Wednesday WIP - May I

I've been wondering over the last couple of weeks if I really wanted to keep posting WIP updates every week. I'm not sure whether people read them or are really interested in what I post on them, but I have decided to keep posting them. It turns out, these posts have been very good for me, especially with longer running projects where sometimes it's hard to see that I really am making progress on things and it's really easy to get bogged down in everything. So, on to this week's update:

Beholder: This one is finished. I barely got it done in time for the Mom's Basement contest deadline. It won the contest! =D I'm very excited about that. The finished beholder can be viewed on DeviantArt.

Anime Art Girl: This one is also finished. You can see it here.

Blanket: I'm up to 12 green hexagons finished--only 2 since last week. This project is going to move pretty slow probably because most of this month is going to be spent on art and costumes in preparation for Animazement.


Mai and Zuko: Mai is now mostly finished. I still need to do something for her shoes. I ordered a wig, which will hopefully be here soon. My husband will be cosplaying Zuko. As can be seen in the photo, I've started his costume. The red undershirt is finished. His pants are mostly finished, but they're a real pain to get on his dress form. The tunic honestly looks better than in the picture. It's only knee length, even if it looks longer in the picture--we have trouble with his dress form staying at the appropriate height; it keeps wanting to slide down. I also still need to sew the sides up and add the gold decoration on the front. It'll look a lot better when that part is done; right now, it kind of looks like a brown blob. XD

Props: This is going to get a different spot for right now, since this is more my husband's project at the moment. He is making the butterfly swords that Zuko uses in the 3rd season, plus he's going to make a couple of Mai's throwing knives for me. =D I put the patterns down for the picture because it's a little hard to see the pencil markings on the wood.

Wednesday WIP - Edition 3

For all my whining about motivation on Twitter, it's actually been a fairly productive week. I'm going to start with updates on last week's projects, then move on to newer projects.

Eight of Wands: Howl is finished! View him in all his glory on DeviantArt. I will eventually post him on Etsy, but I've been waiting till I get a little closer to finishing the whole tarot set before starting to post them there--6 cards left, so I'll probably start posting the Tarot cards as soon as I finish with the "What Would ___ Do?" set.

Beholder: Still not finished with this one. It has 2 eyestalks now though. =D I really like how it's coming out so far. I'm going to aim for 6 eyestalks for now and see how that looks and add more if I need to; looking at it, I'm thinking 10 eyestalks would be too much. The eyestalks should also be somewhat poseable.


Blanket: Yes another one, and this one isn't exactly a new project. I was too lazy to get pictures last week, and it's been on hold for a while anyways. Technically I started this blanket last July. Pictured are samples of some of the hexagon pieces for this blanket. The sketch diagram thing should give an idea of what it will look like when it's finished. I'm working on the green hexagons right now; the yellow, orange, pink and purple ones are all finished. Future WIP updates, I'll probably only note the # of hexagons left since photographing the whole thing is a bit unwieldy to spread out to show progress--the completed blanket will be approximately 4.5 feet across. Right now for the green, I have 10 out of 36 hexes finished. After that, I have 30 blue and 43 white hexes.

Mai: This year at Animazement, my cosplay group is going as Avatar: The Last Airbender characters. I'm going as Mai, and my husband is going as Zuko. I think that couple is so adorable. =D I started this costume a couple of weeks ago, but this is the first week that I've had something to photograph aside from a pile of fabric. The pants are finished and her overcoat thing is almost finished--I just need to sew the gold buttons on the front and back. I also have the red shirt that will go under the overcoat mostly finished. It needs a zipper in the back (which is why it's not on the dress form--I got the back basted together, but had the wrong zipper. I have a new zipper now, but I haven't gotten it put on yet, and I didn't want to undo the basting just to take a picture for this blog post), lining added to the sleeves and the bottom edge hemmed. All in all, there's not much left. I still need to figure out how I'm going to do her shoes. I also really want to get a wig for her hair, but I may have to deal with my own hair--awkward since I don't have bangs. I am lacking time and, I'm really not all that good at dealing with wigs anyways.

Anime Artist Girl: This is a rough sketch of my design for the logo contest held by the Anime Artisan's team on Etsy. The contest is for members to design a boy and girl character to be the team logo. Once entries are in, members will vote on what they like best. I won't go into the number of versions I've trashed working on the boy design. XD

Wednesday WIP - Edition 2

The last week or so has been a bit slow for getting stuff done on my projects thanks to being sick for most of that time. However, it's not been completely useless.

I finished the blanket from the last WIP post. The finished blanket has been posted to my DeviantArt account.

Anime Tarot: Howl has moved beyond the concept phase. He's been drawn, and the lineart is finished. I need to clean it up... a lot. XD I also need to color it. =P Still, I'm really excited about the last part of the Wands suit. Starting with Howl here, most of the characters left are some of my favorites. I loved Howl's Moving Castle. It is my favorite Miyazaki movie, replacing Princess Mononoke. Some of the favorites that are coming include characters from Slayers, Trigun, and Code Geass.

Plushies: I still haven't finished that Moogle plushie. Lame, I know, especially all that's left is the wings... still. XD I've been a little distracted. I finished one custom plushie since then though. Plus, I'm working on a plushie submission for the Mom's Basement April craft contest. The theme is Dungeons and Dragons. From the start, I wanted to make a plushie something... I think the original plan had been along the lines of crochet dice (which I still might do) or something like that, but my husband gave me the idea of doing a Beholder--one of the archetypal monsters in the D&D system. It seemed like a fun challenge: make a hideous monster into a cute chibi plushie. =D I've got the base body and the central eye finished (not attached yet though). I'm working on the eye stalks and smaller eyes now--I sketched them into the photo to give a rough idea of what they might look like finished.

Hopefully by this time next week, both of these projects will be finished.