Sailor Crafty

New videos on my channel!

2012-01-17T21:39:00.000-08:00

Got a couple new vids up on my channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/sailorcrafty

Go see them for an overview of Lugia and my work in progress vid of the Sailor Moon transformation cosplay!

A Double Rainbow Miracle

2012-01-02T10:40:00.000-08:00

I want to start the year off with a story of a real-life miracle witnessed by my family.

My grandpa, Robert Williams, was just the neatest guy who loved rainbows. He had them in his home and office and everywhere in between. He was an educational counselor for most of his career and people knew him as “Coach Rainbow” and “The Rainbow Man”. He was brimming with positive energy and love for every person he came across. He also “bled BYU blue” and was the biggest fan I’ve ever met. He even got to be a motivational coach for the football team!

Grandpa died the Saturday before Thanksgiving 2011 with his family around him. Before he passed, he was given a Y flag with signatures from all over BYU, which he loved. The flowers on his blue casket (of course he had a blue casket!) were arranged in the rainbow colors and were absolutely stunning. The amount of people that arrived at his memorial service was overwhelming. The community he served was truly changed for the better with his energy and love.

Grandpa was taken to Mesa, AZ to be buried in his hometown last Saturday. It began to rain and the family was worried that it would be a miserable experience at the cemetery, but luckily the sky cleared up a bit once they got there. After the service was over and people started to wander off, you would never believe what appeared in the sky as they stared in awe…

A full double rainbow, all the way across the sky. “What does it mean??” It means that there is always hope, if you know where to look!

To see a video on this story, visit my SailorCrafty YouTube channel by going here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWHFuxptAFI

Sailor Moon Transformation Cosplay Idea

2011-12-17T17:57:00.000-08:00

I had the craziest idea for a cosplay the other day, one that made me laugh out loud at it's sheer silliness. I also think it would be pretty original...I've never seen it done before anyway.

Here's the idea: what if Sailor Moon's transformation "froze" while it was happening? How would she look, running around all sparkly and covered in ribbons? I could pose gracefully like a dancer for every photo, and I believe a LOT of people would understand what I was. I started figuring out how I would do it. Here are a couple reference photos of what she looks like when she's transforming:

This is from the first season. Her body is like a whirling kaleidoscope of color inside the drawn outlines. Pink, blue, yellow and sparkles everywhere. Her eyes blink a couple times, and then they are closed until she is fully transformed (because honestly...I would go blind if I had that kind of magicalness swirling around me, wouldn't you?).

This is from the second season. Same concept, but now there are blue and pink hexagonal sparkles added in.

In the third season, her body is mostly pink and yellow as she transforms.

In the 4th season, she and Chibi Moon are contrasted with different colors. Sailor Moon is blue and yellow while Chibi is pink and yellow. They both have their coordinating sparkle colors appearing darker on their bodies.

I didn't include the 5th season because it's my least favorite of the transformations...I feel it isn't as graceful and "dancerly". The 3rd season one with the giant blue heart is my fave.

Most of her transformations have the characteristic "see-through magic ribbons", as seen below, that wrap around her body and create her leotard costume base. If I were to do this outfit, those ribbons would be the crucial element for it to be recognized for what it is.

There is also the issue of her hair. It is outlined with her body so whatever color the body is, the hair should match. Therefore, it wouldn't be a wig, but shaped from fabric. I would also add wire so it could be shaped as if it were "flying".

After her torso gets wrapped by the magical ribbons, her arms and legs get wrapped as well for her gloves and boots. I didn't notice until I took these screenshots that her fingernails stay magical pink up until she gets the gloves on in her 1st season transformation.

So after I watched all the transformations a couple times, I figured the main elements for the cosplay to be recognizable would have to be this:

The classic Sailor Moon hair shape
The whole thing would have to be doused in sparkle
The pink ribbons should at least be around the torso, if not also around the arms and legs.
The "brooch" needs to be very sparkly, if not flat out-glowing.
My poses need to be in keeping with the elegant dance style of the transformation for photos.

Okay, so how do we translate these elements into real life?

First, we start with the body. I considered a leotard with hands and feet, then matching makeup and hairpiece made from fabric to the leotard color...but there would be a disconnect between the leotard and my skin, so that wasn't the ideal option. Plus it's messy and I'm way too lazy to spend hours putting it on. Then I discovered what a "zentai suit" is. Zentai is Japanese, short for "zenshin taitsu (tights)", or full-body tights. It looks just like it sounds:

*shudder*

As disturbing as they are, zentai suits are pretty popular with dancing troupes and costumers alike, along with people with tight-clothing fetishes. If you're comfortable with your body, then...whatever, right? As long as you're wearing something underneath to hide certain things...I'm fine with it. XD

So if I were to do a zentai suit, I could hopefully make the hair piece from matching fabric and stuff it to look like Sailor Moon's hair. Shouldn't be too hard.

