The Halloween Let Down

As a kid, I always wanted to cosplay my favorite characters at Halloween. When we'd go to look at costumes, I'd always be horribly disappointed, searching for the costume my favorite characters would have worn. For some reason, marketing gurus thought that costumes should have a picture of the character or the name of the show they were from printed prominently on the costume. I'd feel heartbroken. No self respecting cartoon heroine was going to walk around with her own face plastered on her dress. It was disheartening. I didn't want to dress up as a nod to my favorite character, I wanted to step into their role for a moment. I wanted to look in a mirror and for just a moment, completely embody them.

My mom was always frustrated. "What do you mean you don't like any of the costumes? I thought you said you wanted to be Rainbow Brite? This is a Rainbow Brite costume, what's wrong with it?"

Seriously, when did Rainbow ever have her name plastered on her skirt? Do you remember it? Neither do I. Same thing goes for She-Ra and Strawberry Shortcake. They were not the ultra-vain name brandishing types. Lady Lovely Locks was all about the hair, not about the picture of her hair on the front of her dress (but let's be honest, I'm a brunette, I wanted to be Maiden Fair Hair. That costume wasn't even available for purchase. Don't even get me started on the pitiful Cleopatra costumes out there.

Ultimately this led to a lot of homemade costumes that couldn't be bought, but they weren't the characters I loved either. They were always something that couldn't be bought, because "if you're going to be something I can buy in the store, why don't we buy it in the store?" And as a grown up sewing maven, I get it. The amount of time I pour into every costume for my kids, I get it. Every year we make my daughter's costume and buy one for my son. Why? Because cosplaying Darth Vader is easy for a preschooler, right off the rack. Cosplaying Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night as a teenage girl? Not so much.

So, this year as I work on my zaftig Mina Harper cosplay and my daughter's Starry Night, I smile and remember the day I realized while holding a cheap polyester Rainbow Brite costume that was just wrong, that dressing up can be more than that: deserves to be more than that.

Cosplay over costumes any day.

Gettin' down the with artists

I'm the artsy craftsy type, and although I hear that Etsy and Artfire have message boardy networky functions, I haven't checked them out yet, and I'm kind of glad, because that gave me a chance to see the awesome going on over at Attack of the Craft.  Better still? One of the very first items I ever fell in love with on Etsy was by the artist who runs the Clay Pony shop.  But then, at some point, though she continues to stock her shop with awesome jewelry, the specific pieces I love the most were gone.  I know that around the time they disappeared Etsy was cracking down on fan art pretty hard, and since they were Whovian pieces of goodness and wonderment, I was sad that I'd never have a chance to buy them without contacting the artist and being all "please please pretty please can you make me one of those things you used to list?" and that comes off as a little stalkerly to me.
Fast forward to ...

She's selling there now!!!!!

Go look at the magical TARDISy goodness the Clay Pony makes.

Did you go? Did you look?  Do you see why I'm excited to have found this new crafty forum?
It's wonderful.
So go check it out, because it's radness is unparalelled.

Fan Girl Friday- Five Geeky Things

Five geeky things you might not know about me.

1. I seriously considered naming my poor offspring River Thrace.  (Serenity/Doctor Who/Battlestar Galactica much?)
2. When I have to choose, I always pick the TARDIS blue one.
3. My favorite TV show as a kid was Star Trek.
4. When I was 4 I was obsessed with the idea of faster than light travel and it's implications for time travel.
5. My daughter told me that there were 10 kinds of people- those who understand binary, and those who don't. It was one of the proudest parental moments of the year.

Treasury!!!

I admit it, this is my second treasury, but it's the first I've had the presence of mind to take a screen shot of.

So go check it out, because Battlestar Galactica stuff is truly rad.

Frak, it's BSG!

Fan Girl Friday - Fabric Rosettes of Whovian Goodness

I made a pretty TARDIS blue fabric rosette headband to wear.  I took this picture at about 1AM, so don't hate on me for lookin' all tired n stuff. K?

But it's TARDIS blue, and I love TARDIS blue. Because they're rosettes, they're all spirally, like a time vortex, and you know I love me a time vortex.  

I got the idea from BabyBabyLemon on twitter when I asked what I should get my aunt for her upcoming birthday. She said she was in love with the designs by AlloraHandmade (whom you should follow on twitter, because she's got a giveaway at 1k followers), and I checked them out and found them to be radtastic.  Sadly, not quite up my aunt's alley, but right up mine.  

Of course, if it's not TARDIS blue, and none of hers are, I need to make one that is, right?  So I said to myself, "self, that is something you so can rock, especially since your paypal account is in the middle of the tedious verification process, you can't just up and say "aqua is close enough."  Also, I don't know about you, but I get a certain amount of giddy out of making something myself.

So, I googled "fabric rosette tutorial" and found these gems, though none were exactly what I was looking for.

Freckled Laundry Rosette Tutorial

Little Birdie Secrets Rosette Tutorial

MamaMonster Frayed Rosettes

 Ultimately, I pooled what I'd learned from reading them and from years of playing with scrap fabrics and started making rosettes.  I also made some radtastic black jewelry out of some, but that's not very fangirl, now is it?

Now to try to do a great big Eye of Jupiter one. Ah, Battlestar Galactica, how I miss you.  Ooh, maybe a cylon inspired necklace too. ;-)

But yeah, I'm still thinking of buying some from the woman who inspired it all anyway, just because sometimes it's nice to have something someone else put love into.