Turning a Romper into My Wedding Dress

     For our final wedding post of the season, I've saved the best for last - my wedding dress.  When Brian and I started talking seriously about getting married in October of last year, I immediately started thinking about what I wanted to wear.  At the time, he and I were both grad students, so buying a traditional wedding dress would have strained our budget, and I've never been a white dress gal.  I had been debating whether to go for an Alice in Wonderland themed or Halloween themed wedding, and ultimately settled on Alice in Wonderland.  I thus decided that I would look for something blue to wear.
     I started googling blue prom rompers, and while there were some pretty ones, they were still pricey and there were none that I adored.  What seemed to set apart many of the prom rompers from the less fancy rompers was a tulle overskirt.  I had a pretty blue romper I had used for Alice in Wonderland Disneybounding, and I thought, I bet I could make a tulle overskirt.  So I did.
     As someone who is still relatively new to sewing, the making of this overskirt was a bit of a process, with plenty of hiccups along the way.  However, while the garment is far from perfect, I think I 100% made the right choice in constructing my own dress.  It added an extra touch of specialness to be wearing something that I had made, and I felt so beautiful in it on the day of.  I've actually worn both pieces of the look since for Disneybounds, and I still feel beautiful when I put it on.
     Here's a video of the overskirt making process.  While you could use it as a tutorial, there are probably far better tutorials out there on making an overskirt, so I would recommend watching it more as a sneak peek into my wedding dress journey.  I'm so excited to be sharing this with you, and I hope you enjoy this post!

     If you're looking for more photos of the dress, don't worry, I've got plenty :)

These first two pictures were taken right after the ceremony.  It was very bright out, so we had some trouble finding the best lighting.

We came back in the evening to take a few more pictures.  Here you can see the dress in a few different lighting situations.

     The last picture is from an Alice in Wonderland Disneybound shoot I did on my birthday.  I've reused both the romper (okay, technically the wedding romper's identical twin) and the overskirt a few times since the wedding.  Some people might find this tacky, but I'm all for reusing clothes.  Why would I want to wear something this pretty only once?
     That concludes the wedding posts.  Next week we'll be diving right into Halloween content.  I hope you're as excited for Halloween crafting as I am!

Making a Gastly (Pokemon) Inspired Look: An Intro to Pokemonbounding and Gastly Community Day

Gastly photobomb from Pokemon GO Gastly Community Day

     As I'm sure many of you are aware, I love Pokemon GO.  One of my favorite Pokemon is Gastly, although Brian will tell you that I say that about every Pokemon.  I've been doing a lot of Disneybounding these last few months (which I hope to have a post about sometime in the future), and I thought it would be fun to dress up in the style of some of my favorite Pokemon.  I'm using the term Pokemonbounding here, but you could also call it a Pokemon cosplay.
     I got the idea to make a Gastly look by layering a purple tulle overskirt over one of my many black rompers.  When Niantic announced that there would be a Gastly Community Day in July, I decided that I had to make my Gastly look to wear for Community Day.  I've included a video of the process of making the overskirt below, which some of you may already have seen on my YouTube channel.  I also ended up making a Gastly plushie to go with the look and plan to post that tutorial sometime in November or December.

     For the rest of this post, I just wanted to share some more pictures of the look, as well as some of my favorite Gastly Community Day moments.  First up we have some pics of the outfit:

Me pretending to be a ghost, since I'm styled as a ghost type Pokemon.

Conspiring with my little plush Gastly.

I was quite pleased with how this look turned out.  I think it captured Gastly's vibe pretty well, but let me know what you think.

     Next up, here are a few of my favorite AR photos from the day:

I was lucky to find a shiny Gastly within the first 15 minutes of the event, while Brian and I were out taking pictures.

Here's another photo bomb.  I thought the photo bombs were the cutest thing.

     I had a great time.  I played for probably about three and a half hours of the event and managed to snag 14 shinies.  I spent most of the time indoors playing from an incense, which was nice because it was pretty hot and humid out.  Even with the extended time window, I forgot to evolve my Gastlys, so I'll have to wait until December and hope that they do the same sort of thing as last year, where you can evolve for a special move during the December Community Day time window.
     What Community Day are you hoping for?  This may sound a little silly, but I would love to have a Meowth Community Day for better odds at finding a shiny, and hopefully some adorable photo bombs.  Which, speaking of Meowth, I'll have a post up here for a Meowth look probably next week, after Pokemon GO Fest.  Stay tuned for more Pokemon content.

DIY Alice in Wonderland Card Soldiers

     We were originally planning on having these little pals guarding our guest book, but when our plans had to change, they became the perfect decorations for the ceremony.  Huge shout out to Katie and Jacob for staking them into the ground for us with skewers and copious amounts of packing tape as we rushed to start the ceremony in time.  Unfortunately I didn't think to get any pictures of the soldiers side by side, but I made one left handed (for Brian) and one right handed (for me).  These could be great for any sort of Alice themed celebration.

     I didn't manage to get a good picture of the second card soldier during our wedding, so here she is doing a Queen of Hearts Disneybound with me.  Yes, I stole her scepter for this look.

