Friendship Bracelets

Technically, I should be in the midst of re-sleeving my hoodie like I started to do a couple nights ago…and…then I got distracted by the idea of suddenly wanting to learn friendship bracelets. /o\ I don’t quite understand my brain sometimes. (And actually, I should be searching for a textbook so I can do homework right now but shhhh. I’ll get on that in a moment.)  So I hit up that goldmine of information–YouTube, natch–and I found the channel of user BeyondBracelets, who has quite an extensive collection of tutorials on weaving bracelets neatly organized into playlists ordered by difficulty. So far I’ve practiced the Candystripe, which is what this video teaches–

–and wound up tying it around my brother’s wrist, so he wound up taking it back to school with him. Not bad for a first attempt, though I need to work on finishing them better.

I honestly thought that weaving friendship bracelets would be a lot harder, but provided you just observe a few basic rules, it’s something pretty much anybody could do. And since I have four giant spools of crafting thread that I recently dug out of the garage during spring cleaning (which prompted this sudden interest in bracelet weaving), I have a good feeling I’ll be making lots of them! Which means there might finally be some new products in the WCFT Etsy store.

And that, my friends, is a wonderful thing.

In Progress – Killjoys Masks

First of all, if you don’t know who the Killjoys are and why they’re awesome, please start by watching this music video and then follow it with this one.

Second, if you’re coming over from the Girl Automatic blog: Hiiiii!

Third, what you’re really here for: Pictures. (Click on them to full view.)

^ All good projects start with a good plan. This is mine. I like my plan. I’d also Twitpicced this a few… Actually, maybe last week? (The days kind of run together. ) But this a clearer version. The mask in the bottom left is the design for the mask of The Devil’s Orchestra. Who are The Devil’s Orchestra? It’s a long story. (No, really. I tried fleshing it out for NaNo. I didn’t “win”, but I have a much better idea of who they are–or rather, were–now.) For now, let’s just say they were an important part of who Girl Automatic is–and was–before she took up being the Voice of the South Region.

^ My current workspace in my room. Before painting, I took the elastic out of each mask to avoid getting paint on it. It’s actually easier than I thought it would be.

The masks I’m using are by Creatology. They’re shiny, kinda transparent when held up to the light, and white. I’m using just your average, run-of-the-mill acrylic paint. Something I have learned thus far is: Acrylic Paint + Creatology Masks = Lesson in Patience.  You will need at least three or four coats, depending on whether or not you want the mask’s original color to show through. (I don’t.) Next round of progress pictures, I’ll show you the brush I eventually settled on to do the base coats. Originally I used a huge one, but the coverage ability wasn’t all that great.

^ After a few layers of paint and a layer of glossy varnish/decoupage glue, it looks like this! (It looks way shinier than the picture shows.) If I’d left it unvarnished, the paint would’ve had a matte look with a nice texture… But I wanted to make sure that the paint would hold up in the event of water. So! Varnish it is.

(I know I have a matte varnish somewhere, because I tend to have supply amnesia when I go to Michael’s, but the bottle was in my closet and thus, what I grabbed first.)

I actually put on varnish before detail work because I thought it would offer me some protection against paint peeling in the event that I used masking tape. And then I remembered that I’d bought a whole pack of chalk during a phase where I’d go around campus, sneaking into empty classrooms to write cryptic messages. (It was a weird, though brief, phase.)

Unfortunately,  I still wound up needing tape. My ability to trace the lines I’d made for myself were not as great as I thought. This is the result:

At least at the time of shooting. I wound up doing a lot of minor touching up and I have managed to get it in a place I’m happy with. I’ve also finished the green one from earlier in the post, but the picture I sent of it to Twitpic last night doesn’t do it justice. Better one to come later.