Have a Wibbly-Wobbly Timey-Wimey Christmas!

Best BFF ever!

After Alex gave me this early Christmas present of a glass TARDIS ornament, I decided to go ahead with a Doctor Who themed Christmas Tree this year. We started on Weeping Angel tree toppers (still in progress), inspired by this tutorial by Cynthia at The Creative Crossing. I'll post pictures of those once they're finished.

Since I only had time to make a few ornaments, I filled up the rest of the tree with "TARDIS Blue" glass ornaments, stuck random doctor who toys into the tree (like my blue dalek, wind-up weeping angel, and 11th doctor sonic screwdriver) and then topped off the tree with a fez and a bowtie!

Here are a couple of the ornaments I made. The adipose are made of Sculpey and the Van Gogh TARDIS exploding is decoupaged onto a glass ornament. After being approached about selling the adipose ornaments, I'm trying to get an annual Doctor Who Handmade Ornament Swap going on to not only build up my Whovian ornament collection, but also to spread the crafty cheer to those looking to make their tree a bit more wibbly-wobbly or timey-wimey. Let me know if you're interested!

New website, new tools, new jewelry!

My website, www.angelafalcone.com, has been totally revamped. Check it out and let me know what you think. I created a special mobile site since the main website is flash, so that's what you will get if you're viewing from your phone.

Anyway, I got a new riveting tool for my birthday. Super exciting! I've also had minimal saw blade breakage lately and that makes me happy. (I hope I didn't jinx myself just now...) So, here are a few things I've been working on.

Alex and I are doing the Gretna Farmers Market this weekend with her knitted stuff and my jewelry. Should be fun!

DIY $5 Christmas Wreath

OK, ya'll. If you're like me and can't justify spending money on yourself when Christmas is right around the corner, this is the perfect inexpensive DIY wreath to decorate your boring door. I bought all of the supplies from the Dollar Tree and spent a grand total of $5.44, including tax. This doesn't include my glue gun or ribbon that I already had.

For the base, I bought one for $1 at the Dollar Tree, or you can take an existing wreath that you don't like and strip it down. I picked out some shimmery ribbon and wrapped it around the base and hot glued the ends down where the flowers would go. I cut the poinsettias and pine cones to separate them and then individually started threading the wire stem through the branches in the wreath and wrapped the remaining stem around the back of the wreath and twisted in. It's a bit tricky at first, but play around with it. As far as getting the statue to stay, hot glue is your best friend. Luckily, the owl statue was hollow, so it wasn't too heavy. Also hot glue any stems or pieces that are loose.

Dragon*Con 2012 adventures

With Slvester McCoy, the seventh doctor!

Is it time for Dragon*Con again, yet??!? I'm anxious for next year. Alex and I managed to pull together my Dalek dress to go with her TARDIS dress for the con this year. I made these pill box hats from sheets of felt and recruited the help of my dad to figure out lighting. They came out super cute and I'm excited to add to the costumes and keep them in cosplay rotation. We also had some female doctor who costumes, but those were way too hot and didn't last long in Labor Day Atlanta heat... Next costume project: classy femme Boba Fett!

Here are some of my favorite pictures from Dragon*Con weekend. I loved meeting so many great and interesting people! Never a dull moment!

With Patricia Quinn, known for being Magenta in Rocky Horror

With J. August Richards, Gunn in Angel

With Kai Owen, Rhys in Torchwood

With LeVar Burton

New Jewelry

Bath Balls a la Martha Stewart

This is a bit late, but still worth posting. For Christmas, I made the mistake awesome decision to have a DIY Christmas. Just about every gift given by yours truly was handmade-ish (handcrafted?) in my very own apartment. But right now, I'm just going to post about the bath balls and packaging that I made for the ladies in my family. I used this bath snowball tutorial from Martha Stewart's website. A word of warning, though, only do this when you have enough time to try again and definitely wait longer than 24 hours to remove the remaining half from the bath ball. The first time I attempted these, I only let them sit overnight and trying to reshape them is a huge pain, trust me. A trick that I learned (and could not find online) after breaking many of these in half for removing the second half of the mold is to lightly tap the plastic mold, while holding it upside down in your hand, and then carefully twist the mold off of the bath ball. For these, I used blue food coloring with lavender essential oils and orange food coloring with pomegranate and vanilla essential oils. I used large mason jars, colorful tissue paper, and ribbon for the container. Then, instead of wrapping, I wanted the recipients to be able to reuse the packaging, so I painted each person's initials on blank tote bags, sewed on a flower, and painted their names on Christmas ornaments instead of using tags. 

Luckily, I have an awesome family who loved (or at least pretended to love =P) their handmade goodies. I've heard horror stories of people who have made wonderful handmade gifts (which, as I have learned, typically cost more than store bought gifts and take much planning and hard work) only to be told things like "We understand, everyone is having money problems right now. It's the thought that counts." I can't imagine telling someone something like that. Even that hideous handmade sweater from your granny with the hot air balloons painted on with puffy fabric paint. Just smile, say "thank you" with enthusiasm, and shove it to the back of your closet in case you ever have to prove that you liked it enough to keep it.