It has been a very very busy month. I can't believe I have not posted in so long.

So, today I am going to share pics of my in progress rebuild of my breastplate. I am so tired. I finally got my stuff out of storage. I had to empty the Pod container all by myself, and ever since my joints have been randomly failing. I can't do anything to make it better. Carrying around heavy things is something on the rheumatologists no-no list. But Pods really soaked me on "fees" and I had no money left to hire anyone to help. I don't really know many people here, and didn't feel like guilting my coworkers to help, as I have to work with them in a small room in the middle of a noisy data center. This morning I was going up the stairs to do my hair before work, coffee cup in hand, when my right ankle and left knee gave out and I fell down the stairs and spilled my coffee everywhere. Da kitteh was SOOO excited. She found the biggest spot and hunched over it, growling if I got close.

Did I mention my kitty LOOOOVES coffee? She is so funny. The first time I drank coffee when she was living with me, she kept trying to put her head in my coffee cup. I explained to her that coffee is for closers, and she was a kitty so would never be a closer. She looked at me a second, meowed loudly then walked away. Ever since she has been desperate to get coffee. She will sneak over my shoulder and try to drink from my cup. She will sneak in the side and try drink it if I hold it too low. I have to hold on to my cup or put my hand over the top or she is drinking it. :/ I dropped some coffee beans. She found some I missed. She licks them or sucks on them...never chews them. I thought I confiscated all of them, but from time to time she shows up with one and starts tearing around the house.

Anyway....

So here ya go. I decided to tear apart my breastplate because it was ugly and not very functional. I couldn't find my dome patterns, so I just cut apart the old ones and used them as a pattern. I think it looked ok.

Then I took some armatur wire and plied it and made a frame. I used a glue gun to glue the boob cups in, then started to cover it with 2mm foam. I haven't finished that part yet. My idea for the rest of it is to cover it with kelp leaves. I was originally going to sculpt kelp leaves out of Foam-Mo. However that did not work out so well. So I ordered som plastic ones off Amazon, and I have started spraying them down with black primer.

So it has been a few weeks. I have actually been sort of productive. Along with working full time, trying to get my household sort of settled, studying to take the AZ 100 exam, and trying to finish my schoolwork, I have also been inspired to work on my Talleg cosplay.

If you remember, I kind of was at a standstill for a while. I am struggling to make the spoon maille work. I am struggling to make the chaine maille work. The breastplate was a travesty.

So...I was watching a Twitch streamer make some of her EVA foam armor, and I got inspired. I also got inspired to pull out the makeup and play around with it.

I have never been good with makeup. As a teenager it annoyed me, and as an adult I just never got it. This does not help with doing cosplay makeup. At this point all I do IRL is some coverup from time to time and lipstick. To be fair I love dark lipstick. But that is about all I do.

So this is the 3rd time trying to make it work, and I think I am getting a bit closer to ok. Here are some before and after pics of this time.

Better. Not great yet though. I went a bit too heavy handed with the dark blue for contouring. Under the eye is supposed to be a bruise. Yeah....noooo. Looks like blood though, so I may use that technique. Just not for a bruise. I think it needs more yellow and purple, maybe. And a little less heavy handed. My lips are also very lopsided. That is because they are. Looks like I have had a stroke or something. It is waaaay more pronounced in the makeup. I need to learn how to make that less obvious.

And the worst thing...the eyes. I have always reacted badly to eye makeup. I finally found stuff that will be ok, and I have no fucking clue how to apply it appropriately. The blue face makeup needs to get closer, and I need to learn how to do eyeliner.

I have a blue wig that goes with this, but I could not find it before I took the pics. I am still unpacking moving boxes and hadn't found that particular box yet. I did last night. I guess I need to try this again so I can see the full effect. I also need to get finishing/fixing spray and face primer. Those are both easily doable though. Just not till the next paycheck, as I am still trying to get my Pod outta hock. Well, not hock technically, just out of storage. They are expecting way more than they quoted when I first started storing it. I am hoping to get it and have all the contents by the end of this month.

