Egyptians and Romans and Beer

Maui Brewer's Festival is the most wonderful time of the year. It's always right around my birthday and all my friends go and we've taken to dressing up in costume (see Wonder Woman from last year: http://crafty-asschick.blogspot.com/2014/07/wonder-woman.html?m=0).

This year we chose Egyptians and Romans. Here we are:

Queen Elsa Costume

Frozen! If you haven't seen it watch it. 

These days everyone loves Elsa and singing about letting it go. Believe me - I certainly do. Recently, I made an Elsa costume for a friend (I'm also working on Anna - have been for a year - but there's just too much detail work it's taking forever).

Here's it is:

I didn't use any of the Elsa sewing patterns available through Simplicity, I kind of combined a couple other patterns to make it.  

I used Butterick 4827 for the skirt and sleeves and New Look 6480 for the bodice:

I picked these mainly because I already had them. To figure out where to cut the dress pattern to insert the corset top I overlayed the pattern pieces over each other matching waistlines and drew in where the skirt seam and neckline + sleeves would start. 

Because I used a stretchy power net for the sleeves I had to do a lot of altering to get them to work since the sleeves and neckline needed to be more form fitting than the pattern allowed for. I don't know what would have worked better but that was definitely not the easiest way to go. 

I ended up buying a lot of fabric online because they kept coming in the wrong color. The bodice is taffeta with rain sequins and coutil underneath for support and boning. The skirt is satin and the train is a glittery organza. Like I said before the sleeves are power net. 

I made the corset first and, other than the pattern issues with the sleeves, it was the most difficult part. Working with sequin fabric takes a lot of time. 

Here's my process: I started with white, silk organza and transferred the seam lines and pattern markings on to it using wax transfer paper. 

I then used those pieces to cut out the sequin fabric:

I then basted the organza and sequin fabric together to both secure the fabrics together and to mark the seam lines:

When sewing with sequin fabric you have to remove all the sequins from the seam allowance and the seam lines to sew them together.  Otherwise the sequins get sewn into the seams and poke out in all kinds of ugly and uncomfortable ways. 

Fortunately the sequins were pretty easy to remove. The were sewn on in small groups so I just removed them by pulling out the bobbin thread. It took some time but it could have been worse. 

It's also important to keep some of the sequins to use later either filling in gaps along the seams or as replacements if some fall off. 

Once all the seam lines were free of sequins I sewed the corset together. Then I sewed the train over that before combining the bodice, sleeves and skirt into the final dress:

100 Days of Doodles

I'm a pretty avid doodler. #workdoodle is one of my regular hashtags on Instagram (@mauisadie in case you want to follow) since I like to doodle in meeting or during phone calls. 

Earlier this month on of my high school friends announced that she was doing the 100 Days Project (http://thegreatdiscontent.com/100days) and suggested that I should as well. 

The 100 Days Project in a nutshell is about creating something for 100 days. The idea is that you pick something to make and make one everyday from April 6th through July 14th.

That's a lot of creating but it's a motivation which I always seem to need.

Since the idea is to create the same type of thing everyday I decided to go with doodling (#100DaysOfDoodles) because I do it quite frequently already, and it's a lot easier than trying to sew something everyday (ain't nobody got time for that).

Since it's only Day 12 here's a few of my favorites so far. 

You can track my progress through the next 88 days on Instagram @mauisadie #100DaysOfDoodles

Ass Piñata

As you may recall, a couple years ago I made a Boob Piñata for my sister's bachelorette party. Well a couple of my good friends are getting married next week and they had their bachelor and bachelorette parties last weekend. He's kind of an ass-guy so she asked me to make an ass piñata for his party.

Ideally we were gonna get a fake arm or something to hit it with because that is just hilarious.

Here's the finished product:

That's a real thong.

Unfortunately, since this was my second piñata I thought I was hot shit and decided I knew better than the instructable and tried to change things up. Boy was I wrong.

Everything worked out ok in the end, but there were a few issues. So here's some tips and some things not to do when making a piñata.