I considered making the suit myself, but after looking at stretchy.org and seeing how much work goes into measuring and patterning...I decided not to. I am looking into buying a Morphsuit from morphsuits.com instead, as long as I can get the hair fabric spot on.

If I can get a super shiny silver or light pink suit, I think that will be the ideal color to go with. It would be a little harder to find something with the exact color combos that Sailor Moon actually has as she's swirling around in what seems to be inter-dimensional space.

Next: The ribbons and the sparklyness...how do we best portray this? The ribbon shouldn't be too hard to find; I would like to get some wired ribbon if possible but I also have some pink fabric already that I could cut into strips and wire myself. I will also add some ribbon to my arms and legs I think, just pretending like the transformation is happening all at once instead of piece by piece.

To get some glow and sparkle going on to REALLY wow congoers, I'm going to go with this:

This is called EL wire. It's hooked up to a battery and glows, and is cool to the touch. I can intersperse this with the pink ribbon to give off that magical impression.

These are super cheap hair clips that have fiber optic strands in them. What I want to do is stick the center of one or two of these in the brooch that will go on my chest and spread the fibers so there are twinkling lights among the magical ribbons as well as the glowing EL wire.

The last problem I want to solve is the eyes. I will probably applique either some open anime eyes on the face of the zentai suit, or just eyelashes so it looks like my eyes are shut. I think open eyes would be a little less off-putting when people try to interact with me, even if they're not accurate to what is actually happening in the transformation. What do you think?

I haven't decided how I will make the brooch glow yet, but I do know that it will be a little bulky as it will probably house the batteries for all the glowy stuff I'm adding and is a centerpoint for all the ribbons to attach to.

One more thing: Should I add some more fiber optics to my hair buns and forehead as if the full transformation is going on, like with her accessories and jewelry? It might be overkill but then again it might be just plain pretty. :P

The ULTIMATE would be to have a whole group to do it with...all the inner scouts, frozen in their transformations. We could have all sorts of fun inventing how to do the special effects on those...but how do I find 4 girls brave enough to wear zentai suits? Perhaps if my finished outfit generates enough buzz, I will have people swarming to do more of these. I think it's hilarious and can't wait to see the reactions! I hope to have it done by Anime Salt Lake in March :D

Mercury Power!

Mars Power!

Jupiter Power!

Venus Power!

MAKE UP!!!

How I Made The NinjaBee Mascot Costume

2011-12-07T17:45:00.001-08:00

This is a blog post about how the mascot making madness started.

In my junior year of the BYU advertising program, I began looking for a place to complete my required internship credits. Being a shameless nerd, I started looking at local game developers for any sort of marketing position. I found out about NinjaBee Studios, an offshoot of Wahoo! Studios, close by in Orem. They had a PR position open so I applied and got an interview. From the sounds of it, they were looking for someone with more of a PR focus than an advertising focus. As we talked, I let slip that I was into costuming and they eventually asked if I could make a mascot outfit for them. I reluctantly said yes, as I had never taken on a project of that magnitude.

I can only think the word "magnitude" in Admiral Ackbar's voice. Hehe.

So NinjaBee's logo looks exactly how you think it would:

I came up with a design that would make sense on the human body but changed up a couple elements for the heck of it:

It was kinda...meeeeehhhhh. So they had someone at their place come up with a new design:

Much, MUCH better! And it matches the look of the logo while still being practical to wear.

So next, I started drafting patterns with cardstock paper and masking tape. This part was fun and not too hard actually, thanks to the design having mostly flat planes. It was much like a big 3D puzzle with flat pieces that just needed to be cut at the right angles to make it fit around the body. I also re-designed the abdomen (the part with the stinger) to hang more behind the person instead of straight down to allow for users of different sizes and heights to be able to wear it.

I can't remember whether I found the foam before or after the pattern was cut out...anyway, I bought a huge roll of foam wholesale from a local packaging company and started cutting it and gluing the pieces together according to my pattern. This is the same foam I made Lugia and Charmander with later with awesome results.

Luna surveys my work. I had to redo the chest piece a couple times to get the correct shape.

Here is how the foam inner skeleton ended up looking. The hands and feet are still in cardstock draft mode, but the body, abdomen and head were ready for the next stages:

At this stage I took the outfit to NinjaBee for approval...they LOVED it! It gave me a burst of energy to try and complete it before GEEX 2010.

