My Other Miscellaneous Geeky Fangirl Doings

Besides working on fashion illustrations and sewing plushies, I've also been crafting my fandoms and doing some cosplay-lite. I wanted to chronicle these, however briefly, before SHB#2 arrives, since this blog is supposed to be a record of my haphazard (and some are definitely more haphazard than others) projects.

I was late to jump onto the Hamilton bandwagon, but I console myself that once I jumped on, I jumped on hard. The soundtrack has been on repeat in my car for oh, more than half a year now, and SHB knows and enjoys a good half of the songs (his top requests: anything sung by Aaron Burr or King George; not his favorites: cabinet battles, anything having to do with Maria Reynolds). Although I'd seen it recommended by basically every blogger I enjoy and many real-life friends I love, I didn't get into it until my best friend's girlfriend got her into it. As a thank you to the two of them for finally getting me into my favorite musical ever (sorry Les Mis, you've been relegated to second favorite, although you'll always have the distinction of being my first love), I drew/painted these two pieces:

I took all of Alexander Hamilton's and Aaron Burr's best lines and turned them into a ham (A Dot Ham!) and a burr (A Dot Burr!).

Time is such a theme in Hamilton, so it seemed appropriate to make a clock. "Why do you write like you're running out of time?" 

Bonus LOTR-themed clock that I pyrographed for Elaine:

I love the new craft kits that Target is putting out! 

It's really thanks to my fashion illustration classes that I even did the first two pieces; I had all my nice pens and paints at hand already and felt empowered to use them. I also drew this little illustration based on my best friend's cat for her husband, who is a Toothless the dragon fan.

Cactus the cat looks a lot like Toothless the Night Fury, don't you think? Color pencil and pastel illustration.

It's been hard to find the time and energy to make proper costumes this year, thanks to pregnancy and a busy schedule, but I'm proud of myself for still managing a couple of less-involved outfits. Elaine and I went to see the next installment in the HP symphony series at the Silicon Valley Symphony, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I originally planned to make a Fawkes costume, but time and a baby bump got the better of me and I went for a much more low-key and goofy costume: the actual Chamber of Secrets! I'd seen all those Buzzfeed-ish "articles" about ridiculous uses of a baby bump in cosplay (Krang! the Death Star! an alien/parasite bursting out!), so it seemed to follow that my incubation chamber should hold a basilisk. I painted some painter's tape to make a quick "sticker" because I didn't want to paint directly onto a perfectly good black tee, then painted the door to the Chamber of Secrets onto a piece of craft foam and fastened it over my belly.

I put a bunch of painter's tape onto a piece of waxed paper and used acrylic to paint the basilisk, then cut out the shape. 

I considered stressing about the not-quite-symmetrical door design, then decided it wasn't worth it. Same goes for the scale pattern on the snakes. 

My crowning glory, though, was the tiny Moaning-Myrtle-in-her-toilet headband I made to direct people to the chamber:

Don't ask why I have a tiny pink plastic toilet readily available in my house. 

Elaine was a great sport and let me slap a printout of the blood-painted warning wall on her dress, so that we could go together like we did at the first symphony, where we were McGonagall and her silver cat Patronus.

I'm hoping to get my act together post-birth and make a Snape-boggart costume for the third movie/symphony...we'll see how that goes.

Shortly after the symphony was the second Silicon Valley Comic Con; I wanted to dress up as something, but with AP exams coming up I had no time to make the pregnant Princess Serenity or pregnant Zoe Washburne costumes I originally envisioned. When my sister Emily told me she was going as Imperator Furiosa, though, I knew I could pull off a quick pregnant Splendid Angharad costume. Can you even call it a costume if you're just wrapping white fabric around yourself and throwing cinnamon and coffee grounds at it to dirty it up? At any rate, it was a very comfortable costume to wear and certainly easier for toddler-chasing than my original ideas. Just FYI, if you bring a two year old to a convention and you're pregnant, it's very helpful to also have the best aunts along to help chase and wrangle.

