Covered in Glitter and Screaming

To celebrate the changing of the Chinese zodiac animal from rabbit (2022) to dragon (2023) I wanted to make a card that had some kind of reveal, particularly emphasizing the same head shape from one to the other.  Design process: Honestly this didn't end up quite as successful as I hoped it would be, but this is where I landed in the time that I had, and as it was they were pretty late. Next year is another opportunity!

Sometimes a set of horns is just what you need to pull an outfit together. In this case, these were horns for a Krampus party.  Don't want to read? Here's a video! If photos and text are better, carry on: Shoutout to  Lost Wax , I used one of his templates for this. Paper pattern transferred to 5mm foam and cut out Letters and registration marks matched to glue the horns together! I used hot glue, but contact glue would also work (I was not patient enough for contact glue) The horns are glued together. Now to decorate them! Applying foam clay (love this stuff!) to the horns like Kamui Cosplay does here One down, one to go Horns sculpted, now to make them wearable I used circles of 2mm foam sheet with two slits cut across the middle to secure the horns to a headband Then the bases of the horns were hidden by hot gluing down some black satin ribbon Hot glue on some fake flowers and we're done!

Don't want to read? Here's a 2-minute video instead! The concept for my 2023 Halloween costume was the Starbucks siren, as seen in their logo (although taking some artistic license to wear clothing from the waist up and not doing gymnastics, so we're not going for 100% accuracy). Image from  https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/starbucks-logo-evolution-tale-design-history-kaizen-tech-global My starting point was the leggings from my Amabie costume and a green bodice I got a million years ago (intending to make a Poison Ivy, although that has yet to happen). Phase 1: Bodice The first step was to add scales to the bodice to match the leggings as much as possible. I used my scan of the leggings from Amabie to make shapes to send to the Cricut to cut out of fabric. I wasn't convinced that sticky vinyl would stay put on the satin, so I ended up backing some polyster with fusable interfacing for durability and hand sewed it on. This was a beast of a project, but it was the best wa...

The original plan was to go as a dragonfly, but the thing about dragonfly wings is that they stick out perpendicular to the body. This is not practical for moving around a small apartment or a crowded city, so they needed to be able to move.  And then the wings took so much time that I just couldn't pull together anything else for a dragonfly (I also couldn't decide how to handle the eyes). So I pulled a white dress out of my closet (from my  Bast  costume), made a quick zip tie crown, and called it a fairy queen. The moving wings required a TON of trial and error. This was the first concept test. Gears may have been a more solid construction if they had worked, but it didn't end up being practical. It went from gears to pulleys, then there were changes in the placement and pulling mechanisms, then figuring out how to keep the wings from hitting each other, then testing which direction to pull (around the waist or over the shoulder), then how to divide the wings so each h...

My illustration pen pal loaned me another Griffin and Sabine book, and I returned it with a handmade card. This one plays around with the format, and features an octopus holding a message in a bottle. Process video: I ended up making several of these, but I think I want to go back and adjust the design a bit. I love the look of the suckers being cut from the front piece of paper to reveal the back, but the finer details are hard for the Cricut to handle without tearing. This card also doesn't fit into a standard envelope. The plan is to make at least one alternate version of this concept that is easy to replicate, to be added to my (brand new!) Etsy store , which currently features kokeshi doll cards .

I was commissioned to make two stencils (2 feet wide and 4 feet wide) and to hand paint a 2' wooden sign. Design I ended up combining characteristics from three different versions of the fraternity crest design to make the client's ideal version, and then I converted it to a single color graphic with added support bars for when it was cut out of the final material. Reference images from https://oppf.org/ , theshieldmaker , and wallpaperuse.com Stencils There was significant research and experimentation with different ways to physically produce the stencil. Maker spaces did not offer a work space large enough to produce the stencil at either of the final sizes (2 feet in diameter or 4 feet in diameter) and generally focused on laser cutting, which is a bad idea for most types of plastic. Ultimately I opted to produce it at home with my Cricut. Materials testing: this is not the right kind of plastic N OTE TO CRICUT USERS: 1mm plastic is too thick and acrylic thicker than a trans...

I made two waterfall cards with very different visual flavors. Both are adaptations from one of these tutorials from Mixed Up Craft , but with different proportions so I needed a few prototypes to get all the math right. The first one was for a sakura-themed baby shower. Nearly everything on my friend's registry was already spoken for other than a gift card, so to give that a more personal presentation I made the waterfall card. Here's the final! If you want to see my trial and error, here's the process: The second one was the original goal, but harder to implement because of the dimensions of the cards. This is, however, the more clever card because it was given to a magician, and there's a classic card flourish called a waterfall. So this is a waterfall card made of a waterfall of cards! Final product (minus the outer shell): Prototype plus final: