Pumpkin Fascinator

Last summer I found the most amazing/hideous bright orange plastic bridesmaid's dress (or, awful prom dress?) and it was immediately decided that I should wear it to be a pumpkin this Halloween. So I was excited about my costume for MONTHS, although somehow I neglected to plan out a suitable pumpkin-leaf headpiece to go with it until the weekend before. We were going to Providence for a conference and then a Halloween party, so I grabbed some felt, scissors, copper wire and a hairclip and started working on a pumpkin leaf/tendril fascinator on the train. I cut out pumpkin-shaped leaves from three colors of felt in graduated sizes and embroidered veins on them in contrasting colors. The embroidery not only added color and line to the leaves but also caused the felt to bunch up and become more leaf-textured. The leaves took me most of the conference, and I sewed them to the hairclip during the afterparty and added tendrils of copper wire.

Here's the finished product:

And here's a couple shots of it with the ridiculous dress at the party that night:

 I'm not planning to make anything that over-the-top to sell except by special request, but I do have fascinators with similar (though smaller) leaves in my Etsy shop.

Forged Wire Rings

After the recent craziness of my schedule, I just had to doodle around and make something new -- and I'm pretty happy with how it came out! I saw a lot of rings like this while we were in San Francisco and I love the idea. I took it a step further by oxidizing the copper after forming these rings, then buffing off parts of it to reveal the pink copper color. I love how every second in the liver of sulfur bath creates a slightly different tone in the copper -- it turns from gold to maroon to grey to blue-black, all in about 20 seconds (depending on the heat of the bath and wire, I believe). Unfortunately the color in these photos isn't great, but it should give a sense of the difference in color that happens after only a few seconds.

Bronze hue (only a few seconds in the liver of sulfur):

Maroon-pink shade (about 8 seconds):

Deep grey (more than 20 seconds; burnished afterwards to bring out some of the pink color):

Detail of the pattern:

Singed Flower Project

I've been working on making much larger flowers, with anthers made by twisting wire with beads. It's sort of an inside-out version of my twisted wire earrings, and I like the effect a lot for brooches or hair clips. Here are three that I've been working on:

Riveted Flower Cuff

Yesterday I made myself a cuff bracelet to add some "edge" to an outfit. I used some of my singed fabric flowers, but the bracelet still comes off as pretty tough! I've listed the bracelet on Etsy here.

Papercut Map Cards

After my cutout map experiments, I've been thinking about the idea of making one-of-a-kind handmade cards with map imagery. One way that's been successful so far is three-layered handcut map cards. The cards are each a piece of thin paper folded in four; blocks are carved out of the top layer, and houses are carved out of the second layer. When the card is closed, the writing layer provides the background. I suppose that if you were to write densely enough on the card, the writing would show through in the houses.

I'll be showing a few of these cards at SLAM the weekend after next, and if that goes well there should be more available at Somerville Open Studios! They are also currently available on Etsy, if you're not in the area.

HTML5 Military Jacket

My friend has suggested for a while that the HTML5 logo would look good as a military-style patch, and I only recently got around to the project. Originally I was going to do some kind of iron-on transfer, but I figured hand-painting it would make it more personal. I think it came out really well!

Before I started on the large logo, I made a strip of icons representing various tech classes in HTML5, to go across over the jacket's breast pocket. I sketched the shapes freehand and then filled them in using bronze-colored acrylic paint.

The HTML5 logo is graphic and shield-shaped. It works pretty well for a patch. I sketched the logo onto fabric (this time with the help of a ruler, since the straight lines are pretty crucial) and mixed paint to match the orange shades.

I pinned the fabric to a thin corkboard so that it wouldn't buckle too much under layers of wet paint.

I decided that the four logos needed something to make them pop, so I outlined them in pen (I settled on a waterproof, bleedproof Copic after exhaustive testing).

I folded under the edges and made small hems across the top and bottom, then sewed pieces of velcro to the ends and middle of the strip.

The strip attached to a piece of velcro already on the right side of the jacket, and I sewed a slightly larger backing to the HTML5 logo and pinned the whole thing to the left sleeve. Here's what the jacket looked like on:

I might want to make the logo strip a little smaller, but I don't think paint would still work in that case; paint pens might end up being better. Overall, though, I think it worked surprisingly well.

Celtic Knot Bracelets

I intended to have these ready for the St Patrick's Day SLAM on Saturday, but unfortunately my sewing machine wasn't cooperating. I've finished them now, though, and they're available on my Etsy site for a limited time.

Crocheted Hairbands

I was inspired to make these by a customer who had one to keep her ears warm. I'm always reluctant to wear hats because they're too hot and limit my hairstyles, but I love these because then my ears don't get cold. I'm working on refining the pattern and then I'll be putting some on Etsy.

What to do with 500 pieces of tissue paper

I recently acquired a whole ton of small pieces of tissue paper that had been used for packaging. Last night I decided to try and come up with some fun things to do with them.

I made some origami lotus flowers. Using the thin paper, I could make more petals than I can usually get out of normal-weight paper, so they're a bit fluffier, and also more delicate.

I sprayed one with clear spray, and one with iridescent paper spray. I like the iridescent one a lot. I glued a blue glass gem into it and made it into a pin. It's already up for sale on Etsy.

The one that got clear spray is still waiting to be posted -- but I'll put photos up here!

I also experimented with making tissue paper roses. Eventually I would find a way to attach them to a hair comb with some white winter twigs and perhaps some white feathers. I was really inspired by the interior decorations at Bergdorf's this winter, which were all lights and mirrors with white twigs and other adornments.

Winter

Snow:

And more snow:

Snowflake decorations:

Making snowflake ornaments:

Hand-sewn stockings for our apartment: