Magnets

When I am not working on a specific project, I will post some of my past projects and how I completed them. The first one I will show are custom made beer cap magnets.

Here are the final results:
image


The supplies you will need are:
beer caps
magnets
Mod Podge (found at craft stores)
some type of glue (I used Clear Silicone because I love it)
1 inch circle paper cutter (found at most craft stores)
Photos (from your computer or magazines)
Optional:
Needle nose pliers

1. To start, drink some beer. ha. Just kidding... but acquire some caps however you'd like. 

2. Then, find some pictures that you want to place in the magnets. I personally like to use pictures I've taken (or from friends) instead of generic magazine pictures. Whichever way you like, find them. I will give specific instructions on how to use pictures from the computer. 

If you're using magazines, skip to step 3.

2a. To use pictures from the Internet or pictures from a digital camera, locate the pictures on your computer (if using from the Internet, make sure to download the pictures and place them all into one folder to make it easier). For this, you will need Photoshop (any version). If you do not have Photoshop... I'm sorry. ;)

Photoshop Instructions:

• Create a new document that is 8.5 x 11 with at least 150 resolution.
• Open the picture you want to use.
• Using the Pointer tool (press V on the keyboard), drag your image onto the new document you created.  
• Switch to the elliptical marquee tool (press M on keyboard). If it defaults to the rectangle, just click and hold until the small menu appears and choose the ellipse. 
• Select "Fixed Size" next to Style and enter 1in next to width and height. This will make sure you are making 1inch circles.
• Click on the image you'd like. The circle is likely too small.You need to resize.

Marquee is too small

• Press ctrl+d (or cmd+d on mac) to deselect the circle you just made and switch to the pointer tool. Press ctrl+t (or cmd+t on mac) to resize the image. You must make sure you are working on the layer with the image you dragged on to the document. You should be able to resize now. Press shift when dragging your image to keep the same aspect ratio. 
• Switch back to marquee tool and check to see if you resized the image enough. If not, try again until it's right.  

Everything I want is in the marquee

•  Once you have everything in the circle marquee that you want in your magnet, press ctrl+shift+i (or cmd+shift+i on mac) to get the Invert and press Delete. This should erase everything except what is inside the circle.  
• Press ctrl+d to deselect and switch to pointer tool to move image to the edge of the document. 
• Repeat this process for as many images as you have. 
  

Repeat until all images are aligned on the edge

2b. Print document using photo paper.

3. Cut out images using the 1in cutter. Do your best to line up the hole on bottom of the cutter with the image.

If you look carefully, there is a little bit of white in the hole - don't do that!

And cut!

If you are using magazines, I highly recommend you cut an additional piece to glue underneath because magazine paper is very thin. The mod podge will leak through and show  both sides of the magazine paper. Just cut a 1in hole from some photo paper (or anything else that is slightly  more thick but you want it to be white so nothing comes through.
 
4. OPTIONAL - Bend edges of beer cap with pliers. This makes it so the image doesn't seem so crowded in the cap.

Forgot to paint my nails....

The one on the left is bent

Again, the one on the left is bent.

5. Glue image into the cap. This will prevent the mod podge from getting underneath the picture and pushing it up. WAIT for the glue to dry before moving on. Time will vary according to the glue you use. Read the label.

6. Time to Mod Podge! I like to use a cotton swab to help me with this part. Just scoop some mod podge onto the cotton swab and then place that onto the image. You want enough to cover the bottom but not too much because it won't be as clear once it's dry if you pile it on. Use the cotton swab to move it around the entire image.

7. Glue on the magnet. Use something metal to place the magnets onto while they dry.

8. Wait. Wait. Wait. Time for the mod podge to completely dry is about a day. I tried to rush it using a blow dryer once and it actually melted the picture so I DO NOT recommend trying to rush this.

