I had hoped to wait until I'd finished a few more projects, but ebay decided to have a special today whereby it allowed you to post 5 auctions with no insertion fees. So I've posted a few items here:

http://shop.ebay.com/aa_chan/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p4340

(It was tough to do, what with me being down at my parent's house and all of my images and html editing software at home on my computer, so I'll try to polish up the auctions once I get back. If you have any questions about the items I'm offering, please let me know at dietzt@cloudnet.com.) Hope everybody has a happy holiday!

This is what I want for Christmas this year. Even though her head is big. Like, Nancy Reagan big. (Seriously, that woman always scared me when she came on the news.) I was thinking I could auction off the doll accessories I'm currently making or hold a raffle of some sort to be able to afford her. (Or I could just keep my money and use it to fix the million or so things wrong with my life OR buy a vacuum chamber for my resin casting which would probably do me a lot better in the long run.) But Christmas is a time for dreaming of impractical presents and I can think of none less practical than this so ... *shrug.*

I'm working extra hard because I want to get my regular projects done while making some doll stuff to sell on ebay. (This, while everyone still has their Christmas present spending money.) Sleep and I really haven't seen much of each other recently....

I received a notice from www.lulu.com saying Vol. 1 of my Prop and Armor compendium series had gone ker-flooey for some reason. (It was those dam data vampires from Dimension Q again, no doubt.) I reuploaded the book file and you should be able to order the softcover book again, if you wanted to do such a thing and weren't able to before. My webpages should all be working now, although I'll notice a broken image here and there that appears upon refreshing. (Don't know what that's about, but at least all of the links should work. I hope.)

1. Make him a miniature cabbie hat.
2. Make him tinted John Lennon glasses.



I managed to find the desolate corner of Crafts Direct where the colored plastic film sheets were being sold. I used said films to tint the mini-spectacles that I made today. (I also found out a way to apply a layer of shiny gold monokote to the outside of the lenses to give the illusion of gold wire rims.)

Along with my BJD's winter outfits (that I'm working on) I'm also making some extra things to sell on ebay at some indeterminate point in the future. (I've also had someone commission a hat and some other clothing items for their Weylin so...yay! I've got an excuse to work on doll stuff now!)

I found some plastic doll spectacles while out fabric shopping today. These things are normally too huge for SD sized ball joint dolls but I discovered that you can easily grind the lenses down if you have a dremel tool with a sanding attachment. You can also make nosepads for the glasses using hotglue (this adds a touch of realism to the glasses and helps them stay on the bridge of your doll's nose:)



I think they turned out really well, considering. I'm thinking of getting more doll spectacles, resizing them and selling them at some point in the future. (Poor Rufus will have to endure looking like a nerd from now on. Sigh...)


It looks as though my site is working again. I still need to go through it all and fix any broken images that need fixing and I'll try to get that done in the near future. I'm still working on the pepakura armor tutorial (it's taking me forever to sand and spray those roundy parts of the helmet) and I want to post more prop pics here as well.

Oh, and I used to think that the craigslist.org Rants and Raves section was the damp, stinky-bum infested, urine-soaked back alley of the internet, but I'm starting to think that Youtube comment sections for political/history themed videos may in fact be worse. You want to see a festering, racist cesspit of stupid? Go to any video that mentions the dropping of the atomic bomb or the Holocaust. Even if most of the commenters are just trolling, why would you waste your time doing such a thing? Plant a tree, donate to a charity--do something USEFUL with your time. Stop wasting it on Youtube and polluting the world with your idiocy!

That is all.

I like to think I'm somewhat tech-savvy, but I have no idea what's going on with my websites now. I'm really really starting to wish I had just sucked it up and paid the hundred bucks to my old webserver provider, because moving to a new server (even one that only cost 1/3rd the price) just isn't proving to be worth the frustration and possible loss of business I've endured this past month. (I know you've all tried to help me with your advice, and I know that the problem might even resolve itself with a little time, but I'm just...really wishing that I hadn't changed things.) I'm guessing that the problem isn't with the new webspace itself, but rather, with the domain name transfer, which seems to have odd, random effects on those browsers that view my page. There seems to be little rhyme or reason to what you'll see when you click on my cosplay website at any given time. I noticed almost all of the images missing from my armormaking tutorial page--I checked and saw that not all of the images had made the transfer to the tutorial folder on my webspace. I've uploaded the images to the new webserver but it doesn't seem to have made a damn lick of difference. I don't know when or if my pages will ever start working again, but I'm not looking forward to having to remake my entire site if they don't..

I tried uploading some new costumes to my online gallery. Here they are:

Baiken from Guilty Gear

Rika from Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni

Adult Princess Zelda from Ocarina of Time



The links and images should work since I uploaded them directly to the IP address. Oh, and the weather finally stopped being beastly long enough for me to take some scenic pictures of my ball joint dolls at Quarry park:




I made everything the dolls are wearing, including the sweaters:



I was originally going to try and make their sweaters myself from scratch but, after two days of frustration and several do-overs, I found myself staring at a crappily knitted, hole-filled piece of fabric that was about 3" x 1". This would not do. Fortunately, I discovered that you could make a pretty decent doll sweater by strategically cutting fabric from a full-size people sweater and serging the pieces together. (You need to use a sweater that's thin enough and has a small enough cable pattern so it doesn't look clunky on the doll.) I even had enough fabric left over to make a few extra sweaters and hats, so I'll probably be selling those on ebay pretty soon, once I catch up on my ongoing prop projects.

