Let's Craft Something!

I know you have to be so tired of hearing about this stupid starfish headpiece by now!  There is good news, though:  I'm practically finished with him!

In case you've been living under a rock since 1995, this is Staryu.  He's one of the original 151 Pokemon, so I guess to be fair, I should say "unless you've been living under a rock since 1995 OR you hopped on the Pokemon bandwagon after the first few generations."  Staryu's gem doesn't seem as bright in this picture, but you can see the weird little gem holder thong that he does have.  (I've checked other angles -- it's only around one leg.)  I also changed the coloration to look a little more realistic, such as trying to make him look more porous like an actual starfish.


I finally hot glued his gem and holder to his body, which is a huge relief for me.  I was afraid of losing parts of him.  I also cut out a star from some stiff felt and hot glued it as a backing.  All I lack is gluing on the clips to keep him in my hair.


Even though I have yet to wear him, I love him.  I've put a lot of time and effort into him and tried to correct as many imperfections as I could, though some were not avoidable.  At least they are hardly noticeable from personal-space-distance.


After my interview yesterday, I thought long and hard about going to get a cupcake as a reward.  I managed to calm myself and decided to go to Thrift Mart instead.  Instead of gaining calories, I lost them walking around.  Take that, fat.

I also gained a pair of pants, shirt, large skirt that I will need to take in, and a very large bed sheet that I can use for sewing my skirt.  I was looking for a yellowish color and this color is nearly what I was looking for.  For $2, I think I can spend some time aging it to make it a little less bright.  (I tried to take a picture, but the brightness just was not coming through.)

Just a heads-up for what's coming next.

How much longer can I drag this stupid little starfish out, right?  Well, I'm almost done with him.  He's practically down to the tiny little details now that don't even have to be included.  I know I haven't done much with him since we last saw each other, but I've really been brainstorming my last minute costume ideas.  That's right, our convention is in a little over a month and I have no new costumes.  Poops.  That means I really have to get to work in this next month!


This is how we last saw this little guy, right?  Oh wow, that makes me feel like I've done so little...  I made the gem casing, which took longer than expected because I had to let it air-dry, along with those two little leg spoke things.  Then, to my mortification, I could not get the gem out.  After a little gentle prodding with a toothpick, it wiggled out.

I painted the gem casing and those little leg spoke things on it as close to a golden color as I could get.  It looks a little more buttery than golden, but I feel like the color works a little better with a steampunk flare to it.  The casing and the little spoke things dried together, which is a relief for me, but I'm still going to hot glue them both down...just to be sure.

I pulled the gem off.  Turns out my super glue wasn't really that super.  I decided I'll hot glue it when I reattach it.  I liked the color of it, but knowing it was supposed to be a gem and that it was pretty matte, I had a brilliant idea.  I grabbed a some nail polish a shade deeper and put a few coats on it.  Now it's pretty and super shiny.  I feel like it looks a lot more like a gem now.  I thought about adding flecks of glitter to it, but I thought that would be a little much.

Thinking back, I probably could have used one of those little glass half-marble things.  I got some for mom a few years back to help decorate her bathroom, so I even have it in that dark red color.  Oh well, it would have probably shown the colors underneath anyway.

Just to be safe, I covered the starfish body with a matte finishing coat, which I had stolen from Zach.  I could have probably skipped this step, but I'm pretty paranoid about him getting messed up. After I got the gem casing the color I wanted and let it dry, I covered it with the matte finishing, too.

Now, it's down to the hot gluing and putting this bad boy together!  Since I made it all in different steps and let things dry in between, I was able to build each piece around one another.  This way, all of my pieces fit together perfectly.



All I have left are some minor details.  I had considered putting a little bit of felt on the back on it to make it a little nicer.  I also thought that might make the hair clip stay on it better.  I had also played around with attaching pearls to it, but I haven't quite decided.  Thoughts, opinions, or constructive criticism?

Have you figured it out yet?  Since he's done, leave your ideas on who/what it is in the comments and I'll reveal it on Monday.

Hey, look at that.  I'm adding a little more to the headpiece.  I do mean a little.  It's a tedious process working with clay.  It may not be to you, but to me it is.  I'm always a little more cautious than I probably have to be, but I really don't want him to break.



I sprayed some nonstick cooking spray on him to make sure my little clay ball didn't stick to him.  I shaped a half circle in the little indention, scooped it out, and baked him.

Once he was baked, I put a coat of red on it.  (All around, bottom and everything.  I didn't want to risk it showing.)

I took some super glue and glued him in place.  Ta-da!  A starfish with a gem-like-thing.  I debated on adding glitter to make it a little more shiny, but I think that I'll go over it with a clear coat of nail polish in the end for that shiny effect.

