I made a camera! Gakkenflex

Look at this amazing thing Charles got me for my birthday! It's a camera kit camera!

Here's a more complete blog about the magazine and all the parts. Maybe I'll upload some "making of" photos later.

This is from a Japanese magazine whose title translates as "Science for Adults". Each edition, they have a different kit to make something. The first time we were in Japan, Charles bought one that had a kit for a little air-calliope thing. It was super cute.

The magazine is in Japanese, so we couldn't actually understand too much of the instructions. The pictures were really clear so we managed without a translation. We started out with lots of little bits of plastic and screws and gradually built this camera from near scratch. It was fascinating to learn about how the shutter works. When we finished, I stuck some stickers on the outside. I could choose from this design or a woody looking one. I think this one is way cooler.

With its little hat up

I'm not sure what these bits do?

It looks like it has two lenses, but the top one is actually the viewfinder. There's a mirror that reflects the light from the viewfinder up and out the top of the camera, through a piece of foggy plastic. Looking inside the camera there's a little screen showing you the world in front of the camera. It's like looking at a movie in there!

Looking through the viewfinder at a tree in our backyard

The viewfinder and lens are two interlocking cogs, and they screw in and out of the camera. They are calibrated so that when you adjust the lens length, you also adjust the viewfinder length, and this is how you focus. I'll have to wait until my film is developed to see just how precise this focussing mechanism is.

Interlocking cogs that are the lens and viewfinder

There is no counter that tells how many photos are left, and no automatic winder. Instead, there's a knob that you wind to advance the film. We calibrated it using a trusty ol' texta before we shut the back of the camera. We found that one frame of film is worth exactly a half turn of one of the knobs. I'm sure it says that somewhere in the Japanese text, but we just figured it out ourselves. This means that you have to be careful to wind the film, or you'll get double exposures - which can be cool too!

I'll upload some photos when I develop them later. I'm so excited about my gakkenflex!

Winding knob and gague

I made a little felt case for it. Unfortunately I could only find good strong felt in a yuck brown colour, but whatever. It fits! I also tied a bit of cute ribbon onto the camera to use as a strap. It's so light I don't need a strong leather strap.

Here's a link to a youtube video about the Gakkenflex by Mijonju

Gakkenflex flickr pool

Arts and Crafts

At the end of June I sold some jewellery in my church Arts and Crafts show. I made a bunch of money, which was nice, and here's some photos of my displays. Not super professional, but whatever. I was under SO much pressure that week, it was RIDICULOUS. Exams, arts and crafts, birthday, music stuff, church strife, guests… it was crazy times. So I'm amazed I got anything in the show at all!

I used some empty picture frames to display my stuff, with fabric-covered cardboard to stick the pins in. It worked pretty well!

As well as selling earrings, necklaces and brooches, I made and sold hair bows. I made quite a few sets. They're actually really difficult to make, plus I kept getting fond of them. I made about 7 sets, but ended up keeping 3. They work well on bags and cardigans as well as on hair! I'm really getting into these kinds of accessories.

Tea-dyeing a blouse!

As you know from my review a few months ago, I recently bought a lovely blouse from Kids YoYo through Qutieland. Here's a stock picture - as you can see, it's a lovely off-white colour.

Unfortunately, when I received it, I found that it was actually a pure white colour - blindingly white. I know that pure white is a staple of the traditional Gothic Lolita wardrobe, but a Traditionalist I Am Not. After a lot of consideration and trepidation, I decided to tea-dye it.

I got my inspiration from this post I found on EGL. She dyed a white bodyline jumperskirt and it looked so much nicer afterwards.

I have tried tea-dyeing lace in the past with mixed results. I dyed a cotton lace and an elastic lace. The cotton one came out orange, and the elastic one came out pink. With my blouse, I used a much weaker tea so that it would be a better colour.

Here it is beforehand… whitey white.

Here it is during the process. I made a pot of really strong tea and then diluted it in a bucket of hot water. I added white vinegar as per the instructions, which is the setting agent. It smelled DELICIOUS (not).

