Glazzed

I didn't keep track of how many pieces I made... however I did keep track of how many pieces I glazed.
I must have been on a mission to use almost every glaze in some way or another. What follows is a general description of each piece then a description of the glaze process. (More pictures to follow)

1. First small 'bowl' in brown clay
• This was from the previous post
2. Plate with blue slip design with spirals

• Aquamarine Sorbert with a spray application on top
• Concentrated spray in the middle
3. Plate with blue slip design with dots

• Aquamarine Sorbert with a spray application on top
4.  Tiny vase with a chip out of it

•  Poured Mauveyish on the inside slowly rotated it and then dumped it out
• Sprayed Ebony on the outside
5. Tiny vase without a chip
   
•  Poured Ebony on the inside slowly rotated it and then dumped it out
• Sprayed Mauveyish on the outside
• After glazing it came out with strange bubbling on the inside with spots that appeared to have had the glaze dripped off inside sections
•  Re-glaze involved heating with hair dryer and painting more Ebony on the inside and Re-painting the upper half with more Mauveyish
6. Vase with blue slip on outside and dots on lip

•  Poured soft white on the inside 
• Dipped into Mint Green
7. Little bobble pot 
   
•  Sprayed Ebony on the inside (light coat)
• Dipped half in Celadon
• Dipped half in Noxema Blue
8. Vase

•  Inside Noxema Blue
• Outside dipped into Ice blue
9. お母さんの誕生日(4)
   
•  Inside on the bottom Katlyn's Green let dry then put wax over it
• Poured in Powder Blue and wiped off from the bottom of the inside
• Dipped into Noxema Blue for the outside
10. Plate with brown slip

•  Sprayed a base of Chamelion 
• Sprayed shots of Seafoam radiating from the middle towards the outside
11. wavy rim bowl

•  Curious george inside and on the top
• Noxema blue on the bottom
12. Large plate

•  Kilin Room Blue sprayed on 
• Underglaze painted design in Red brown/white/pink
• Clear glaze painted over dry design
• Wax over clear glaze portions
• Spray Golden Blue over the top of everything
• whipped off Golden Blue from wax portions
13. Small plate

•  Chameleon sprayed on 
• Underglaze painted design in Red brown/white/pink
• Clear glaze painted over dry design
• Wax over clear glaze portions
• Spray Golden blue over the top of everything
• whipped off golden blue from wax portions
14. Chipped pot

•  Ice blue on the inside
• Noxema Blue on the outside
15.  Second small 'bowl'

•  Inside Floating Red with Floating Blue on top
• Outside Floating Blue with Floating Red on top
16. White bowl

•  Lemon curd on the inside
• Oribe on the outside
17. Largeish vase

•  Oribe on the inside
• Xavier's Jade on the outside
18. 3rd Brown bowl
    
    
    
    
•  Inside sprayed on Soft White
• Poured Mauveyish inside
• Underglaze design Black/Terra cotta/White
• Wax (dripped a bit so need it to be a horizontal surface to apply wax)
• Sprayed the outside top portion with Aquamarine
• Sprayed parts of the bottom portion with Katlyn Green

Spinning into a new hobby

I've done some minor crafts since the last post

  Most notably for Halloween made quick outfits for 2 of the 3 Powerpuff girls, Blossom (for a friend) and Buttercup(for me)

  Easy cheap costumes since I still had about 4-5 yrds of Muslin left. Just cut two rectangles and sewed up the sides and left space for armholes. Then made a rough cut to shape it better and re-enforced the sides. Then I dyed each the appropriate color and made black "belts" with stiff material I found at walmart. The belts were held on with safety pins. We each wore white stockings and I bought a cheap black wig and chopped some rough bangs into it and made it chin length.