The arm and leg pieces are two pieces of foam glued together at the seams (I cut the edge off at an angle to help the piece open up) and then sewn for added seam strength. I wanted them to open up even more to not be so tight on the wearer so I reinforced them with steel hanger tape (same stuff I make cookie cutters with!) and wire. This was kind of a jury-rigged method for keeping the foam more opened up, and it worked pretty well!

Next, I lined all my pieces in black ripstop nylon fabric from JoAnn. I figured if the mascot gets sweaty on the inside, nylon would be the easiest thing to wipe and sanitize for repeated use.

For the "skin", I ordered 5 yards each of black and yellow vinyl. I got it from http://www.discounteddesignerfabrics.com/. This place is AWESOME and will send you free swatches of fabric so you can see if the color and texture will work. I found the two colors of vinyl in the exact same thickness and they look great together. I cut out all the vinyl skin pieces and sewed them together, then put them over the foam and glued them into the inside edge of the foam.

The underside of the head, all finished, and the foot, ready for the vinyl to be glued under.

The wings were a bit tricky. I made a frame out of thick gauge wire that I hand-bent into the correct shape using a cardstock pattern as a guide. I sewed some see-through mesh fabric onto the frame, then glued a strip of black vinyl all around the edges. The hard part was getting the wings into the thorax piece. I put the wire through the back, then bent the wire ends towards the armholes to flatten them (don't want them skewering the user) and glued some foam over it to try and hold it in place. I hope it worked...

The head was tricky but also fun. I made eyeholes, then used aida cloth and window screen mesh to make "buggy" eyes that stuck out from the "helmet". I glued some white felt on for highlights. I also opened up the mouth for more visibility. I created a ninja mask that went around the whole head and tied in the back. The wearer can see through the mask in the "mouth" as well as out the eyes. The finishing touch was a shiny black pair of wire and vinyl antennae!

The head before any embellishments

Kind of a creepy smile there, Bee!

Figuring out the mask pattern by pinning it onto the foam

So I finally completed all the pieces by GEEX 2010 (just barely, I think a week before actually!) and even gave them a simple sword to complete the look. Here are all the pieces that go into wearing it:

-one head

-one chest, wings attached

-one abdomen, complete with sharp stinger!

-two arm armor pieces

-two calf armor pieces

-two feet (basic boot covers with elastic on the bottom to hold your shoes in)

-two 3-fingered gloves (very simple, with a stuffed layer to puff it out)

-one sword

-wearer's black clothes underneath

It's sturdy, can take a beating and won't hold onto dirt, so this mascot should last them for years! Here are some photos of the final product.

This is the guy who got the PR position. He looked great in it!

I went as Sora to GEEX and got a stylin' photo with my main Bee:

All in all it took me over a year to complete the costume...my excuse is that I had school and marriage and all kinds of fun things going on at that time. I could probably crank out the same thing in 2 months if I really applied myself now that I know what I'm doing :)

GEEX 2011 - First Debut Of Lugia!

2011-11-05T19:47:00.000-07:00

GEEX (Gaming & Electronics Expo) was last month and it was the first place I was privileged to debut Lugia! My husband wore him, while I wore Lyra from Pokemon SoulSilver (the female trainer you play in the game). My friend Kat was Charmander and her little brother made an awesome Ash. We were the first ones on stage for the cosplay contest and even got our picture in the Salt Lake Tribune! We performed a little skit where Ash and Charmander walk on stage, I follow them and demand a Pokemon battle and send Lugia after them. Lugia does some attacks but misses. Charmander uses Charm and hugs Lugia. It was absolutely precious :3 You can also see them in action in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Uyd7r47xV4

We won a gift card to Salt City Burger as a group and used it that night. The food there was AWESOME. I highly recommend it. It ain't your typical burger joint. I got the burger with ground bacon in it with carmelized onions and guacamole. ZOMG, yum.

Here are the photos from the Tribune! I love my derpy "surfing" pose, haha.

Pokemon Lugia Mascot Cosplay: FINISHED!!

2011-10-25T20:40:00.000-07:00

ZOMG YOU GUYS. I DID IT!!

DERP!

That's right folks, I actually finished Lugia somehow in time for GEEX on October 14th-15th. I pulled an all-nighter and finished both him and my Lyra (Pokemon Trainer from SoulSilver) cosplay! He is so majestic and HUGE!

Immense wingspan, slender long neck, spiky tail...it's enough to make any dragon-bird lover go SQUEE~~

The wearer (namely, my dear sweet husband) can see out of the slits on the bottom of the neck. I designed them to kind of fit with the character design so they look more like "gills" or something, rather than a big obvious square that sticks out in pictures.

The mouth is hinged both on the upper and lower jaws, and someday I will implement a puppeteering mechanism so the wearer can open and close the mouth. The ultimate plan would be to attach speakers for his trademark roar/"song" and lights for added effect.