SO the next thing I am working on is redesigning and redoing the breastplate. Because she is water genasi, everything in her armor is nuatical/water themed. I was watching this Twitch person making her breast armor, and got inspired to try something new. I found this stuff :

That is all for now. I will update as things progress. Which is slowly right now as I work through a ton of life stuff.

Soooo....been nearly a month, once again. I am now all moved and partially settled in. I haven't done much right now. I need to revisit Talleg's outfit. I need to decide the next one and start on it.

I have been streaming again on Twitch, under Teaweaselstopmo. Feelf ree to come by and see. It has been mainly gaming, as I still need to get my shit together for my cosplay.

But really, for now, that is it. Not much else. Weebly iPad app has beena cting up. If I can get it to go I will do some more updating at work today.

So, as I suspected, I have not had time or energy to blog or to create. Job, w00t. :P I do have an income, which is nice. Also....I am moving. Tomorrow I go sign the final paperwork and pay my deposit for a townhouse over in Beaverton. I am excited to have my own space again. As far as housing in Portland goes, it is fairly large for the price. It is fricken hard to find a place to live here. People were either not getting back to me or they would disqualify me over the phone because I have been at my job such a short time and it has been a bit since I last rented, and before that I spent 10 years going from one room rent to another, not really renting my own place. But someone finally took pity on me, and I will be moving the end of this week. Yeay!

That means that once I get settled, I will start doing more cosplay stuff. I will do more creative streams on Twitch. I will play more games. I will be able to settle in a bit. I also have decided to try FAWM. YET again. I probably won't finish this year either, but it is worth a shot.


Also....KITTEH!! I mentioned her before. She is cute and intelligent and funny and frustrating, and a total love. I am happy to have her in my life. I am really really glad I was able to find a cat friendly place to live. It would break my heart to have to leave her behind. Because I really don't have much to add here, you get kitteh pics.

Also...Merry Christmas, if you celebrate it. I hope yours was a good one.

I missed the whole month of November. :( To be fair it was a very busy month. I did not really get any arty stuff done. I did some photography. But I really had to concentrate hard on school and getting a job. Which proved successful. I am now employed. I started last Wednesday. Now I have to get ready to move. So this month will probably be light as well.

I did get some ok photos this month, and I tried my hand at compositing photos. I intend to do more. Here is a bit of what I did.

I also took some spider pics. I have a spider living just outside my window I have named Jeff. Every time I approach the window his legs start flailing. I was watching The Grimm Adventures of Billy and Mandy at the time I noticed. He has a giant Fleur de Lis on his back. So pretty.

Also I have an addition to my family. Her name is Grainne Mhaol, after the Irish female pirate. Pronounced Grawnye Wail. She is a cutie and I can go on and on and on about her. I will just post a couple of pics and will drone on about her in a different post.

It has been a while again. I have been so busy trying to find a job I haven't had time to do much else.

I have lost a lot of wieght, as a consequence clothes fit me that did not before. Last summer I ordered a bunch of clothes online that were really really cheap, but despite being size 3x they didn't even remotely fit. They were more like 14-16, which is in the Large/Xlarge range. At this point things are starting to actually fit. This weekend is Kumoricon, and I haven't had time to do much cosplay building. I was just planning on going, playing DnD and taking cosplay pictures. But this jacket now sort of fits, and it is kind piratey....maybe? It had a really crappy zipper on it that wouldn't stay together even if I zipped it up without putting it on so there was no pull on it.