Poison Ivy - Part 2

Let me start off by saying that I was finishing up the costumes the night of the party and already running a little late so we didn't have a lot of time to take pictures. Additionally, the best I could do at the time was snap some quick shots with my iPhone - so my apologies.

Completed Poison Ivy and Green Arrow Costumes
I was initially extremely excited about my Poison Ivy costume but I have to say that Green Arrow stole the show so I'm honored that my boyfriend trusts me enough to put something like this together for him.

Poison Ivy
This was a time consuming costume. I'm glad I started early - especially on the wig. When I got tired of coloring the wig with sharpies, I moved on to gluing leaves onto the corset and when I got tired of that, I went back to the wig.
The wig turned out beautiful. It did, however, end up dying my skin. I knew I was supposed to rinse the wig until it ran clear but I rinsed it a few times and was *almost* clear. It was obviously losing some color so I thought the 'almost clear' was good enough. It wasn't. The party was mostly outdoors and the August Texas heat and humidity made it much worse. Luckily I was with friends so it wasn't a huge deal. This is what my hand looked like, imagine what my back looked like! Lesson learned!

For the bottom piece, I took a pair of boy shorts that I had, dyed them green (they were white) and glued leaves to it. To keep the shape of my body, I had to hot glue while actually wearing the underwear. Because this was incredibly dangerous and scary, I placed a small piece of cardboard to place against my skin so the glue didn't touch me. I had to have my boyfriend help me with the back. He did a great job.

Because the corset was too small for me, I just extended the two sides so there were two flaps and then secured it using velcro. At the end of the night, one of the velcro pieces came off so my lesson learned there was - don't buy the cheapest velcro you can find!

Last but not least was my makeup. I used several different green eye shadows and green glitter eyeliner for the branches. I also used spirit glue to attach a small leaf to my cheek. 

Green Arrow


This costume was slightly more difficult than I thought it would be. I had the most difficulty with the underwear. With no pattern or experience with making underwear and limited fabric, it was really just trial and error until the shape finally came together.


The vest wasn't particularly difficult - just needed to be sewn to his size. The eyelets were inexpensive and easy to apply (he did that part). The shoulder things started out as trouble but once I understood what I needed to do, they came together. I cut the shape of them, sewed the top and bottom together so there was no seem on the outside and cut some old advertisements that came in the mail as support so they held their shape and placed them inside before attaching them to the vest. Unfortunately I do not have a photo of that process.

The boots (of which I don't have a close up of him wearing them -sorry!) were made with pleather by cutting boot shapes, sewing in a zipper so they could be tight fitting and he could still fit them over his feet and then glueing that to a shoe sole. We used an old pair of chucks, cut the actual shoe piece apart from the sole and attached a couple pieces of elastic to help it stay on the foot. The boot piece was then glued to the sole using hot glue.

For his turtle neck, we found two similar (in color) green shirts at Goodwill, cut the sleeves on the one he was going to wear and used the other one as the actual turtle neck. These were sewn together. 

The "G" on his belt was hand drawn (by him) on cardboard, cut out using an exacto knife, covered with excess shirt material and glued on. 

The mask was made by liquid latex and black paint (for color). This mixture was painted onto a plastic mask for the face shape, let to dry, then cut off the plastic mask using an exacto knife. Because we didn't have costume makeup, we had to use liquid eyeliner to black in his eyes. 

The hat was made from the same pleather material as the boots using a great tutorial here: http://craftystaci.com/2010/04/17/robin-hood-hats/

I had to modify it because the pleather is one sided - not two. I had to sew two pieces together and then do my best to follow the tutorial. The front is a little off just because of the two sides of material and the hem line down the middle. He was happy with it though.  

Poison Ivy - Part I

I have chosen to be Poison Ivy for my friends Superhero/villain birthday party on August 13th.  After many image searches online, I decided I wanted to cover a corset in fake leaves, don a red wig, green leggings and figure out the rest of the details as I go! Oh - and on a very tight budget! 

