Star Wars Befores and Afters!

For my birthday we watched the original Star Wars Trilogy.  We have a special edition set that comes with two disks for each movie – on one disk is the most recently ‘restored and improved’ version, and on the other disk was the 1970s theatrical versions, supposedly unedited in anyway.

For A New Hope, we watched the newer version, and my father (the other Star Wars geek in the family) and I spent most of the movie picking out all the new improvements and all the new CGI (which frankly I don’t like, I wish they could have just, I don’t know, put in new puppets or something, I think the CGI characters they keep adding look out of place).   For The Empire Strikes Back, I unknowingly put in the original theatrical version, leading to me remarking during the movie that while Lucas had certainly stuffed A New Hope with ‘improvements’, at least he didn’t do much to The Empire Strikes Back.  Of course, then I took it out of the player and realized my fail, lol.

We did choose to watch the original version of The Return of the Jedi though.  What can I say? I like it old school.

Curious though, I did some googling and found this super cool series of articles that compare all the changes made to the movies over time!  It’s really neat to see it all side by side, and I HIGHLY recommend you check it out.

For example, here’s a scene from the 1977 first version of Star Wars: A New Hope:

And here’s the same scene from the 2004 blue-ray release:

Amazing, right?

Sewing project, busy month, happy gluten-free birthday to me!

So, my latest craft project is a Princess Leia hooded tank top, which you can find on instructables.com.  No, not posting pictures of it here because I’m modeling it – I don’t care to post pictures of myself in more than one place if I can help it!  I’ve entered it in the instructables Fashion contest as well, so take a look at all the entries and place some votes *hint hint*

I’m also currently working on a Gameboy Advance amigurimi!  I’ve got most of it done, just need to do the detail and felt work.  I’ll hopefully get that done within the week or so.  I just recently cleaned so now I have space to work on crafts again (the amount of just stuff I can accumulate is amazing).   Here’s a sneak peek of the gameboy advance:

I’ve got a lot coming up for me this July…my sister is getting married and coming to Florida to spend her honeymoon, so I’ll be spending some time with her and my new brother in law.  I’m also helping out with the VBS for the younger kids at my church, and my family is going to go on a 3 day getaway at a nearby state park where we are going to rent a cabin.   I’ll probably be putting more wear on my kindle next month than my crocheting hooks.

Today is also my 22nd birthday, and I feel very old :/  The family has already had a birthday celebration for me as last week I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease and had to cut out all gluten (so that very same day we had my birthday cake before I went on a gluten-free-for-the-rest-of-my-life plan).   Guess next year I’ll be making a gluten-free cake!

 

Star Wars Lightsaber Earrings!

My latest craft – lightsaber earrings!  These are actually made from soda cans, believe it or not.

It’s getting a bit redundant to post the instructions for my crafts here when I always post them on instructables.com, so I’m going to just start linking.  If you’d like to see how I made these (or make them yourself) you can see my how-to on instructables.com :)

Random stuff and my newest addition to my collections

First, take a look at what I found for $2 at Micheal’s yesterday:

Why do I need a miniature Superman lunchbox? I don’t know, probably for the same reason I need the other random items that litter my shelves (like the Hello Kitty Pez dispenser, the piggy bank of Mickey and Minnie Mouse dressed up as Luke and Leia, the random vintage jewelry, Japanese hair pins and more miniature glass bottles than I care to count).  They also had mini Batman lunchboxes, but what I really wanted was Wonder Woman (didn’t have her though).

I’ve been in a crafty mood lately, and the half-finished projects scattered around my room attest to that.  Last Wednesday was the last day of the Wednesday night kid’s classes at church that I volunteer for (haven’t I mentioned that I volunteer to work with the church kids? I guess not.  I’m their official crafts/games/story teller person and handle about 10 -15 kids, ages 4 to 6).  With the classes not starting back up until the fall (summer break and all), I’ll have more time to work on my own projects now that I’ll be getting a break from designing kiddy crafts during the week.

I’ve had a hankering to make a doll lately.  I’ve made dolls before, mostly Reborn baby dolls though I’ve also made dolls by sewing, sculpting, crocheting and ‘putting together from random parts lying around’.  But I want to make a really sturdy, high-quality doll that can be posed and detailed, and easy to make clothing for.  Something about 13-15 inches high, with an adult female body, preferable jointed at the hips, shoulders, elbows and knees.  Ultimately, I’m inspired by the Japanese ball-jointed dolls, but I don’t want to actually get one myself (yeah, you can customize them to high heaven but they’re just…too mainstream).  I could sculpt the entire thing out of clay, but that’s too fragile.  I’m thinking of making it out of silicon.  I have lots of mold making experience and at our family businesses we actually make our own molds so I have easy access to the supplies I would need.  But I’ve never tried making a silicon doll before.  I’ve helped my mom make porcelain doll molds, but that’s a bit different.   I may just take the easy way out and do a heavy customization an a pre-existing fashion doll (Gene? Tyler? Barbie?) instead.  But I’ll have to look more into it.

I also really need to work on my Princess Zelda costume.  I have parts and pieces for it lying all over my room, but the work has been stalled because I don’t want to start making it until I have a serger sewing machine – no point in doing all that work only to have the costume fall apart and fray a year later.   Unfortunately, sergers cost $200 upwards, and I don’t have that money to spend at the moment.  I also need to get a new dress form – the  one I have is too big for me now  (yay for losing weight!).

(Btw, that’s my old dress form to the left there, with one of my better costumes I sewed about two years ago, I love that dress…doesn’t fit anymore though, been thinking about taking it in).

So until I get a serger and new dress form, the Zelda costume is held off indefinitely.  I have clothing patterns for the dress already, as well as a box full of gems and other pieces to make the armor, as well as a half-finished crown.  Really need to finish that crown – the leaves and headband part are all done, just the middle part of the crown is driving me insane.  I have been searching for months to find a perfect gem to go in the center and I have yet to find anything that’s just right.   I’m also not quite sure how to go about sculpting the middle piece, so kind of putting it off.

However, I did recently convince my two younger brothers to agree to wearing Han Solo and Luke Skywalker costumes should I manage to get them sewn before Halloween.  Brother #1 is 6’1 and has dark, slightly curly hair and Brother #2 is 5’11 and had shaggy blond hair.  I’ve wanted to dress them up as Han and Luke for years.  Of course I’d make myself the classic white Leia dress.  This year my family is thinking about going to Mickey’s Halloween Party which is held in the Magic Kingdom in Disney World every year, so I’d have to get them done before that.   So that’s a total of four costumes I want to sew before Halloween…got to start saving up money for that serger and dress form!