Five Elements

I made a set of four t-shirts for a friend and his family using a combined concept of the five elements of Japanese Buddhism and the five elements from that movie...you know, The Fifth Element, with Bruce Willis.

So we've got earth, fire, water, wind and then that fifth one. In Japanese it translates to "void", which is not very good at all considering that this was a wedding-type present.  Enter the fifth element from the movie:  love!  Perfect.  

This is a very, very loose translation of these elements, but here goes:  For earth I used cotton t-shirts...you know, because they are, like, of the earth.  It makes sense if you close your eyes and spin around ten times.  I also splurged and got some good old American Apparel ones.  I hate them.  Well, their advertising campaign, because they seem to portray kidnapped teens.  Very pathetic.

Next up, fire!  Or, in this case, the sun.  I used that Lumi solor-powered dye.  It was pretty cool.  My stencils went on pretty easily and then I dabbed them with this dye.  Again, it still smells like a hair salon and brought back many memories of unfortunate perms from my teenage years.

So here's a shot of their backyard progress on Sunday:  

From left to right we have the shirts that have been out in the sun from the longest amount of time to the least amount of time.

It got tricky from this point, because I had two minute intervals to grab one shirt, run it to the laundry room, take off the stencil and plunge it into hot water.  (Enter the third element:  Water!  I told you this was a very loose interpretation of these elements.)  And then they got dried partially in the dryer and partially in the air (Hello, fourth element:  Wind!).

The result:

I think they are kind of nifty.  The symbol on the chest is "water" in the Japanese/Chinese character.  It has a connection to his name (well, their names) and years ago I tried to convince him to get it as a tattoo.  I don't think he did.

I tried to be so careful not to get that dye on an other locations, but a little dot is on the male shirt and a few little dots sprayed onto the neckline of the toddler shirt when I took off the stencil.  I also did not account for bleeding during that two minute interval when I took the stencil off and plunged it into the washer.  There was enough light in the laundry room to activity the dye, so many of the characters are not as crisp as I would have liked.  See for yourself:

Boo.  Oh, well.  Now I know.  I feel bad that they are not perfect.  Hopefully he won't mind.  As for that fifth element...made with love for my dear friend! 

I stuck it all in the mail yesterday with the quilt and the bibs.  International shipping.  Sucks.  Balls.

Resources:

Tutorial from HowAbout Orange.

Lumi.

Other projects using this dye.

Silky Stash Additions

These came from the thrift store.  I have the most of that black and you can't see it in the picture, but it has these little raised circles all over it.  It's rather nice.  So that's what I've got.  I keep swearing off buying more fabric until I figure out what to do with what's already in my closet, but then I find things like this and I just can't resist.

meDDusa

There she is:  the meDDusa bra for my fifth bra for a cause.  As a reminder, my earlier entries are outlined here and last year's entry is here.

The deadline for this surprised me, but I was able to throw it together on Friday and Saturday nights. My dream is to someday make a spectacular ice queen bra, but I really need to plan months in advance for that one.

I found little snakes from that AxMan Surplus store at a rate of $1.50 per dozen.   I believe I used ten bags of snakes.  This mo fo is heavy!  Who would have thunk that almost 120 snakes weighs a ton?  I used a strapless bra, but because the snakes weighed so much I had to add some sort of makeshift strap.

Here it is before the strap and not on the mannequin, because it kept sliding down her slippery plastic boobs.

I bedazzled the sides and middle with some plastic green rhinestones.  Pretty soon I will only have pink ones left, because I used the blues and the reds for earlier projects.  

So this is all boxed up and ready to go.  Yay!  Hopefully they remember to check their POBox for it.    I also hope that the snakes stay glued down.  They kept squirming off and I had to reglue at least 20 of them last night.  

One last shot:

Tee to Tank

I have been eyeballing this tee to tank tutorial over at Crafterhours for quite some time, but did not have many loosefitting tee shirts to work with, but I received one from a friend a few weeks ago as a thank you gift for donating to his documentary film campaign, Saving Hubble.  

A unisex t-shirt (size M) showed up and it was too big.  Instead of donating it to my husband's wardrobe (because he already has one!), I chopped it up a la Crafterhours.

It works and it is very comfortable.  

Food for thought:  That logo is pretty adorable, right?  A cartoon hubble and all, but the placement across my chest makes me feel like the thing just shot off my nipples with his little gun fingers.

Peeping Prevention

After living here for over two years, I finally made some sort of window covering for my side door.  It faces the neighbor's driveway and side door.  I feel bad for them, because through my side door window they can see where we temporarily store our recycling.  The following picture is not very clear.  I tried to recreate their experience, but my reflection kept showing up in the photos.  Here's the best I could do:

In my defense, it is the night before the recycling goes to curb.  Anyway, I used some of the remnants from this curtain project and made just one panel to cover the window.

This should have been done ages ago.  I'm not sure if I want to make a second panel to make them bunchy a bit more or just leave the single panel.  This works for now.  So now their eyes do not have to be assaulted by mess.

Dr. Sewer: Case File #1

Patient presented with a severe head injury consistent with the bite of a canine.  The Patient lost a lot of internal filling.  

Stitches were not a possiblity, because the wound was too gaping.  Patient received a transfusion of 5cc's of internal stuffing.  Patient was then given a permanent patch and is expected to make a full recovery.

Permanent eye patch.

Visiting hours.

Reunited with his family.