Way past midsummer...

Bonjour!

It is now the last week of summer before I'm off to Ottawa for school.   I finished my summer job.  Now I have my days all free!  Which is fantastic, but unfortunately, they will mostly be filled with packing.

On the weekend I finished this lovely "The Amazing Spider-Man" inspired hat.  I haven't seen the movie yet, but I was somewhere on the internet and saw this picture.  I fell in love with the hat Emma Stone was wearing.

I would have tried to do it myself, but before this project, I had no clue how to do the zig-zags (i don't know if that is what you call it) or the puffs (that I now know are called bobbles).  I did a little googling and found this cute ravelry pattern.  I really like the pattern, it was easy to follow. The "b" should be "mb" (make bobble), I was a little confused when I first read it.  I did do an extra zig-zag chuck than the pattern had, to make it more like a beanie and less like a tuque. 

It toke me about two weeks, as you can tell, it is not the same color as what Emma Stone was wearing.  This  blue is a really soft acrylic that my friend picked out for a hat I made her.  I had left overs and after this I still do and might make a cup cozy with it. 

Here we are:

The Front

The Back

I think it turned out really well.  I haven't been able to wear it very must because it is makes my head all hot.  So it will be prefect for fall and early winter. 

That pretty much it for now. 

Much love, 

Zoe 

Making Galaxy Shoes (tutorial)

Hello people!

I purchased a pair of plain white shoes at the beginning of the summer. I didn't really have any plans for them. I was thinking of leaving them white and writing quotes all over them. I obviously changed my mind. After seeing some super cute wedges that had a galaxy scape that would make NASA proud, I knew what I wanted to do.  

Thus is my tutorial on how to make galaxy shoes! 

What you'll need:
-Shoes that you are willing to paint on (I recommend that they be black)
- Acrylic paint, the more the merrier.
-Brushes, something that you can dab with, and a small one for making stars
- Pictures of space (optional)
-Some spray varnish
-A cupcake for when you are done (optional but strongly recommended)

                                              Here are the white shoes, fresh from the box.

 

I started painting the edges of the shoe black with a smaller brush, in retrospect, starting with a black shoe is easier because you can skip this step. 

I changed to a bigger bush to fill in the rest of the shoe. I kept the trim white but you can do what you like with it.

 After I finished painting the shoes black I searched Googled galaxy and space photos.  I eventually went to NASA's website because I didn't like the results I was getting on Google. (That doesn't happen often does it?)

I found a picture that had a lot of blue and brown-red colors.  So that's what I used for the first shoe.

Here's the "finished" result for the right shoe.  I added stars in after it dried.

Here's palette with the colors I used.  I used a stubby, short bush and used a tapping motion to pain it. I found I could spread the color without mixing or smugging the colours together.

This is my work space before I started the left shoe.  Yeah. It's kinda messy and on the left of the picture you can see all the tubes of paint I used in this project.

If you turn your head sideways you'll see my left shoe.  I painted two nebula's on this one.

Here is a side view to show that I paint the design on to the side of the shoe.

Here are both shoes all painted.  

I let them dry for 24 hours before starting the next step.  

The next step is to splatter white "stars" on the shoe.  Make you sure you test your splatter before you do it on your shoes.  I know I have the tendency to make really big messy splatters and get most of it on myself.  This is not at all what I wanted for these shoes so I tested the splatter technique with a couple of brushes before I found one that makes super small white dots. Perfect!

  

I used a small brush to paint big stars.  I also dabbed in some stars in silver and some yellow stars that supposedly glow in the dark, but they don't glow, the dots are too small.   

Above are the shoes after splattering, and painting in the stars.  When I was looking at the NASA pictures I noticed that some of the stars are clouded over by gas and particles that may eventually create planets. I went over the nebulae with a thin layer of transparent colours. 

I waited about a day or two and sprayed them with varnish to seal the finish. Below are the final result,   

Side Views

The Back

I hope you enjoyed that. If you have any questions feel free to put them in the comment section.

chipkey creations' photostream

chipkey creations' photostream on Flickr.

August 9th

Hey everyone,

How are you on this Thursday afternoon? Or at least that's what time it is as I'm writing this.  

The past week has been rather hectic.  Nothing dramatic, but just work and there was a long weekend.  During which I gave my friend her new hat and bracelet.  As promised here are some pictures of the hat.

 
I used a bulky red yarn of which I got a huge amount.  I did a rib stitch for the first few rows then a simple cable stitch until it was about 6 inches long.  Then I decreased until there were 6 stitches left.  

 For this bracelet, I asked my friend what she was looking for, and she gave me four colors, those you see here. Orange, yellow, pink and red.  I went on my friendship bracelet site, to look at a pattern and picked one that I though she would like.  I found three and texted my friend asking if I should send her the links so that she can pick the one she'd want.  She told me that she trusted my judgement, and only wanted to see it once it was done so that it would be a surprise.  

As you can tell my friend did like the bracelet, hat and she was very surprised.   

As I mentioned before it was the long weekend here in Ontario.  I did a lot of things. I've gotten some of the stuff ready for school in September, hung out with friends, saw fireworks.   I also spent a whole afternoon watching the second half of the second series of Doctor Who and made this bracelet.

It's part of a weekly challenge that the aforementioned friendship bracelet site.  I don't know if I've won and if by chance I do I'll be sure to tell you.

That's all for now, 

Much love 

Zoe