Personal News and a bit of Crafting

Hello again! I'm sorry I didn't do the Wednesday update last week. I'm glad to see Alex had plenty of crafting news to make up for it. The explanation for my hectic week is pretty simple, Brandon got a job in Ann Arbor and we moved him into an apartment out there. Also, my brother Max passed the bar and I drove home to attend his court ceremony! Everyone is moving forward, it's an exciting time all around.

After Brandon moved out, I wasn't quite sure if he brought his camera with him or left it behind, and now I can't find it. So, this week's photos were taken with my cell phone. I apologize for the poor quality.

My next big project is Gini's graduation announcement cards. She asked for a big "W" for Western Michigan, and something to show that she's a biology major. She's into plants, botany is kind of her thing. So I chose vines.

This is the sketch I did on trace paper

Wow. These photos are worse than I thought. I need to find that camera. Sorry guys.

Here is the linoleum all inked up, ready to be carved.

I may change the placement and size of the leaves as I go, some of them are a bit off. But other than that, I just gotta chug away and get it done. I'm really happy with how it has turned out so far.

Another big project I've got going right now is cleaning out the spare bedroom in my apartment, because there is a possibility that after graduation next month, Gini might be moving in with me! It will be nice to have someone else around, now that Brandon is gone. It's pretty quiet around here.

The first step in cleaning the house was getting my vintage hats up on the wall, and out of the way. Every time I moved stuff, they were getting crushed. Plus I just love how they look on the wall all together.

Again, sorry for the photo quality.

After I get Gini's graduation announcements printed and my apartment cleaned, I can focus on the next big step for Nimble Toad, which is Marmalade Dog 15 here at WMU. We had a company meeting a while back, and we all agreed that this is a big milestone for us, so we're each trying to move our crafts and inventories more in the direction of cosplay and gaming genres.

My big decision on this front is how much I'm going to continue with block prints and knitting, and how much time I want to dedicate to learning other, more useful crafts. By more useful, I mean more relevant to - what else? - my favorite geeky genre, Star Wars. After giving a small pep talk to the group about finding a genre, a product, or a craft that they can do constantly and never tire of, I had an epiphany. That genre for me is Star Wars.

So I've decided to take a crack at prop replicas. My first project is Han Solo's belt. Alex is just lately getting into leather working, so he said he would help me with this project. We met for a while yesterday to look at source photos and come up with a game plan.

It's a surprisingly complex item, but essential to any Han Solo costume.

I think this is a great item to offer, because the rest of the costume (excluding the blaster, of course) is relatively easy to make yourself, but not everyone can just whip up a leather belt, and serious cosplayers will want to avoid pleather or other less realistic alternatives.

I really hope this project works out. It's opened up a whole new world for me in crafting. I'm very excited to dive into star wars props, and I'm definitely glad to have Alex by my side while I'm doing this. He is just as obsessed with accuracy and durability as I am, which I think are qualities any cosplayer can appreciate.

I'll be sure to take 'in-progress' photos once we have materials. This is a big project for me, and I definitely want to document the process.

That's all for this week! I'll take photos once I start printing Gini's graduation announcements.

Gloves, gloves, gloves!

I've been on a glove-crafting spree lately.
To start with, I made two pairs of fingerless gloves, on slightly different designs:

Sorry about the weird image alignment.
Spiked fingerless gloves has a sort of timeless elegance, if you ask me. I got a bulk order of these gloves, so I've been playing around with different spike configurations (on the knuckles versus in between the knuckles). The gloves are available on etsy here and here.

I also made these, which were substantially more work:














I came into a set of cold weather motorcycle gloves, and I decided to modify each one on a slightly different design. I've nicknamed these "the Morningstars," due to the their resemblance to the sort of thing that would be bashing in the skulls of knights on a tenth century battlefield.
Pretty cool, right? Well, I felt that my own winter gloves were somewhat lacking in comparison by this point, so I made these:




























I've had the idea of doing scales on the outside, chain on the inside for a while, and I think it came together quite nicely.
At some point, I plan on adding no small amount of spikes to the backs of the hands, and maybe trying to forge some steel talons to go over the fingertips. It'll be no small amount of ridiculous, I assure you.

Quick Note

Hi! Yes, I know. Yesterday was Wednesday, and still no update. I'm sorry. This week is particularly hectic. I won't bore you with the details, but rest assured that I literally haven't been near my computer in over 48 hours.

I need to start working on sketches for Gini's graduation announcements, so I will post about that as soon as I have photos.

That is all! Bedtime!

cranking out the fun

Life as a fifth year college student is no joke. I just found out that I will be able to graduate in the spring (and then start the wonderful search for grad schools catering to German linguistics in between working on my wedding and saving money for the future so I can eat). Therefore most of the stuff I have been working on craft-wise has been for people I know.

First off are these lovely hats. The one on the left and the one in the middle are patterns from Rheatheylia.com. I absolutely love this website. The creator's patterns are so creative! The hat on the right is my own pattern. I made these for my cousins just for the simple reason that I love them and they're pretty cool.