  About a month ago I discovered an Arts and Crafts center in the basement of the university student center. In this center there is a pottery studio, set up for silk screening, ready-made ceramics to paint and some other crafts. They offer classes open to both students and the community.
  The fee for use of the facility is $70 a semester for students with the cost of classes ranging from $40-$70 per class. The nice thing is that they pro-rate the facility fee for after half the semester. So I only paid $35.
  I have tried pottery before when I was much younger, I still remember begging my mom to learn how to throw pottery using a pottery wheel and being told I had to wait because I was too small. They only had kick-wheels (exactly as it sounds you have to kick the wheel to keep it spinning) and I was too short to reach the wheel with my feet when sitting. Later on my mom found a place with electric wheels and I was able to learn.
  The space has two types of clay for sale, brown clay and white clay each in two sizes, 6lbs for $6 plus tax and about 20lbs for $20 plus tax. I started with a 6lb bag of brown clay and decided to just try my hand to see what I could do. After about 10 min of struggling a nice woman decided to help me out by giving me a demonstration on centering the clay and throwing a bowl. After this and a few more missteps I was able to finally make two small 'bowls' I then ran out of clay and got 6lbs of white clay to see how that would work, I found the white clay easier to work with on the wheel. Some people told me the brown clay was much easier for hand building. One thing I discovered was it is a lot easier to throw with lots and lots of water and really short nails to keep from tearing the clay when trying to shape it. The next day I bought 6 more lbs of white clay. Armed with one day's experience and tons of youtube videos I tried again and again. I got more help from other women in the center. I had been trying to divide the clay into about 1lb chunks and by the 3rd day  I realized that it is easier to deal with about 2-3lbs of clay at a time so this time I dove in with 20lbs of clay breaking it up into about 2.5 lb chunks.
  Since the craft center is student run at the university they are closed during all university holidays, on Sundays and for football games (Which are big down here), otherwise they are open from 1300-2200 Monday-Thursday 1300-2030 on Fridays and 1200-1700 on Saturdays. The most important part is that they are closed for winter break. So the deadline to finish playing with wet clay was November 20th, and glazing Dec 10th. My goal was to get as much practice in before the deadlines passed.
  I realized after the second day that I kept forgetting what I had made. I might need to take pictures or something after I'm done.

  So the deadline passes for wet clay and I must go glaze all the pieces. This is where I realized I have no idea what I made, save two or three pieces. I had to look at the bottom of every piece to see if it had my initials on it.  After talking to a few people, spending a few days staring at the glazes, and having another nice woman show me how to use the spray booth, I started to glaze my first piece. Since I had been told that you are less likely to recognize your pieces after the glaze process I kept a notebook stating what color glaze I used where and how I applied it.

  I glazed my first tiny 'bowl' with Seafoam inside by pouring some in and then dumping it out, then I used Aquamarine Sorbet in the sprayer to spray the outside and then I dunked the rim into soft white. Two days later I got my first piece back and went on to glaze the next 15 or 16 pieces and am waiting to see how they turned out :)

a parasol in white

I have been making quite a few lolita outfits with white as a base color so I decided I needed a white parasol as well. Almost all umbrellas are made either black or multicolored.  Sorry for the dark pictures forgot to use flash.

After investigating my previous spiderweb parasol, I decided on something a bit more useful. I also noticed that the spokes are flexible and bent easily so to get a more dome shape I could make the outer circumference of the parasol smaller than the umbrella. After playing around a bit I decided with the 8 posts I would want about 12.5 to 13 between them. I also knew that I needed each edge of a triangle to still measure the length of the spokes which was 23 inches.
So using the pythagorean theorem I was able to calculate the height of the triangle and use the measurements to cut 8 triangles from white fabric from walmart ($4). I also decided to do a band of eyelet fabric ($1) around the parasol.
In order to get a better color match between the white of the eyelet fabric and the plain white fabric I decided to just sew it on top. Then I sewed each triangle together and matched the eyelet strips.

Afterwards I used an heirloom stitch with a wing needle on the sewing machine to place two lines of stitching near the top of the parasol. The first line has eyelet holes very close together the second I manually spaced them out by counting the stitches of the machine. I like this look better but would be difficult for any larger project since it was very slow going.

Next I took about 1 in ribbon ($2) and sewed two basting stitches down the middle in order to gather it. This was a bit of a process but worth it. one spool was enough to go around once but I need another to finish off the second round. I'm thinking about using wider ribbon to sew around the bottom. So I would need two more spools of ribbon.

The base for the parasol is a $5 umbrella from walmart which I need to paint the handle white. So far this parasol might cost a total of $16 I've found one on e-bay for about $12 but there are quite a few ones for $30 or so.

Backlog of crafts!! (Part I)

Once upon a time, there was a graduate student who knew she had work to do. Papers to grade, tests to study for, research to do! She could barely see how to keep her head above water. So what happened to this poor overstressed soul? She procrastinated.  How you ask?
She finished the Abby Caddaby outfit for her 'niece' lily's second birthday
She decided to dip her toe into the world of sweet lolita and made several skirts
Worked on Cutsew tops
Made a Parasol in design, not function
Made clay jewelry
Flower hair clips
and more.
Unfortunately she didn't blog about any of this until now!

Since the most recent projects are fresh I'll be blogging backwards.