His side profile looks kinda funny...I forgive this, since I pieced him together one piece at a time and the vision I had in my head made sense. The tail looks a bit sad and I will probably redo it if we go to a con next year. I would like it to "pose" better for pictures.

The back spikes look cool. I will be fixing them to stand up more someday in the future.

This is Lugia's hey-hey-hey pose.

There is still a lot of work to do, as of course cosplayers are never quite satisfied with their work. I want to make the neck a little shorter and maybe more serpentine for a better shape, but this works fine for now. I can't wait to show it off to the neighborhood kids for Halloween!

Charmander Mascot Cosplay

2011-10-25T20:10:00.000-07:00

Hi guys! Wow I have a ton of content coming up so sorry if it's overload @_@ I will separate things into distinct posts so you can read it in bite-sized chunks (if your mouth is the size of Venusaur's...hahaha!).

FIRST: I made my friend a Charmander cosplay for the GEEX (Gaming and Electronics Expo) in Sandy, UT. The head is made of the Astrofoam stuff I used in Lugia and Blizzard fleece. Before I put the teeth, nostrils and mouth in he looked a lot like a ninja turtle:

Charmander and the plushie we used for reference :3

I used a basic animal costume pattern from JoAnn and modified it so the zipper (in this case the velcro) goes in back. I put some foam in the front to give it more dimension for the "belly" and stuffed the hips with polyfil fiber to fill them out a bit. The feet are foam and blizzard fleece. The tail is a foam triangle, lots of polyfil stuffing and blizzard fleece, while the flame on the tail is just fabric and stuffing. I also made little puffy gloves for the 3-fingered hands.

Here is the head after we added nostrils, eyebrows and Fimo clay teeth painted with clear nail polish to give them some shine:

My reference pictures showed that Charmander's head basically goes straight to his body with no thin neck, so when we made the head we just made it wide enough to cover the wearer's shoulders:

The eyes on the head are made from felt, green fabric and some black mesh fabric (for embroidery I think...it's called Aida cloth or something). The wearer can actually see out of the mouth because we carefully selected a red fabric that didn't look see-through from the outside. The tongue is just a small pink pillow basically. Everything is held together with hot glue with the exception of the seams in the fabric, which were sewn.

RAWR! Charmander is ready for GEEX, Halloween, and beyond!!

Long Time No Post

2011-09-01T20:59:00.000-07:00

Who wants to bet that the title of this blog has been used hundreds of times? Haha. Anyway, I do have 3 new videos up on my YouTube channel! I have a Sailor Moon stuff tour, a Charmander cosplay WIP tour and a video of my cat Luna doing tricks. At least go watch the Luna one, it's adorable. Thanks for following <3 Go to http://www.youtube.com/user/SailorCrafty

Latest Lugia Progress Videos on Youtube!!

2011-07-07T11:43:00.000-07:00

Hi everybody! I have a bunch of progress pics to put up on here soon...in the meantime, head on over to my official YouTube Channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/SailorCrafty. I uploaded 5 videos last night to show off the latest cosplay progress! I have pretty much completed the head (complete with shiny fangs!), wings, leg pieces, and almost finished with the tail. The body is somewhat of a mess and I will be starting over/revamping it hopefully soon. Go check it out!!

<3, Sailor Crafty

Pokemon Lugia Cosplay Progress

2011-06-23T20:18:00.001-07:00

Here's an update to my costume progress!!

I have the wings pretty much done. I need to add a hole that the wearer can stick their hand out of, and add the thumb "feather".

Here's when I was laying out the wings to cut out the fleece fabric. Along the top edge of the wing I have glued down a strip of black vinyl (should have been white now that I think about it...) over some really strong wire for the user to hold up the end of the wing by a handle. Then there are arm straps with sticky back velcro attached:

Here's a layout of the entire "skeleton" of the beast in my living room:

This is the body/ribcage portion of the "skeleton":

Before I had the body together I wanted to get a sense of the scale of Lugia thus far (our ceilings are way too low in the house so we had to go outside). I had my husband go out and show me how tall it would look with the head and the tail. It's EPIC:

I am really loving the scale of this costume. It's so big but easily operable by the wearer so far. I just hope the rest of the fabric doesn't add on too much weight. Most of the weight will be carried on the shoulders but I may need a back support cushion in place to help hold up the tail also. It's getting closer...

