Feather Masks, part 1

A while back now (May 2009, I think) I made a bird mask for larping purposes. Partly it was because I wanted to try out leather mask making techniques, and partly it was to be kit for me to use at the Maelstrom larp event I was about to go to. I figured why pay for a mask for something I'm not sure I'll go to again when I can have a go at making one with materials I already had?

So. I used some veg tanned goat as the base, dampening it down and molding it to my face - which at the time involved a fair bit of lying around with wet leather on my face, since a) I didn't have a mannequin head to use instead and b) as I now know, I'd been a bit too enthusiastic in wetting the leather.

Still, eventually it dried enough to hold it's shape when placed on some scrunched up packing paper, and it was then placed on a wooden chopping board in the oven at the lowest temperature I could manage to dry it out thoroughly. I also molded a beak from the same leather and cooked it the same way.

Once I had my dried out mask pieces, I played around for a bit with positioning the beak - angle, how far I wanted it to stick out from my face, how wide I wanted it to be where it met the rest of the mask. I also decided to coat the beak section with another piece of leather, to give it a better colour & finish since I didn't have the dyes to colour the base leather. Also the beak didn't seem to be solid enough, so the extra leather layer bulked it out and gave it a bit more structural strength.

Having glued the beak to the rest of the mask, and trimmed and tweaked here and there, I then had to feather the face. I'd opted to create a fringe of pheasant feathers so my mask had a feathered 'crest' (I now know that crest=wind break, which is not so fun on a windy day walking with the wind directly behind you -.-). I wanted more colour in the mask than just the browns of the pheasant feathers, so the next 'layer' of feathers was a dark turquoisey sort of green, long enough to mingle a bit with the pheasant feathers so that the 'crest' blended in more with the rest of the face. Then came a dark green layer across the upper edge of the forehead and around the sides of the face. For the cheeks, and around the sides of the eye sockets I chose a bright limey green. Edging the eye sockets, and forming the bulk of the forehead section I brought the browns back in with some patterned chicken feathers.

The final stage was cutting a small pile of rounded strips of brown leather, which were glued overlapping around the eye sockets. This covered the 'roots' of the small brown feathers around the eyes, and gave it more of a scaly eye-socket skin look, as most birds don't seem to have feathers coming right out of their eyelids.

All the feathers were attached by first piercing a hole in the leather using my leather sewing awl - I tried not to poke right through the leather, but to go in at an angle and create a little pocket for the feather to be glued into. I even managed to do it with only a couple of exceptions, which later had leather patches put over them on the inner side of the mask so they'd stop scratching my face.

I'm really quite pleased with how well the mask has lasted - it's been to 11 maelstrom events and counting, as well as a couple of other things. It's been carried about in bags of stuff, and strapped to the outside of a backpack that's then been piled up unthinkingly with other luggage. Not to mention rained on, torrentially, as well as blown hither and thither, face on into strong wind or indeed with the wind coming from behind trying to tear the crest out. And yet I've only lost a few feathers, which feels like pretty good going, really.

Above: side view of the 'Dima' mask, cunningly positioned using an upturned flower pot.

Below: Front view of the mask, with somewhat alarming orange flower pot eyes.

Job!

Blimey, I got a job. Granted it's only a three month contract, but it's still a job!

Not something I ever expected to be doing either - I am now a technical author, which just means I write step by step instructions for production guys to follow.

Ah well, I think at this point I might as well just accept that I'm just not the type of person to settle on one thing early in life and stick with it. I like trying new things too much!

Quite enjoying this technical authoring thing - it suits my nit-picky, perfectionist nature quite nicely, since I have to be really careful about spelling and phrasing and the order in which I do things.

Also I've been lucky enough to find a work place full of nice, friendly and generally really relaxed people. I suspect it's even better for me than I realise, since it's easing me back into working with more people than just myself in a decidedly relaxed fashion.

Anywho, hurrah for jobs, however temporary!

Flappy patches bag

I got given an old bag a while ago, which was perfectly serviceable but had lost it's magnetic fastener. Since at the time I was also developing an enthusiasm for patchwork fabrics whilst having nothing in mind to do with them, I came up with a plan. I would make lots of little two sided patches that I could sew onto the bag to personalise it a bit.

This would have been much easier to do if I'd had access to a sewing machine at the time. As it was, I managed to make up maybe half the necessary patches by hand before I got bored and packed the project away somewhere for a day when I felt more enthusiastic about it again.

Not too long ago - month or so maybe? - I gained sewing machine access. I've also had silly amounts of free time in between job hunting, so I've been gradually settling into the mentality for digging out old projects.