The orange convention wristband kind of ruins the whole look though. 

Right after we took this picture, SHB squirmed out of my arms and took off across the exhibit hall to point at a Batman display. I guess I was asking for it by dressing him in his caped Batman shirt. 

I was really excited for the Wonder Woman movie coming out, but sad that there was no way I was going to make either of my two preferred costumes from the film: the wool suit, which is actually quite historically accurate for a superhero movie, and the blue dress with the sword down her back, which is just awesome. I still want to make both, but they'll have to wait. In the meantime, I'm still pretty pleased that I managed to spray-paint my own maternity Wonder Woman top and make a quick craft foam tiara. Emily went as Doctor Poison, who, although a villain, still has a tiny piece of my heart as a female chemist.

Yes, I succumbed and bought the toy sword. 

So that's what I've been up to this spring! I still have to blog SHB#2's quilts and then I'll be all caught up. Minus those Antigone costumes, of course.

The One (Teething) Ring and More Geekcrafting

I feel like I'm just repeating myself over and over sometimes: no, SHB isn't sleeping any better, no, I'm not really doing much sewing (brain too tired), and yes, I made more geeky wood-burned items.

I went to Daiso again (it's far enough away that SHB will fall asleep on the drive, and that's really the only reliable way to get him to nap. That, and wearing him, but I can't wear him for all four naps or else my torso might collapse in on itself) and got another box identical to my tea box. While I knew I wanted to burn it, I couldn't figure out what other Tolkien-y panels I could do; the dimensions make it difficult to do another map or anything else based on his drawings. I was having a hard time thinking of another geeky theme that would be suitable for the rustic-ness (rusticity?) of wood-burning, when during one of the interminable middle of the night feedings, my delirious brain hit upon it: Daiso...is a Japanese store...Japanese animation is great...Totoro is a great film...it takes place in a forest...trees are made of wood...

As you can see, I decided to experiment with adding color. I used color pencils, which worked astonishingly well. 

The white color pencil didn't work as well as the other colors. I just love these little forest sprites though!

The title, Tonari no Totoro, and some soot sprites.  

The classic large Totoro with his umbrella!

And of course, a little bonus on the inside!

Since I couldn't manage to make the box into a Tolkien piece, I had to look elsewhere to get my LOTR fix. Thanks to Becky for cluing me in as to the existence of The One Ring teething toys! It was fairly easy to order some blank, unfinished wooden teething rings and burn them myself. It's like these rings are made for the One Ring inscription, because the length of the four lines is just right for the smallest Elvish font that my finest wood-burning tip can manage. I added SHB's Elvish name on the back of the ring as well, then polished it up with coconut oil.

In the Black Speech, it reads, "Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulûk, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul."

The top, lighter-colored ring hasn't been oiled yet. I love how the oil gives such a warm honey color to the wood. Also it makes them smell delicious. 

On the back, I put SHB's name in Elvish. The other ring is for Becky's coming Hobbit. 

You may wonder what I'm planning to do with the last, unfinished ring, since SHB doesn't need more than one One Ring (hah!). Well, I'm putting it up for grabs! If you know of a small human being in your life who would appreciate such a mighty gift, leave me a comment and I'll choose a winner on Sunday night. And if the name of your small human being is one that has a Google-able Elvish translation, I'll even add it to the back before oiling it up and mailing it to you.

Of course, if you just want a approximately 3" wooden ring with the One Ring inscription on it for yourself, you can go ahead and throw your name into the running and I won't tell. Do not deny that your heart has greatly desired what I offer! After all,  I offer it to you freely. If you ask it of me, I will give you the One Ring...as long as your name is the one the random number generator picks. 

Hobbit-y Pyrography

These days, SHB is sleeping somewhat better in the evenings, meaning I can be fairly sure of having an hour or so to myself after dinner. I was so excited at first (a whole hour! I can do ALL the things!), but I quickly learned that after working part time and taking care of SHB the rest of the time, not to mention making dinner and cleaning up, I have no energy left for anything mentally taxing. There are so many lovely new patterns I want to get to (hello Sewaholic button-down shirts -- perfect for breastfeeding access!), but I can't seem to muster up the gumption to tackle muslins or fitting or even thinking about where that one fabric is in my stash.

I still want to do something mildly productive, though (I can only read so much before the words start swimming before my eyes), and I have that whole irreversible task resolution, so I have to settle for my brain-dead craft of choice: pyrography. It's essentially tracing, with very little thinking involved, so it's perfect for a tired new mom. And being the geek that I am, naturally it would all be Tolkien-themed. I'm lucky that one of my fandoms lends itself so well to this medium; it's harder to do convincing wood-based, rustic-looking crafts for say, sci-fi fandoms like Star Wars and Firefly.

So, during Christmas break, I burned two small cheese-sized cutting boards:

"If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world."

It was tricky getting the wood grain to cooperate to make the elvish designs smooth enough. 

Not actually from the books, admittedly, but I still love the list of hobbit meals. 

Oak leaf motif. Because hobbits. 

IKEA won't let me forget where I got the board from. 

I ended up gifting one to Elaine and keeping the other for myself. It was awfully therapeutic to do, and there's the added bonus of a pleasant smoky wood smell (so nice in winter, especially when you discover that your fireplace is out of commission and will cost $4000 to fix!). It was so fun, I found myself itching to do more. Then I realized that we were storing our teabags in an old gelato container, so when I was at Daiso the other day I picked up this wooden box for making into a more aesthetically pleasing receptacle:

I've always been the tiniest bit sad that I gave these boxes away at my hobbit-themed birthday party, so it was about time I made my own Thorin's-map-themed box.

It pleases me that the green tea is on the Lonely Mountain side, since it's vageuly Mt. Fuji-esque. 

I'm really pleased with how well the wood grain works with the mountains on this side. 

The great wyrms of the North came out looking a little goofy. 

Even though nobody will see it, I like knowing that this inscription is under the mountain...er, tea. 

All credit for the design on the box goes to Tolkien himself, of course.

It's tempting to make even more random LOTR decor -- Jo-ann's has so many nice blank wood items -- but considering only one person in this house is actually a fan, I think I'd better hold back. Unless, of course, I can indoctrinate SHB...then it'll be two to one!

A Long Expected Party

After lots of party preparations late into the night...

Dwarven treasure in wooden boxes for the trivia winners!

Including last-minute inspiration while looking at our recycling and an ugly shelving unit that needed hiding...

Two cereal boxes + some tape + judicious application of Sharpie to a yellow balloon + black fabric stash = Barad-dur. Since the Eye of Sauron was a balloon, it swayed back and forth with every air current, making it look like it was actually turning to watch your every move. I don't think I've ever been more pleased with myself.

A day spent whipping up Middle-Earth-themed goodies...

It's too bad our door isn't green! We had Radagast the Brown wizard hat cookies, not-coney stew (with taters, of course), some nice crispy bacon ("Put it out, you fools, put it out!"), lembas (actually almond shortbread, with the reasoning being that the added protein would help keep a grown man going at least for an hour, if not all day...and all imprinted with either G runes for Galadriel and Gandalf, or with Bill the Pony, Gollum's fish, or Radagast's animal friends), and nametags with gold rings (actually grommets).

The One Ring was passed from Bilbo to Frodo, Photogenic Hobbit made an appearance, elves looked serene, people gambled on LOTR trivia...

Merriment was had and awkward prom photos were taken.

It was seriously the birthday party of my dreams! I had so much fun and felt so loved, and I'm pretty sure other people were having fun too. Walnut poked his head out twice, only to decide that there was too much going on for him to make an appearance. So of course I had to steal him afterward for a quick photo.

Come on Mr. Walnut, I can't carry the ring for you, but I can carry you!