After one night up way too late on the internet I decided to create an Etsy account and order several (30) ring blanks to make rings the blanks cost about $12 shipped. After doing this I also decided to get on ebay  and found earring posts (24 pairs) with backs and hair clips (20) for about $15. These arrived first.

Using the clay I had bought (see earlier post) I decided to make some of the cute earrings I had seen on the internet. Most of the ones I found entertaining were the items from Mario. So far I have made toadstool earrings and Yoshi egg earrings. I also will attempt to make chomp earrings and the evil fire plant earrings after a bit of study on how to do it. For the teeth I realized recently that i should just roll a tube the approximate height i want then make it into a triangular prism shape then cut them to make the teeth. (Pictures to come) I used to love Yoshi (favorite character) so I plan on making more yoshi inspired earrings as well. And possibly Kirby.
The main reason to get so many posts (and now I'm beginning to thing 24 isn't enough) was to make sweet jewelry to match my outfits. I've made a pair of strawberry earrings as well as purple and white spiral lollypop earrings. I will need to obtain a chain to hold the red and white spiral pop that I had made as a necklace (hopefully for less than $2).

As for the flower hair clips I'm slowly getting the hang of it, although I'm beginning to realize I need better quality flowers than the ones from the dollar store since most aren't full enough. I'm thinking about making my own but that would be a whole other project. So far I've just been playing with the hot glue gun. 

I've been wanting a parasol for quite a while now. I had attached ribbon to an umbrella and it is cute and I still love it but I wanted something with more fluff to it. Since at the time I was determined to start a new project without leaving my house to buy something I found a stash of old black yarn and found a fun doily pattern on the internet, figuring that I could just adapt it for the larger parasol, and by adapt I mean just ignore the gauge size and see what happened. With (LOTS of) help of my friend Michelle I was able to finish the pattern. Which took several weeks (mainly of me waiting to ask for help again) Then I bought an umbrella from Walmart for $5 and cut off the covering. With a $1 can of spray paint I painted the silver spokes black since the pattern is very reminiscent of a spider web I didn't want it to have  the obvious silver spokes. After painting it and letting it dry for a day or so, I sewed the crochet pattern to the spokes and it was done. However after looking at how large it was I decided to see if I could get it to shape more into a bell, So I crochet a chain around to narrow the circumference.  Although I still had it a bit too wide this made much of a difference giving me an idea for a much more useful parasol.
I plan on taking the fabric cut from the umbrella and cutting it into the right shape to have the desired circumference of about 90in or so then cut fabric to match it. After decorating the fabric I can sew it to  a new umbrella. I'm planning on this new project costing me under $10 by using quite a bit of odds and ends I already have around.
Now that it's 2am and I have a test in less than 10 hours I must say adieu, buenes noches, 休みなさい！

The new sesame street?

Apparently Sesame street has a new look and characters that I don't know. I found this out sitting on my friend's couch while her daughter was watching this strange updated sesame street.
Fastfoward several months later and I get a message from that same friend telling me that she want's to do an Abby Cadabby theme birthday party for her daughter's 2nd birthday. My first question "Who in the world is Abby Cadabby?" Well apparently the new layout is the only new aspect of sesame street. There is a new character named Abby Cadabby! After a bit of research I find out that she is a 3 year old fairy in training!
Well why has my friend messaged me with this news? She was hoping I could help her out by making an Abby outfit for her daughter. OF COURSE  I would!!!
Now this has opened a whole new challenge for me, how am I going to make an outfit for a 2 year old who lives over 1,000 miles away!

I'm 'always' up for a fabric related challenge. So I gathered several measurements from my friend and she also gave me her daughter's clothing size, 2T.  Since I was working without a pattern I decided to run do the second hand store and pick up a dress in her size to model my design after. Apparently you can find adult clothes cheaper than some children's close at the 2nd hand store, lucky for me the dress I picked up was only $3.

Next I picked up fabric. I found some chiffon type fabric in the remnant bin for about $5 and some mirrored organza for another $5. I also picked up flower petals from Joann's (the only place that had them in the area) and was able to use a 40% off coupon to get them for about $7.

In order to get the desired matching color scheme I decided the best bet would be to dye everything, blue, blueish purple and purple. I also saw the perfect color thread on sale for 50% off and got both blue and purple to use in the serger. I used a strange soaking method for the dying since I wanted to get a light color. I also decided to go for the three different shades.

I dyed the flower petals by threading them all through a strings and then splitting them into three different bunches.

After this I had to take a break since school called.