Hipster Princess Bubblegum costume

Sigh! Another Halloween has come and gone ... next year, when I'm not at uni, I plan to dedicate a lot more time to decorating and crafting and costume creation and just general Halloween shenanigans! However, I did still have a lovely Halloween, and I succeeded in making myself a costume so, without further ado, may I present ...

The hipster Princess Bubblegum! ^___^ Do people even do hipster versions of things anymore? This is how out of the loop I am. However, I have big, thick rimmed glasses and I didn't want to wear my contacts so this is the costume I went with! ^___^

 

The scarf, shorts, and shoes were thrifted (Bec actually found the shoes for me, so a shoutout to her! ^___^), and I already had the belt, top, tights, coffee cup, and bag so this was a fairly easy and inexpensive costume to put together.

 

After I made my crown, I guess I could have called it quits, but what is a hipster without some jewellery? (I actually don't even know. Do hipsters wear jewellery? I've heard they like triangles, do they wear triangles as jewellery?)

I watched this fantastic tutorial video by Nerd Burger and decided that I simply *must* have some donut jewellery. I'm not really sure if there are any donut people in Candy Kingdom, but I just couldn't resist.

They were really easy to make; make sure you check out the video as Cazz explains the process wonderfully. I already had some Super Sculpey in the beige colour that I used for the dough, and I picked up some pink and purple puff paints and blue and yellow sculpey from the craft store for the icing and sprinkles (I already had the sculpey in the other colours).

I made one purple donut into a brooch, and two smaller pink donuts into earrings, just by gluing the pin/earring backs on with E6000.

I also made this brooch using some of the light blue shimmery clay; mostly because I had this song in my head the entire time I was crafting things for this costume.

I also had a go at making a little Peppermint Butler brooch; it's not perfect (I need to work on making sure I don't leave nail marks on everything and I think his head stripes are too raised ...) but I think it's pretty cute anyway.

And, speaking of cute, you may have noticed that in the pictures above I have a little friend riding on my shoulder - Science the Candy Corn Rat! Yay! Pops de Milk made an adorable Science, and even shared the pattern for her so I knew I had to make one too ^___^

Patricia's pattern was lovely to follow; very simple to understand with with lots of pictures! (I always like to have photos to refer to so I can tell if I'm on the right track with a pattern!)

 

I did my Science's face differently in that I sewed on small felt shapes instead of using safety eyes and embroidery for the eyes and mouth respectively. I did actually have some 7mm safety eyes that I was going to use but when I put them in they just didn't look right. I didn't have any smaller ones, and I was too lazy to go back to the craft store, so I used felt instead! ^___^

One thing I must get better at doing is making the legs for amigurumi - mine always come out slightly bigger at the base than at the top and I think they are meant to be the same the whole way through. Practise makes perfect, I guess!

 

My Science also has more of a curly tail; this is probably because I crochet too tight. However, it may loose its curl in time so I'm not too concerned about it.

I also crocheted two more brooches (one can never have too many brooches, right? ~___^). For the lollipop I used a pattern by Twinkie Chan, but used part of a wooden skewer instead of crocheting a stick. For the sweet, I crocheted a rectangle, sewed it into a tube, put a scrunched up bit of paper in the middle, and then tied yarn around each side of a ball. Then I just glued brooch backings onto both of them ^___^

 

As always, there is so much more things I could have crafted for this costume (Peppermint Butler handbag, Lady Rainicorn bracelet, science glassware charm bracelet ...) but I think I did pretty well considering I was also finishing off an assignment ~___^

The zombie project I was planning has pretty much completely fallen through at this stage so I'm not sure if that will be appearing on here anytime soon, which is a pity since I still think it's a cool idea! I might keep working on it. I've still got eight tiny donuts to make into something though (plus three major essays, blah!) so I've got enough to keep me busy. I'm thinking maybe a bracelet? Or magnets? Or more hair bows? Hmmm.

Until next week!

- Lisa xx

Bat necklace, spider ring, rat ring: jewellery made from Halloween toys

Hello! A while ago I shared with you how to make hair clips out of leftover Halloween plastic rats, but I still had some animals left over!

My favourites were probably these little bats; they're so cute! They had a suction cap on the back, but they didn't stick very well so I had no qualms about making them into necklaces ^___^

They were really easy to make into necklaces; all I did was poke a sharp needle through their wings and then attach chain using jump rings. So simple!

 

 

I think they add a really fun touch to an outfit ^___^ 

I also had about a bazillion plastic spiders (yep, that number is totally accurate) so I made one into a ring simply by glueing on a ring base.

 

I wore this ring to work which, in hindsight, wasn't a great idea. Cue a lot of people shrieking and jumping as they saw it and thought it was real. Ooops, sorry folks!

 Lastly, a rat that didn't make it onto a hair clip became another ring.

Less people scream when they see this one. Do what you will with that information! ~___^

I think a necklace out of spiders is next on my list ... ~___^

- Lisa xx

Cheese and whiskers!

Today I'm going to tell you about my hair. My hair is very fine, very voluminous, and very very prone to knots and split ends. I've since learnt that the best way to deal with my hair is to never ever brush it and to condition and finger-comb it regularly but when I was a child my hair could best be described as horrid, knotty, and bushy. I hated brushing it, because all the knots made it hurt so much, which of course only made the knots worse! Once, when I was about seven, my mother found a dreadlock at the base of my skull because I had been only brushing the top layer of my hair! I was regularly informed that my hair looked like a rat's nest, and today it *really* does! ~___^

 Rats galore! ^___^ I made these rat hair accessories using only four things: hair combs, plastic rats, glue, and pliers. I brought the rats the day after Halloween, the day when all the spooky plastic animals are 80% off (score! ~___^) I also brought some spiders, so expect some more slightly creepy jewellery and hair accessories in the near future!

Anyway, back to the rats. These hair pieces were very easy to make; I used the pliers to clip down the hair combs into smaller pieces, and then glued the plastic rats on top. I made the hair combs smaller so that they would fit completely under the rats, but this does reduce the functionality of the hair combs. They'll still stay in, but they aren't much use for actually styling your hair. It's up to you if you want to keep them full sized or not, but I will add that cutting the hair combs smaller is a great way to use up old hair combs that have lost a tooth or two ^___^

 I think these will be great for Halloween next year, but honestly I'll probably wear them out and about during the year as well; they're actually kind of cute! ^___^

What do you think? Rat hair clips: yay or nay? ^___^

- Lisa xx