its the update

I have a bunch of stuff to post. Buckle in!

First loooook what came in the mail last week!

I’m finally gonna retire my old Hermione. Been wanting to for a few years now! I bought Luna’s wand back in 2015 intending to start on a Luna costume and just never have… but now I have a sweater and a patch… I’ll probably start collecting more stuff for it later this year, the robe will probably be my Halloween project.

Worked on my Tink wig a bit last week.

Luna likes the new wig brush I just got.

I splurged on some new makeup for Tink too…

I wanted some green glitter and I kept reading good things about Lit, so I bought some. ITS SO PRETTY
I’m gonna put some on Kevin too, I’ll tell him it’s pixie dust, he can’t stop me.

Last week was pretty much just more handsewing.

I still haven’t painted Kevin’s sword yet…. because it’s become my Luna sword.

She gets all hyped up and wants to attack feet ALL THE TIME… but I’ve discovered if I’m carrying the sword she backs off LMAO.
So it’s just stayed in the living room where I can use it to fend her off.

Then it was time to tackle the side bustle.

It’s that one long piece of the crepe de chine that was leftover, with the trim I didn’t use on the bodice sewn on the edge, and what was left of the green mesh and the poofy trim. I added that art nouveau brooch piece to the top, and it snaps onto the bodice so I can take it off if I don’t feel like dealing with it.

More mail call!

The FB Leia group organized a run of these so I got one for myself and one for Ash. I really need to find or make a bag I can display some of my pins on instead of having them sit around my sewing room.

Thursday night it was finally time to try Tinkerbell on…

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I’m SO happy with it. It’s so sparkly and it fits me really well and I just want to wear it all the time and look at myself in the mirror.

Once I tried it on I had 1 thing to fix and 1 thing to finish — it fits me much better than the dressform, which caused the back zipper/skirt section to gape open a bit. So I had to take it in a little through there to keep it from being a free peep-show. (I’m glad I still have my Sailor Jupiter green booty shorts to wear under this!) I also added the modesty panel I made a couple of weeks ago – wasn’t sure if I was going to use it or not, but decide it was necessary, so I got that sewn in.

I decided I wanted to curl my wig just a little… to give it a little texture. Put some curlers in it and the curls came out differently than I planned….

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But I decided holy crap I love it so I shaped them up a bit more and sprayed them into place.
There’s a big flower stuck on in the back in that photo… I took a headband, covered in some of my scrap green fabric, sewed some flowers on and that big white flower in the back. It’ll sit around my bun. I didn’t take a pic of the finished thing though, totally forgot.

SHOES! Ok so I can’t remember if I talked about my shoe issue or not. The shoes I got at goodwill and dyed ended up being too small. Of course I didn’t discover this til AFTER I dyed them. I mean, they were marked as 7s so I assumed they’d fit fine, but these fit more like a 6. Like just putting them on and standing there for 5 seconds left a red mark on my ankle! WTF!

So first thing I tried was putting on thick socks and heating them up with my hair dryer. That seemed to help a LITTLE bit. But not a lot.

So next I tried freezing baggies of water in them in the freezer overnight. That was… interesting. Even though I didn’t think I got any water on the shoes, I ended up with frozen patches/ice crystals all over them that had to melt off – thankfully didn’t damage anything (I didn’t think it would, since I’d already dyed and dried these, but something to consider if you’re trying this trick…). It DID seem to stretch them a little – but only width-wise, which is not what I needed. I needed stretching length-wise. I tried it again re-positioning the baggies, but it didn’t change much. I think this trick probably works best for stretching width-wise.

Next thing I wanted to try was shoe-stretchers. I was going to try this FIRST, because I knew we had some shoe stretcher we inherited from my grandpa. But when I pulled them I realized there was no way they were going to fit in my heels – they were very obviously meant for men’s shoes. But I realized that if I wanted to stretch them length-wise, shoe stretchers was probably the way to go. I looked some up on amazon… and didn’t feel like paying $10 for a pair of plastic stretchers. So I got my grandpa’s metal ones back out and messed around with them…

I was able to flip the toe section backwards and get them wedged into the opening. I left them like that overnight and pressure through the opening was enough that it stretched it out pretty well. I think I can say it was a success – they fit MUCH better!
I’m still going to put moleskin on the ankle edge, since it’s really rough and stiff even after all this. I see why somebody got rid of them LOL

And theeeeeeeeeeen the rest of the weekend was pretty much all work on the wings.

Chase finished getting the soldering done on the frames and the lights in place on friday. (He was off that day, so he just knocked it out!)

Saturday Chase was gone all day so I camped out in the living room, watched Parks and Rec most of the day and worked on these wings.
Got the fabric cut out…

I used silver embroidery floss to sew the fabric around the frame.

Originally I was going to do 2 layers of the fabric and sandwich the frame in between them. But that became more opaque than I wanted and hid too much of the framework. So I only did one layer. I just pinned it around the frame, hand-sewed it on, and cut away the excess.

Also, Luna was TOTALLY INTRIGUED. #1, she loves mesh/netting fabric. She wants to eat it. I can’t leave any fabric like that out, she will try to eat it (mostly she just slobbers all over it). #2, she loves metal. She wants to rub up against anything metal, gnaw on it, she’s a weirdo (ie, she loves our metal back scratcher a LOT). #3, it’s sparkly and catches the light.

IT’S JUST SO INTERESTING

It was a pain in the butt to get these sewn on and it’s not 100% perfect, but it’ll do.

Here they are lit up last night…

And video…

The music in the background was on the tv. Lucky break, it works well with them LOL
The wings are separate but run off the same remote. So trying to get the patterns/brightness all set the same was also a bit of a pain. Just going to keep playing with them this week.

All that is left on Tink at this point is the wing connector — the piece that will hold them together and at the right angle, and slip down into the back of my bodice. Also need to put hooks on the battery packs to attach them to the back of my bodice. And I need to find my dance tights.

I didn’t get anything done on Peter Pan this weekend, I had wanted to go over to and try it all on Kevin but just didn’t get a chance. I’m off Friday, gonna go pick him up and work on it then. Which doesn’t give me a iot of time to fix anything if something doesn’t work, but… oh well, that’s the way It’s gonna be.
I do need to get his sword weathered, make a strap for it to connect to his belt, and either make a pouch or see if I can just stick my Dolores one on it. Hoping just using the Dolores one will work.

And thennn I do have some new artwork to post too. More 365 revisited stuff.
I never did a regular ANH Leia for the 365 back in 2010. So here’s a new one.

Not totally happy with it, I feel like she looks a bit awkward, but it’ll do for now.

Here’s another totally new one – I never did Padme’s “Burgundy” Robe from ROTS in the original project, so here’s that.

Next I wanted to redo Ceremonial Leia. The 2010 version of this was one of my least favourites I did for the project.

Mostly because the proportions are just so off, the hair looks weird, it just looks rushed. I mean everything in the 365 project looked rushed but this one was one of the worst.

It’s one of the ones I played around with redoing back in 2014 (? Or was it 2015?):

But I never finished it.

So I took it back down the original sketch — fixed some issues on that sketch, and started over from that.

I am pleased with it now.

Next up I wanted to move over to something Disney. I decided to Jane because I thought it would be fairly quick — and it was one I’d redid back in 2014-2015, so I figured there wasn’t a lot to do.
Here’s the 2010 version: