

I can't wait to get him home. He wears 26mm eyes if the company info is correct. (Sometimes it isn't.) If so, finding him eyes will be interesting. I'm not even going to bother looking much right now. (I already know Ersa Flora doesn't make that large of eyes, so that's not an option.) I'll wait to see how he develops.

The Joker Project Begins

I really enjoy having more than one project to bounce back and forth between. It satisfies my project ADD (or is it ADHD now?) and allows my brain to process projects while I am not immediately working on them.

This week I have started working on drafting the patterns for the Joker project. I got this one via Den of Angels. It is for a 70cm Dollzone body. Since I just recently acquired my first Dollshe Hound (<3 <3 <3) I have a doll to work off of that is similar in size. The only real difference between the DZ and the Hound is in hip size. There is also minimal adjustments to leg and arm length - in other words, simple stuff that I can easily adjust. My buyer needs this for a con in September, and as this is a project very dear to her and a long time coming, I am thrilled to be able to help her out!

She at first wanted the Joker outfit to resemble the Asylum game. (Not familiar with it, but I saw the images.) My attempts at finding stripes in the right color was dismal (I tried - really, I looked everywhere!) so we went with a solid. She had to think about it a little bit, and settled on the more vintage Joker. Here is what we are basing it off of:

And that is a super small picture...But it provides the visual. She picked out the color twill she wanted for the suit, and also for the vest. The mustard for the shirt has been really hard. Apparently "mustard" doesn't actually exist in fabrics, and is a very misused title. I found nothing actually mustard on Fabric.com. I did find what I was lead to believe was a true mustard on Etsy. The helpful friendly seller said it was truly a mustard and even sent me pictures. After a long wait for her to mail it (9 days) it got here today, and it is NOT mustard! Its kind of funny to hear how people describe colors. I said it looked like peanut butter. A family member described it as toffee. Another said it was closer to dijon. I would say a deep, deep dijon if a mustard reference must be used. I am undecided as to what to do with the fabric. I like it, but it is not workable for this project. I don't know if I want to pursue a possible refund, or cut my losses, toss it in a fabric container, and use it for something else. (I usually find uses for whatever I buy.) So, I will just get some marigold cotton from Joann's, and be done with it. (This was something my buyer and I previously discussed should the mustard not work.)

And as luck would have it, by the time we got all the details worked out and I got the down payment, fabric.com was all out of the purple twill she wanted for the suit, and would be until July. I have plenty of time, but when something is time sensitive like going to a Con, there is no real length of time to rest on, and not having the fabric until then isn't what I wanted. Of course, I'd have to if I couldn't find it elsewhere. They had nothing at Joann's. I looked online at Hancocks (we have one here) to see if they offered it, which they did. So I went to the Hancocks we have here, and landed on a gold mine of twill colors. I found both the purple and the green she wanted, which is nice as I don't have to order either one online.

So far I have the slacks pattern drafted but have not sewn a test run. I am working on the test run of the blouse. Its so exciting to finally have the dream come true of sewing a suit on a Hound. I hadn't envisioned sewing a Joker suit, but this is awesome! Progress pics will follow as I get more done.

Dyeing Silk Dupioni

When I got a commission for Delf Zuzu to make some fancy Princess dresses via DoA, she said she really wanted something nice for them, like silk. I had never worked with silk before, and while I knew it was expensive ($30 a yard) I didn't realize that you could only order it by the yard from online stores. I guess for some reason I assumed I could get 1/4 yard pieces, even though I knew full well you usually cannot purchase under a 1/2 yard at a time. So, I realized the only thing left to do for these dresses was to dye them. Which led to hours of research - the best dye, the setting process, tips on working with silk, the do's, the don't's. I discovered dyeing fabric to be nothing short of chemistry. You use specific dyes for specific fabrics, and set the dye with something of the same make up as the dye itself, i.e. acid dyes must be set with an acid, etc.

I ended up buying 3 yards of plain white silk, which should surely provide ample fabric for the 7 dresses. On top of that I bought 1/2 yd. of cream silk, and a 1/4 yd. of a blue green, which I am in the process if embroidering. (I am making a total of 9 dresses - 1 is made out of chiffon, and the other the cream silk mixed with a brown linen.) Then I ordered several acid dyes from Dharma Trading Company. (Great place to order from.) And since I didn't want to stand over a hot stove smelling vinegar, I got some citric acid to add to the dye bath instead. (I am working with 3 color palettes for my buyer - 1 doll wears pinks, one pale mints and blue, the other in creams and browns. For some dumb reason I only bought 2 shades of pink.)

Dyeing silk is actually really simple. I of course did the recommended test on some tiny pieces to get the shades I wanted for the dress I started with. When I worked up the courage, I pre-washed the whole big yardage, and let me tell you, silk dupioni wrinkles. Badly. It takes a lot of effort to iron out the majority of the wrinkles (I do wonder how some people have achieved this by merely hanging it up to dry. I did as well, and that was my result.) I found that Dupioni will never look like it did on the bolt once its been washed, but I really love the effect!

Once I did that, it was time to section off the amount of silk needed in each color for this dress, and then it was time to dye! To me, the most annoying part of dyeing is waiting for the water to come up to temperature. Not sure why this is so annoying to me, but it really is. For the palest pink, I put the fabric into the dye bath earlier than I should have, which was before I added the citric acid (following the instructions on the dye.) It only takes a few seconds to get the color I wanted, so I took it out of the bath, waited till the water reached 185 degrees, added the citric acid, and then the fabric for maybe 30 seconds. A perfect pale pink. For the second color, and much smaller piece, I needed a darker deeper pink. So I added a teensy bit of the darker pink dye (Flamingo) to the bath of Ballerina Pink. (I used very, very small amounts of dye, and no, I did not weigh my fabric.)

After they were done, it didn't take much time to get the loose dye washed out of the fabrics, and they were ready to dry. The next step of the process is what I was really dreading. Steam setting it for 3 hours. I got the news print (which I had to hunt down - apparently it isn't as plentiful here as in KY where  lived?) and the supplies for the homemade silk steamer. (Big deep pot, washed out can, pie pan and towel.) According to instructions, you need to lay your silk flat on the paper, carefully roll it up, seal the ends and then coil it. It sounds really good on paper, but coiling it? How do you do that without crunching the fabric? I must be missing something here, so I abandoned that, and just cut out my pieces before I steam set the dye. Risky, as I could mess up and need to re-cut out a piece and re-steam set it, but that's what I decided to do.

I ended up cutting squares of the newsprint that would fit into my pan (after cutting out the 3 sheets that go in the bottom of the pan) and carefully laying out my pieces. Once I got them all laid out, not touching each other (there is a lot of pieces to this gown) I wrapped the entire stack in more newsprint, present style, and tied it shut with yarn.

The steam setting process itself isn't all that bad. Not at all what I expected. I kept a close eye on it to make sure the water didn't boil out. All in all, pretty simple!

I did find that my pieces came out of the paper super stiff. To help that, I just got them wet and re-ironed them. (Dupioni is a tougher fabric than some people make you think. It can handle water and heat, and comes out looking beautiful.)

All in all, its a fun process. I'm glad I am enjoying it, as I have quite a few more colors to dye and steam set. I'll post the finished dresses later on.

Finally some time to sew for me!

Or more like my dolls. I have been booked for the last few months with commissions that took me much, much longer than they normally would since I got smacked with a frying pan in the teeth with the meanest sinus infection I have ever had. It took me about a month to get back to normal function. So, since February, I have forsworn doing much if any sewing for my dolls to try my hardest to get back on track. I'm pretty much there! I have 4 commissions finished, and another one very close, so today I figured I could justify sewing something for my dolls.

I got a Mirodoll 60cm body back a couple of months or so ago for my IH Lion head. Jesse had been sitting there for quite awhile with no body and no hope in sight for anything other than the existence of a floating head. (Eye ball-less, face-up-less, and wrapped in bubble wrap in a container.) After some help and some research, I discovered that the Mirodoll yellow NS is a pretty darn good match to the old Iple NS. And right when I was set to order, the bodies went off sale, and I assuaged myself with putting a 5star Kid Jesse (lol, both Jesse's) on layaway. Then they went back on sale right as I just paid that layaway off. But luck finally prevailed, and as soon as they went back on sale I got more dolly money. Mirodoll has fantastic customer service. I simply emailed them what I want, told them how long I needed for my layaway, and boom! All set. I got it paid off pretty quickly, and they shipped it maybe a week later? So, that was the story of my Mirodoll body.

It turned out to be a fantastic resin match. Not totally perfect, but very, very good. I've had it out of layaway for awhile, but not the justified time to make him any pants. I am lucky to have an awesome friend who is very talented at sewing (she runs Velvet Tiger on Etsy) who agreed to trade me a cool camo tee shirt she had made that would fit the Mirodoll perfectly. I was already going to make her some Kickwear pants, so we did a partial trade deducting the shirt total from what she owed me on one pair of the pants. She is so awesome - she sent me not one, but 2 shirts! Both are perfect for Jesse (IH Jesse, not 5star Jesse - that one is named Lucian.) So, Jesse has been sitting there with only a shirt on if anything at all for the past x amount of days. I can't even tell you how utterly tired I am of seeing him naked. Tonight I started on some pants for him FINALLY!

I didn't get them done tonight like I wanted to. I am making him some cargo pants in grey twill, as that is all the twill I have except this banana yellow I got for my MSD. (Its bright too - I finally used it today for some kickwear pants for my BBB Tony, Jackson.) Unfortunately, I ran out of sewing steam about 7:30 tonight, and with dirty dishes glaring at me, I put it up for the night. They are about half finished. Much simpler than kickwear pants, so I should get them finished up tomorrow and also get some work in on my remaining BJD commission.

So, I am feeling good, relieved and happy I have so much done! And relieved I am so close to having Jesse finally dressed!

And at that moment, when all appeared lost....

I finally got around to reviving my blog. I seriously thought about letting it just simmer down to an inglorious death, but, I did once upon a not too distant past enjoy blogging. And I did log in a few months time of life on here. Why let it go to waste?

I don't have anything brilliant (okay, I probably never do) or even that entertaining to post tonight. But I figured I might as well just go ahead and change the Christmas theme that is so very outdated. There has been a lot of different things going on in my life that have gone unblogged (oh, the horror!) so maybe tomorrow I can post some updates on what is going on with my hobby life. And that concludes the first post in 4 months.