Update: Lugia Mascot Cosplay

2011-04-18T20:54:00.000-07:00

Hi guys! It's been a cosplay whirlwind around here lately...I signed up to be in a cosplay skit for Nihon Matsuri (Japan Festival) in Salt Lake City at the end of the month (I will be Super Sailor Moon and I have someone to be my Chibi!!), I was in a photoshoot for my friend's photography class as Sora from Kingdom Hearts II (one of my fave costumes to wear!) and I got some stuff done on Lugia while finishing up watching FullMetal Alchemist all the way through for the first time. Whee! The nerdiness has definitely made me feel like myself again :)

Here are some new pieces I've worked on for Lugia:

These are the inner foam pieces for the legs. The darts were then glued together and the calf pieces also, making just one seam along the back of the leg. I will be covering these pieces with fabric shaped to look like "digitigrade" legs, so it looks like Lugia is standing on his toes like a bird would. It doesn't look like much now but there will be flexibility in the knees since I didn't use foam in that area.

I cut a bit more foam out of the arm pieces to lessen the weight even more. Next to the arm/wing, we have the inner skeleton of the tail! I used the same principle that is used in those wooden toy snakes that you wiggle back and forth on one axis but the vertical axis stays rigid. So there is one long solid piece vertically, and circular pieces that maintain the tail shape but allow it to move horizontally. This serves the purpose of 1) keeping the tail off the ground (it's gonna be covered in white fleece--easily soiled) and 2) giving the character some personality and realism with a moving tail. I only hope that the fabric covering will not hinder the movement too much.

And lastly here is a photo of the neck, wing and tail just to give you some idea of the scale:

This next part was whipped out in about an hour. I cut out ten pieces of foam in a rectangle/trapezoidal shape, made some fabric covers for them and voila! Lugia's back "spikes" are done. Easy Peasy.

Next part of the costume is figuring out the BODY. This is crucial because it connects all the pieces together. It needs to be the right size and shape, and I have to make some kind of pattern to cover it with the fabric.

ANGST. I hate making patterns XD

Lugia "Mascot" Type Cosplay Progress

2011-04-04T17:13:00.000-07:00

Hello people of the interwebs!! I've had quite the hiatus but I'm back and ready to show you my current project:

I'm making a Lugia cosplay!

Lugia holds a special place in my heart. I remember taking my little brother to Pokemon the Movie 2000, probably at the tail end of junior high school. I like anything that remotely resembles a dragon and Lugia is basically a giant dragon bird that swims AND flies! Best of both worlds! Around that time I also got my hands on Pokemon Silver which will forever be my favorite game of the series (of course, SoulSilver is its souped-up, super-awesome descendant, but you gotta go with nostalgia, right?).

Since I worked on the NinjaBee mascot (long future blog post pending on that one), I felt fully prepared to tackle this monster using more AstroFoam from the hundred-foot roll I bought. Basically you create the shape of the whole creature using foam, then glue fabric onto it. Pretty simple, although I'll admit I have a hard time coming up with 3D patterns. I have to really think about the shape I want to make, and what smaller flat shapes make up that 3D shape. Boggles the mind, it does.

I started with the most important part: the head.

I worked up a drawing of how I want the costume to work and the approximate proportions I want it to have on the wearer. Lugia's big, so we need to make it an impressive size while maintaining a light weight and easy wearability.

I basically tape a bunch of pieces of paper together and draw all over them once I figure out the size I need everything to be. I know how to do math, yay! Proportions are easy to figure out once you've remembered how to do fractions from grade school. XD

The neck is just two flat pieces of foam glued at the back. The head is two flat pieces glued at the top, with the "eyeshields" sticking into the head via tabs/slots. The jaw is 3 pieces glued together.

This is how the final product should look. There is a place for the ensemble to rest on the wearer's shoulders. The wearer's head will be in the neck, looking forward through thin mesh fabric. I am working out how to attach the head and jaw in order to give the wearer the ability to do some puppetry, moving the head up and down, and the jaw also.

Mouth open would look like this.

Next I worked on the wings. I made them jointed so that the wearer can fold them up to get through doors and to allow for some dynamic poses. This is AstroFoam with batting glued between.

This shows the wing proportions with the head. I like how big everything looks!

This the wing with elastic added for the wearer. I am a little worried about it cutting off circulation though, and I might try velcro instead so it's more adjustable.

I cut into the wing to lighten the weight somewhat. The biggest piece relies on the wearer's wrist only to keep it up so it needs to be as light as possible. No droopy Pokemans!!

What a fun material I've found! Just a clear plastic tube that served as packaging for ornaments.

This is quarter-inch FunFoam from the craft store. The black piece is a sunglasses lens, popped out and hot-glued to the foam. Can you guess what this might be??

I glued fabric around the AstroFoam eyeshield, then placed the FunFoam and sunglasses lens on top of that, and glued a small white paper highlight onto the lens. Looking good, but there's something that would make it even better! (Also, please disregard the 25-year old carpet...what a lovely, earthy color...)

Here's the back of the eyeshield with the fabric glued around the edges, to be cleaned up later.

