Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Natalie's got a gun...

Aerosmith running through my head for this project....


...anyway.  This one was for Natalie, possibly for comicon coming up, but otherwise for Halloween.  She's being Rose Tyler a la Doctor Who, and in need of a gigantic space gun.  So we first hit up the d.i. and rummaged through the kid aisle, looking for a basic water gun that we could modify a bit.  Found several, but the best was pretty large, and we ended up only having to add on a few things.

Sunday, August 25, 2013

Dinosaur Tails

So this project doesn't exactly belong on here...though I suppose it could be a Halloween costume.  Oh well.  ANYways, saw a really cute project and instantly thought of my friend's kid, who will be 2 in a couple months.  This is the original idea.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

"We're not worthy!!!" *drools*

*sigh*  There are days when I think my Halloween plans are looking pretty awesome.  Then there are days when I wander onto Halloween forums and find out that I'm desperately, solidly, utterly, without a doubt, Wrong.  THIS lady is awesome.  My favorite/most humbling moments are when she's blithely talking about airbrushing and her sculpting skills like they're totally normal--like ANYONE can just pick up a knife/paintbrush/airbrush gun and do these things.  Anyway, serious envy, and awe for her mad skills.


The full 'how to' video

Sunday, August 11, 2013

Lighting Sketch

Just a quick sketch of the placement of the lights for the underwater lights.  The purple is two black lights at either side of the porch, one strung up using a plug in cord for Chinese lanterns.  The multi colored circles are for the jellyfish that will have a rainbow light set off in each of them.  Because they'll have to be set by hand, I'm thinking I'll try and limit the jellyfish--I think they'll look cool, but turning them on and off by hand is going to be a bit annoying to do more than once or twice.

The ocean lights will be focused so that they cast their shadow towards the ground.  And the blue led string of lights is just in case everything is too dark, and more light is needed.





Saturday, August 10, 2013

Crazy party bulb

So one of the bulbs I ordered was more of a test to see if it was as cool as the description purported.  IT. WAS!  I figured the lights might rotate, not that the whole thing would--and live up to it's description that mentioned similar effects to a disco ball.


Sunday, August 4, 2013

Lighting and Fluorescent Paint

One of the things I've learned in researching blacklights and what reacts to blacklights is the difference between just neon items, and UV reactive items.  The two are very different--especially when it comes to paint.  I've been a bit nervous about buying different types of paint without knowing they'll actually be shown off by the blacklight.  But as luck would have it, I was cleaning out the craft room and came across a can of green fluorescent spray paint.  Decided to spray the masking tape and wire coral...thing, I was toying around with to see if it would light up.  IT DID!!  So now at least I have one brand/type of paint that I know does light up around blacklights!  Yay!!























The other item that I had bought came in the mail awhile ago, but finally found the perfect spot to put them--in my overhead lighting, which I normally don't use.  These are color changing bulbs that can be put in a regular socket, but are changed with a remote control.  They have low wattage, so they're environmentally friendly, and they (supposedly) have a long battery life--51,000 hrs.  Also, there are 16 colors (derived from various combos of red, green, and blue), as well as 4 settings that can rotate through them.


The other awesome thing about them is that they're rather cheap right now on Amazon--$4.40 as of today, which is a bit cheaper than a normal party light bulb.  The only downside to them so far is that they're not particularly bright--of course, if you live for the ambient lighting like I do, that's not so much of a deterrent.  I showed them to Sam, and much excitement ensued.  So we've now bulk ordered a bunch and I think much of the house will soon be one giant rainbow.  

**UPDATE** The bulk package of bulbs has arrived!  Now the 'rainbowing' of the house may commence! 

Sea witch dress

I may have randomly had the sea witch dress problem solved.  Sam came home with a dress from work that someone didn't want...that was in my size...and is turquoise/sea green...and has a flouncy skirt...and looks halfway decent on me.  I'm suspicious of this too-good-to-be-true item that has dropped in my lap, and so am cautiously optimistic.  I think I can definitely alter it a bit to make it work for a sea witch costume.

Here's a couple of pictures of the dress--it's extremely flouncy, and the upside is that I would eat no guiltburgers in cutting it up and having my way with it.

Saturday, August 3, 2013

Sea witch costume--back to the drawing board

So with the disastrous venture with the dyeing of the lace, I needed to go back to square one on the main dress of the costume.  Fortunately, Sam and found a piece of fabric (actually a curtain panel) at the DI that she brought back.  It's a pretty blue with a large strip that has sparkly sequins in rows.  It's not quite enough material to make a dress out of, so it would have to be cut up and put back together a bit.  So I did another sketch for a different approach to the sea witch costume, this time using the panel as the main focus.

Here it is without color......and with approximate colors:


















Friday, August 2, 2013

Another tribe member

So I half-heartedly went googling for others who had perhaps tried to make ocean props, maybe for theater, or something random.  After some searching, found this lovely website.  Looks like they were making coral for decorative purposes, but had some rather genius ideas about making coral look like coral: fake plants!  Can't believe I didn't think of it--dur.  Grouped together, a bunch of blossoms would definitely look like the coral reefs.  I liked several of the arrangements they made.


The coat of texture spray would be a really good way to strip away the flowers to the basic forms.  I would then want to paint or spray paint neon colors so that they could be picked up by the blacklights.

Skeletons!!!!

Came home to see this on my front step:

Coral thoughts

Preliminary thoughts on building a coral reef.  I started playing around with taping together hexagons.  Not terrible results.  I'm debating about using stiffer cardstock, and covering it with masking tape, just to make it easier to paint.
I was kind of going for coral that looks like this:

And my attempts at recreating it.


**UPDATE**  DIY coral under blacklights



I can do quite a bit with paint, but I'm thinking I could also use the hot glue gun and make droplets of glue for the 'fringe'.  Or maybe yarn?  That fun fur maybe...  Course, the highlighters look pretty good under black light.  Depends on availability of neon paint.  
I was looking for a project that I could do just bit by bit, but lazily at my desk.  Printing out and taping together hexagons would definitely fit that.  Still some tweaking to do on this potential project.