You can find more pictures from my doll photoshoot in this directory:

http://69.65.3.194/~dietzt01/dollpics/dollsweaterpics/

(Oh, and I'm still working on that handmade clay ball joint doll that I made all those molds for. I found out the neck depression wasn't deep enough to fit on the neck of other styles of dolls, and since I want people to be able to buy just the head if they want to, I have to fix that and then recast the whole head. Again. *Sigh.* I should have taken up a less exacting and mentally demanding hobby than jointed doll-making. Like Rocket Science.)

It seems as though my domain name has been transferred finally, although a lot of my links and images just aren't working anymore. I'll have to sort this out and maybe do some recoding. I've been having connection issues as well for some reason but I'll try and stay current on everything.

Actually wool isn't that bad a fabric to work with. It's when you have to sew with it on your lap and it gets all scratchy and starts to overheat you that it gets annoying. And I'm already annoyed enough what with my website still not working properly. It's got until this time next week to shape up otherwise I'm going to have to throw another unintimidating internet tantrum (after which I'll probably grit my teeth and start recoding everything with grim, defeated resignation.) Sounds like a fun way to close out a week.

My Renaissance BJD Pavilion Auction ends tomorrow on the 5th. Here are some pictures of the tent:








Dolls not included of course. I also found some fancy hairclips while rummaging through some post-Halloween sales and found, after removing the clips, that they made pretty good doll wigs:





I may post these for sale on ebay in the near future. Gotta finish hand-sewing that wool coat that's been the bane of my existence for the past three days. Sigh. I'm also still working on that Pepakura armor tutorial (just trying to primer and sand the curved parts of the helmet) and I have some e-mail to answer. Please e-mail me at dietzt@cloudnet.com if you have any questions about the items I'm selling...

My website isn't working anymore. Again. I did get a confirmation e-mail from my new webhost saying that they registered my domain name so that's a hopeful sign anyway. Might take a few days before things start working again though. What I want to do is post a new tutorial I'm working on--I'm trying to make futuristic looking armor with Pepakura paper patterns, tagboard and styrene. (I'm hoping this will boost the demand for the styrene I'm selling.) I'm also trying to finish up some long-running projects that have been taking up space.

Here's the link to my current ebay auctions:
http://shop.ebay.com/aa_chan/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p4340

Hope everyone had a good Halloween. A friend gave me a huge bag of parade candy that he had been saving to pass out on Halloween. (Mmmm. 4 month old candy. I mean, YUCK, 4 month old candy. Except for those tiny tootsie roll toffies. Those are still good. Those are indestructable. In fact, I think they were all made in one big batch at the beginning of time and have been packaged and doled out to humanity slowly over the centuries. It wouldn't surprise me.)

That is, my website should be working now, as I've finally figured out how to change the nameservers with my current domain host. I thought at some point the process was going to involve my having to sacrifice a dozen black pullets to the Almighty Gods of Internet Bureaucracy, but thankfully all I had to do was skim some technobabble-loaded e-mails and punch a few keys. (I can't say that my websites are working absolutely perfectly yet, as I noticed a few links on my cosplay site not functioning as usual. I'll give it a few days for the whole domain situation to sort itself out before I start adding content again.)

Oh, and I've learned a sad but important lesson today. If you want to send something like this to Canada:



You probably want to send it via Registered Mail or some really uber-expensive, uber-trackable way because it WILL get stuck in customs for a month while panicky Canadian authorities try to figure out if you're a major arms dealer trying to flood their country with rusty machetes. (Have I mentioned that this Jason machete is plastic and has about as much chance of cutting your skin as a semi-melted marshmallow peep?) I suppose it does look rather menacing under an X-Ray but come on! How long does it take to determine that an object is plastic anyway? You'd think just lifting the package would be enough of a clue. Real metal knife = heavy. Plastic knife = light.

It just shows the danger of shipping realistic looking weapons across national borders. You would think that I would know this lesson by now, except that most of the weapons I typically make tend to look more like something produced by the Whammo! corporation than something you'd actually use to kill someone with. As such, Customs tends to ignore them.

I'm selling more stuff on ebay this week. (I broke down and listed my yaoi doujinshi and Zelda armor for sale and included some BJD stuff.) I also included a very expensive book on how to print comics, if you're the type of person who insists on doing it themselves and can make hide or hair of all the technojargon contained within. Here's my link to the auctions:

http://shop.ebay.com/aa_chan/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p4340

And here's a slapdash yet instructive Youtube video showing what I've got for sale (yes, there's a video there despite what the blank black screen would have you believe):



Thank you Windows Movie Maker, for making this possible...

Well, my old webhost finally deleted my old webspace today. I had thought that, upon their doing so, my domain name would somehow magically transfer to my new webhost providers. After umpteen hours of waiting for it to do so, I began rooting through the confirmation/information e-mails my new webhost provided me with. It turns out the transferring process is a little more complicated than I thought it would be. And it will apparently take about 7 days for the transfer to take effect once I do jump through all of the necessary hoops.

Sigh.

So what do I do now? I've already uploaded all of my old pages and images to my new website. But none of my page links work and I can't even put a "HEY I MOVED!" message on my business website to let people know what happened. (A more appropriate message to post there would have been: "HEY! I'M A TECHNOLOGY-CHALLENGED DUNCE WHO THINKS THAT THE INTERNETS ARE A SERIES OF TUBES WITH ELVES INSIDE OF THEM WHO AUTOMATICALLY DO WHAT YOU WANT THEM TO DO WITHOUT YOU EVEN HAVING TO TELL THEM TO DO IT. I CAN COUNT TO POTATO! XDDDDDD!!!!!" )

Sigh.

So anyway, if you have any questions for me about anything, please let me know at dietzt@cloudnet.com. I hope to have everything up and running and functioning again as soon as possible.

Thanks!
Teresa (AA)