Happy Things!

Happy Halloween from Thing 1 and Thing 2!

"You will see something new. Two things. And I call them Thing One and Thing Two. These things will not bite you. They want to have fun.” Then, out of the box came Thing Two and Thing One!  ~The Cat in the Hat, by Dr. Suess

My little sister and I decided to dress up as Thing One and Thing Two for a friend's Halloween party. We decided not to go for the red-unitard and shocking blue fuzzy hair. Instead, we wanted to be creative, girly and cute Things! (My little sister is helping me to write this blog post, so if there are tons more adjectives than normal, they are her additions!).

My thought at first was to attempt a Lolita look, but with just two days to make a costume, there wasn't enough time. Thing Two wore one of my old ballet tutus and I made myself a fluffy tulle skirt. I crocheted bue slouch hats in record time and tied big red bows on the side. We borrowed our brothers' soccer socks, wore high heels, put on blue eyeshadow, and tried temporary blue hair dye.

Thing Two's blonde hair took the dye really well. Mine, not so much,.

Mom snapped some pictures of us today in our Thingie costumes!

Thing Two says that I must emphasize the fact that this is not our full costume, but just the t-shirts and hats.

This costume is really comfortable and a fun change from the Elf and Princesses dresses that we have been wearing almost exclusively for the past several years! (I seriously have not had a non-fantasy costume since fourth grade!).

Have a great Hallowe'en!

We made the t-shirts ourselves-- the shirts are $3 Walmart finds. The paint took three coats to get the solid white (and two full bottles of the soft fabric paint). I had fun imitating Dr. Suess' handwriting! The fabric paint holds up surprisingly well and has already made it safely through the wash. You can see my old soccer shirt that we used for a template. ^_^

We tried convincing Mom that we needed to get kites and fly them indoors and ruin a pink-and-white polka-dot dress, but that idea didn't fly. :)

The boys also have Halloween costumes, but don't fancy being on the blog, so the Things shall suffice!

Smaug T-Shirt {Guest Post}

Hello and greetings, serendipitous readers of Shealynn's equally lovely blog! I'm Marlene E. from over www.thetouchofwhimsy.blogspot.com way, and I'm absolutely delighted to meet one and all!


I've officially hijacked this blog for a day, so now you must bear with me as I share my little tutorial on how to make a positively geeky and utterly fashionable shirt inspired by everyone's favorite-book-soon-to-be-an-amazing-film, The Hobbit. My inspiration was simple. You know those coolio maps the good ol' Professor drew at the beginning of the book...? Not sure? Don't know what I'm talking about? Here's a convincer:

Okay, said map has a little dragon drawn on it. See it...? Oh, you don't...? THERE.

Now that we've got the inspiration clear, onto the shirt!

Here's what you're going to need...

ONE Cream T-Shirt, blank and ready to be turned into awesome sauce
ONE skein of DMC floss in red... if you can't find this particular color, that's okay. Any burgundy will do just as nicely.
ONE needle
ONE sheet of transfer paper*
ONE ballpoint pen*
*If you have another method of transferring designs onto fabric, by all means, feel free to substitute!

With these trusty tools, you're good to go. Now, the more astute of you may be shocked, but I didn't use a hoop. I thought it would stretch the shirt in an unsightly and irreparable manner.

I also couldn't find my hoop. Hem

Take the following design...

...and transfer it onto your shirt. About 3 1/2” below where the pit of your neck should be when wearing the shirt.

Now, my dears, take your NEEDLE and FLOSS, and go at it with a simple split stitch! Nothin' fancy, nothin' big... just make simple, plain old split-stitches all along the outlines of the design. You can substitute any other stitch you think would look better, I just chose this one because I wanted to. So there.

And... really, that's that. Really. Oh, I did forget a step... go rock your new Smaug shirt in a place where all can see your awesome geekiness.

Oyez.

Thanks a bunch, Shealynn, for having on your lovely blob. It's been a most pleasurable experience!

Jewel's Photoshoot {Part Two}

Part 1 HERE

She must be one of the Wood Elves of Mirkwood. Singing to trees?
(Yes, she was singing while I was taking the pictures. I thought it would make her relax and feel more natural in front of a camera, but I have a feeling she just thought I was out of my mind. But then again, aren't I always?)

I love this picture-- Jewel is joyful and this really captures her smile. :) Plus, I just re-read The Hobbit, in which the Elves are far less solemn and sad than in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Tolkien describes them as joyful and fond of laughter and songs. It all fits. Jewel laughs a lot, has a stunning singing voice, and looks great in fantasy clothing. I think she's a real Elf in disguise.

(Jewels, I can just imagine your reaction to this. Muahahaha!)

