Covered in Glitter and Screaming

Mystery gifts are my way of thanking some of the donors to a fundraiser I did some years ago. I ask for a theme, and then I make a thing in as much secrecy as I can manage and send it to them. This gift's theme is Kitty Glitter, for someone who loves her tabby cat, her garden, cherry blossoms, and things that are pink and sparkly. Here's the short version of how it was made (30 seconds): And here's a more complete version (4 minutes): Lessons learned, materials used Okay craft nerds, this part is for you. During the trial and error phase of figuring out what the base mask should be made of, I tried revisiting the pattern I made for my Bast mask. I didn't love that overall mask shape to begin with, but thought I might be able to improve upon it. I was mistaken . I couldn't even get it to look like the original, I'm not sure how that happened. I also tried using Crayola Model Magic on a wig head because it's pretty light, but I'm not a sculptor and it jus...

Every wedding anniversary is associated with  specific items . The first year is the paper anniversary, the 50th is the golden anniversary, etc. A few years back we started taking photos of ourselves with those items. The traditional items for the 12th anniversary are silk or linen (traditional) or pearls (modern). Husband has a (probably) silk brocade jacket, so that set the formalwear tone. I made spider and pearl accessories to go with them. I started with a faux pearl necklace that looks like a spiderweb. After some sketches and image searches I realized that what makes it read as a spiderweb is if the curved segments curve up . It's not how it would happen in real life because of gravity, but even in my sketches if the arcs drooped down it looked more like a chandelier than a spiderweb.  The three strands that make up the main part of the necklace were harder than I expected, both to get the lengths right and to get all three to lay flat against my neck. But it works! ...