Since this is the project I've been working on this week, and I finally got around to updating the blog with the no-longer-self-employed info today, I thought it'd be nice to do my first project blog as well.

Here's the 'back' side of the bag, which is still the same as when I was given it. This is also how the 'front' side looked before I attacked it with patches:

The patches all started off as 5cm squares, and I made sure (with one exception, in the end) to use a different fabric front & back for each patch. Each patch was first sewn around three sides of the square, with the two pieces of fabric face to face. Then I turned them right side out, so I had handfuls of tiny squarish bags.

Once I'd made up a big pile of patches, I laid them out on the bag, a) to see if I actually had enough (I didn't. More patch sewing. Ended up with too many instead.) and b) to play with the colour layout. I had originally bought various red to orange toned fabrics, so had thought to graduate the colour over the bag - darker at the bottom, lighter at the top. I did end up doing this, in a very rough way. I also ended up with a sort of splotch of the lightest colours centred on one patch that I had experimentally embroidered with some fancy thread.

The patches got sewn on in rows, set slightly out of alignment (a bit like bricks). I just went along the open top edge of each patch, then attached a strip of fabric along the top of the row to hide the messy edges. Each row overlaps the lower one enough to hide the top strip. The colours on the underside of the patches are roughly graduated toward the top of the bag, so even if the patches are flapping about the overall effect should still be dark to light from bottom to top.

I only did one side of the bag in the end - partly because I thought it looked nice, partly because I was running out of the particular fabrics I'd used so far. Probably also because the thought of sewing another giant pile of patches was a little daunting. I think I'd originally thought to do the other side with different colours - blues and greens maybe - but now I'm thinking it's better the way it is. So here's what it looks like now:

Now I just need to patch over the hole left on the inside of the bag's 'back'. This is where the old magnetic fastener used to be. I'm not sure if I just want to patch over it and leave it as an open bag, or if I'd rather add a button of a toggle or something. I did use it for a while as an open bag (before the patch plan got started), and I don't recall feeling the need to 'close' it, so I'll probably just patch the hole and leave it at that.

Well, I guess that's that for now, at least.

All change!

Right. Yes. Well.

I've actually stopped being self employed (ok, so that was back at the end of December, and I've just been neglecting the blog since then)(...even more than normal). This was due to a variety of reasons, mostly revolving around lack of financial stability. It's pretty hard to through yourself full tilt at this sort of project if you don't have the savings to back you up. You've got your material costs, event booking fees, insurance costs, travel costs, banking fees etc.

Also, living essentially out in the middle of nowhere whilst unable to drive wasn't working out too brilliantly. Reliable housemate was reliable, but did have his own things to be getting on with, and I really needed to be getting out and about a lot more. Largely the issue was being able to transport self + kit + merchandise to craft fairs and events - which is far easier if you're doing it with your own car, which is fully available when you want it, and which you can cheerfully drive around bumpy, muddy fields knowing that the consequences of doing so are entirely your own problem.

So. The self employment is on hold till such a time as I have better facilities, funding and mobility. Possibly also until we're not in recession, cos, y'know, people don't tend to spend too much on luxury items when they don't have much spare cash.

Meanwhile, the website will be getting a name change and moving to a matching address. I'm not hurrying with that though, since it's an opportunity to play with layout and graphics for a bit, and it'll just be existing as a gallery anyway. I'm also planning to set up an Etsy shop, just so I can put the odd thing up for sale since I'm not going to stop making things.

The blog is also going to get tweaked - since I'll still be making things, I figure I might as well document projects here. It's even possible I'll end up using it more in that context than I was before... You never know. It could happen.

Right! That's all for the moment, I believe.

October report

Right. I said I'd post about what I've been up to during October so here we go, although it'll probably end up seeming like I achieved a lot less once I write it down.

First off, I finally opened an account to deal with my EoninArts finances. I was originally going to go for an account with Santander, but after hearing from various people that they weren't particularly well thought of as far as customer support goes I decided to have another fish around. I ended up going with NatWest, who seem friendly enough, and have counters with real people in that you get to interact with whenever you go into your branch, which was another thing Santander don't really do.

I also got in touch with my ex-boss, who works with textiles, and arranged to share a local farmer's market stall with her for a couple of weekends in the run up to Christmas. Sharing the stall means we each have to pay only half the fee for the day, don't need to have as much stock just sitting ready. It also means we each have someone else to talk to - which for me certainly makes turning up at an established market a lot less scary - or watch the stall while the other goes to grab lunch or have a quick look at the other stalls.

