July, 2010
Felt Baby and Mama Elephant
Elephant, elephant
Big and strong and gentle and intelligent,
Intelligent!I bought this complete kit for making a little felt adult and baby elephant, accessories included, months ago, kind of forgot about it, and then finally did it last week. I am such a retard at sewing and making anything that it took me about six hours to finish.
I traced the pieces on the felt with elephant-colored (silver) Sharpie and cut them out, which was not too bad, though scissoring anything for a while makes your hand tired tast. Then I stitched the two sides of the elephants together, which was okay, too, though the stuffing is coming out a tiny bit at parts where I missed a stitch or it came out. Stitching the beads on the little blanket was slow, and hard to figure out at first, but fine. Stitching the blanket on to the mother elephant was a BITCH. I didn’t do blanket stitch (“blanket” stitch, hehe), I just stitched the easiest way; but it was excruciating. It took FOREVER. And the thing is, the thread you use is so thick that it’s hard to pass the needle through the material. It was extremely frustrating; I would pull and yank on the stuck needle as hard as I could, time after time, and it took so much effort each time, and I was pretty much dying inside. I tried using a smaller needle, but it took forever to thread it, and it didn’t make stitching any easier. I used pliers sometimes to pull the needle through the cloth sometimes, hah. And the felt would rip from how much rough effort it took to get the needle through.
Anyway, no one wants to hear me bitch and moan about the trauma of physical exertion with a sewing needle. It was a very sloppy job, but I think they turned out well enough that you can’t really tell how bad I was at it.
Here’s the final product:
I plan on giving them to my mom, since they are, well, a mother and daughter elephant, and I made it with my own hands; ’twas a LABOR OF LOVE.
Tags: elephant, felt animals, i fail, sewing
Nomi Chi – Mystical, Creepy, and Perverse
Nomi Chi is a talented artist/tattooist out of Vancouver, B.C. Her work combines female and animal figures in a bizarre, sinuous, whimsical, and wispy luxurious style. Animal skulls, eviscerated furry creatures, and surreal woman/animal combinations are dominant themes. Languorous, morbidly lovely and erotic, sometimes tender, her sketches and paintings are both casual and mythical, and creepily delicious. Here’s a selection of her art:
I have this hanging up as a print on the wall of my bedroom.
Tags: animals, evisceration, nomi chi, rabbits, skulls, surreal, vivisected
3 Style Icons
I guess they’re kind of a holy trinity for me.
What I admire about them is their ability to create an image for themselves, to forge and strike a visual identity from the inert mass that flares for a pretty near eternal instant.
Descriptor: Vintage VixenMmm, Dita. What I love about the burlesque queen is that she’s always impeccably dressed, and preserves the glamor of the golden age of Hollywood while putting her own twist on it. Her sense of fashion is amazing. She has a very distinctive, consistent style, which is complete and cohesive. She goes for the elegant and glamorous side of retro rather than the kitschy. And she does it through and through. She doesn’t dress casually even to go to the supermarket. With her signature black curls, vividly red lips, and lily-white face, she can be dark, bold, vampish, yet she’s feminine, delicate, always elegant, and sometimes sort of fluffy. She infuses the more mundane present with some of the fascinating and voluptuous glamor and the tightly-controlled, very put-together beauty of the ’40s and ’50s. I think Dita is a perfect example of self-transformation and creating beauty through unique style. Nothing beats her retro look of wickedly defined, bright red lips, jet-black sculpted hair, and clear white skin. Dita’s book, Burlesque and the Art of the Teese/Fetish and the Art of the Teese, is gorgeous and a really fun read.
Descriptor: Experimental EpidemicThe multitalented Destroyx AKA Amelia Arsenic, lead vocalist for industrial/alternative band Angelspit, is another one of my style heroines. Her blog, www.destroyx.com, is all kinds of goodness. Her ability to style and adorn herself absolutely blows my mind. She combines cyber, fetish, gothic, and retro looks with daring, elegance, and innovation, to create an edgy, sophisticated, and utterly unforgettable image. Even though she takes elements from so many different styles, I think that above all, her style is really only hers and one of a kind. I love the complexity, eclecticism, elaborate accessorizing, and layering that go into her outfits. She is a makeup guru. Her looks are bold, gorgeous, and original. She represents the pinnacle for me of achieving interesting effects through makeup and styling – becoming something more than just yourself visually. Angelspit’s got amazing visual design and aesthetics with her influence, and Destroyx and ZooG (the other member of Angelspit) make a powerful creative duo.
Descriptor: Wayward Victorian Girl/Insane Asylum InmateEmilie Autumn is a quirky solo musician who makes self-styled “Victoriandustrial” music. She has a lovely style all her own, which is a kind of bastardized-era, feminine, torn, tattered, wispy, layered, ribbony, very pink-themed goth look. Her hair is divine, a very beautiful shade of pink and/or red. Aside from the Victorian influences, there are fey influences and influences from the Elizabethan period, which show in her music as well. Her style is light, ethereal, and fairy-like, as well as grungier girl-punk with the requisite studded cuffs and tattered fishnets. Bloodstains, hearts, and teatime are recurring elements. Emilie has an incredible ability to create an image, and this can be seen in all the artwork, design, extra features, and images on her Opheliac album – a testament to her creativity and styling genius. She is charming, alluring, and promises to take you beyond the mundane, into a secret world of melodramatic madnesses, anachronisms, oppression, and trauma. Her whole aesthetic concept revolves around the “Asylum.” Her style is very coherent, but has lots of variety and potential. Her very basic and most replicable look is something like a “dirty”/tattered white tank top with a heart patch, or a tea-stained corset, with bloomers, red-and-white stripey stockings/asymmetrical legwear, and of course, her heart makeup.
Tags: 1940s, 1950s, avant-garde, destroyx, dita von teese, emilie autumn, insane asylum aesthetic, latex, retro, victorian, vintage