Drying on the line. As you can see, it is a pretty nice antique-y colour, but I wouldn't call it off-white.

After it dried, I noticed that there were drip marks on the sleeves. I was so upset! Immediately I tried washing them out, but that sort of made the sleeves lighter than the rest. I put the whole thing in the washing machine, which I should've done before drying. It turned out much nicer.

After the whole process. Pretty good result! Now it's been through the wash maybe once more and it's an even nicer faded colour now. I'm happy because it's much more wearable than it was before.

Charles is off to America!

I just saw Charles for the last time for about 3 weeks. He's leaving for San Fransisco tomorrow morning! He is going to a workshop in Stanford University, where he's performing a piece he wrote with our friend called Strike On Stage - check it out here. Then he's flying to Montral, Canada, to visit McGill University. He has some meetings with some dudes there. Then he'll visit his cousin in New York… and come home to me! I'm really proud of him. He's doing a big scary thing. I'm really looking forward to seeing all the great stuff he'll be doing. So I need to send him on a shopping trip in San Fransisco or Montreal - he won't be in New York long enough to do any real shopping. Any suggestions for awesome San Fran shops? I'd just better make sure he knows my shoe size :-)

New (ish) dress

This is my absolute favourite dress. Victorian Maiden's Adele Bustier Dress, from 2009. I tried this on while I was in Japan, but didn't buy it. I bought it recently through a shopping service, GosuRori Order. They were really good, and it came extremely quickly - but - gosh it was expensive.

Worth it. This dress makes me feel like a princess. No matter what kind of posh place I visit, I'll always look good enough in Victorian Maiden. I'd visit the Queen in this dress.

This photo was taken the day before a bit percussion concert last term. This was the dress rehearsal. And that's Charles.

Cute new earrings!

Look at these cute earrings I made! Made with rose beads from Japan, and some glass pearls. I strung them together with fishing line and glued them onto earring backs.

Lappy

I got a new lappy! Isn't it cute! It's a new Apple MacBook. Super great compared to my old iBook G4. I bought it because it's new and fast and shiny, but also because it has an inbuilt camera. I will need that so that I can do video chats with Charles when he moves overseas in TWO FRIGGING MONTHS. He's also visiting America for 2 and a half weeks starting this Saturday, so it will be good for then too.

He bought me a laptop sleeve to go with it - it's bright pink! Cuz I'm a GIRL!

Next I'm going to buy a cool laptop skin. I really want this beautiful Snow White one. I used to really like Snow White as a kid and I think it's clever usage of the apple logo.

I looked for the Snow White skin on Etsy and found lots of different sellers selling the same thing, with even the same photo! How do I know if they're legit? I'm pretty sure you're not allowed to sell something on Etsy unless it's vintage or handmade. They could all be handmade, but not all by the same person! Something weird is going on. We'll see what happens when I buy it.

But I might have to wait until I get my tax return back. I just bought a laptop, you see, and I'm kind of feeling the pinch.

Labyrinth Party! Costumes!

About a week ago, I held a Labyrinth themed birthday party. Labyrinth is my favourite movie ever! I don't know why I didn't think of having a Labyrinth party earlier. Some people might think it's a bit juvenile for a 23rd party. I guess I just like dressing up? I should say that I got a lot of useful pictures from the Labyrinth page on this website - the Costumer's Guide to Movie Costumes. It's a wonderful website! It has pictures of costumes from a lot of great movies, and sometimes instructions on how to make them. It's super great, I can't recommend it enough.

Jareth and Sarah in a promo photo from the film. This is how I decided to dress Charles and myself - as Jareth and Sarah from the crystal ballroom scene. Note puffy sleeves and huge dress on Sarah, and ridiculous hair and blue sparkly coat for Jareth.

Here's our costumes. I was a bit skeptical about Jareth wearing cons, but whatever. My entire costume is handmade except for my singlet top, and I also made Charles' tiny jacket. I made it while he wasn't there, which is why it's tiny. I tend to think I'm a normal size, which means I think everything else is tiny. Turns out that I'm the tiny one. His jacket was made out of stretch crushed velvet, which was fortunate.

