The original My Little Pony Build-a-Bear mane styling post is actually one of the most popular posts on my website, and because of that, I’ve had a number of people asking what to do if their pony’s mane is so horribly tangled that the only option seems to be to give said pony a little haircut. Well, before you go that route, take a look at this little tutorial on how to fix up an extremely messed up mane.
Oh, Scootaloo… Too many snuggles, eh?
Have you ever wanted your own t-shirt with your favorite My Little Pony’s cutie mark on it? (Or a t-shirt with a simple cartoon symbol, like Super Mario’s 1-Up mushroom or other relatively low-detail images) Well, here’s a tutorial for you – and all you need to know how to do is operate an iron!
Materials needed:
Step one: time to put those scissors to work.
The first thing you’ll want to do is cut out pieces of fabric a little larger than each different area of color in your image. I ended up with four pieces of fabric – blue, red, yellow, and white. While you’re working with the scissors, you’ll also want to cut apart your image – I cut mine into different sections based on the colors in Rainbow Dash’s cutie mark, and ended up with a cloud and three little lightning bolts. You’ll also want to get out your Heat ‘n Bond, too – and cut out pieces that are slightly smaller than the pieces of fabric you’re using.
Step two: Get out the iron!
Next, it’s time for the iron. Lay out your piece of fabric, then lay the Heat ‘n Bond, paper side up, onto your fabric and follow the instructions on the package to iron your Heat ‘n Bond to your fabric.
Step three: tracing our pieces!
The next thing we’ll do is get out our marker and trace our cutie mark pieces onto the Heat ‘n Bond paper.
Step four: cutting out the fabric shapes.
The next step has us cutting out the fabric shapes. It’s also not a bad idea to re-assemble the shape to make sure everything fits together – if not, you can trim things a little bit to make them fit.
Step five: lay out your design, and iron away!
This is where the fun stuff happens. Peel off the paper backing from your pieces of cutie mark, and lay out the pieces on your t-shirt where you want them to end up when you’re finished. Iron them onto your t-shirt according to the directions on the Heat ‘n Bond package – you may want to pay special attention to pointy ends that might come up if not properly adhered to your shirt.
Step six: wear your t-shirt!
Once your shirt’s cooled off a bit, and you’re sure everything’s securely ironed onto your t-shirt, now you can wear it!
This is a pretty fun way to make a unique looking t-shirt – I’ve worn my Pinkie Pie t-shirt to conventions and received lots of compliments on it, and some people even thought it was screen printed – when I told them I did it with fabric and Heat ‘n Bond, they were amazed! And as I said earlier, you can do this with any sort of simple graphic that doesn’t have a lot of detail to it. If you follow these steps to make a t-shirt, show me the results!
Edit 10/30/14: Thelma followed my tutorial to make a Rainbow Dash shirt for her daughter (and she also made some very cute wings and ears, too)! I’ve got her pictures below – the shirt turned out awesome, I love it! 🙂
It’s been a while since I’ve done a craft roundup, and I’ve missed scouring the internet for cool craft project inspiration! So, without further ado, here are five awesome craft projects to add to your to-do list!
*hissssss-BOOM*
For those of you who love Minecraft (much like myself), or know someone who does, here’s a treat for you! This Creeper afghan looks pretty simple to put together, and would look cool in a geeky guest room or would make a great gift for someone who’s super obsessed with Minecraft! You can find the pattern here.
So adorable!
Here’s a cute little Charmander amigurumi plush that looks like it would crochet up pretty quickly – I love his happy little smile! I might add this little guy to my to-do pile, myself… The pattern for Charmander is on Ravelry, right here.
Nothing says awesome like a Nintendo controller purse.
Next up is a Nintendo controller purse! I’ve never seen anything like it – and it looks like it’d be fun to put together, too. You could probably up the size of the pattern and make a large book tote, too. Find the pattern here!
This is a perfect way to breathe some new life into a dead Nintendo controller…
And how about a wallet to go with the purse? This looks like the best use ever for a dead NES controller – and could be a fun afternoon project for a rainy day. The tutorial for making a controller-wallet of your own is here.