Even though I asked for people to bring children's books to donate instead of gifts, Shayna (of course) disobeyed and brought me the exact same kind of Rainbow Brite sheets that I had as a little girl! I loved these sheets when I had them and wanted a Starlite of my own so badly, so I was thrilled beyond belief; I think I might have accidentally let loose with a ringwraith scream in my excitement. And the icing on the cake was the LOTR Pez dispensers from my pastor!

And to keep happiness going...the winner of the Care Bear sheets is Trisha! Please email me with your mailing address as soon as possible so that you can get these sheets by Christmas!

One last picture: Walnut the ethereal elf-cat. 

Merry Early Christmas!

My husband and I decided to splurge this year and get ourselves an extremely early Christmas present: a DSLR!! Our little point-and-shoot has been around for several years and while it was definitely a workhorse, it's so exciting to have this beautiful new camera to play around with! Based on a recommendation from our friends over at Orange Turtle Photography, we got a Canon EOS Rebel T1i for our starter DSLR. We've been going crazy taking pictures of everything (read: Walnut) and marveling at how sharp the shots are.

This was taken indoors! At night!

In the meantime, I've been working on my first "art" dress. Definition of an "art" dress being that it's somewhat impractical for everyday wear and a little too weird even for special occasion wear. And inspired by something. I think that covers the definition of most artsy-fartsy things, yeah? Here's a sneak peak:

To take a break from this dress (it's definitely the longest I've ever worked on anything, and this isn't even that complicated!), I've been returning to my craft roots. I think my first serious foray into arts and crafts was in college, when I went through a wood pyrography phase. As my phases go, it was a fairly long one -- an entire school year! I burned all sorts of gift plaques, boxes, and even candlesticks and napkin rings, all in "elvish"-inspired script. I even sold a few in a craft fair at UCSD. I don't have any pictures of any of it (this was before digital cameras were super common; I have some actual camera prints somewhere, lost forever), but that's probably good because most of my efforts were pretty laughable. I do have this one leftover that's more Gondorian than elvish. Well, watching TTT while hand-picking my Superman dress reminded me again of how much I love love love the aesthetics of LOTR, and I remembered a pyrography project that I had started but never completed. I went digging through my closet and found this plaque:

Pencil on wood, with one measly star finished.

Back when I was a crazy college student, I actually taught myself calligraphy. Not just in English, either -- in Tengwar, JRR Tolkien's alphabet for writing in the Elvish languages of Quenya and Sindarin. I even took some of my notes for my upper div biology classes in Elvish, which of course made studying even more difficult than it needed to be. Anyway, this plaque was my transcription of the Elvish hymn to Varda, A Elbereth Gilthoniel. Here is the English transcription and translation:

A Elbereth Gilthoniel
O Elbereth Starkindler,
silivren penna míriel
white-glittering, slanting down sparkling like a jewel,
o menel aglar elenath!
the glory of the starry host!
Na-chaered palan-díriel
Having gazed far away
o galadhremmin ennorath,
from the tree-woven lands of Middle-earth,
Fanuilos, le linnathon
to thee, Everwhite, I will sing,
nef aear, sí nef aearon!
on this side of the Sea, here on this side of the Ocean!

After a few hours of work, I had the calligraphy done, but I felt like the ocean and elf and tree still needed something more. So I went looking through my Alphonse Mucha art book for inspiration (I think the elves fit perfectly with the Art Nouveau style of illustration; just look at the similarities between Arwen's bedroom and the Paris Metro station entrances). I returned to find that a freshly pyrographed plaque is apparently the perfect cat butt warmer.

I swear I didn't pose him like this (cats aren't generally amenable to posing, anyway). I came back and he was sitting exactly like this.

Anyway, after I shooed Walnut off and finished sketching and burning, I have this:

Pyrography tool and tips in the upper left corner: $15 at Michael's.

I still need to stain and seal it at some point, and given the wait time between the pencil transcription and the actual pyrography, let's hope it's not another seven years. Also, still no idea what to do with it, practically speaking (it doesn't match any of our apartment's decor), but it makes me happy to look at it. Also, let me just say that I totally CANNOT WAIT for The Hobbit movies!

Linked here: