Last year I made a deck of custom playing cards. These are related to "transformational playing cards" that were popular in the 19th century and were different than regular cards because the pips were incorporated into some kind of design. Mine were designed to be an homage to science fiction - Clubs = retrto sci-fi, Diamonds = slick high-tech sci-fi, Hearts = steampunk, Clubs = cyberpunk.

I'm not a traditional artist, but I was able to build the elements of the cards in Second Life (a virtual community). This involved a lot of work building each of the small elements used in the cards (the little robots, the suit "pips", etc.), styling the avatars to fit the look and feel of each suit, making the textures for the frames and backdrops, etc. It took about 2 months to build and design and about 2 months to do all of the screen capture snapshots, then an additional month or so for the Photoshop work.


For example: the Ace of Shovels

Once everything was done I had the deck printed on Moo cards and they came out wonderfully! Since they are Moo cards and on coated card-stock they are even playable.

Link to the Flickr Set of the full deck: http://www.flickr.com/photos/arystopics/sets/72157625699939891/

My new bag. I had originally thrown it together (with a different star) for a Ramona (from Scott Pilgrim) costume for a comic con. I remade it last week using my own star and a new lining with pockets. It's pleather on the outside.

More views



^^ I added a little Watchman button to hide the snap.

Inside:

While I was on vacation last week I finally got around to reconning a couple of the t-shirts I had in my stock-pile. I had gotten some pink RIT dye a few weeks ago and thought both tees needed some color.

Reconned Jill Thompson Threadless Tee:



I ordered the shirt while Threadless was having it's $10 sale and I loved it, but thought the white was a bit to bright and even at a women's 2X it wasn't comfy. (original can be seen here: http://media.threadless.com/product/2378/view1.jpg)

After tie-dying the shirt I cut out the collar (as I generally do) then added a blue & black striped material (from a previous recon) on both sides, straight up through the sleeves. I also sewed in ribbon ties for the sleeves so I can wrap and tie them to customize the shirt when I wear it, too. I really love the way this one came out. I'm headed to NY Comic Con next month and I plan to bring this along to wear one of the days.

Palovr t-shirt




I can't seem to find a before image, sorry. Parlovr is an awesome band from Montreal ( http://www.myspace.com/parlourmontreal )and when I went to see them in the spring I bought a t-shirt. It was a 'unisex' large so it fit okay, but I wasn't crazy about the grey. So into the dye-bath it went...

After dying I cut out the collar (I pretty much hate t-shirt collars), then cut up the back of the shirt and added in a panel of black. I put in grommets and added lacing. I'm pretty happy with how it came out. I'm certainly much more likely to wear it out now.

Woot. I hope you enjoyed. Thanks! ^^

-Arys

Wow! It's been a long time since I had anything to post. :-P (I'm just starting to post, so I hope you click through to the pics ^^)

Recently I had to work a booth at C2E2 for my job and decided to cosplay the weekend. In throwing stuff together for that I ended up with a couple of pieces i thought could get carried over into my regular wardrobe with just a few tweaks.

First is this jacket that I reconstructed from a denim vest that was too small for me and a leather shirt from the local thrift.

back


front

I wanted it to have a sort of pseudo-steampunk feel. The vest was a little too small for me to be comfortable so I cut it up the back to the collar. Then, when I went back to hem in those edges I added in a bit of brocade to the back panel. Rather than do the lacing through grommets on the back I opted to do button holes instead. I took the sleeves from a leather shirt and cleaned up the hems and did the lacing thru grommets. And added bits of brocade to the underside of the collar and along the front.

I really love this jacket now! I can't wait for the chance to wear it out. (Of course now it's, like, 90 degrees and too hot. :-( )

Next is this skirt:





I threw it together for an improvised Delirium costume, but liked the idea. I used the waistband from a pair of old jeans and some scrap fabric to make the panels. ^^

*whew*
Sorry for being so chatty!