itsa my birthday too

Hi Hello I actually have content to post this week!

I worked overtime last week so I could be off on my birthday. I slept in, got up and finished cleaning the house, went to lunch with my parents, took a nap, went and got Kevin and by then it was party time.

Obviously my birthday party theme was Raid Area 51.

Kevin was the ALIENS guy. Of course.

At first I wasn’t sure what costume to put him in? 11th Doctor? Luke Skywalker? Both aliens. But then Ash was like, um he has to wear his ALIENS GUY costume! Duh.

I was the MOTHMAN. I threw this together using my leftover bolt of Amidala Post-Senate robe fabric.

It’s literally just a tunic – no hemming, and a cape, slit up the back with elastic shoulder loops.

I spent more time vacuuming up the mess from cutting that fabric than I did actually making the costume. It’s still everywhere and I’ve vacuumed 3 times.

For the eyes I used a headband I had, painted it black, wrapped some wire around it, stitched some of the black fabric around them, and then velcroed the “eyes” onto the headband. The “eyes” were just LED lights that come with a light-changing remote so I can change my “eye colour” anytime, which was fun.

believe in the power of the mothman

Chase was Buzz Lightyear. Though he didn’t stay in this very long because it’s still 99 degrees down here.

My parents’ storm Area 51 shirts were super cute.

And now the food…
we had “Alien Eggs” (jalepeno poppers)

Sarlacc Platter (Chips and Dip)

Gagh (chicken nuggets)

Identified Flying Objects (they’re cupcakes!)

Dr Okun’s Sampler Tray (Meat and Cheese Plate)

(Dad said, “I thought you had a picture of me on there!”)

And Solidified Area 51 Alien’s Blood (jello shots)

And one I didn’t get a pic of… the Peach Neuralyzers (with a pic of MiB Will Smith) were Peach Bourbon Popsicles we had but they really couldn’t be set out LOL.

All kinda of aliens showed up.

It was a fun night.

My present from Chase was this portrait of me and Indy by IG @MightyPigeon_Art who I’ve been following for a while and I LOOOOOOOOVE it she perfectly captured Indy’s little face.

Lauren and Jeremy gave me a Binx is my Boo mug and a Skeletor Live Laugh Love pin ! LMAO

This hilarious shirt from Nana and Kristie!

And this little Qi’ra from Hannah!

Saturday we got up early… the neighborhood we moved into it has a giant yearly community yard sale, so Chase and I got up and drove around to a few of the sales.
One thing we got was a Nintendo Switch. Hadn’t been planning on buying one but it was a good deal, came with 2 games. It’s mostly for Kevin but we’ll be playing some Mario Kart on it as well.

I also came across a house with a ton of Halloween stuff (looks like they’d bought out a Halloween store) so I got a couple of things. And found this Marx Brothers book for 75 cents at another house.

After the yard sailing Chase had a haircut, I took Kevin home, came home and napped, then cleaned up from the party a bit. Mostly a lazy day. Sunday I threw my green cotton for Belle in dye remover and got it down a decent amount to try dyeing it again, this time in avocado… but I didn’t have enough dye. It barely did anything. So I’m going to have to order more dye to pump the colour up. I think at this point that cotton is going to be lining anyway, but I’m going to keep trying until I buy replacement fabric.

That’s the dyed fabric laying on the floor in the front. As you can see it’s not in the same green family as the rest of my greens.

I want something that is a “true” green, leaning slightly more yellow, to be a happy medium between the darker green (under bodice) and the “spring” green of the skirt and sleeves.

I did finally do a bodice mockup yesterday out of some lining material.

Thankfully it fit pretty great straight off the pattern, I just need to shorten the shoulder straps a bit.

So at this point I’m now stuck until I get the cotton part figured out. Either buying something new or successfully dyeing this cotton, I’m leaning towards it being buying something new. After dyeing this cotton so many times it’s starting to get splotchy. (3 dye baths and 1 dye remover trip).

BTW you can follow me on tiktok @ kelldar. I don’t post a lot. But I did post that yesterday.

Last night I decided it was time to finally play with new toys I got over the summer. First up was my new iron!!

OMG ya’ll!

This thing just OBLITERATES wrinkles. It heated up really quick, holds a TON of water and was super satisfying to use. I’m in love. It needs a name! (Even though my “old faithful” iron never had a name. But I love this one so much it needs a name! I’m thinking something related to Iron Man, so… Tony?)

After that I sat down to finally figure out my silhouette … and I could not wrap my head around it. I struggled with it for about an hour without ever even trying to print anything before finally just closing it down and going to bed. Chase has printed something on it once already so i’m going to have him look at it with me this week.

So in other costume news, Chase was watching LOTR last weekand asked me a question about Arwen’s costumes which led me down a rabbit hole and now I’m planning on making her Hope dress. I almost made this one back in 2004 – peep the tags – but I ended up using the velvet I had to make a cape instead.

For reference, that’s this dress:

Back in 2004 I was stumped by the design on the sleeves. Now that it’s 2019 we have spoonflower whoohoo! I drew up the design based on sketches of what it looks like from Padawan’s guide and the ACS LOTR site, loaded it in spoonflower and got a chiffon swatch. Cuz I’m not embroidering chiffon again. Nope no way. I’ll bead it when it’s finished but that’s it!

I was just saying to Ash while we were at Dragoncon that I needed to do another Arwen costume to make use of the new Arwen wig I bought a couple of years ago, when we shot Blood Red & my white dress on the white backdrop. It’s a perfect wig and I’ve never worn it anywhere except for that shoot. So yay! Overall it’ll be a pretty quick project. Of course it’s leapfrogging over Belle in my brain right now which I CAN’T let it do, I really need to finish this dang Belle costume I’ve been trying to do for over a year.