everyday is halloween

halloween season starts for me as soon as my birthday ends

(that's kind of a lie; halloween season starts as soon as halloween season ends for me)

i've already picked up a few things at michael's--they seem to start stocking the earliest. there's a michael's that opened up just a few blocks from my apartment!

those coffin boxes are my favourite--they sell them every year and they're only 99 cents. i bought six last time i was there. they're small but useful--good for holding sundries and jewelry and the like.

xoxo

the lazy coffin quilt

just finished my first quilt top! it's really lazy because i was mostly focused on doing something rather than doing it well so a lot of my seams are just a little uneven and whatnot. if this were a gift or something i was making more seriously (rather than an attempt to use up some of the many random bits of halloween fabric i have) i would go back and fix these problems but i think it looks fine. i have to add backing and batting and i think i might add some fabric to the sides but i'm pretty excited about it.

xoxo

back to the roots

 i used to be a fashion blog. not here, but over at queen of the rats. 

i let go of that a bit partially because i was never able to take very good outfit photos and partially because other things in my life began to take over. but i very much liked this pre-birthday outfit from wednesday, so here is an outfit post!

 this hat is from a hat store in pennsylvania, and the flowers are a floral headband i got a couple months ago. i really liked wearing them together.

the dress is from forever 21. 

this was my birthday outfit~! dress from free people, cardigan from urban outfitters, headband from urban outfitters ages ago. it's a bit harder to see the outfit here because selfie-taking in a french mirror from the 1700s is more ghostly than practical but i liked this one too.

im very inspired of late by morticia addams. not exactly the most summery of sartorial muses but i do love her very much. 

x

tarth sigil cross stitch

finally a project where i took progress pictures all the way through!

this pattern is my own design. it took almost exactly a month, working sporadically, from pattern to completion.

 outlining the sun panels

 stitching the first sun

lots of background stitching 

first sun panel finished! 

starting the second sun 

 more sun

 finished second sun and started background

 suns finished!

beginning the first moon panel 

first moon completed, now for the background 

 lots of blue

 nearly finished with this quarter

 3/4 done!

 last segment outlined and beginning to fill in

finished!

it's the sigil of tarth from game of thrones. brienne is my absolute favourite character. it still needs to be washed and ironed, and i'm not sure what i'm going to do with it (frame it? use it as a patch?) but i'm quite proud of the way it turned out!

x

dragon eggs and other important things

phone pictures ahoy, sorry all. ive been real lazy using my SLR because my phone is always right there.

i stumbled across this tutorial on how to make dragon eggs and i decided this was something i needed in my life (despite my quest to cut down on clutter...). it was pretty easy, although i ended up needing a lot of tacks. i had nail polish on hand already. 

for this i used:

 -styrofoam eggs (ubiquitous around easter, perhaps a bit harder to find now)

-plain metal tacks from staples (i bought five packages of 200 to cover four eggs... you might need more or fewer depending on how big your eggs are, how much your tacks overlap, etc.)

-triple thick gloss glaze--you could also use mod podge or something similar

-nail polish (i used spoiled by wet and wild because i have a lot of them and they're cheap so i didn't feel bad using them up)

for the red egg i used:

-pick your poison

-i don't drink cheap wine

ants in my pants (for the glitter chunks)

for the green egg i used:

-the parking meteor expired (which is a gorrrgeous black w/ iridescent purple/blue/green sparklies)

-good karma

first i pushed a bunch of tacks into a box so that i would have a surface on which to work on them. i ended up covering the top side of the box in tacks--i had more than enough for the red egg but needed to paint even more tacks for the green one. i must have overlapped the tacks more on the green egg.

 

here are some of the painted tacks!

 

i started pressing them onto the egg base starting at the fatter end and making a spiral around the initial tack, overlapping the 'scales' with one another.

 

two completed dragon eggs, glazed! i'm halfway done with another and have a fourth base waiting to be covered.

i'm also working on a cross stitch project involving these designs:

i made them using perbee, which is a program intended for perler bead patterns, but i've found it works just fine for small cross stitch patterns. the pattern i'm actually making is much larger than the perbee designer allows for, but i've put it together in parts so that i have a decent idea of what i'm doing when it comes to actually stitching.

x

nyc pride 2014

i was lucky enough to get to pride this weekend despite starting a new job. here are some of the ladies from orange is the new black! 

i was so excited by them i took like seven pictures and all were terrible 

sorry about all the people in front (sorry, random people, for blogging you)--i try to stand in the back of crowds when i can because i'm so tall, which makes for happier short people around me but also really terrible pictures 

 i think this guy was a transformer or something

 beautiful desi costumes

 jews!!! my dad is jewish and i identify strongly with jewish culture and so i was really really excited to see this!

 more jews

some important people

happy pride!!!

xo

there and back again

the hiatus was unintentional. 

i was very busy doing things like graduating college and getting a job.

i've been pretty terrible at documenting things but here are a couple random things i pulled off my phone to recap my crafting exploits over the last couple months

nathan explosion embroidery. this isn't my first traditional embroidery piece but it's the first (and only) one i really like (cross stitch is soooo much easier, you guys). because i'm a dummy (and because i had very low expectations for myself/this project) i stitched it on a piece of old tshirt that has a coffee stain on it. it's not that noticeable though. this is one thing i definitely want to practice more and get better at this year. 

ok this isnt a craft but i have a bachelor's degree now so that's pretty cool

 this was my dad's birthday present. i actually made it several months ago but i didn't want to put it on the internet before i actually gave it to him.

 i was presented with the opportunity to go to a con and, having very little time to prepare, simply reused my henchman 21 costume from last year's new york comic con. those wings, however, were fucking TERRIBLE, so after a ton of trial and error i came up with these new ones. i really liked how they turned out but unfortunately i didn't reinforce the cardboard underneath enough so if i want to wear this cosplay again i'll have to make another pair. i think i have the technique down though (seriously, there was a LOT of trial and error) so it should be a bit easier this go round. 

some terrible costume selfies. i actually got some great shots taken of me by others but am unsure if i can repost them without permission.

i rage-stitched this during and after the season finale of game of thrones. it's the name of brienne of tarth (favourite character, actual role model)'s sword. plus a little sword. no joke, the 'p' is messed up because i was counting the spaces for it as the episode ended and i got so mad i fucked up the count so it's lower than the rest of the letters. 

(the night is dark and full of spoilers ahead:)

the only good thing about lady stoneheart not being in the finale is that my lady stoneheart costume is still accurate:

this was last year's halloween costume and although it was thrown together in like five minutes (i already owned everything except the cloak and the grey clip-in hairs and the slit-throat prosthetic) i was super proud of it. i'm hoping to maybe wear it to a con someday and i'm a liiiittle glad that there's no lady stoneheart show canon as far as her appearance goes, at least not yet, because this'll be pretty much unrecognizable as soon as there is.