Newest Completed Project

I know I posted some time ago that I would be making special costumes for my kids. This would've been back in September or October. My intent was to have them all made up for Christmas. Well, that didn't happen. LOL I did complete one for our oldest daughter's birthday, though. So here is the finished product. I'm happy to share these photos with my readers but please do not copy them in any way. These photos are my property and these photos are of my child. I hope you enjoy the post and the photos for the educational purpose for which they are intended.

San is one of the main characters from an animated film titled "Princess Mononoke". Her costume consists of a fur covered clay mask, a blue dress, a white slip-on top that goes over the blue dress, a pair of oversized oval-shaped shell or bone earrings, leather headband & armbands, a fur cloak with a string of teeth holding it together, a jewel dagger necklace, a pair of short moccasins, and some red face paint. Altogether, I'm not sure how much I spent to gather all the materials I needed to accomplish this but it took a long time to get them all. I would estimate that the entire cost was around $130 for the entire outfit, and considering the labor for this kind of job, you'd be looking at paying about $300 for a well done costume. That is, if you bought one from me. Um...don't ask. It's fun when it's for my kids who love it no matter what discrepancies exist therein. I'm not making stuff like this for anyone but close friends.

Materials:
blue fabric for dress-1 flat sheet-$6 (I had some left over from another project.)
White fabric for top-1 yd @ $3
Moccasins-$35 (her grandmother bought those for her)
Amethyst gemstone dagger pendant- $15
4 Shell 'Teeth'- $6/each
'Fur' fabric (fuzzy fleece)- 2 yds @ $6/yd
Shell ovals for earrings- 2 @ $1.50/ea
1 pr sensitive solutions post earring findings in gold- @ $4? I had these on hand.
Velvet ribbon for armbands- $1.50/spool
black elastic for headband- @ $3? I just had some on hand.
3 black buttons for arm/headbands- $1.50/card or so
3 bone beads for arm/headbands- $5/container or so. Depends on the size of the container.
1 pre-primed full face mask- $3 or so. Can't remember exactly.
Acrylic paint for mask- 3 colors @ $1-3 per container
Hemp cord for the dagger necklace and cloak tie- $2 or so
1 package twill tape-$3 or so
Single fold bias tape in white and blue-$3/each or so

It took about 3 or 4 days to put the whole thing together. I started with the furs since they were simply a very free hand cutout resembling animal furs. I just had to make sure they were wide and long enough to match the picture and fulfill their purpose. I simply edge stitched them with a very nice zig-zag pattern. I used a t-tunic that was already made up for her and a tank top to cut out the dress and top. I used the hemp cord to make the dagger necklace and the cloak tie. It was a bit difficult to find a long enough piece of the cord that would fit through the tiny holes in the shells I used for teeth. I suppose I could have tried reaming them but I'm a tad heavy-handed. For the mask, I removed the elastic that was to hold it on the head and used a hole punch to make holes all around the outer edge. Then I sewed the smaller fur around the edge of the mask using safety pins to secure it in place through the holes. I tacked it to some twill tape on the inside. That made the mask less likely to scratch my daughter's face or make her itch. Once the fur is sewn around the mask, there's no need for that elastic thread that comes with it. For the arm bands, I just cut lengths of ribbon/elastic the size I needed, found the middle of each, sewed a black button and a bone bead in the center of each.

I've also included a picture of the animated San for those who wish to compare. You should be able to copy and paste the link.
http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs28/i/2008/052/0/3/Princess_Mononoke___Wolf_by_Sonda.jpg

The mask should've been clay but that would've been heavy and would've required all kinds of patience I just don't have. I mixed some paints I had on hand to achieve colors pretty close to the original. I used a cordial glass to make the cirlces around the eye holes and I freehanded the white lines across the face. The earrings should've been shells that were solid and much larger but that would've just been too much for my daughter. Well, I hope you enjoy this post. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
Laugh a lot!

A Wing and A Prayer, A Sigh and A Care

I'm just gonna jump right in today. My husband just called me to say gas prices went up. Now, normally that wouldn't warrant a whole text message, much less a call. I'm used to seeing the prices vary by week by about 2 or 3 cents. Aren't you? Well how about this whopper! Read it and weep. Gas prices went up a whole 26 cents. Yes. You did not read that incorrectly. Our gas prices rose 26 cents. With my husband having to drive 45 minutes or more to work every day and then again to get back home, this could be the beginning of the end for us. We just recently decided to opt out of the food stamp program b/c we felt we could perhaps make it on our own. Our own government is trying desperately to push us back into the system of handouts on a maybe. You heard correctly again! There isn't even a problem yet! They're raising prices on the /possibility/ of things going completely nuts. So our government is basically saying, "Let's stick it to the poor souls who still have jobs during this time of greater unemployment. Let's see how many more we can drive out of jobs because they can't make it in to work. Oh and while we're at it, let's continue to waste our own natural resources because the sky is blue." Yeah, folks, it makes about that much sense.

So somehow, I have to figure out a way for us to earn more income. We had to drop our dental coverage because it was costing us more than we spent in dental visits per year. You read /that/ right, too. It was a good policy but come on! Spending more to keep it than we did to use it was just a little upside down, if you ask me. Now we're going out of pocket on that but at the time, we thought we'd be able to take care of the normal visits on our own, albeit one person at a time. Oh, well, maybe I should just go to dental tech school. Back to the matter at hand, I guess I better go apply for my business license. I'll be putting stuff up on Etsy if I am able to get that license and I'll post here to notify folks when everything is a go. I might eventually put things up on Artfire if I make enough money through Etsy to cover the monthly fee for premium that Artfire charges. I really need to figure something out. I must. In this nasty economy we have, with a group of money-grubbers at the wheel who could care less about anyone but themselves, well, you have to ask yourself what is going to give next?

I'm so thankful we live in the country. I hope our garden does well this year. We're going to need those veggies. I refuse to pay $2 for second rate lettuce. And at Wal-mart, to boot! I am just so amazed that people will buy that nasty iceberg lettuce for that price. It's a sad day when iceburg lettuce costs more than romaine. Wow. Just wow. I really hope that my milk price doesn't go up. Otherwise, we will be buying a cow...or borrowing one. I won't be able to buy milk if the price goes up. And I can't risk the health of my children by buying second rate milk, either. So, what a conundrum!

So now we need to figure out how to spend money in the best way. The grocery items we purchase rarely, if ever, offer coupons. I've gotten to the point where a coupon being offered to me usually causes me to suspect the item of some kind of nefarious ingredient or chemical. So I'm watching instead for sales. Wal-mart is no longer a guarantee for the lowest price in town, though they still do the price-matching. And if they have a lower price on anything, it's usually for their clothing or for their brand of grocery items. I never shop for clothing at Wal-mart. I usually hit the outlet or bargain stores for that and only at the direst need. I can sew. :) I guess we'll be staying close to home and trimming our eating habits down to bare minimums. I wonder how many others will be having to do the same. You can pretty much bank on it that the politicians will not be among us. And for the record, I'm all about the billionaire who made his money legally being able to keep that money that he earned. He shouldn't have to pay for my kids to get their teeth cleaned. I just want us to have an opportunity to be able to hold a decent job that pays for what we need. I don't want a handout. I'd rather have the opportunity to succeed at something. But it looks like it's going to be very hard to even do that for now.

Remember to breathe.