A Jareth still from the movie, including mask.

My Jareth with his mask from the masquerade. I made this mask using a plastic mask from Lincraft and paper mache. I made the nose bigger and gave it some character around the eyes. I completely forgot about the horns and hand thing on Jareth's mask, but I did remember to paint it red. It's also glittery.

Sarah's dress in the film. It's amazing. It's sparkly gauzy fabric with lots of embroidery on the bodice, and sleeves that are twice puff'd. It's a highly horizontal dress.

Me. After that photo of Sarah this looks so saggy in comparison! I think to have the right level of puff in the skirt you need some hardware under there.

Each part of the "dress" is separate. It's hardly a dress at all! The skirt is basically a long rectangle of gathered satin overlayed by a long rectangle of gathered organza.

The sleeves are a loose fitted sleeve down to my hands, with a faux puffed sleeve on top. I made that by making two wide cylinders - one organza for the outside, and the other some cotton I had around. I gathered them at the top and bottom with elastic and voila! In the film she had sleeves with TWO puffs, somehow.

The bodice is the best. I made a corset! Well, the facade of a corset. It's not lined, but it is partly boned. The fabric is some beautiful off white cathedral satin (I don't know why cathedral, it's just quite thick and luscious). It was a remnant at Lincraft - cheap! I'm going to do a further post about this corset, so no more here. It was rad. Underneath that I wore a lacy singlet top, and the lace bits spilled over the corset top.

How many pieces is that? 9 pieces, if you include the giant petticoat I wore underneath!

Me eating a fairy cake in front of Sir Didymous. I tried to have Sarah hair, but it's difficult with a fringe and without dark hair or a team of stylists. I curled it with my curling iron, used a BumpIt (look it up) to create height, some bobby pins to hold it back from my face, and a LOTof hairspray.

Despite my dress not looking as huge as Sarah's, it was still massive. It was really hard for me to move around during the party, and I got quite puffed when I had to get out of a chair etc. I can't imagine what Jennifer Connely went through.

I also made a kind of "shaft of hands". I dyed some latex gloves green (as best I could), stuffed them, and stapled them onto a black cloth. Glitter was applied liberally. I clipped it to the front wire door. It actually looked really dumb, but Charles has taken a good photo here that makes it look spoooooky!

Lots of other people came and dressed up for my party. I had a really great time! A weird thing is that I was the only one who made my costume. It's weird - whenever I have to dress up for something in particular, I just make whatever I have to wear. I forget that nobody else thinks this way. It's often a lot easier than searching the shops for what you want - all the shops ever have is what's in fashion right now. Which is whyyyyyyyy I was the only ballroom Sarah at my party!

Thanks for looking!

Complaints Choir!

So today I remembered a cool thing that I saw in Japan!

Complaints Choirs!

We went to an exhibition in the Mori Building in Roppongi (am i right charles? i forget), and there was a cool video of choirs from all over the world complaining about stuff. My favourite was the Birmingham Complaints choir. So good! Go to the website and click the video link next to each choir. Here's the direct link to the video for the Birmingham Choir.

I want my money back

My job's like a cul-de-sac

And the bus is too infrequent at 6:30

Why don't they pay me more?

Life was good before

And I'm thirsty!

I recall that the Sweden one was cool too. I forget the others! Probably rad.

The situation was this: we'd just come through a grisly exhibition about I dunno, death or something, and there was this theatrette with music coming out. After being weirded out, grossed out, and in the middle of having some kind of existential crisis about the previous subject matter, I cracked up and couldn't stop watching for like an hour. It was amazing. Then it was sunset and we looked at Tokyo from a million feet in the air.

Here's a link to our blog post about it from back in January! It has pictures!

In other news, I recently had a themed birthday party. The theme - Labyrinth! I dressed as Sarah in the ballroom scene (obviously). It's only 5 minutes of the film, but it has the coolest costumes! I'm going to share pictures of that costume in my next blag. It was all handmade.