That clear plastic from the aforementioned tube became the "cornea" for Lugia's cartoony eye! It was already curved so it gives this awesome, glossy 3D appearance. So cool!

Here is a composition shot of the eye work in progress! He's looking more like Lugia by the minute!!

Stay tuned for future posts on Lugia's progress. My next items of business will be the legs and tail, followed by the body. I am so excited for this project!

Napoleon Dynamite Face Wall of Awesomeness

2010-12-22T14:16:00.000-08:00

Here's a really random project I worked on while I was attending the LDS Institute of Religion across the street from Mesa Community College in AZ. I was on the Institute Council, and we were responsible for all the fun activities for our students, including dances and "Friday Forums" where we would have a speaker, musical number and food afterward. It was a place for young single adults to gather and mingle together. Who knows how many dates/marriages resulted from our efforts? Haha.

Anyway, we had a huge party where we rented a bunch of carnival games, had cotton candy and popcorn, karaoke and lots more. I suggested we have a "face wall" where people could poke their heads in and take pictures together. Our council leader Bro. Hunter took all the photos from that party and compiled them into a slideshow video for the classes to watch later on. It was so much fun!

On our face wall we have Napoleon, Pedro, Deb and of course Tina the Llama! I stuck to simple lines and of course simple coloring since we didn't have long to work on it (and because I really didn't know how to draw people well). I like how it turned out though, and the students had a ton of fun playing with it. I think one girl even got her head stuck in Napoleon's face for a bit. She got out eventually and laughed it off (thank goodness!). It was a fun idea and it was awesome to have such a big role in the party itself!

Cookie Cutters of the Day: Pac-Man and Ghost!

2010-12-08T18:25:00.001-08:00

I whipped these up just yesterday for a customer. Hope she likes them! How nostalgic and fun (and blissfully easy to make)!

Kingdom Hearts II Embroidered Munny Bags

2010-12-06T17:25:00.000-08:00

I'm a cosplayer as you know by now, and a couple years ago I had the urge to make a special prop for my Sora outfit from Kingdom Hearts II. In the Twilight Town portion of the game, you meet the group of friends that Roxas hangs out with. Olette pulls out a cute bag with an oak leaf symbol that they can use to store the Munny they earn doing various "jobs" around town. It's a simple drawtring-type purse.

I decided to make a bunch of these to sell or give away to friends. I started out with the oak leaf portion. I drew the oak leaf shape onto some "tear away" stabilizer. I then used my sewing machine and carefully sewed the stabilizer onto a piece of red fabric layered on green fabric.

Next, I hand-sewed tiny gold and blue glass beads onto the stabilizer, again following the lines of the pattern. I added round blue beads as accents on the points of the design. Nothing about the actual picture from the game indicated that it was made this way. I took some artistic license and thought about how a girl like Olette would make it and went from there. Girls like shiny things! After the beads were on I carefully tore the stabilizer away and cut out the excess red fabric. The result can be seen in this next blurry picture:

Once the embroidered part was done, I sewed the green patch carefully onto a melon rectangle of fabric. I created a diamond shape by first cutting and then folding under the sides, as you would do in an applique. It was the most difficult part as the shiny green fabric did not take kindly to folding under and I made several mistakes. Makes it look all the more handmade I suppose.

I sewed the melon rectangular piece onto another while at the same time putting a bit of rope trim in the corners. I made an inner lining with some leftover pink fabric from another project to make the bag less likely to fall apart. I added the drawstring and painted some wooden beads purple with nail polish. I tied the beads onto the rope trim and frayed the ends. Here is the finished product (although colors in the above pictures are far more accurate than the colors below due to a cheap camera):

I ended up making 12-13 of these little guys! I sold a couple over DeviantArt and gave the rest away to friends who love Kingdom Hearts. It was a really fun project and really brings the prop to life!

Beast Wars: Transformers Maximals Pillow

2010-12-02T11:51:00.000-08:00

I had a friend that worked in the library with me and we had a mutual love of Beast Wars: Transformers, an awesome CGI cartoon that was on around when I was in junior high. I collected a bunch of the action figures. They all could completely morph from their animal forms to their robot forms. They're some of the coolest toys I've ever owned. Do you remember that show?

Anyway, my friend brought a few of his action figures to work so we would have something fun to play with while we waited for files to load, etc. We even had a little party at my place where we watched a couple episodes. Over the summer (the same summer I made the Sailor Moon brooch pillow) I made a Maximals symbol pillow for my friend.

I had a red ripstop vinyl and some metallic black/blue fabric for this project. I made the symbol design on craft paper for the pattern and cut out the outline from the blue fabric. I put a large red piece behind the blue fabric where it was cut out and sewed the blue onto the red.