For some reason I didn't think of getting a pic before I started working on it. First I just cut off the zipper. Then I reinforced the button area. I have pinned all the buttons on, and sewed about 3 of them. I will then make loops to hook over the buttons. I have no idea what else I will do with it. What will I wear under it? Skirt? Pants? Will it easily lend itself to being turned into a cosplay for an existing character? I dunno. It is 3/4 length sleeves. I have a ton of silver buttons. Originally I was going to put buttons on both sides and lace it together. However I do not have enough of the same kind of buttons, so I decided to do the button loop thing. I have these pirate skull and crossbones buttons. Not enough for the sleeve cuff buttons, but that is ok. I will put dragon buttons on the sleeve cuffs. The color matches. Sort of. I also found a bunch of Halloween themed stuff I bought on sale last year. I have no idea what I will do with them yet, but I am sure I will think of something.

I need to get back to job hunting. If I come up with something cool I will post it.

Sooo....

Still looking for a job. Trying to get through school stuff. That has been my life. :/ I finally passed the Comptia A+ cert. So yeah....

Yesterday I was able to work on playing around with painting some cabashons. Just some playing around, trying to de-stress myself. I like the one in the upper left corner the best. I put some dark sparkly orange on it, then blotted some of it off wiht a paper towel. Them I put some blood red on it and blotted some of it off. Then I backed it with a dark brown. I think I need to make more of those.

I also have been working on making underworld terrain for DnD. I kind of like how this one turned out.

For the month of October I decided to try to a photo a day challenge. Sometimes it has worked, but a lot of times they are meh. I got myself together a list and posted it on Discord. I have only missed one day so far. Here are a few of them.

So I have a ton of holes in my armor that look really bad. I am running out of time to complete this, as the con is 7th of Sept. So I decided to just try to make some easy simple 4-in-1 chain maille to fill in those spots.

All I have is shiny aluminum 16 gage wire, and I have no more money to buy any, so that is what I used. I am in the middle of the second sleeve. I figured I would make a strap to tie them together and strap em to my person. That may not be what happens after I try it out, but that is the plan.

The principle behind the 4-in-1 is to put 4 rings onto 1 ring, then attach those 5 ring sets together to make the piece. It took me a while to get it, but after I finally wrapped my head around the concept it went fairly smoothly.

I am running out of rings, and I have completely run out of wire. I still have torso and legs to cover. So I have some 18 gage wire, so I guess that is what I will make the lower body chain maille out of. It'll be fine, right? I still intend to finish the spoon maille. I just haven't had time and I won't have time to complete it before the con. This is just intirim stop gap measure maille.

Neglectful blogger has been neglectful. But busy.

Talleg is supposed to be done for Rose City Comic Con, which is here in a couple of weeks. I do not think I will get the spoon maille done. But everything else is progessing nicely.

Mainly done, I suppose. The vambraces need leather straps and buckles. I am waiting for leather strapping to come in from Amazon. I am also going to replace the belt strap with leather before I attach that belt buckle. I am working on the thigh armor, which will look exactly like the vambraces only thigh sized. And I will rivet it in the middle as well as the edges. That too will need straps. Then I will just need to decide how to do the upper arms and torso. Cause those will eventually be the spoon maille. I may just try doing some kind of intirim maille look thing for now. I also need to get my +1 mace done. I am making it light up and it will be a flange mace with angry waves as the flanges. I am kind of excited.

But seriously...I am really really happy with how the gorget turned out. That is the last pic in that bunch of pics. I had a few false starts, but it got there in the end. I used a SCA leather gorget pattern and modified it. The first one I did out of 2mm foam. It looked great, except the trim looked like it had been done by a drunk person and it felt like it was too flimsy to last long.

I opted to use real rivets. They are cheap leather rivets, meant for decoration only not real work, but they will do. For $8 I got a set that had a hole cutter, 30 rivets and caps, an anvil and a setter. Amazon has those cheap buckles for 50 for $10. They are all different sizes, which is what I needed. I intend to use them for the vambraces, leg armor, etc.

OK this is getting long, so I am going to leave it here. One day soon I will do a post talking about the silver gilders wax I used to make the armor shiney. But for now, I need to get back to it.