You've waited long enough... Here are the pictures of my tribal-style steampunk costume! Lovingly cobbled together out of things I already had -- I didn't buy anything specifically for this costume -- it's the perfect blending of two costume styles that I truly love.
From top to bottom we have:
-Steampunk feather clip from The Gypsy's Kiss. You may recognize this from my Dancehall Steampunk costume earlier this year.
-Three hairsticks tucked into my bun, sagging a bit because I'd already been dancing when this picture was taken.
-Primitive grey niobium earrings and earcuff from The Beaded Lily.
-My peacock feathers woven necklace. I was going to wear a steampunk necklace that Chris gave me, but it was too long, and this one matched the colors of the costume.
-Vest purchased from Target, upgraded with vintage glass buttons. I wore this last Halloween, too.
-My coin bra, which doesn't jingle much with a vest over it.
-Green lace choli with 3/4-length sleeves, purchased at Plaza de Anaya last week.
-Brass bracelet that Chris gave me for the holidays, awesome coin bracelet that I bought in NYC, and an assortment of rings that I grabbed on my way out the door.
-Tribal steampunk belt. My vest covers it in this picture, so I'll get better pics of it next week. I ended up tying it with some black grosgrain ribbon, and amazingly it stayed up all night.
-Bustle skirt! I'm so happy with how it turned out. There's nothing like wearing a bustle to dance.
-Gradiated sage green harem pants.
-I was wearing my sequined ballet flats, but they're really uncomfortable, so I kicked them off as soon as we arrived.
And here's a back view so that you can see the beautiful gathers on the back of my bustle skirt. Squee!
I hope that everyone has a fun Halloween. I'm spending mine at home with Chris, tidying up the office to make room for our new computers.
I'm happy to say that I managed to complete my crazy steampunk belt, which involves one "Abercrombie" brand cloth belt that I bought at a thrift store years ago, copper chain tassles given to me by a former friend, copper chain given to me for my birthday a couple years back, 8 vintage keys purchased from Gem Show, and the HUGE kuchi pendant-y thing given to me by my friend and mentor Helen. I might also add some ribbon to tie it closed, because I don't like the yarn ties it has.
Anyway, my cookies are in the oven, which is why I have a couple of minutes to pop on here and let you all know that I will take many pictures tonight and share them here and all over the Internet tomorrow.
Remember when I said that I was hoping to finish the mushroom pixie necklace this week? Yeah, I haven't touched it. When I made that statement, I forgot to take into affect the fact that Halloween is this week. Yesterday I was struck with the desire to make a bustle skirt, so I did. I took scissors, needle and thread to an old skirt of mine and bustled it up. It looks pretty sweet.
Today I had to stitch the elastic straps for my zills, and while I was doing that, I started thinking about Chris's steampunk costume, and how his vest would look a lot better if it had vintage brass buttons instead of cheap-o plastic ones. I'm almost done with that project. Tomorrow's project will be my crazy steampunk belt to go with my bustle skirt.
I swear I'll get some beading done over the weekend!
It was really windy yesterday. I had this silly hope that the wind was blowing in some much-needed rain, but no. It was blowing in Autumn! It's still windy today, but it's a cold wind, the kind that cuts right through clothing and leaves you shivering.
Summer was nice while it lasted!
Here in Tucson, sometimes we have very warm Halloweens, and I can wear belly dance costumes outdoors. Othertimes, like this year, it's the sort of Halloween where I want to just wrap up in a beautiful cloak. I'll probably compromise, and wear a belly dance costume, but not bare my midriff. Or I might just wear some Ren Faire clothes from my pre-dancing days. We'll see what mood strikes me on Saturday. Who knows, maybe it will have warmed up a bit.
During "business hours" I try to work on jewelry for my shop. But on evenings and weekends, I've been working on this. It's called Twinkle, Twinkle and it's Beki Haley's class project from the Tahoe retreat. Those four pinwheel-looking stars will eventually be hanging from the ends of the spiraling herringbone rope. I did 4" of rope yesterday while waiting for Chris, adding onto the 10" I already had, so there's not too much longer to go.
Both this necklace and the Mushroom Pixie are woven with a new-ish thread called One-G. Made in Japan and distrubuted by the Toho company, it's a bonded Nylon thread. It has everything I love about Nymo (drape, ease of threading) and less of what I hate (fraying and knotting). It also costs 3 times as much, so I probably won't switch over to it entirely (after all, I still have most of a huge spool of black size B Nymo), but it's definitely fun to work with.
Chris has purchased all of the parts to build us identically awesome new gaming machines. I'm quite eager for this, as my current computer is about 5 years old and barely runs Guild Wars (a game that is 4 years old). I can't even try out new games to see if I like them, because my computer can't handle them, even at the lowest graphics settings.