I then cut out small blue pieces for the eyes and ears and sewed those onto the red background. The "whiskers" are pieces of red fabric sewn on top of the blue. I cut around the whole thing to make a simple shape for the pillow, and had a long rectangular strip for the outside edge.

It turned out so shiny and cool! My friend loved it! His return present to me was a block poster of a Jurassic Park raptor (my favorite dinosaur), printed out on regular sheets of paper. We pieced it together and taped it to my apartment window. My neighbors thought I was so cool! I later named the raptor Henrietta and it guarded me and my roommates well!

Sailor Moon Brooch Pillow

2010-12-01T09:32:00.000-08:00

During the summer between my junior and senior year at BYU, I moved home to AZ to look for an advertising internship. It was tough! There weren't many openings and I was pretty close to finding one through my friend's brother but that fell through. That was also the summer that I started chatting with my future husband over Facebook. I ended up moving back to Utah a month earlier than previously planned, since no internship turned up and of course I wanted to start dating this young man that I was so excited about!

That summer I got REALLY bored with no job or school. I had 2-3 boxes of fabric lying around from the days I worked at JoAnn. I would buy things on discount just because they looked pretty. I have quite the variety of shiny fabrics and I saw that I had all the right colors to make Sailor Moon's first season brooch! I used my toy version as a reference, although the one in the show is all gold with no pink background. I think it's cute either way. I love the use of gold and pink on all of Sailor Moon's magical items! It's so whimsical and fitting of a princess.

Progress pic

I made the crescent moon out of gold lame (pronounced la-meh, but I couldn't figure out how to type the accent...), which is a really cheap fabric and frays super easily. I had to double it up so it would have the strength to hold together. I made the crescent and all the jewels as separate little pillows with a cheap white backing fabric, then sewed them onto the main pillow. I outlined all the jewels with gold rope trim by just gluing it on. Trying to sew that on would have been a nightmare for sure.

I used a pink sequined fabric for the top background, and just a matte pink fabric for the back. The outer rim is just a simple tube, stuffed and sewn on to the circular pillow. It was a challenging piece altogether, but very rewarding to make. I put it up on DeviantArt. Pretty soon a young "Moonie" from the Midwest was contacting me with the desire to buy it. Her grandma was the one who called me and she had the most adorable accent. We worked out a price of $25 plus shipping (which later ended up costing more than I had planned...so I didn't make as much. Lesson learned!). The recipient was SO happy and told me that if I made any more pillows to contact her first! It was a really fun experience and its always great to meet more "Moonies" that share the same obsession :)

Someday I plan to make the Crescent Moon Wand and maybe some of Sailor Moon's other brooches. Getting the motivation to measure out everything and get the right shapes in there is the hardest part, haha. Wish me luck!

Fabric and Wire Doll Wings

2010-11-30T14:23:00.000-08:00

A close friend of mine wanted me to be a part of the Asian Ball-Jointed Doll hobby (ABJD for short) and sold me one of her smaller dolls for a truly decent price. These dolls are at the center of a huge community of enthusiasts that buy clothes, eyes, wigs, accessories and parts to make their dolls beautiful. There are many styles, including dolls that look like anime characters or have animal-like features. Whatever the case, there is something for everyone. Since they are fully jointed, you can pose them any way you like for pictures, giving them a more lifelike quality than you can get from regular dolls that only bend at the base of their limbs.

The doll I have is called a Mythdoll Little Leroi. It is an androgynous, flat-chested doll that you can dress as either gender. He looks good as either a male or female. He has a sweet, innocent face and long, slender limbs that hold their poses fairly well. The joints are connected by elastic.

I wanted to make a set of wings he could wear, and drew up a design based on anime wings. I sewed one long wire into the wings and made a little "U" between them that I can stick in the back of his clothes or tie onto his waist with a ribbon. The first material I used was a bit wrinkly and not as stiff as I would have liked, and I made a few mistakes on it. Nevertheless, I was excited enough to take a few pictures of Leroi wearing his new set of wings!

I liked the design so much I bought a large piece of felt and went to work making about 12 more pairs. I currently have them for sale at my etsy shop. You can check them out at http://www.etsy.com/listing/45150938/felt-and-wire-angel-wings

Cookie Cutters of the Day: Hairstyling Tools

2010-11-29T11:38:00.000-08:00

This is one of the first orders where I did multiple cutters for the same person. She had just been accepted into beauty school and wanted to bring some themed cookies to her class. I made some scissors, a blow dryer, a brush and a comb. At first, the comb had little jaggy edges all the way down, but when I showed my customer a picture, she changed the comb to one with a handle. It was an easy fix. All I had to do was rebend the same cutter. They turned out great and the customer loved them!