First off here's the base of the piñata:

It's a lot more tape and paper than the last one. That caused some issues later in the process so I'd suggest always trying for more balloons and less tape. Because of the final shape of the piñata I'm not sure how I would have made that work, but just keep that in mind.

I live in Hawaii where it can be pretty humid and I've now learned that I definitely need help from a fan when drying papier-mâché. When I opened up the piñata it was still slightly wet inside even though it was dry on the outside.

One other problem that I didn't figure out until my last layer was that my starch had settled so most of my layers were more watery than starchy. Which explains why it wasn't hardening like it should have. So, make sure you shake the liquid starch well before using it.

Another small issue was that the string I had was too thin. It definitely didn't seem like it would last too long so I told them not to hang it up for long.

This biggest issue that I had was totally my fault. I jumped the gun on opening it up and stuffing it. I was thinking by opening it before the final couple layers I'd be able to secure the closer so much better. What I didn't think through was that then it would be soaking wet and heavy while drying the last layers.

Because of the added weight it toppled and landed in such a way that the ass cheeks became indented. I woke up to this the morning of the party and had a slight meltdown. I had to cut it open and pop out the cheeks. Then cover up the creases and reseal up the opening.

All in all it turned out ok. It looked great but it was easier than it should have been to open up.

So lesson learned...follow the damn instructions.

Halloween - Graveyard Cabaret

This year I was lucky enough to be asked to co-produce a Tim Burton inspired cabaret show for Halloween. I did a couple numbers last year in the Halloween show put on by the local Cabaret group the Kit Kat Club. While I was discussing ideas with them I mentioned that I had always wanted to do a Tim Burton inspired show for Halloween. Well the idea stuck and that's what we did.

And it was most excellent. Easily one of the best Halloween variety shows I've seen.

My favorite Tim Burton movies are Beetlejuice, Corpse Bride, Big Fish, and Nightmare Before Christmas (not that I don't love all of the others as well) so I started re-watching movies for inspiration. Here's what I came up with:

From Beetlejuice: 

There's the scene where Beetlejuice is in the miniature model of the town harassing the Maitland's and their caseworker Juno distracts him with a devil themed strip club: Dante's Inferno Room. Since we were doing a cabaret show I thought it would be awesome to do a dance like he might see in Dante's Inferno Room.

I found some awesome music - Take Your Skin off and Dance by Martin Martini and the Bone Palace Orchestra - and three of us put together a sexy devilette number.

Here are some pictures (most photo credits go to Jack Grace Photography):

You can see some of our awesome graveyard set in some of those.

From Corpse Bride: There was an awesome number by Bonejangles and the Bone Boys where the tell the story of how the corpse bride came to be. The song is called Remains of the Day.

I decided that I wanted to do a black light skeleton tap dance to this song. Unfortunately tap dance isn't my specialty and I wasn't able to do all the choreography myself, so I enlisted the expertise of my talented friend Aly Cardinalli for some help with the choreography. It also took awhile to find tap dancers - they are a dying breed.

Since it was black light we also had a ninja come in with some props here and there.

Pictures (photo credits go to Jack Grace Photography):

There's some ghosts in the background of the first picture and a veil, "the family jewels" and a "satchel of gold" in the second.

I had never done a black light number before and it was very interesting to do. I wish we had had more time to work on how we looked in the black light since the skeleton was only on the front part of the costume. There's a couple places where it was hard to see some of what we were doing.

Inspired by Big Fish: Since I had decided last year that there would be no Thriller this year I decided to do a group circus number to make up for it.

I found the most fabulous song by Vermillion Lies called Circus Apocalypse. It was awesome and creepy and the words were all about joining the circus, but you have to die first. Just perfect for a Tim Burton Cabaret.

So I put together a group and did a creepy circus dance with acrobats, clowns, a bearded lady, a strong man, lion and lion tamer, a knife thrower, a tightrope walker (me!) and of course, a ring master.

I made my tightrope walker costume - it's the only costume I made for this show which is very weird for me.

Pictures (photo credits go to Jack Grace Photography):

 

 

From Nightmare Before Christmas: As a group we sang a portion of This is Halloween to open the show. We were onstage with just flashlights so I don't have any pictures of that.

