The Prop (And Armor) Blog

Hi folks. In the past month, a lot of things converged to make life really difficult for me. I haven't been taking on many new projects since I've had my nose to the grindstone finishing up old ones. (I have about a half dozen on the verge of being sent out. I'm just getting hung up on finishing up the details. I'd say the last 10 percent of any project ends up taking at least 50 percent of the effort.)

My mother's in the hospital again and I'm super worried this time. I regret I haven't been able to get down to the Cities in months to see her. (I have to go down to the Cities now to get more styrene since I'm almost out. I actually bought out two local stores' supply of hotglue (that's how much work I've been doing lately.) And now I expect the price of the stuff to go up, thanks to the rising price of gas.

I'm sorry I haven't been more responsive. I was taking pictures of a new prop project to make a tutorial out of, but I realized I was ruining the zoom lens on my camera (that and I was running out of time to make the thing.) I wish I could do more tutorials. I have hundreds of hours of propmaking footage that I've filmed, but I've yet to be able to edit everything together. Hopefully I'll be able to at some point...

Sorry about that. A project I was working on ran overlong. (It involved body suits and scale armor--a good rule of thumb to follow when trying to calculate the amount of time either kind of project will take to make, is to take your initial estimate and triple it. Twice.) Consequently, I haven't had much sleep lately or much time to work on non-work related projects. (Oh, and I was working so hard that at one point, my hotglue gun exploded. It overheated, went POOF! and started on fire. Luckily, I had been smart enough to connect it to an extension cord which I could easily disconnect from the wall.) This is not the first time this has happened to me. I go through about 3 or 4 hotglue guns a year but they rarely ever explode on me....

I've been in a cocoon of panic and overwork. I need to answer e-mail and will get that done as soon as I can.

Really weird weather lately. Snow will not stop. Starting to wonder if it isn't Ragnarok already....

Been trying to get my sleep schedule back on track after this last project. (I've been doing a lot of experimental stuff with wiring and the installing of LED panels and string lights. My versatool has a soldiering attachment, so that's come in really handy.) Still, it's slow going for me and I've had to put in a lot of extra time. I still am taking videos of myself making various projects, although God knows when I'll have the time to edit them into something resembling coherency. For now, I'm just storing them on an external harddrive which I call "The Vault of Limbo."

My internet connection is still acting wonky even after I had a cable technician come out and inspect the connection in my apartment and outside of the building. If there's something fishy going on within the walls, I'll have to get the landlord involved, which is something I really don't want to do. Not sure what kind of architectural-related magic mojo could be interfering with my signal. Maybe someone's illegally spliced into my cable somewhere....

I have no idea if I'm coming down with a cold or if my body is generally just fatigued and "cough-y". This is always the time of year when I feel the worst off and our January weather isn't really helping things. (My sinuses are waving tiny little white flags and are trying to escape through my nasal cavity. Feh.)

A few weeks ago, I posted a few things on my Etsy page:

https://www.etsy.com/shop/amethystscloset

Mostly buckles and corset hardware. I still have ton of ball joint doll stuff that I haven't sold, although I'd like to do so at a venue where I could promote it a little better. Preferably at some real life event like a convention or something. Are there any big ball joint doll conventions in the Midwest that anyone knows of?

Me: Reads a forum. Sees something I don't agree with and decides to make a reply. Spends half hour of more precious and rare than gold free time formulating a well-reasoned argument in favor of my position.

I look and see that the forms below my entry have already been autofilled with my e-mail and login information.

I click "Post Comment"

See big Wordpress Logo. Below that: "You are being asked to login because dietzt@cloudnet.com is used by an account you are not logged into now. By logging in you'll post the following comment to [insert name of forum entry heading]"

Me: OHSHITOHSHITNOOO!!!!!!!!! *Returns to previous page*

"Leave a Reply" Written above blank form. Well-reasoned argument in favor of my position now in that Great Database in the Sky....

Lesson learned: Never attempt to post a forum comment without copying and pasting the entire thing into Notepad first. Also, Wordpress is designed and run by third stage syphilitic monkeys.

Forum designers: DON'T LET THE LOGIN INFO FORMS BELOW A COMMENT FORM AUTOFILL IF THE INFORMATION CONTAINED THEREIN ISN'T GOING TO LOG YOU IN! You wouldn't hand someone the keys to a car with no wheels, would you? Why would you DO something like this!!??? WHYYY!!!???

Livejournal may suck as well, but at least it never pulled this kind of crap on me...

Am answering e-mail and finishing up long running projects to mail. Will get to styrene inquiries as soon as I can. Had a great birthday with my friends and got some free food and monies. Thanks for the well wishes, everybody!

*Copies. Pastes into Notepad*

Just letting you know I'm still alive and will try to get all of my e-mail answered soon. I've got my nose to the grindstone trying to finish up my old projects. I took time off from my outside job to try and finish up everything I have on my plate (and back burner) before spring and summer convention season sets in (as well as bridal-and-prom-dress-season, which is when things at the outside job tend to get busy.)

Wanna know how busy I've been around here lately? So busy that I actually cleaned out every store within a mile radius of hotglue. (Every project I do these days seems to require at least three packages. Sigh.)

Did some interesting things down in the Cities this past week. (Some top secret stuff that you'll find out about eventually.) I also picked up some more styrene. (I will answer all e-mail inquiries as soon as I can. The price of styrene and postage went up so I might have to adjust the shipping prices on my styrene price list a little.)

