Everyone can use a bit of sparkly...

I really must know: If you happened to be trying on THESE SHOES just for fun while this song started to play:



would you not bust even the tiniest move?

Apparently it is somewhat frowned upon in certain company.

Picture taking...

Eventually I plan on opening another Etsy shop that has one of a kind items as well as clothing. I don't know when I'll be able to do it but in the meantime I've been drawing things up and otherwise dreaming.

I have a steampunk style mask that I made that I haven't listed to my Etsy yet because I kind of want it to be one of the first items in my potential shop. I photographed it today in the type of style I'm thinking that shop would be in. I would make one of these sepia colored photos the main photo and then have multiple full color photos to show the details and "real" look of the piece. I would photograph my other items in a similar way but not everything would be steampunk.

Here are the same photos in color. I was originally going to do my makeup but I could not find my makeup kit (it's been a long time since I last used it). I went ahead and did them anyway since I intended for the photos to be sepia-fied and my lack of makeup would be less noticeable. I wouldn't have done foundation either way because I don't want any makeup getting on the mask.

Can I just say that styling, photographing, and modeling all at the same time is quite a pain? I need to find someone willing to be my model and a person who actually knows how to use a camera. I did figure out how to work a tripod and timer though. I should have set up a mirror so I could keep from making the grumpy faces I tend to naturally do (I can't help it, my face just does that) and have some sort of pose going. I started feeling like all arms and legs while waiting for the camera to shoot. It's a weird sort of momentary panic-inducing anxiety to be in front of a camera about to shoot and not know if you're even in the shot.

I know very little about photography but I've found that I prefer to take pictures without flash whenever I can as it keeps makeup from looking really shiny and doesn't cast hard shadows. However, no flash means you need more light around or all you've got are shadows. Here I used a three light lamp with regular florecent bulbs (haha, I'm betting real photographers are shuddering right now) to add more light... it didn't work very well because all of the light I had was coming from one direction and resulted in a hard shadow anyway. I'm really just making stuff up as I go photo-wise. Maybe one day I'll get to take a photography class. By the way, the first picture accidentally had flash (I didn't turn it off), I don't know that you can tell the difference in this instance (especially since I didn't wear makeup) but it did result in my needing to correct the photo for red eye.

Of puppets and potty mouths....

This has been out for a while and I shared the link on Twitter but... here it is here too! I made that potty-mouthed puppet~ hahahaaa!



My father joked that it picked up some of its colorful language while I was making it. I assure you I did not swear during its creation - it was a lot of fun to make. However....I will admit that swearing is one of my favorite sins. I don't tend to do it around other people unless I know they partake in swearing as well. There is a reason why "I believe a well placed swear word is a thing of art. I also believe I probably shouldn't." is a line in my manifesto. Yeah... I once wrote a manifesto. It was technically a school assignment. I should revisit and revise some of it for more general life things (I included a few pop and LDS culture references in it since my audience at the time mostly consisted of BYU college kids).

Another self indulgent things I love post.

The picture has nothing to do with this post. I just thought I should add something pretty.

The idea for this post was brought to you by this treasury I made.

You wouldn't think while looking at me how much I really like clothes. I'm typically a jeans and print screened t-shirt wearing forgot-to-brush-my-hair kind of girl. And glasses, I wear black rimmed glasses that I very much need in order to see decently. I've never had contacts. Occasionally I wear a hat. Hats are fantastic. I am not a hipster. I promise.

