Sewing: A Gift in Black and White

I'm so excited: I just made my first gift with my newly acquired (okay, newly just-starting-to-be-acquired) sewing skills!

This is from BurdaStyle's Marcel Eye Mask pattern, which now costs a dollar. Not a bad price if you're not into drafting the pattern yourself (I downloaded it ages ago, before sewing was something I took seriously... lucky me, because lady-shaped people love this).

The back and the front are two different patterns from the same bit of fabric I got at Whipstitch. I promised to post the skirt I made in the same fabric, and as soon as my husband is around to take pictures for me I really, really will. 

The ties are a sheer, black ribbon. It's filled with lentils, scented with rosemary (one of my favorites!) and can be used hot or cold as an eye press. 

The two sides really make me want to try this pattern again in a Jekyll/Hyde theme. What do you think?

mask inspiration

I haven't worked a mask in some months; simply haven't been inspired.

I couldn't begin to make something as lovely as the masks found here, but they are proving to be invaluable in terms of inspiration to get moving on wedding crafts.

Amazing, aren't they?

http://www.furiae.com/

Some recent projects in the works...

This past weekend saw a surge in my crafting productivity. I re-glittered several Halloween wedding decorations that I promised I would do months ago, I silver-spray tested spiders, I made more glitter spiders with super-fine Martha Stewart glitter (omg such an improvement - they look super nice now), and I started on some test paper mache projects (pictured, very early stage) for wedding table centerpieces: a witches hat, a mask, and a Victorian-style Halloween container.

The exciting news is I found a paper mache recipe that I really adore. I've been using it with newsprint strips, and it actually makes the strips feel stronger when they are wet. Everything dries with a very clean, smooth, almost glasslike texture, very strong but still a little bit flexible (provided you do your projects in light layers, as I do).

I found the recipe (which involves white glue, corn starch, flour, salt and water) over at AranaMuerta's site.

I'm not done with any of the pieces, but as soon as I have some more time to finish I'll post them up.

Incongruent Feather Mask

A quick review of the Creepy Cupcakes blog will reveal that Carrie Mae has a love affair with masks. All kinds of masks.

Using the second of several blank mask forms I made for myself ages ago, this one with a 'winged' shape, I covered it in feathers using hot glue, and for no explainable reason stuck a spider in the middle:


I really think hot glue spider webbing is in order now. Just covered in webbiness.

Background, for those of you who are new and the others of you who (understandably) dont memorize my every post:

Awhile back I made about five blank mask templates out of paper mache. More information about where I found the blank and what I did is here, but the essential 'how to' is that I used a paper cut-out duplicated several times on newsprint, took advice from Stolloween's site on what kind of mache paste ingredients he uses and made my own recipe, layered the newsprint masks on top of one another covered in mache paste, and let them dry on top of a styrofoam dummy head so they'd have a nice mask shape. Simple and cheap, right?

The first result of that night's efforts was the Long-Nosed, Faux-Venetian mask. This is the second mask. Less involved, but really light and comfortable to wear.

The feathered mask is tied on with black ribbon. It tickles my nose when I breath in, but it's so delightfully soft!

Another of these same mask templates is in process of becoming a stick mask with a witch's face. This is my first experiment with making my own paper mache clay. Hope it ends well! So far, so fun.