Cookie Cutters of the Day: Dr. Seuss Medley

2010-11-22T10:44:00.000-08:00

One customer bought a set of 5 cutters from me based on Dr. Seuss! They asked for A, B, and C in a Grinchy font, a fish, and the very Hat that the Cat himself wears. I had to re-do the fish a couple times to get the fins all situated correctly. That was slightly nerve-wracking, but I finally settled on a shape that looked close enough. I think they turned out really cute!

Cookie Cutter of the Day: Dog Outline!

2010-11-19T11:30:00.000-08:00

Today's featured cutter is one that was a bit daunting to do...when I saw the design I wasn't sure I could make it. The customer wanted two sizes of the same design. It is supposed to be a French Basset Hound, a breed with long hair. I did the best I could to capture the essence of the dog's movement and included as much of the "scruffiness" in the fur as possible. It was made from the easier-to-bend steel hanger tape. All in all I was pretty happy with the results and the customer was satisfied too. Hooray!

Custom Handmade Cookie Cutters!

2010-11-18T12:06:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my blog! For my first post, I am going to make a plug for a little business I've been running on the side: custom cookie cutters in any shape you can dream up!

I started making cutters several months ago when I realized the materials were readily available and I already had the design skill to pull it off. I grew up doodling on my notebooks in school and I figured if I could draw, I could probably bend metal into the shapes I liked too! I wandered around at Lowe's to find metal ribbon, and came across hanger tape. It's used to hold pipes in place and is thus found in the plumbing aisle. There are two varieties. One is copper plated and comes in 10 foot rolls while the other is steel, comes in 25 foot rolls and is much easier to bend but not as shiny/aesthetically pleasing as the copper plated tape. Instead of being a solid ribbon, there are holes evenly spaced down the length of it to enable nailing/drilling screws into the surface it's hanging on.

I've learned that the copper ribbon bends easily where the holes are, but is very tough to bend on the interval between those holes. This limits my designs to fairly simple ones for the most part. I can use the steel ribbon if there are more details, but I have a hard time soldering the ends together because the solder doesn't stick very well to steel. The copper ones are easily soldered but the heat leaves a bit of discoloration on the metal. I use a lead-free rosin core solder, a small propane tank, a lighter and metal pliers with rubberized handles to get a strong bond on the ends of the metal. At first I was having my husband do the soldering because I think of myself as a clutz and did not want to risk burning my fingers off. After a few training sessions however I have found that the process isn't as scary as it looks and I can now do it with ease on my own.

My first projects were used to make delicious gifts for friends and family. I made guitar and musical note cutters for my dad, who is a professional musician. We made a batch of large sugar cookies and painted them brilliant colors with icing.

The next project was the face of Link from the Legend of Zelda series, his sword and shield, and of course the Triforce (one triangle that could be used 3 times). I made a separate cutter to make the hair on Link's head. We cooked up a delicious rhubarb pie for our cousin and put the shapes on top. It turned out great!

I also made the face of Yoshi the dinosaur for a Sci-Fi club party and it went over really well.

After I made a few cutters and got used to the materials, I decided to start making them for a larger audience and put a listing up on etsy.com. The response has been amazing! I get a few orders a week. The feedback I've had so far is positive and encouraging. I charge $4 for each cutter and $3 for shipping inside the US. If that's not a bargain I don't know what is! I've found another website that does custom cutters professionally but they charge $15-$35 depending on the project. I know the materials don't cost that much!

I've gotten all kinds of requests, from sports logos (the Phillies "P" has been asked for a lot!), to human parts (heart, foot, ear), foods (ice cream cones, pickle, banana), the Twitter bird, the Washington Monument and Capitol building, gingerbread house patterns, and more!

It's so fun because it's a collaboration effort between myself and the customer. They get to pick any design they want, I create the cutter, and the final product that they create is a combination of their cooking/icing skills and my metal bending prowess. Each cutter is bent entirely by hand (with some help from pliers) and filled with my good wishes! I wrap each cutter in tulle and ribbon for that touch that says: I put some love into this! I absolutely love it when they send a photo of the finished product too.

I'm going to start posting a "cutter of the day" to show off some of the work I've done and maybe spark some new ideas. The holidays are right around the corner! Instead of buying those same old gingerbread men and Christmas tree shapes, you could get something that will make your family laugh about your ingenuity and represents something you share. Maybe it's a college mascot, a cartoon character, or the shape of your state! It's up to you. Come see my listing and put it in your bookmarks in case you think of something great!

TrombonePrincess's Custom Made Cookie Cutters

I promise the rest of my posts will be shorter and more image-oriented, haha. This one just explains the whole process of cutter making. Thanks for reading!