I thought I would try an experiment with real snakeskin nail art From my pet snake's shed skin, I cut small pieces and put them over still-wet NYC polish, then added another coat of polish. Lastly, I ended up doing like three/four topcoats so the texture won't snag things!

Sorry my cuticles are a mess!

My husband and I went to Anomaly Con in Denver over the weekend. This was our first non-academic, steampunk con together We may not have all the gears, goggles, and other accoutrements that are associated with the genre quite yet, but I'm pretty happy with the way the stuff I made turned out.

On Friday, I wore this outfit that features the skirt I made in this topic.

The shirt, boots, and belt were all thrifted finds.

I made my husband's vest out of two oversized pillowcases. (I was ripping the braid off before I remembered to take a pic)


The pillowcases had interfacing in them already so I just left it in...


...and then sewed the backside of the pillowcases on as lining.


The whole thing pieced together:


With buttons:


And on my husband:


It was a little small, and some of the seams are definitely quite wonky, but I'm happy with it for a first-ever effort

For my primary outfit, I focused on making a ruffly skirt. I started with an Old Navy skirt that I bought....let's say, a decade ago? Here's the pile of ruffles I wanted to sew on it


All attached:


Me in it (plus the rest of my outfit):

So I completed this skirt from a week or so ago!!  I serged a total of 92 Chinese silk brocade squares for the ruffles (could've been rufflier, but oh well). I also learned how to use my new machine to make buttonholes.  

Squares all sewn together, lined up on the original base skirt (which I switched to pleather later)


Finished skirt.  With dragon buttons!


Flash on:


I'll try to get some better pictures in the daytime

So I bought a destash of all these amazing 3x3" squares of Chinese brocade on Etsy, and decided that they'd make a pretty cool ruffle skirt for an Asian steampunk character.  I'm planning to serge the squares into long strips, ruffle and then sew to the basic skirt underneath. I think I'm going to serge the hems of each ruffle strip, but I can't decide if I should use white or black thread for that. Thoughts?

Also, if anyone has experience attempting to ruffle brocade...I could definitely use tips!!

Pic of my WIP:



(Yes, that is my glorious couch!  It's a hand-me-down through generations of colleagues at work.)

Here are things I've worked on since December 4th or so:

Olay Regenerist ads necklace--I wore this to my husband's work holiday party.




This one's made with Discover card ads and a page from the Think Geek catalog


Made from wrapping paper (I kept this one for myself; it still needs some tweaking)


Made from a poster for a work event


This one's from a fairy sculpture ad


All Travelocity ads! The round beads were made from 1/4 inch strips.


Stuff I made for my husband's coworkers


Stuff I made for my coworkers


My favorite totally awesome huge bracelet, made from a poster a friend gave me (she got this bracelet in return!)

I've been working steadily on a lot of paper beads in the last couple months.  I sold four necklaces at a silent auction for work, and am putting a bunch of it up in seasonal craft fairs (not doing well on that front yet).  

First, eighty-odd beads made from a poster from work:


and a bunch of necklaces made from various flyers/posters from work:







Other stuff at the unsuccessful craft fair:

Been mostly hanging around looking at reconstructed clothes since I signed up last October, but this past week I've been making a lot of paper beads, so now I'm posting in here for the first time

One of my dearest friends at work is having a birthday tomorrow, so I made her this necklace out of my new paper bead collection! I think the paper beads look almost like malachite. Just a couple of the better pics of it: