Apartment Tour :D

Ughh, still hate being in videos.. :x

Intro to Laser Cutting!

Today I tried using a laser cutter for the first time. :D I’ve been wanting a custom name necklace for quite awhile now, especially like those made by Cicily Margo and Di Depux. The only problem is that I’m a student trying to make rent and can’t currently afford to purchase such lovely work (I still would like to get a custom order from them in the future though!). :c

I’m going to walk you through the steps it took me to make these today! :]

Where to find a Laser Cutter

For this project I used the laser cutter at the Art and Design building of my university. There are many places you can find them outside of schools though!

Hackerspaces often have laser cutters available for use. For those of you that aren’t familiar with them, the definition of a hackerspace is:

A hackerspace or hackspace (also referred to as a hacklab, makerspace or creative space) is a location where people with common interests, usually in computers, technology, or digital or electronic art can meet, socialise and/or collaborate. …

Many many cities have hackerspaces, here’s a list of them from all around the world. :]

If you’re unable to find a laser cutter near you, you can always have designs cut online at sites like Ponoko~

Preparation of the Design

Each laser cutter may be set up slightly differently in terms of how you need to create your layout. Some have you use specific sized outlines, fill in designs with certain colors for different options (engraving, cutting, etc)

I created the layout for the pieces I needed to cut in Adobe Illustrator. Inkscape (which is free) and Corel Draw are able to make the correct vector files as well~

Cutting the Design

I chose to cut my pieces out of wood sheets because I wasn’t able to find acrylic sheets today. Here is what they looked like cut out. :D (My school charges $2 for 10 minutes of cutting. These took around 1 minnute to cut out)

Painting and Gluing

Since I used wood instead of acrylic sheets and still wanted my pieces to be colorful, I had to paint them. I used some plain acrylic and some glitter paints (as well as Krylon Clear Gloss spray paint) and painted the pieces before I glued them together.

Here’s a photo of the mess of paint I used, haha:

And here’s a photo after I put a chain on the necklace. :D

I’m excited to keep tweaking my method, and also experimenting with acrylic sheets and engraving eventually~~ :D

This Saturday I had a booth at the Boneyard Arts Festival! :] The festival is a four day long event in Urbana-Champaign, which is a college campus a few hours south of Chicago (basically the middle of nowhere :p ). Each of the four days is held in a different part of town, so I had my booth up on Saturday during the Urbana day.

This was actually my first time having my own personal booth at a fair. :D In the past I did a ton of arts and craft shows with my parents, and still help my dad with his booth every summer at a local French Market. I think all of that experience helped me know what to prepare for this booth. :]

Here are some close-up shots of the table..

I made the t-shirt displays the night before setting up. xD All I had was one large and one small cardboard box, so I had to figure out a design that would let me create three displays out of the materials I had~ I’ll try and upload a small diagram if anyone is interested in recreating a stand for themselves. :]

My friend Sam was also showing her work! She does some lovely photography:

And my boyfriend came to visit with my favorite drink of all time~~ (he also helped me take most of the photos in this post c: )

And finally, here’s sneak shot (she doesn’t always like her photo taken) of my roommate Caro when she was visiting. ;p

All in all it was a good day. :] I didn’t sell too much but it was kind of expected, since the crowd wasn’t the exact type that would buy my clothing. But it was still a good, first solo booth experience. Now it’s time to get back to real life (and stop making clothes) and bury myself in research papers and final projects, haha..

P.S. I’m going to put up a new giveaway for a crop top and hair bow soon! Which shirt design would you guys prefer?

Preview of my booth this weekend! Anyone going to visit me? ;D (Taken with instagram)

I haven’t shared music with you guys in a long time it seems~ I have two favorite songs at the moment, both of which I first heard in DJ Big Jacks’ Electric Relaxation mix.

My roommate Caro introduced me to Aritzia’s soundcloud page, which is filled with tons of really great hour-long mixes (Aritzia is fashion boutique that plays these mixes in their store).

The first song is Love for You by Calvin Harris. I got kind of confused while searching for the song because I happened across this video of Acceptable in the 80s by Calvin Harris, which is quite a different from the song I posted above:

I really enjoyed the color, clothes and everything else about the video though. :p

The second song is Down in L.A. by Munk. I’m not a big fan of the video.. but it was the only way I could post it~ Try listening to it without watching it first maybe. :]

Outfit from a couple days ago. The weather has been on and off beautiful lately, so I have to take advatage of dress weather when I can get it. :]

I got the dress in Tawain (during my 2009 trip I think) for about $3 and shortened it. It’s got blue ladybugs all over it. :D The neon leggings I got from the children’s section at Target a few days ago for $2.50. I checked the adult section for bigger sizes but they only had boring colors…

And finally a shot of my Sweettooth5150 hair bows and sassyNpunk bat necklace. c;

Oh, and I got my mint polka dot socks from forever21 for $3.50~ The best part is that they match my Chubby Bunny mint hair bow exactly!~~