The fun part will be transferring over 4-5 years worth of files... Stories, photos, random junk. I cleaned it out recently, but there's still tons of stuff on this beast. Some of these files date back 10 years or more, to my old on-line roleplaying days. You'd think I'd get rid of them, since I haven't looked at most of them in a decade, but nostalgia is a powerful force.
Thursday was the last night of my current belly dance class. Having taken Beginner C and Beginner A, I figured I would be taking Beginner B this session. However, there are no beginner classes for the Winter session, only a fast-track class that reviews A, B and C and then transitions the dancers into intermediate moves.
My options were:
Take this 8-week session off and practice at home.
Switch to the beginner classes offered by another teacher.
Ask to be allowed into the Fast-Track class even though I've only taken 2/3 of the prerequisites.
I opted for the third choice, permission was given, and now I've challenged myself to have at least passing knowledge with all Beginner B moves by Thursday, as well as having practiced A moves and refreshed myself on C, which I've barely practiced while I've been trying to perfect A and survive the gym.
I'm very excited about this, as moving up to intermediate is a big step forward for me. It also means I'll finally learn zills. Every time I dance in public, someone asks me why I don't have them... Little realizing that it's hard enough to keep track of what my hips, shoulders, feet, hands and whatever else are doing, without playing a musical instrument as well ;)
This is one of my current projects! A little vintage faerie button, in a peyote-stitch bezel. Next up comes the accents! Red and white is not a palette I do very often, but I decided that I really wanted to stick with it for this piece (without drawing the blue, green, yellow or black into it) because of the iconic white-spotted red mushrooms. I hope to finish it early next week.
I thought I'd have time for an actual blog post, but Chris just informed me that he wants to leave early, so I'd better go finish getting ready for class. It's the last class of this session, and tonight we have to practice leading slow moves! Yikes! I've been drilling my snake arms in preparation.
Face of the Gorgon is my second Medusa-themed necklace... Third if you count the one that I made for myself with this same focal. I just love Medusa!I had some fun combining stones for this necklace. The nephrite jade echoes the shape of the pendant, whereas the lizardite has a snake-skin like appearance. I actually had the chance to purchase some beads that were made with real snake skin, but they felt really gross. I couldn't stand touching them. I don't know if the texture was really that bad, or if my natural aversion to snakes was kicking in.
The nephrite, lizardite, and eagle eye from yesterday's necklace all came from the Rings and Things show in May. They have another show coming up on November 1st, but I don't think I'll be attending it, since I'm hoping to go up to the Phoenix area on Friday the 30th for a Halloween party. Three trips to Phoenix in 4 days would just be too much.
When I started making jewelry 11 years ago, a lot of my designs were Gothic in nature. This was partially because I liked the aesthetic, partially because hematite beads were cheap, and partially because those designs sold well on eBay. There are still some Gothic designs in my shops, but lately I've been leaning a lot more towards steampunk.
However, earlier this month I got dressed up for a night on the town with Chris, and I ended up pretty Gothed out. Admittedly, there were steampunk influences, but I was wearing all black and grey, and it reminded me of how much I love the Goth aesthetic, and how I need to remember to use it more in my jewelry.
Along those lines, I present Beneath an October Moon, the latest addition to my Etsy shop.
Wheel of Destiny is today's Daily Special. This particular brass stamping is one of my favorites. I need to find more, preferably in the states this time (I ordered this batch from Canada, and I hate how long it takes things to arrive from there).
I have some ideas in mind to make another piece or two today. My shop definitely needs more new items to fill it out, especially with the holidays around the corner.
Well, not really, but it's a fun title for a blog post. We were supposed to have fish for dinner tonight. The instructions said to baste it with butter and broil it. But the butter got so hot that it burned holes through the foil and filled the house with smoke after only 5 minutes of broiling. We decided that aluminum-flavored fish was not the ideal meal, so we went out for burritos instead.
And that's really the most exciting thing that happened all weekend. We gamed a bit, I got a lot of work done on my necklace from Beki Haley's class at the bead retreat, and the corgis were cute as ever. Also, I finished reading the last book in a trilogy I've really been enjoying. Good times, just not much to blog about.
Here's a picture of my Mistress of Ghosts earrings. Blogger is being dumb and rotating pictures for no reason again, but we can pretend that I just took the photo at an artsy angle.So, as the title of this post suggests, last night's concert was not quite what I and my fellow belly dancers expected. First of all, despite the fliers saying that the show started at 9pm, they didn't let people in until after 9, and then we had to sit through 2 hours of the house DJ, who was playing very loud hip-hop. Things at least got interesting after an hour and a half, when the previously empty dance floor became the stage for a few hip hop/break dancers to show off their very impressive moves. At around 11, the opening act came up. Unfortunately, this was another DJ, and his music wasn't that great.