These are clothing items and characteristics that get me every time:

Plaid (in mid-tones especially)
Grey Tailored Wool Coats (If you've seen the new British Sherlock series, Sherlock has an amazing grey wool coat. I would marry that coat. It's also a really good show -the acting and writing is especially brilliant.)
Cowl/shawl necklines
Hooded anything
pleats
pin-tucks
stripes
mandarin collars
unique pockets
Natural fibers, especially wool and silk
Texture (either visual or tactile)

Color-wise:
Jewel tones mostly, I have issues with pastels and the color yellow.
Red (the deep purple undertone kind especially or candy apple red)
Black
Grey (If you notice how I spell gray as grey and it bothers you, just pretend I'm British and move on.)
Green
Teal

Motifs (mostly in regards to jewelry):
maple leaves (the standard kind not the kind that look like drugs if you know what I mean)
wings
turtles
cats
animals (I have a goofy pair of raccoon earrings I'm rather fond of)

Metals:
I like them all. Gold, silver, brass, copper, pewter etc. I'm partial to brass and copper looks-wise. Separate is best, I think silver goes best with more things so it's a little more all purpose. Gold is classic. Yup.

Gemstones:
-Other than being really sparkly and amazingly hard and durable I don't get the mass appeal of diamonds.
-I like the idea of rubies but I've never seen one in the wild so it's hard to say. I think it's because I like red so much. I used to like amethysts but my favorite color was purple at the time.
-I really like turquoise (it's also my birthstone along with blue topaz) but it doesn't look that great on me.
-In truth I like semi-precious stones that really look like polished rocks -turquoise, jade, jasper, and obsidian. I generally don't wear or own jewelry that has stones now that I think about it.

Hats:
I like them all. I only wear the kind I think I look good in and that mostly depends on their size in regards to the rest of me and if they cover my ears. I've considered getting contacts solely because of my love of hats.

Shoes:
The most important thing is to make sure they fit properly.
-I have an undying love for a pair of Gore-tex black leather Danner work boots I wore until they fell apart. They weren't the prettiest shoes but they're still a fantastic pair of boots. I plan on getting another pair eventually. Super comfortable and they're great for rain and snow since they'll keep your feet warm and dry. I think they beat a pair of Uggs any day.
-I don't like peep toes. Not for me.
-I like color but mostly stick to brown and black since they're  the most useful. White makes me sad. I like quality instead of quantity. If they fit well, are classic, look good, and don't hurt my feet I know I'll happily wear them until they wear out so it makes paying more for quality completely worth it.
-I really like boots in general.

That turned out to be a longer tangent than I was planning. I think it's interesting to look at what comprises your tastes and what you actually wear, a bit of self reflection in regards to style -I recommend it.

Final Sock Puppet Post

This'll be my last sock puppet post. It took me long enough, yeah?

I made Ms. Michaelsock's hat by knitting a square and using a running stitch with the same yarn on the outer edge of the square and gathering it. It's similar to what you would do if you were making a fabric yo-yo. I don't know that that makes complete sense. A different way of doing it would be to hot glue the square to itelf while making it rounded and kind of poofy. I actually used a combination of both techniques. 

I made the hair by guestimating the correct length. I made an X with two lengths of yarn and then secured the yarn hairs together by alternating and tying threads through the two middles of the X.

I then braided a piece of yarn and hot glued it to the top of the puppet to make her hair more interesting that just a long bunch of hanging yarn.

After that I glued the main piece on like so:

And then the finished hat got glued on as well.

I had thought of leaving it like that and calling it good but I felt there was a way to make it better. So, I used some gold and black Premo Sculpey I already had to make her a ukulele. Character is in the accessories after all.

I started with a rolled out oval shape like this:

Then I basically squeezed it with my fingers, pulled the neck out and poked it a bit. Probably slapped it around too. After all that abuse I ended up with this:

Then I added black accents and some wire I had laying around. The knobby bits on there were made with four little pieces of wire with some tear dropped little pieces of clay stuck into them which were in turn stuck into the neck of the uke. After about 40 minutes of baking the uke was finished, I hot glued a circle of elastic on the back of it so I could wear it bracelet style with the puppet.

And, voila! Le Ingrid Michaelsock. (Please excuse my lack of accent marks, I don't know how to do them in this program thingy and I'm too lazy to figure it out. Otherwise I'd just use a different word/phrase and skip the pseudo French usage altogether. I don't know French anyway.)