I'm finishing up about 6 or 7 things now. Not sure how I get into the habit of finishing a bunch of things at a time. It makes actually getting stuff out the door kind of bothersome. It's easy to spend an entire day just packing things and not doing much else. Which makes me feel as though I haven't really accomplished anything for the day at all. Sigh.

It is so flippin COLD. I always turn into a Sasquatch this time of year, developing extra layers of fat, hair, and wearing the kind of clothing which makes me look like an Eskimo with a cocoon fetish.) It's tough to create a good impression on someone when you look like that. -_-...

Enough complaining. For now.

I was hoping to go down to the Cities this week and pick up more styrene. (It's supposed to be freezing rain followed by ungodly liquid nitrogen cold in the next couple of days, which will make even getting into my car a task worthy of a Greek mythological figure.) I am so not keen on winter. It's like living in the slippy, slidey ice level of some platform video game, with an added "stay outdoors too long and you start taking damage" game mechanic. Only it's REAL LIFE and YOU CAN'T ESCAPE FROM IT. I suppose it beats living in a real life Sewer Level, but not by much.

I had a slight accident (my wire shelving unit collapsing in on me) that finally prompted me to clean my apartment. I also found some very cheap storage tubs for sale at Menard's and a friend sold me a thin DVD shelf which I could place in my hall and use to open up some more space in my work room. I also finally broke down and cut up my half-finished Companion Cube table (which I hadn't worked on since 2008.) I really needed the space and I was able to salvage most of the craft foam, styrene and foamboard that I had already put into the project. I replaced the Cube with a thrift store card table (which I could place storage tubs under.) I saw an excellent cage-style rack (with shelves and bars from which a person could hang clothing) but it was pretty expensive for a thrift store find (and I'd already spent about half my latest paycheck on storage/shelves this week.)

Need to improve my sleep schedule. Waking up only to find it getting dark two hours later isn't fun for us non-vampires.

Been busy with my projects--trying out new methods and materials. (Well, better to experiment with those kinds of things now than struggle with them during the Summer Convention Rush.) It's been awhile since I tried my hand at sculpting and silicone mold-building, but here are some results:







You can guess what game/series those were from, can't you?

I did revise my armormaking book while I was home during the Christmas break. It was mostly updating links and references. I'm trying to finish book five, but I've had to play catchup after Xmas break. I did get some nice stuff for Christmas--money mostly, since I have little need for material things (other than shelving and storage boxes.) My employer did a clean-through of our workspace and gave me a ton of old buckles she didn't want any longer. (Mostly plain utility buckles--perfect for making belts and straps for armor.) She also gave me some netted and ruffled petticoats so that was really nice. (Since THOSE things can cost a ton even if you find them in a thrift store.)

Don't like winter. Car froze solid the other day and I had to take out a glovebox fuse just to get the interior lights of my car to shut off and not drain my battery. If we can get a warm day one of these days, I'm hoping it will thaw my car doors out so they'll return to normal. At least I have an engine block warmer in this car (not that that helps when I forget to plug it in...)

Aww. The 1-1/2 year run of snowless winter was nice while it lasted. We got ourselves about 8-9 inches in the recent blizzard. It's supposed to get cold tonight and turn all of the snow into concrete. I've already cleaned off my car and I managed to locate the block heater inside it, but I'm guessing it will do one of two things - (a)not work or (b)set my car on fire. I do hope I'm joking there.

I finished a big casting project, but since it was supposed to be a gift for somebody, I can't post pics until after Christmas. Been working on about 6 projects simultaneously (which is always fun.) Thanks to the nature of enamel and epoxy putty (which I'm using a LOT of lately), I can only work on each project a little at a time before I have to set it aside to draw, harden, whatever...

Christmas came a little early for me. My boss at the alterations shop decided to throw away the vast collection of buckles her predecessor had saved up over the years and I volunteered to take them home. I go through a ton of buckles, especially in armoring projects, and I managed to snag a huge amount of doll sized buckles. (I've sorted through all of the weird buckles and clamps which I don't think I'll need and I was thinking of placing them for sale on etsy, along with a bunch of other stuff I really should get rid of. Once I have the time.... -_-)

I've been doing a lot of projects involving lighted panels lately. (I wish thatscoolwire.com would get with the 21st century and accept paypal already. It's because of businesses like them that I have to keep a credit card around. (A Ring of Power would have a far less ominous influence on my life... I'm always sooo tempted to use it, but I know I shouldn't, unless I know the only alternative is being eaten by Ringwraiths...)

Hi folks! The Luna Plushie auction went well and I hope to be able to make another plushie at some point in the future, (although seeing as how it took about seven months to make the last one, I'm not optimistic that I'll get it done before Christmas.) . I'm currently working on my backlog, trying to clear up some long running projects. (These are the hard, labor intensive projects that seemed to slow down time itself whenever I tried to work on them, hence the reason I put em off for so long.) I'm currently making another Zelda's Light Bow, using a totally different method from the one I used to make my first Zelda Bow, ....aaaand the new method turned out to not really save any time at all. At least the materials I used to make the bow this time around are a lot lighter and more durable than the plaster-embedded gauze I used to make the first one.

Christmas decorations are out. You might be able to find them at your local craft store or at any hardware or department store that sells Christmas decorations. PLASTIC ROUND CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS. (a href="http://consign2design.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/P1110990.jpg"> Like these ones.</a> Ones that are 10" or bigger. Why is this important? Because it allows you to make costumes with shoulder pads like these if you want.

I have literally HOURS of process video that I've taken of myself making projects but I can't find the time to slap any tutorials together. I got a new donated harddrive so I have room to store the video until the day I can figure out what to do with it. Sigh...