*vworp vworp*
This isn’t just one project, but a list of fifteen! Find some inspiration for your next cross-stitch project here.
Hope this gives you guys some inspiration for your own craft projects, or gives you some cool ideas of things to try! 😀
Well, I went on vacation to Florida for a week – which was a welcome respite from the crazy end-of-semester busy-ness. However, I came back to probably the coldest weather I’ve experienced in a decade! (And brought a cold home with me, to boot.) It was pretty, that’s for sure, but not the type of weather I enjoy…
Look at those pretty frosted branches!
What’s a snowed-in nerd to do?
Well, lots of things, actually. I may have spent the day listening to NPR on the radio, since the internet was out most of the day. And believe me, a snow day is the worst time to have the internet die on you. Thank goodness for the radio – I listened to classical music while working on some craft projects!
Scooter cross-stitch and the world’s first glimpse of my Doctor Who Season 18 scarf, take two!
This winter break has been lovely for working on projects – I’ve got a shawl in progress that I started on the way to Florida, I’ve got a counted cross-stitch project I started just after Christmas, and I’ve got my new Doctor Who scarf to boot! So while the snow blew around outside and the temperatures plummeted, I stayed warm on the couch and worked on nerdy crafts. (It was pretty much all I had the energy to do, anyway. Stupid chest cold.)
I also took some time to clean out my closet a little bit, and may have dug up some My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic goodies I might give away in a contest during this week… so stay tuned, pony fans! I promise I’ll start blogging more regularly, too.
Or, as I’ve been titling this project in my head, “How To Turn Yourself Into A Dragon”.
Toothless is best dragon.
Yes, I’m going to try to put together a Toothless costume for the 2014 convention season. I may even start as early as tomorrow. And it’ll be my first time assembling a costume this complicated, especially without any sort of pattern! I’m excited. And kinda nervous.
I’m no stranger to the world of do-it-yourself cosplay. While I don’t exactly have the skills for super frilly over-the-top costumes, I know where my strengths lie, and I work with that to make costumes that will look good, even being simple. Like my Pinkie Pie costume, or my Fourth Doctor costume. And I have done work without patterns before – Pinkie Pie’s skirt was done completely freehand. I’ve also done three sailor fukus with no pattern (yes, not only did I dress as Sailor Moon and Sailor Jupiter, but I also dressed as my own fan character, embarrassing as it is to admit), and an entire Princess Peach costume as well – with varying levels of success. I know what I’m about to enter into – this isn’t unfamiliar territory.
And I do have some visuals to work off of. I’ve seen this around the internet in a number of places – this is one of them, as well as on DeviantArt – and while I’d love to buy one, I can’t really justify spending $300+ on a sweatshirt. (And having made a Toothless plush myself, I know that a fair bit of work went into it, I’m quite sure, but is it really $300 worth of work?) I’d much rather make one myself, too. I had a blast making Toothless, and I’d love to do something similar, something on a slightly bigger scale, something fun. And not to mention pretty darn recognizable, especially for the summer conventions, with How To Train Your Dragon 2 coming out in June.
So, how the heck am I going to approach this? How am I going to start?
Determined dragon is determined.
With determination, that’s how! Heh. I figure I’ll start with stuff I’ve already got – I’ll be using the pattern from the Toothless plush for inspiration on how to construct the head and tail. I’ll also take advantage of ready-made stuff – such as a pre-made sweatshirt and pair of sweatpants. And the pictures posted of the sweatshirt give me quite a few ideas of how to construct things. From there, I can construct Toothless’s little… head tentacles? Not-quite-horns? You guys know what I mean. Anyhow. I can construct a way to add those to a sweatshirt hood, and then add hand covers and wings and a tail. (And maybe foot covers, for the sweatpants, if I can swing it.) The most laborious part will likely be the scales – I have no idea how I’m doing those yet, but those aren’t my main concern anyway. Those’ll likely be the last things I put on.
But yes. I am going to make a Toothless costume. And it will either be epic, or be an epic failure. I’m leaning more towards epic, myself. And of course, as I build the costume, I’ll keep everyone updated. I know I have a lot of fellow Toothless fans who read the blog, and I want to share the process with you guys!