After that came the really tedious part.  I say really tedious because I don't know how to do this part without letting the bits air-dry.  I have to do a circle around the gem, and two little legs that go between the legs of the starfish.  I tried doing this all in one piece, but I just couldn't see it happening.

I did the two little legs of the gem holder by themselves, but with the rest of it already baked, I was afraid to put it in the oven.  I would cry so hard if it shattered right now.  So my little legs are currently air-drying.  Once they're dry, I'll add the circular part of the gem holder.

Is it starting to come together yet?  And clues on what it is?  I hope so.  I can really see it now that I have the gem in place!  (There again, I know what the end result is, so I guess that's kind of cheating.)

Alright, so this is something else I'm working on starting for myself: meal planning.  Zach and I have been saying we were going to lose weight for far too long and I really want to force myself to get motivated and do it.  So, I'm trying to find a way to make a weekly meal plan for myself, but it's proving to be pretty hard to do.

Do you guys do this?  Have any tips for me?

This is what I was planning on posting last week when I had that terrible day-long migraine.

Do you remember my Freebie Friday that was about making your own porcelain dough?  Well, there was a reason that I shared that with you all; I had recently searched for it for an upcoming project/costume.  I'm still afraid to spoil the surprise because I think it's pretty original and awesome.  I'll hopefully be posting some of Zach's as we work on his.  I don't know if Heather and Mike are going to be sharing any of their photos.

So, consider this the beginning of my hints.  I decided to work on a headpiece that will hopefully make my character a little more recognizable as herself.  We're steampunking the original characters, and Zach was a little afraid she wouldn't be as recognizable in the garb, so I'm trying to take extra effort to incorporate things associated with her.  I know this sounds really cryptic, but I hate to just reveal it and ruin the surprise for those who don't know!  Bear with me, please.

First, I made the dough.  I didn't have enough for the complete recipe, so I halved it and so far I have plenty.  It took maybe half the ball to make this much.


I tried drawing a template for the starfish, but it always ended up looking wonky, so I scrapped it and tried using a star cookie cutter.  It looked even worse, so I free-handed one.  Amazingly enough, it worked!  And it looked pretty darn good, if you ask me.

I baked it for an hour in a 170 oven (which is as low as my oven goes) and left the door cracked.  I took so many precautions because I really didn't want this little guy to crack.

I let the oven cool for maybe another hour to where I wouldn't have to use a potholder -- mostly because I was afraid rapid temperature changes would crack him -- and sat him on top of the oven.  I let him sit there for about 2 more hours to make sure he was good and dry.


After raiding our paints, I found a buttery yellow acrylic paint and did a nice few coats with a paintbrush.  After that dried, I took a toothbrush with a chocolate paint to give nice, coarse strokes.


I let the brown dry and then used the toothbrush to flick yellow specks on him.  Unfortunately, in my attempts to make it even, I accidentally did more than I liked.  So, I let him dry again and painted a light layer of brown with my fingertips.  That allowed for some little streaks and covered the bright yellow compared to the chocolate color.

I liked how the layering of the specks under the brown gave him a more porous effect.  I wanted to press a sponge into him before baking, but it didn't quite work out.  He dried quicker than I thought and it ended up just mushing him, so I decided I'd try to achieve that with paint.

He's not quite done yet.  I still have another layer or two of dough to put and bake on there, but he's coming right along!  I feel like this was the hardest part of my pretty little headpiece and the rest should fall in place easier.

Sorry about the image quality... I just took the images that I uploaded to Instagram and posted them here.  I've had an unfortunate case of not-being-able-to-look-at-the-computer-screen-too-long due to my headaches.  I've also been unusually tired.  Maybe I need to get blood work to see if I need to up my Synthroid dosage...again.  Sigh.

Anyway, that's your clue for the week as to my costume!  I'm not going to say yes or no to any guesses, either!  Hopefully it will get to be glaringly obvious for those of you in the anime/video game fandoms.

Warning:  What you are about to see is a horrible mess that I am ashamed of.  Please do not judge me based upon the state of this closet!

You know those projects that you don't plan and you cannot plan for?  The projects that just run at you like some kind of harlot and demand that you do them next?  That was my closet.

I was going to put away some clothes that had just been washed and hung up when the monstrosity that was my closet reared its head and told me, "Not today" (like I was the god of death or something).  It was a combination of things that made my closet horrible: the floor was cluttered with shoes, clothes that had fallen off the hanger, and things I was too lazy to put away, so I just kicked it in the closet.



Another thing that didn't help was the fact that this particular closet has not been remodeled or anything since about 1985 when my parents bought the house.  (I wish I was joking, but I'm not.)  In retrospect, I should have just sucked it up and redid the closet when I moved into this room, but I didn't.  The closet itself is tiny -- about 55" deep and 44" wide -- so in such a small space, having as much room to store things is essential.  If I weren't a pack rat this would have been a lot easier.

As soon as I decided that I was going to remodel my closet, I put on jeans and ran to Home Depot.  After probably an hour at debating the different, cheap wire shelves with a wonderfully helpful associate named Kristen, it came down to a numbers game.  I had looked at an $89 kit that was made for four to six foot closets.  I, however, prefer the cost efficient method to the time and effort efficient; I will do the extra work if it means saving $20.  Kristen offered to give a rough estimate for how much it would be outside the kit.  She quoted doing it completely yourself at around $120, so I bought the kit.

I actually stared having regrets when I started pulling everything out of my closet.  I started with the floor and it wasn't so bad until the large cardboard box I had gotten for the shoes in there began to overflow.  After I got all of my clothes out, it looked like my closet had projectile vomited onto my bed.





I trudged on, however, and learned just how bad my closet was.  Remember when I said the closet hadn't been touched since at least 1985?  The wire shelves were sticky and when I looked at my hands I had flakes of black stuff and mystery glitter all over them.  That's not the worst part, though.  The shelves weren't cut properly or something and they were held together in the corner by zip ties.  Zip ties!  Most of the screws weren't even serving any purpose since many of the hooks had long since broken off.



That was just the shelves.  The walls looked terrible, too.  Aside from all the holes, it was obvious that this closet hadn't seen love in a while.  The paint was that "white a long time ago" color; I guess I could call it vintage white now haha.  There were scuffs all along the bottom where shoes had been kicked against the wall without a care, places where the paint had chipped off, and something where I guess someone had tried to attach something... I don't even know.  It was a mess -- a hot mess.


My next step was trying to cover all the holes and dents in the walls.  This was a chore by itself, not to mention sanding the plaster!  In the end, I didn't much care if it was perfect because it is just a closet after all, so there are still ridges where the plaster was.  It's not a huge deal because I also plan on using as much of the space as possible and many of them will end up being covered up.


While the plaster was drying, I took the baseboards off and gave them a nice, white coat of paint.  These are the baseboards that I remember from my childhood.  We've updated the rest of the baseboards in the house to match the more modern style, but again, it's a closet.

After all the plaster had dried and was sanded as best it was going to get, I took a dinner break, then went to see Zach for a few hours.  When I came home, though, I put on my first coat of paint.  We had bought a very, very light blue to do on a ceiling -- but then we realized how hard ceiling painting was and decided against it.  With a whole gallon of it just sitting in the garage, I opened it up and rolled it on.

Since it was already about 1 a.m. and I still had to wait for that coat to dry, I just called it a night, played some Skyrim and slept on the couch.  (My bed was occupied by all the clothes, remember?)

I woke up early -- for me at least -- and got started with my second coat and touch ups.  It wasn't long before that was dry, so I went ahead and nailed in my baseboards and did some touch ups.  It's not a big deal or anything, but when doing white baseboards, I like to paint over the nails -- seeing the white interrupted by a dot of silver and knowing it's a nail head always bugs me.  Plus, my hammer had scuffed up a few places.


It wasn't perfect, but it was beautiful.  This crisp, light blue color that reminds me of clean laundry, freshly painted baseboards to match, and all this room!  I laid in the floor looking up to the ceiling for a while, just reveling in how much I had already accomplished.  Once you get to a milestone like that, it's hard for me to pick back up.  I took a long break, including making lunch and a gallon of tea, before I started back.


This seems like the best $89 I have spent in a while.  The box is an impenetrable fortress, though!  Seriously, I spent so much time fighting with that stupid box.  Knowing that all of the shelves and things were metal, I considered lighting it on fire to open it; then I remembered the instructions and little plastic bits.  Tip for manufacturers: don't glue your boxes completely shut.

The kit, thankfully, was much easier than opening the box.  The only thing that took me a while was sawing the tracks because my closet is an awkward 55" deep.  I know I could have probably used something a little better than a hacksaw, but it's what the instructions recommended and I really didn't want to break anything.


After following the instructions, ta da!  I had a new set of shelves and what felt like a lot more room in my closet.  It was about 24 hours from the idea to remodel my closet to the time that I started loading my clothes back into it.



Is it completely finished?  No.  I still have some storage needs (such as shoes), but it's a great start and it's oh so much better! Not only that, but I did it completely by myself -- paint, assembly, everything.  Thanks, ClosetMaid!