Monday, November 25, 2013

Masquerade Ball

I don't know what's more fun: getting ready for a ball, partying at the ball, or going through pictures of the ball the next day. 

Jake was giving Jessica and me a by-the-minute-count-down til it was time to leave and commenting on how bad hair spray stinks. It's not fair that it takes him a grand total of 10 minutes to get ready when Jess can I had been preening ourselves for over an hour (only an hour?). ;) When we got there, Jake acted as the doorman, the musicians were setting up, tables were being set up for the seemingly endless supply of treats and goodies, and Jess and I got to work lighting many, many candles. It was such a gorgeous venue! and so many amazing masks and costumes! ^_^




'If Yoda went to Azgard [sic] wearing a light suit from Tron... This is what would result.' -DS

Robert, Laura and their daughter, Arianna. Our hosts for the evening.


Live music for the dances courtesy of The Whispering Roses



Take a guess at what we made Jessica's mask out of. 

Recognize the dress? Kinda sorta? I altered my rococo ball gown. I'll do a separate post about that.




Mandatory sibling picture for Mom. ;)
Then the personality shot. You give me bunny ears; I give you a feather beard. 
Pictures courtesy of yours truly, ECD Oregon and Daniel Sauble.

Monday, November 11, 2013

Grass-Fed Butter

When you're reading through healthy recipes and cookbooks, you can usually find the little phrase 'grass fed butter' on many of the ingredient lists. I always chuckle when I see it because my imagination likes to take it a step farther. Hence this quick sketch. 
Baby Butter: Will I become a trans-fat when I grow up?
Mommy Butter: Of course not, Sweetie! You're saturated through and through. 

Saturday, November 2, 2013

Farm Girl Got Geek: Bofur's Hat

I confess! I confess! 
I'm a fangirl. 
When it comes to anything Marvel or Tolkien, I will 'SQUEE!' very loudly.
You've been warned. 

And now I think I've taken my Hobbit fangirl-ing to a new level - I've created something from the movie. Bofur's hat is just too awesome. 
So I started shopping around. Unfortunately, the only ones on the market were either expensive or cheesy. I figured I could make one, I mean, really, how hard could it be to make a hat? Granted, I never recreated something from a movie before or made a hat before. This is going to be an adventure! 

With all the farming craziness of summer all finished, I now have more time to dedicate to geeky sewing experiments. ^_^

Looking at the hat, it looks like a bomber hat (I hope you didn't read that as Bombur...) with some serious dramatic dwarf flair to it.  But there's one problem: there aren't any bomber hat patterns. Anywhere. I did find a video tutorial on youtube, but still no pattern to work with. Drats. Being my stereotypical, crazy, crafting self, I jumped right in with making my own. Maybe one of these days, I'll get around to making a tutorial and printable pattern to share with y'all to fill that empty place in the cosplay universe.

 After making up the first draft for the pattern and then making the pre-mock-up mock-up out of some thread-bare, old sheets that I had stashed away for the sole purpose of being a mock-up, I felt comfortable moving on to the mock-up. (Wow, that was a run on sentence with a sad lack of vocabulary diversity. Ahem, anyway.) So I made the daring move to start working with the curly brown faux fur that I had  found at the fabric store. The final product certain had a Siberian hobo feel to it because of the fabrics I used. ;)
"Perfect chore hat," says I, "It'll be wonderfully warm for doing those winter tasks."
 And that's why they call it a mock-up. It's comfy and that's all that matters.

 It was finally time to move on to making Bofur's hat. I sewed up the leather exterior (it looked like a vintage football helmet), embroidered the crown seams, jimmy-rigged a frame/system to use to hold up the ear flaps. But I couldn't find the right kind of fur for the lining. Anywhere. Seeing a trend with this project? I checked the fabric stores in the area. Nada. Etsy? Zilch. Unless you wanted to pay an arm and a leg. Amazon? Same story there. :sigh: Then my brother played the Weird Al song, "eBay." Inspiration can come from anywhere I guess. So I checked the online auction house. Lo-and-behold, FUR! And I had choices too! And it was a 'purchase now' listing. Oh happiness! Guess where my perfect fur came from. South Korea. It was funny seeing my mom's face when she handed me the gray plastic package, 'Uh, what are you getting from South Korea?' 'Oh chill, Mom, it's North Korea that has nukes. It's my fur!' It takes a while to ship things across the great wide Pacific and to my front door step. I finished the rest of the hat that afternoon. 


Good luck trying to convince me to take it off. I LOVE it!
My dad was asking about my recent 'obsession' this bomber hats. I shrugged. Maybe I could turn it into a business of some sort. Hmm...