So, stay tuned – Project How To Make Yourself Into A Dragon will start soon.
Mister Crafty Nerd, pondering his allegedly uncrafty status…
It’s not terribly often that I take up a new hobby – especially one that I can easily incorporate my nerdiness into. (Or actually encourages my nerdiness.) However, a couple of my friends are also into this specific hobby, and it piqued my interest…
Yes, that’s right – I’ve picked up the fine (and expensive) hobby of painting minis. And it turns out I’m actually pretty good at it, too!
When I first heard about mini figures, it was through some friends who played Warhammer 40K – that was my only exposure to minis for many, many years. All I knew about it was that it involved lots of tiny figurines, and the game wasn’t quite my thing, so I largely ignored it. Then a friend of mine reintroduced me to the hobby last year – it turned out minis weren’t just used for Warhammer, they were used in lots of games – like Pathfinder, Dungeons and Dragons, and more. I admired his intricate paint work, but didn’t think I could manage such tiny details. Continue reading →
Edit 7/2/14: I’ve had a couple requests for help when it comes to terribly tangled manes – and now I have a tutorial for that! You can find it here!
With the very recent release of Princess Twilight Sparkle at Build-a-Bear, and my very very recent (as in, this afternoon) purchase of Twilight Sparkle and her buddy Spike, I figured I may as well get all three of my Build-a-Bear ponies together for a picture – they’re some of the nicest quality ponies I’ve got in my collection, and I do love taking pictures of my ponies! However, when I took Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash off the bed in my office, I noticed their manes were a little less than perfect looking… Pinkie had a few knots in her mane, and Dashie had some flyaways and looked a little messy. I figured it might be a good idea to brush and detangle their manes – and then got the bright idea to post a photo-laden tutorial of the process here! (Granted, this idea hit me halfway through Pinkie Pie, but still…)
So, without further ado…
First things first, you’ll want to pick up a wig brush (or at least a brush with metal bristles) and some wig detangler. I use an old American Girl doll hairbrush, and recently picked up some Brandywine Wig Detangler off of Amazon for detangling the wig that goes with my Pinkie Pie costume.
Wig brush and detangler!
Have a look at Pinkie’s mane – I’ve brushed it a small amount at this point, but you can see it’s still kinda messy – even for Pinkie!
Pinkie after a little bit of detangling – but not much.
No no no, not a vacation from posting – although I did unintentionally take one of those, and I’m sorry! I’m going to stick to a schedule from now on – Wednesdays and Sundays will be my posting days, with an occasional Roundup here and there. And since today is a Sunday…
WE HAVE A POST!
Now, I really am on vacation – back in my home state of New York, in the lovely Adirondack Mountains. Bryan’s grandparents have a cabin here, and I’ve been coming up here with Bryan and his family for about six years now. We’re close to Lake George, which is a very touristy place, but far enough away from all the busy-ness of the town, which is wonderful.
I mean, come on, look at this beautiful view of the Hudson River. Absolutely wonderful. I’ve been looking forward to this all summer – and I am incredibly happy to be here. All my classes are done for the summer, work has entered a lull (I taught a ridiculous amount of page layout and design workshops during the early part of last week, and that’s it for my teaching schedule for the rest of the summer), and it’s the perfect part of the summer to take a vacation. So here I am, parked at the kitchen table in my pajamas and my Escher-inspired Doctor Who sweatshirt, with my laptop, writing this post while listening to the birds tweet outside.
Well, it only took me six months to do it this time – I finished my second Doctor Who scarf!
The scarf turned out pretty well, although there were a couple of hiccups along the way while making it, including…
Aside from these issues, making the scarf was fun, and it kept me occupied during many long chilly nights of TV watching and gave me something to do while sitting through family gatherings and classes. I’m kind of sad that I’m done with it… and I’m considering taking on the task of making scarves for friends, should they want one. I’m starting to question my sanity, with that last bit, haha, but there’s nothing so soothing as knitting a nice, long, Doctor Who scarf!