An Introduction to Studs

Occasionally I get questions about where I get studs or what types of studs to use, so I decided to make a mini-tutorial. :] As always, please feel free to message me at szmoon.net/ask or leave a comment on the original post if you have any questions or comments!

Past tutorials can be found (here)~

Here is the tutorial for the ZEF shirt that Yolandi wears in the newest Die Antwoord music video. :]

Here is the link for the printable stencil: LINK

As always, let me know if you have any questions! I’m always glad to help~

(past tutorials)

how to make a simple floral headband

These headbands seem to be getting popular so I decided to do a simple how-to while I was making my one for myself~

The materials are pretty inexpensive, especially if you use a coupon at Michaels or Joann Fabrics~

Hope you enjoyed the tutorial! You can see past tutorials here. c;

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

One of our new media professors recently mentioned a movement called Glitch Art. It caught my interest and I wrote it down in my sketchbook, but then forgot about it until my friend Hugh started researching more into it.

I looked it up on wikipedia, saw the image examples and fell in love immediately. Glitch art is defined as:

the aestheticization of digital or analog errors, such as artifacts and other “bugs”, by either corrupting digital code/data or by physically manipulating electronic devices

Hugh and I set out to try our own hand at Glitch art by editing jpg files in text editors. He managed to get it to work right away using a mac, while my windows laptop just would not open the corrupted jpgs (I searched online and other people have gotten it to work on windows..).

So after a couple hours of trying to force windows to make glitch art, I tried it on a mac during my next class and got it to work. The corrupted image you see above was originally this photo of my Sin Kitten shirt.

How to make Glitch Art (one way to do it at least):

• open the image file in a text editor (bmp and tif are supposed to work best, though mine was a jpg)
• edit/add/delete/ctrlC/ctrlX/ctrlV the text
• save the file
• open it in an image viewer and it should (but might not) look a little different
• repeat until you’re happy with the results :]

There’s just something about the aesthetic of digital corruption the I love.. I think found a something to keep me busy for awhile.. :]

My friend John (who, by the way, runs a really cool record label) recently got me interested in using disposable cameras again. I don’t even remember the last time I used film.. it was probably long long ago with a pink camera that imprinted hello kitty in the corner of each shot. :p

So this past weekend I got a $5.99 disposable camera from Walgreens and experimented. I felt guilty for taking so many photos in one weekend, but I was really interested in seeing the effect a disposable camera had on photos. I didn’t want to spend weeks/months filling my first disposable camera only to realize, after finally getting them developed, that I didn’t like the quality of the images.

But turns out there was no reason for me to worry; I’m in love with how these turned out. :] I thought I’d share some of my experiments with different locations/lighting with you guys~

Things I now love about disposable cameras:

• Each shot feels slightly precious. It prevents you from taking dozens of shots.
• You can’t see the photo immediately after taking it.
• The one or two shots you take is what you get. No choosing between a bunch of photos to find one that you feel best represents the moment. The photo you take is what ends up representing the moment. (No idealizing the memory? I’m not quite sure how to explain it, haha..)

Maybe I’m just tired of all the digital clutter I have. It’s so easy to accumulate gigabyte after gigabyte of memories… but sometimes I feel like it’s too much to keep track of. In the future I plan on using my disposable cameras at a slower pace, and hopefully I will record some nice memories with them. Memories I’ll be able to keep in a box or album instead of only digitally. :]