Our finale was to Jump in the Line by Harry Belafonte - which of course you remember from Beetlejuice.  I made some skull maracas for the finale:

We had a lot of fun decorating the stage and coming up with a set for the show. Not only did we have the lovely graveyard, but we also had a tree, a coffin filled with a skeleton orchestra (you can see them in the photo of the ringmaster and the strong man above), and a coffin entrance:

That's the tree next to the coffin entrance - it had a false back so you could through the coffin.

I also decorated some bottles to use a vases, and a vase:

 

 

The bottles were painted with spray paint then decorated with puff paint. The vase was just lined with puff paint - I had originally planned on making the lines straight, but that didn't work out, and I think it looks even better with the squiggly lines.

I also made what I am now referring to as "noddle plants" since they were made from pool noodles:

 

I cut out spirals from the noodles and shoved them into cross-sections of the noodles for the base. Then I spray painted them. On some I added some puff paint for extra color. I hot glued them together and had to hot glue the whole thing on a small piece of plywood because they were too light and didn't want to stay standing.

Apparently I didn't take any close up pictures of them completed. Here's some cropped out of other photos from the show - oops:

They were stuck in among all the tombstones in the graveyard:

It really was an awesome show.

Sewing Room

I've had a sewing room for almost 4 years now. It's very exciting because in my old apartment I did all of my sewing in my living room and it was very cramped. But my new apartment is a 2-bedroom so I now have a room dedicated entirely* to sewing and crafting.

Earlier this year I got an awesome desk from my work when we moved offices. It's a nice large corner desk (it was actually my old desk at work). I had to take one side apart to even get it into the room - which I did entirely by hand because I didn't know where my boyfriend kept his power tools.

It's in a pretty useful configuration right now, so I thought I'd share some pictures/hints/etc.

Note: unlike some bloggers I only did minimal cleaning before taking the pictures - crafty is messy and I'm not going to hide that (entirely).

First off here's the desk:

I can fit both my sewing machine and my serger on one desk! I can reach them both without even having to get out of my chair! I can't even begin to tell you how awesome that is.

The hat boxes in the corner of the desk have all kinds of fun crafty things stored in them: lace, flowers, yarn, pens, etc. etc. etc.

The drawers are especially handy. I've got bins that balance perfectly on the top of the bottom drawer with room left to store other things underneath:

 And this keeps my thread contained (it's always trying to escape):

Next up are my patterns:

They are all in those manilla envelopes in those drawers. My friend Tidy Tina did this for me and it's pretty spectacular. The 2 binders at the bottom have the commercial pattern envelopes in them sorted by women, men, kids, costumes, vintage, lingerie, etc. etc. etc.

So when I need a pattern I just look in the binders to see what I have. Then I go to the drawers for the actual patterns - which are organized by brand then pattern number. I used to keep them in boxes and I'd have to go through all the boxes whenever I was looking for a pattern.

And here's my bookshelf full of crap:

Scripts, sewing books, costume history books, a zombie cross-stitch kit, my balsam head in it's case, boxes of photos/receipts/etc., fireworks, magazines, hats, a laminater, photo paper, my gemagic (bedazzler), and even some crayons.

Here's a wider view of the first side of the room:

So, earlier I had an * on my claim that the room is entirely dedicated to sewing and crafting. Well, since my boyfriend moved in last year that's no longer true. He built those shelves to hold some of his stuff. Fortunately I'm pretty short and really can't reach them so it's hardly in my way.

Here's my ironing corner:

 And my favorite piece of art in the room:

 

Then there's my desk with my computer, printer, important papers, yada yada:

 

Above my desk is my inspiration board:

 

I haven't added much to it recently.

And my closet full of fabric, ribbons, and other frou-frous:

The other half of that close is scuba gear, golf clubs, tools, Christmas stuff, and clothes neither of us wear much.

So, it's not very pretty, but it is very practical. Though I still do most of my cutting on the living room floor - it just really helps to have lots of floor space...and a TV. =)