I am a proud geek, and I love to craft geeky things. I'm in good company here at Craftster!
So a few months ago I started playing League of Legends. My husband has been playing since last year--right after it came out it got really popular with some of our WoW friends, and they got him involved, and eventually I caved in. The publisher, Riot Games, is incredibly involved with their player community, and they do a weekly video, the Summoner Showcase, that features player-made crafts and other LoL-related things, fan art, music, etc. As soon as I started playing, my husband said to me, "You should make something." I answered, "Yes, I should make something."
I had been on an embroidery kick lately, so I was thinking I'd do something like that, but then I started seeing all these poppets for the swap floating around, and I've wanted to make a poppet for a while, so this seemed like the perfect time!
Meet Caitlyn--
And for comparison, here's the art I worked from:
She's almost entirely made from thrifted or upcycled materials: her skin, dress and hat fabrics are all thrifted, the leather is from a damaged purse of my mother's, the hat base is cardboard, the cog charm a piece of plastic lid, the wig base a section of a mesh onion bag. Only the eyes, lace, wire, yarn, and lace trim on the petticoat are new materials!
If you were following my moaning on the Ongoing Poppet Along thread, you know I had a devil of a time with the hat, but I finally managed it and I'm pretty happy with it. Even when I realized I'd have to pop the top piece off to glue the wire in because I forgot to do it first!
The cog charm took me a while to figure out, but eventually I thought to cut it out of a plastic lid. I roughed up one side of the lid with a scrubbing sponge to give it a surface that paint would stick to; then to get it glued on, I cross-hatched the back of it with an X-acto knife for the glue to stick to.
Her leg bands are straps from the purse. My sewing machine couldn't handle the leather, and gluing the ends together wasn't strong enough to hold, so I ended up notching the ends, linking them with wire, then wrapping the wire around to hide the join. I didn't have gold buckles for them anyway, so this works for me!
The boots, well, all I can say is that I love my hot glue gun. Couldn't have managed without it.
The arm bands are made the same as the leg bands, but with thread instead of wire. And the gloves I am particularly proud of, the upper join is just like the bands, but for the lower join I lashed a long thong to one side instead, which threads through a slit on the opposite side, then wraps and ties around the wrist. It was very important to me that, even though I won't be changing her wardrobe at all, that all her pieces be removable--for repairs, if nothing else.
I'm so excited that she's finally done--that hat! those boots! I thought I'd never get them right! Thank you, of course, to ghilie for the pattern, it was very well done and I'd certainly make another one...though maybe not right away!