The two of us also went to a festival event at the Hafod Hotel in Devil's Bridge. I think that would've gone a lot better if the festival organisers had actually put up some signs so that people knew the craft fair was there. As it was, we were in a different room to the rest of what was going on, so it was pretty quiet most of the day. Still, it meant we ended up with a bunch of small crafters all going a bit barmy and generally having a bit of a laugh amongst ourselves, which was nice enough. I had my sale for the day at least, and the attendance fee was a donation to the festival only if you actually made any money, so it wasn't a total loss.

What else? Oh yes. Sadly during September Toko Gallery & Crafts closed. Since that was my only retail outlet in Aberystwyth, that was a obviously a bit of a loss for me. I had a stomp about town and visited a couple of other shops I thought might like my work, but it seems that come October most people have done their buying for Christmas, so although I had a positive response to my work, for the time being no-one's buying. Will try again in the new year.

Trustworthy housemate #1, who has a car, and has been volunteering to drive me places, finally got to drive me somewhere. We went down the coast to Aberaeron, with absolutely gorgeous weather, and I had a stomp around there with my bag of shiny things.

• First shop I tried said they were no longer taking things on a small scale sale/return basis, so that was a no go.
• Second shop was an established jewellers, and although they liked my work, and were quite encouraging, they said they only take hallmarked work since their customers do tend to ask for it. Since I've kept all my work below the hallmarking exemption rate so far to avoid the additional costs that would bring me, it means they couldn't price my work as it should be priced so they'd rather talk to me again once I start getting my work hallmarked. Fair enough, if slightly irritating, but then I never knew about the exemption thing until I looked into it so I can't expect the average consumer to know either.
• Third shop was a little art gallery on a street running towards the sea, where housemate #1 and myself spent a happy ten minutes or so being pretentious about paintings. Then I actually tried talking to the owner. Who turned out to be very nice, and liked my work, and said he'd quite happily have some off me and give it a try. So hurrah! Third time lucky! We agreed for me to bring a selection of work to him the next week, since I had the Devil's Bridge thing that weekend that I wanted to get out of the way first.

I took my work in, and he still liked it (I can never help but worry that people might change their minds) and he even decided he was happy to pay me up front rather than take them on sale or return. Happy times! That certainly put a grin on my face for the rest of the day. As a side note, we then went to look for food, since neither me nor housemate #1 had eaten much that day. He found a chip shop that declared their chips were 'probably some of the best chips you'll ever have'. Well that sounded like a challenge, so we went there - and lo! I swear those really were some of the best chips I've ever had! Probably helped to be sat out on a bench feeling a bit chilly, and also starving hungry, but still. Those were ridiculously nice chips.

After that first trip down to Aberaeron, we actually continued down the coast to New Quay, on the advice of the Art of Aberaeron Gallery chap since it was still mid afternoon and it wasn't that far. That trip wasn't quite as successful - I again ended up talking to someone who liked my work, but had recently bought in a lot of stock for Christmas so would prefer to speak to me again next year. Still, that's a future possibility at least.

So yes, compared to the lethargy of previous months, October felt pretty good.

Appearance and disappearance

This is probably going to be a long one...

After dithering about for a couple of months, I finally got around to actually looking at my own blog again, and lo! New template design thingummy. So now the appearance of the blog has changed a bit. What do you reckon? Do we like the green? I like the green, but I'm still not sure about the text background. Hmm.

Well anyway, sorry for disappearing for a while. Since the beginning of June in fact -.- Where was I back then? Oh yes, I was about to go off for the June Maelstrom event. 'Cavalcade' was fantastic fun - good weather, including an almost ridiculously well timed and terribly atmospheric lightning storm on Saturday night. All undead invasions in the middle of the night should be accompanied by oppressively muggy air broken by booming thunder. Business wise it went as well as the April event, which was perfectly acceptable.

What else happened in June? I registered as self employed, and I really do quite like the people on the HMRC's newly self employed helpline because they are both friendly and genuinely helpful. I didn't end up with the business bank account I was going to a meeting for, although I have now opened a new account to organise by money. I didn't really get much else of major import done that month, I think because I was feeling like I'd already achieved something substantial in registering and going to the 'strom event.

Next major thing off the top of my head was 'Remuneration', the July Maelstom event. Again with the good weather, and a mostly pleasant time, although business wise not the year's best outcome. I think it was around about this point that I started feeling a bit depressed again. I really can't emphasise enough just how difficult it can be - even without you realising sometimes - to start from scratch and try to build a business. Especially when your key problems are a severe inability to self motivate and a long held inferiority complex regarding someone who's started doing the same thing but really doesn't seem to lack in terms of self motivation skills.

So yes, I went somewhat downhill for a while there. At the end of the day, I have one person who I regularly speak to face to face who is trying to be supportive of what I'm doing. Which is lovely, except he pretty much always plays devil's advocate in any conversation, so he can be pretty frustrating to talk to when you're frantically trying to boost your self confidence and positivity. Although I was talking to my parents on the phone roughly every week, I hadn't actually seen them since January, so I was starting to feel the lack of physical presence from them badly.

Even though I've been living in Aberystwyth for six years now, I've generally visited my family back in Somerset fairly regularly at Christmas, Easter and over the summer to coincide with academic holidays. So come August when I'd not seen them for seven months and counting it was starting to feel quite lonely. Happily, I'd been in touch with an old college friend (also back in Somerset) who was interested in trying out Maelstrom, and also in coming up to visit Aberystwyth. The next 'strom was early ish September, so he came up to Aber for a couple of days before hand and then we both trundled off to the event. It was nice enough to have someone actually visit and be there as a new face to talk to, but then I got to go see everyone at 'strom as well which perked me up quite a bit.

The event, 'Retaliation', was fun enough. We were at a new site, which made it a little more interesting. My friend had a bit of a hap hazard first event; kept wandering off to the out of character camping area to sleep since he was feeling tired and a bit groggy (possibly from getting drenched whilst walking in Aberystwyth); had to wait a while to really introduce himself to the relevant group of fellow characters due to events beyond his control; and camped in a dip and woke up soggy in the middle of the night. Yet come time out on Sunday, he had a huge grin on his face and said he'd really enjoyed himself. I suppose that says a lot about how fun the events usually are, and how nice the people.

After 'strom, it worked out as simplest for me to travel on down to Somerset with my friend, rather than expect him to drive me back to Aberystwyth and then himself go all the way back home. Which was awesome really, since it meant I went home to see my family. To sum up, despite a couple of hiccups, it was good. I had some really good (if mentally and emotionally difficult) talks, which helped me deal with some of the things I'd been stressing myself about without actually telling myself. I also got out in the shed with Dad to give the cart a bit of a going over, which I think he enjoyed more than I did, since it seems he rarely finds a good enough excuse to go spend the day playing with bits of wood in the shed.

I came back up to Aberystwyth at the beginning of October feeling not so much cheerily positive as determined, in a sort of mellow-happy way that I can't think of the right word for. So far that seems to have been a very good thing, but I think I'll write up October's exploits in a new post, since this one is looking a bit long winded as it is. Possibly later today, if I remember. Stuff to do right now though, so tara!

Pre-event ramble

By the end of today I need to be all packed up and ready for this weekend's Maelstrom event. I'm feeling a bit confused though - one the one hand I feel like there is still a ton of stuff I have to do to be ready, but on the other hand I added up the value of the stock I have prepared and that seems just fine.

I think it must be because I actually managed to start preparing a bit further ahead this time around. I've always been in the habit of leaving everything till the last minute, which of course results in a mad panic when I realise I can't instantaneously sew a couple of hundred pounds worth of leather and will thus have to just scrape together whatever I can.

This time though I've been getting up every day and thinking through what needs doing, then ticking something off of that list. I've also been remembering to write lists down so I can avoid forgetting things, and I get the satisfaction of physically being able to tick things off and see the list get shorter.

That said, I still need to go sort out the cart handles, and there's certainly still plenty of scope for cart based improvements that I didn't manage to sort out this time around. Also I need to sort out some jewellery stock.

As far as leather stock goes, I think it's confusing me because I've mostly made small things - hand sized notebooks and pouches, sort of thing - so in a pile it doesn't look like much, but price wise it's still well over double the amount I've so far managed to sell at previous events. I always worry about how negative it might be if I sell out - surely it doesn't look good to have no stuff to sell? However right now I'm thinking about the possibility (not that I actually expect it to happen) and mostly just thinking 'that'd be awesome'. Aside from the fact I could certainly do with the money, if I did have people asking me for stuff and I had to say 'sorry I sold out' then doesn't that also say 'my stuff was so good it's all gone'? Isn't it possible that that would encourage people to look up my website and see what all the fuss was about? Maybe encourage them to come see me first next time they're at an event I'm attending?

So yeah, I'm never quite sure where to put myself on the 'running out of stock' issue. I guess mostly if I make sure that running out of stock involves me being able to comfortably pay the rent and everything else for the month after just one event, then that's fine. At the end of the day I still have the carrying capacity issue. Travelling by train means I can only take as much stock as I can carry, and if that turns out to not be enough, then so be it.

I'm procrastinating. I should really stop -.- I need to make myself a letterhead, since I apparently need one to set up a business banking account, which I now have an appointment to do on Monday. I also need to go sort out all my stock and gear and then start packing. Ah well, best get on with it I suppose.