[interruption] During this research, I stumbled across a word that was new to me: cosplay. I have to admit I'm a little ashamed that this is so new to me but then again, creating actual costumes is something I've just started exploring. Cosplay is short for costume play and includes people that like to dress up in costume mostly for events like Comic-Con and similar type atmospheres. A lot of these people create their own costumes (and do amazing jobs!). This concept excites me a little but it seems that a love for comics and cartoons in general seems to be a base for most of these people - that is something I don't have. [/interruption]

First issue - the corset. I asked my sister (two years older than me) if she had any corsets she was willing to 'get rid of'. When she asked what I meant, I told her that I wanted to hot-glue leaves to a corset for this costume. Amazingly, she said I could have one of her old corsets for this project! What an awesome sister =) Of course, the corset is a 32 and the last time I could fit into a 32 was at least 5 years ago. I'll have to be creative with that.

Second issue - the wig. Being on a tight budget, I wasn't sure how I was going to accomplish this. Ebay returned some decent results, but everything in my budget was going to take too long to ship to the states. I researched how to dye wigs, because I have an old red and black wig from a previous Halloween. I quickly found out there is no easy way to dye a wig - and no way to turn a black wig into anything other than black. The best  way to 'dye' a wig is with sharpies! That's right, permanent ink - one strand at a time! That's when I started thinking about finding a blond wig that I could dye. hmmmmm

I started looking at local stores. A friend suggested "Kings Beauty Supply" here in San Antonio. I took a trip down there and boy- this is not a place where I'd like to spend a lot of time. It's technically "Kings Beauty Supply 99 cent store" and they keep a security guard on staff! That should tell you a little about the place. They had a good amount of wigs for you try on. First you have to purchase a 50cent wig cap and they have a 3 wig limit for try-ons. Really? Sigh.

I tried on the limit: 3 wigs. I found one that I liked but the back was messed up. You could see the wig lining like it had been stretched out. I asked about other wigs in that style and was told they had new ones but were not allowed to open the packages of the new wigs. This upset me and I left wigless. I ended up at another hair supply shop across town and this place was slightly more upscale - nice! However, so were the prices and there was nothing I really liked. I decided that perhaps the wig I liked at Kings was messed up due to multiple people trying it on and thought that the new, unopened wig was surely better. I went back the next day and purchased it. (I am somewhat of an impulse buyer!) When I got home and tried it on, the back of the wig was - yep,  you guessed it - still messed up. ugh! Oh well.. I'll figure some way to fix it (of course they have a no return/exchange policy). 

As much as I didn't like being in that store, I got a wig, green leggings,  fishnet 'gloves' and glittery green eyeliner for $38. Score! I got the perfect sized leaves from Joann's (fabric and craft store) and found a GREAT deal on red sharpies at Wal-Mart (3 for $1.47). I'm glad it's back-to-school time and they were on sale! [update] Found red chisel tip sharpies at Office Depot - they're amazing! Highly recommend them for wig dying.

More updates to come as I go.

As a side note, my boyfriend has decided to go as Green Arrow so the majority of that costume will probably be made by me as well. We'll see how that goes :)

Creation

Hello world! A friend of mine is having a birthday party in a couple of weeks and she asked me what her theme should be. After I thought about it for a few seconds, she mentioned super heroes and it got me excited. You see, I love a good theme party. This party has urged me to start this blog so that my creations can be relived - by me and of course by others. I will elaborate on my costume in my next post.

Most of the parties that I throw have some sort of theme- this helps me get my creative fix every once in a while. 

I'm one of those people that are Internet-creative. This means I will search the Internet for hours and hours until I find the perfect thing to inspire me and try to create my own. Original ideas are much more difficult for me. Perhaps one day, when I've been doing this for a long time, I will be the one that comes up with neat ideas and people ask me for tutorials. Until that day, I thank the Internet Gods for the people that are naturally creative!


This blog will be dedicated to my crafts and other things that I create. Enjoy and feel free to ask any questions you might have!