Finally, Beats Antique took the stage at somewhere between 11:30 and midnight, and the dance floor filled up. It was an interesting mix of belly dancers, burlesque dancers (and some bleed over between those two groups), break dancers, normal people at a club dancers, people standing on the floor just swaying a bit, and one annoying trancy guy who was taking up more than his fair share of floor space.
The music was pretty good, though much more skewed towards the hip-hop end and not so much the Middle Eastern and Gypsy influenced pieces that I've seen belly dancers performing to. They also didn't have Zoe Jakes dancing for them, which was a big disappointment. I still managed to have some fun dancing (after all, I've applied my moves to disco, metal, and classic rock), but it was really not what I expected.
After a bit, the breakdancers pretty much took over the floor, and I got shoved into a corner as everyone else crowded in to see what was going on. Now, admittedly, those guys had some awesome skills and I really enjoyed watching them... But I came there to dance as well! Maybe if the club hadn't set up tables on more than half the dance floor (most of which were not occupied), there would have been room for everyone to have their own little space to dance.
I think I'd probably see Beats Antique live again if given the chance, but only if I knew they were actually coming on stage at a decent hour, and with a reasonable sized dance floor.
After class tonight, we're heading right over to a Beats Antique concert that happens to conveniently be happening just down the road 40 minutes after class. I'm pretty excited, as other than shows at Ren Faire, I have not seen a concert since I was a kid. I'm looking forward to some good music, some dancing, and hopefully a bit of socializing with my fellow dancers.
Of course, I have to leave in a little over an hour and I'm still having an internal debate on what to wear -- decisions, decisions!
The Gatekeeper Medallion is an experiment in mixed metals and mixed media. It's also my new favorite necklace! The combination of elements really speaks to me, so I'm hoping that it will speak just as loudly to someone else out there.
Normally I would have just hung the pendant from the brass chain, but I wanted to work some silver into the chain to balance the silver in the pendant. Then when I was weaving the silver chain through the brass, it naturally fell to one side, leaving the other side empty, so I decided to weave in the black ribbon for extra texture and to match the black etching on the shell.
Today's other new items are Little Elf Shoes, Mistress of Ghosts, and Wheel of Destiny.
After a week of being mostly-lazy following my return from Tahoe, this week I had to get back into the swing of things for real. That meant piles of laundry for the last two days, some jewelry creation today (and lots more tomorrow!), and returning to the gym.
I'm really excited about the new designs I'm creating, and I hope to be able to share a couple of them tomorrow. My shop is in desperate need of some fresh jewelry!
The lovely and talented Colleen Theodore took many pictures of me dancing at the Tahoe retreat. I sorted out the best ones (ie, the ones where my posture wouldn't make my teacher cry), and put them in this album on Facebook. You need not be a Facebook member to view them!I learned a couple of important lessons with this impromptu performance, such as "always test your costume before performing" (my scarf came unwrapped, and one bra strap kept slipping), and "if it's freezing outside, don't leave your shoes in one room and then walk across the courtyard to dance in another." Also "when dancing in your friend's temporary bead store, watch out for wire racks." I still have a mark from that last one...
Needless to say, next time I travel, I'll travel prepared. I'll bring a real, pre-tested costume, and I'll write down which tracks on which CDs I want to use for my performance.
To make up for lost time, I did a lot of driving this weekend. Parking practice, errands, date night, daytime and night time driving. I have to drive Chris home from laser eye surgery* while he's loopy on Vallium, so I need to be confident enough to be as if I was driving by myself. Of course, if he's loopy enough to be a distraction, I'll have to call someone else to drive us BOTH home!
*Surgery performed on his eyes with lasers. Not surgery to give him laser eyes, which would be 500 times cooler.
I snapped this picture a week ago at the Bead Retreat, as the wind was blowing in the clouds that would later dump snow on us. Those yellow and orange trees in the middle were the only ones I saw that were changing color. Of course, the mountains themselves were covered in evergreen pines, but all of those trees look like the sort that should have been colorful.
It's hard to believe that I've been home for less than a week... this has been a very long week, and slightly overwhelming. I'm having a hard time catching up on everything I need to do. At least I'm getting a little beading done, as yesterday's post illustrated.
Today I finally went back to the gym. It kicked my butt, but at least I don't seem to have injured myself this time around. On Tuesday I restart the evening classes, since I missed more than half of them the first time around. I'll still miss a third due to dance class, but oh well.
You've waited long enough... Here are the pictures of my tribal-style steampunk costume! Lovingly cobbled together out of things I already had -- I didn't buy anything specifically for this costume -- it's the perfect blending of two costume styles that I truly love.
And here's a back view so that you can see the beautiful gathers on the back of my bustle skirt. Squee!