I pumped out this hat in the car on the way to Youmacon a ocuple weekends ago. I was going to be cosplaying as Noodle from the Gorillaz (I'm a big fan of the artist who created them). I was trying to make Noodle's outfit from their Dirty Harry video.


Gini and I had a crochet/knit exchange back in September with a few friends. I ended up with her name and made her a Shroomish hat. Shroomish is one of those adorable, unpopular pokemon. I have plans to someday crochet an amigurumi Shroomish, but that will probably take place after exams.

Recently I decided to give sushi scarves a try. Sushi scarves are scarves that, when rolled up, look like sushi rolls. I searched high and low on Etsy for a california roll sushi scarf, but couldn't find one. This scarf is the first of hopefully many to come. It's going to be a Christmas present for a friend of mine, so shhhhhhh ~_^

Expect more interesting tidbits in a couple weeks as I work more on Christmas presents/birthday presents for people!

Company Meeting

Hello! I hope everyone is having a lovely Wednesday.

Today I have a few announcements. Unfortunately, this will be a text-heavy post, but I've asked the other members to do some photo-dump entries soon to make up for it. Alex and Kittie kindly volunteered.

Last week we had a meeting to discuss the company's future and to set some goals for the shop, and for our individual crafts. It was very successful, I think we set some exciting goals for Nimble Toad.

Firstly, I have a small announcement. Kelli is now a part-time member. She has a very hectic schedule at the moment, so this arrangement should be a much better fit. All this really means for you is that Kelli may not be as available for commission items, so be sure to leave lots of time and always message us ahead of time to find out when we are available to take commissions. This way there will be less pressure on Kelli, and she can craft on her own schedule.

So, the main purpose of our meeting - as I said - was to set goals. As we chatted about conventions, advertising, and merchandise, I put together a quick list.

I know, not a wonderful photo. Sorry.

First of all, know that this is by no means an exhaustive list. Secondly, notice how much blank space there is! That's room for more goals. ^_^

So, the first big company-wide goal is to have a booth at Marmalade Dog 2010, which is a small gaming convention here in Kalamazoo, at WMU. It's in late March.
Then, we hope to attend JFax and Youmacon, possibly the following year. We also discussed business cards, fliers, and advertising on other blogs.

These goals certainly set up a busy timetable for us, since we need to have a good inventory of geeky merchandise in order to attend these conventions. And of course, merchandise goals took up the rest of the conversation, as we each have goals for our individual portions of the shop. I won't bore you with the details right now, but you will definitely see more of this later.

The overall goal here is to change the shop's direction. At first we were just gaining our bearings, so we posted whatever crafts we had. But now we want to start focusing more heavily on cosplay and gaming-related items. Hopefully you'll notice the difference over the coming months!

Well, that's all for now. You've got some photo-dump entries to look forward to over the next few days!

Valerie: Facebook Halloween

Hey everyone,

I'm going to interrupt our normal posts with a handmade Halloween costume, because I'm just that proud of it.

About two weeks before Halloween, Mike and I decided to head up to a Halloween party in Michigan. Frantic brainstorming for costumes began, and Mike popped out the idea, "Let's go as Facebook and Twitter!" Awesome. Unfortunately, I ended up having to work, so I could go to the party, but I still managed to whip together a Facebook costume for Mike in one night. I don't have "in process" pictures, but it should be pretty simple to follow along anyway.





For the front, I chose to use the Facebook icon logo. I used a 12"x12" square of blue felt for the back, and white felt for the front. I drew the "f" by hand on a piece of card stock, using a ruler to get my lines straight and referring constantly to the computer to make sure I got the dimensions right. Then I cut out my cardstock "f" and traced around it on the felt using my disappearing ink marker (seriously, the best tool ever). Cut out the "f", pinned it, and then veerrryyy carefully sewed the two pieces together. I have a big problem with sewing curves, so I went very slowly. Then I pinned the whole icon down and carefully sewed it to the shirt.




For the arms I just used a ever-useful Sharpie and carefully copied down the "Information" column from Mike's profile (sorry for the covered information), and the side column from the main page. I tried to pay close attention to the details to make it more realistic.



The blue band at the top of the front and back is spray paint. I just taped off the lines I wanted and covered the rest of the shirt with newspaper. I should have been a little more careful taping down the newspaper in the front, because some of the paint got through, but it's not too noticeable.

The white text and "News Feed" were done with puffy paint straight from the bottle. I tried to use only a small amount so it would be more 'flat paint' than puffy paint. The rest is more sharpie. I sent Mike off with keychain sharpies so people at the party could write their own status updates. Mike says everyone loved it, and the shirt came back covered, so I must have done something right!

Have a great week,

Valerie

Val's First Sale!

This is Amanda. I'd like to send out a hearty congratulations to Val for selling her adorable winter cowl in the Etsy shop!

Congratulations, Val! Isn't that cowl so cute?