This picture (click to enlarge) unfortunately turned out very blurry. I still think it looks cool and I had fun editing it; which version do you think is best?

This picture is from the first post on Jewel's photoshoot. My online friend Victoria edited it-- she did a great job!

Part 1 HERE

Jewel

Meet Jewel the Elf

Aiya! 

("Hello" in Quenya. In Sindarin, it is "Suilad." Non-geeks: this is Tolkien's Elvish.)

I love photography. :) It's an art that I'm just barely touching the surface of, and it is so much fun! Recently I was asked by a friend, "Jewel," to do her senior photoshoot. (!!!)

I was going to use my dad's work camera, a Nikon, for the real photoshoot. He was out late on a case, though, and while we waited for him, Jewel agreed to be my guniea pig (willingly and happily, too!). I've always wanted to do a Elven photoshoot, and Jewel just happened to fit in my dress! We dressed her up and hiked out to my favorite haunts with my point-and-shoot.

We were gung-ho about it, too. We ran with bare feet and sandals through the marsh by the pond, skirted the baby poison ivy in the field, and the marched through brambles in the woods. It was glorious.

Jewel has kindly given me permission to share her photos! We took a lot-- look for my favorites in about two days. Although, how could I pick favorites when Jewel is naturally so photogenic?

Longtime blog readers will remember this dress and the oh-so-very-very-big blog post about said "Masquerade Dress". (My irl friends will also recognize the dress, because it is all that I ever wear to costume dances, random dress up parties, and on Halloween). The dress has gone through some changes... It was my second real sewing project, done in 2009 (here's proof-- oh my goodness, it has been three years! I haven't done serious sewing since...)

Here are some pictures of moi, and my dress, and then little moi and little my dress.

top: me, on my way to an English Country Dance

bottom: the "Eowyn" vest that I made last year (it does not fit well), and randomly a picture of me in third (fourth?) grade wearing my very first Elf dress. I was Arwen. :) It's the same pattern as my second, current Elven dress, just lots smaller-- and Mom sewed it, not me.

Now the dress has been updated with more fitted upper sleeves, losing the itchy though beautiful embroidered white material, and lower sleeves of a beautiful, sturdy two-sided material. I also created drawstrings for the sleeves. Now, on to Jewel's photoshoot...

Here you can see the updated sleeves. We also used scrap fabric from the sleeves to make a sort of sash for Jewel to wear, since the dress was loose around her waist.

The sky was stunning that day, and the wind was blowing calmly. 

Perfect weather for an Elf to wander out in...

The leaves were long, the grass was green,

The hemlock-umbels tall and fair,

And in the glade a light was seen

Of stars in shadow shimmering...

(Song of Beren and Lúthien, by J.R.R. Tolkien)

In every picture from the back, I kept thinking, wow, she looks so much like me! Must be the dress. :) She borrowed some of my scarves and hats for the regular photoshoot, and I kept thinking the same thing about those pictures.

The light and colors in the picture turned out weird, but I rather like it in black and white. (Good trick to remember for poor pictures in the future).

It was bright out, but this picture turned out gloriously moody.

This is my brother's Aragorn cape. :)

 Hantalë (hannad/thanks), Jewels, for being such a lovely model and going along with my crazy ideas. Hantalë for being crazy yourself. :)

Tenn' enquetielva!

(Until we meet again! Don't forget, I'll share more pictures in the next post!)

Update: The best pics are in Part 2, HERE!

Bookish Adventures {part two}

{part one here}

into the woods

She wore a skirt made of stories and I wore a camera strap. Together, we traveled to our favorite haunt: the magical forest on the borders of our neighborhood.

As usual, click each photo to see it larger and on a dark background.

(As I'm trying to improve my photography skills... which pose/editing do you like best?)

{part of my destroyable books blog series}



Bookish Adventures {part one}

Books come to life in your imagination. The stories become a part of you, shaping your view of the world and occasionally making you stand on your head in order to see that your life is not, in fact, mundance and prosaic.

One March dawn, my (very patient) little sister and I journeyed throughout our neighborhood and turned it into our own little Wonderland. Several days before, I had made a secret book box using an unloved Reader's Digest Condensed Book. We used the cut-up pages to create a paper skirt and ran outside before schooltime to do my first "artsy photoshoot."

My point-and-shoot isn't the most reliable when it comes to taking good photos, and I snapped away until my memory card held over three hundred pictures. As it turned out, most of the photos were good, and I loved so many that I'm going to have to split up the photos into several different posts. This is Part One of our Bookish Adventures photoshoot, all taken in a lovely little field. Over the next week or two, I'll post photos from the woods and the creek.

Click on each picture to see a slightly larger version against a black background (the pictures look so much nicer that way!).

{ part of my destroyable books blog series}

{part two here}