Sock Puppet Tutorial Part 3

After finishing the mouth the next thing I did was giver her some eyes. Though you can't really see them very well I marked where the eyes should go with two dots from a green colored pencil. I had the puppet on my hand when I marked them since I figured it would be more accurate than marking them with the puppet flat.

After marking where the eyes should go I sewed on buttons the traditional way. I used brown buttons and black thread, I figured the black would be the closest equivalent to an eyes iris. This is what it looked like on the inside: 

 And this is what it looked like on the outside:

 I decided I wanted her to have some eyelashes so I used multiple black threads sewn through the sock fabric and tied on the top with long tails. I think I did three or four knots for each eye. I skipped bottom lashes since I thought it would be too heavy visually.  It ended up looking like this (it kind of looks I'm strangling it at this point):

This is how it looks so far with an actual human hand (my desk is typically a mess, I make no apologies. It's my desk.):

 I did the glasses next with some premo sculpey clay I had lying around (I had bought it ages ago when it was on sale and hadn't done anything with it). I figured I'd start with making a pattern to cut the shape out of a slab of clay. I'd done that sort of thing with ceramic clay and had it work. I did not have the same result with this, it's a much harder clay and not a very good consistancy for smoothing after some of the rough lines created by cutting. So while I started with this:

This:

And this:

I switched tatics after it all went to...well, after it didn't work. It just didn't. I then did this:

And trimmed it down, stretched it and smoothed it out so it looked like this:

It didn't turn out nearly as polished as I wanted but I'd already spent a good amount of time on it and really wanted to move on. If it were a gift for someone or something I was going to sell I would have stubbornly reworked and reworked it until I deemed it acceptable (or, darn near perfect), as it was I was doing this for fun and didn't think I'd win the contest, by any means. This part was quickly approaching un-fun territory for me so I opted to get on with it before I simply threw it on a shelf and forgot about it for a while (as is what tends to happen with projects that don't have deadlines when they get to a stage that's frustrating to the perfectionist in me). I followed the directions on baking the clay but I think I added some time on since it still seemed fairly soft when I had taken it out on their suggested cooking time. Be careful on temperature and everything, I once accidentally burnt some sculpey and the resulting fumes were noxious. It took fans and all of the windows open to get the smell out. My family was not pleased. That was probably about 10 years ago, actually, and I still remember it.

After baking and cooling the glasses I attached it to the puppet using my hot glue gun. I put something in the sock to hold the face out instead of leaving it flat so it wouldn't look weird when worn and so my hand wouldn't get burnt from hot glue. All that's left to do for her is hair, a hat and her ukulele; I'll show you how to do those things next time.

Sock Puppet Tutorial Part 2

I think we've established that I am bad at keeping a blog. Whelp.... Here's some more of the sock puppet tutorial.

Now, that copy of the mouth pattern in card stock is for the inner mouth. It'll be too big to comfortably fit inside the mouth of the puppet so it'll need some trimming. I just set it inside the puppet and marked the over hang.

When you trim it down there should be a little bit of sock past all sides like this:

 

Then, you hot glue fabric onto the card stock like so: 

 I didn't get a pictures of it but the next step is to hot glue this part onto the mouth of the puppet, there will be some glue seeping out between the two layers. To hide the seep-age and to create a lip ridge I carefully rolled the sock fabric into the glue over the edges of the cardstock/fabric mouth. Pictured bellow are the lips I then painted onto the sock. I just eye-balled it:

 Here's what it looks like open at this point, you can see that the corners of the mouth and along the inner lip are the rolled inward sides of the sock.

 I then painted teeth, they're really more like a row of white ovals that are then outlined in black. I was going to pain a tongue and that dangly thing that's in the back of your throat but it looked kinda dumb so I painted over it with a color a little darker than the one I used for the lips.

 And that's how I made the main part of the puppet. My sock puppet philosophy is that the mouth makes the expression but the accessories make the character/individual. So, accessories and details are coming up next post.