Materials:

*White foam sheet
*Red poster paper
*Red cardstock
*White cardstock
*Scissors or die cutting machine
*Glue
*Wooden dowel
*Gold acrylic paint
*Red felt
*White felt
*Red heart shaped rhinestones

Directions:

*To construct the head for your card soldier, begin by cutting out a large heart from red cardstock.  This heart should take up most of the sheet of cardstock.

*Cut out a smaller heart from white cardstock, sized to fit inside the red heart (see picture a few lines down of the assembled head for reference).

*Cut out two smaller hearts from red cardstock of unequal sizes (see pic a few lines down).  These will form the mouth and eyes of your card soldier.

*Glue together the four hearts, as shown below:

*For the body of the card soldier, cut out playing card numbers and hearts.  For example, for the "2" card, I cut out two 2's, one to go in either diagonal corner, two small hearts denoting the suit to go in the corners with the numbers, and two bigger hearts to form the arrangement in the center of the card.

*Glue down your shapes in an arrangement like the one shown below:

*Glue the card soldier's head to its body.

*Cut arms from red poster paper.

*Glue the arms to the back of the card soldier and trim any excess cardstock that sticks out around the soldier's "shoulders."

*To make the scepter, begin by painting a wooden dowel gold.  Let dry.

*Cut out four hearts from red felt, and four slightly smaller hearts from white felt.

*Glue the white hearts to the red hearts.

*Glue some red heart shaped rhinestones to the white felt.

*Glue the centers of the hearts to the wooden dowels at equally spaced intervals, so the center of each heart will be spaced 1/4 of the way around the dowel from the next heart's center.  The hearts will be pushing against each other and overlapping at this stage.

*Glue together the edges of neighboring hearts.

DIY Faux Flower Bouquet

     Wedding flowers can be expensive.  However, if you're able to go the DIY route and buy your artificial flowers at the right time (Joann was having a buy one, get two free deal when I bought my wedding flowers), you can save a ton of money.  The other upside to using artificial flowers is you can preserve your bouquet, and while some people may say they don't look as nice as the real deal, I think they're still pretty and most people aren't going to be close enough to your bouquet to notice.
     I didn't have all the proper supplies for bouquet making (i.e., I didn't have floral tape), but I threw together a couple of bouquets for me and my MOH, and I think they came out pretty well.  Here's how I made my bouquet.  If you're looking for a different vibe than the one I ended up with, replace the flower selection I used with flowers of your choice.

Me with my bouquet on my wedding day.

Me and Katie with our bouquets.

Materials:

*3 bundles of artificial red roses (I think each bundle had about six flowers)
*3 bundles of artificial baby's breath
*Green duct tape (or floral tape)
*Wire cutters
*Ribbon
*All purpose adhesive

Directions:

*Bundle together the roses with some green duct tape.

*Cut apart the baby's breath branches using wire cutters.

*Add baby's breath at even intervals around the bouquet and secure using duct tape.

*Cut off more baby's breath pieces and continue placing around the bouquet and securing with duct tape.  Repeat until your bouquet is as full as you would like it to be.

*Wrap ribbon around the bouquet to cover the duct tape.  Secure the ends of the ribbon with some glue.

Whimsical Alice in Wonderland Wedding Sign

    This wedding craft didn't actually make an appearance in our wedding (maybe next year), but it was too fun not to share.  With some slightly different labels for your arrows, you could easily repurpose this idea for an Alice in Wonderland tea party, as well as all sorts of other events.  This one was a lot of trial and error, so I've included just the video tutorial, as I think it shows my crafting process better than I could articulate in words.

Alice in Wonderland Wedding Cake Toppers

     Even before COVID, when I was planning a much fancier iteration of my wedding, I had thought about using Little Debbie snack cakes during my reception.  Maybe not at the main cake (although I wasn't opposed to that idea), but I thought about having a couple of cake stands with different Little Debbie treats for my guests to enjoy.  Also, this is not sponsored.  I just love snack cakes, which shouldn't come as too much of a surprise, given my Christmas crafting last year.
     Which is why, when I realized we were going to have to majorly scale back the in person component of our wedding, I wasn't upset to make the switch to Little Debbie Fancy Cakes.  We wanted to have something prepackaged, so that our handful of in person guests wouldn't have to worry about other people coming into contact with their food.  Snack cakes seemed like the perfect option, and if you're having a wedding or another celebration during COVID, I'd definitely recommend going the individually packaged cake route.
     I made two types of cake toppers: a couples set for Brian and me (pictured above) and "Eat Me" toppers for our guests.  It was a fun little touch to make snack cakes feel a little more personal.  I did a video tutorial for the "Eat Me" toppers, which I'll include below, and this post has a written tutorial for the couples (Alice and the Hatter's Hat) toppers.  If you're going for more traditional couples toppers (e.g., bride and groom, bride and bride, spouse and spouse, etc.), you may need some different clip art, but the construction process would be similar.  These toppers could be great not only for weddings, but also for Alice in Wonderland themed parties, and with the right clip art, you could use this technique to make toppers to fit any party theme.

Couples Cake Topper

Materials:

*Medium to heavy weight white paper
*Computer and printer
*This Autumn in Wonderland clip art pack
*This Alice in Wonderland clip art pack
*Toothpicks
*School glue
*Scissors

Directions:

*Open up the Alice or other clip art design of your choosing.  The Autumn in Wonderland pack offers Alice with three different hair colors and two skin tones, but there may be other clip art packs that have an image or symbol that you like better.

*Copy the image and paste it into a word document.

*Shrink the image until it is the size that you would like your topper to be.

*Copy the image and flip it horizontally, so that you have your image in its original orientation and now a second image that is the mirror image of the first.

*Print out the images.

*Cut out the images.  You can either cut close to the images, as I did, or leave a border around them.  Leaving a border will require less precision, and you can always decorate the edges if you'd like.

*Glue the toothpick to the blank side of one of the images.  Glue the other image to the back of the first, blank sides together.

*To make the second topper, repeat the steps above with the hatter hat clip art, or another image of your choice.  Note that when you mirror the hatter hat, the 10/6 will be backward.  This means that when placing the hatter hat on your cake, you'll want to pay attention to which side is facing outward.

Pride Nails

     Happy Pride everyone!  I had been hoping to do a video tutorial on my pride nails this year.  Unfortunately, when I'm doing nail art that requires a fair amount of precision, I have a tendency to angle my hands upward, away from the camera.  This means that the footage I took wasn't stellar, and there are lots of points during the video where my hands are angled in such a way that you can't actually see what I'm doing.  So I decided not to do the video and instead just do a written tutorial.  Hopefully I can redo the video tutorial at some point in the future.

Thumbnail: 8 Color Philadelphia Pride Flag

This variation on the rainbow pride flag includes black and brown stripes to represent People of Color in the LGBTQIA+ community.  Although People of Color have been instrumental in the struggle for equality, their contributions are often overlooked (e.g., Marsha P. Johnson, who took part in Stonewall and co-founded with Sylvia Riviera the organization STAR, which provided assistance and housing to homeless trans and queer youth and sex workers [1]).  They are also more likely to face more discrimination and violence due to their multiple marginalized identities.  For example, black trans women are murdered at a rate more than seven times that of the general population [2].

Materials:

*Base coat
*Black acrylic paint or nail polish
*Brown acrylic paint or nail polish
*Red acrylic paint or nail polish
*Orange acrylic paint or nail polish
*Yellow acrylic paint or nail polish
*Green acrylic paint or nail polish
*Blue acrylic paint or nail polish
*Purple acrylic paint or nail polish
*Fine nail art brush
*Holographic nail polish top coat (optional) or glossy top coat

Directions:

*Apply nail polish base coat.  Let dry.

*Apply a thin horizontal stripe of black paint at the top of your thumbnail.  The width of the stripe depends on the length of your nails.  To get a sense of how wide each stripe should be, measure the length of your nail and divide that number by 8.  The resulting number will give you an approximate width.  (Honestly I just eyeballed it, but if you're worried about spacing, math can help.)

*Apply a thin stripe of brown paint in the same fashion.

*Continue applying the remaining colors in thin layers, starting with red and progressing to purple in rainbow order.

*Seal with a top coat, either a clear top coat or a holographic top coat for some rainbowy sparkles.

Index Finger: Trans Flag

Someone who is transgender has a gender identity than doesn't match the sex they were assigned at birth.  (The term for people whose gender identities match the sex they were assigned at birth is cisgender.)  While we hear about women who were assigned male at birth and men who were assigned female at birth, someone does not have to be a woman or a man to be trans.  Many people who are nonbinary, gender fluid, or agender, for example, may also consider themselves trans.  However, not everyone who is nonbinary, for example, will consider themselves trans.  This is partly why many of these communities have their own flags.

Materials:

*Nail polish base coat
*Light blue acrylic paint or nail polish
*Light pink acrylic paint or nail polish
*White acrylic paint or nail polish
*Fine nail art brush
*Holographic or clear nail polish top coat

Directions:

*Apply a clear base coat.  Let dry.

*Paint light blue horizontal stripes at the top and bottom of each nail.  If you're not sure how wide to make each stripe, take the length of your nail and divide it by five.  The resulting number will give you the approximate width each stripe should be.

*Paint pink stripes below the top blue stripe and above the bottom blue stripe.

*Fill in the middle of the nail with white paint or polish.

*Apply a clear top coat, or a holographic top coat for some extra shine.

Middle Finger: Bi Pride Flag

While some people have come to associate bisexuality with being attracted to both women and men, many bisexual people find themselves attracted to people of genders outside of the binary, for example, people who are nonbinary or agender.

Materials:

*Nail polish base coat
*Magenta acrylic paint or nail polish
*Purple acrylic paint or nail polish
*Blue acrylic paint or nail polish
*Fine nail art brush
*Holographic or clear nail polish top coat

Directions:

*Apply a clear base coat.  Let dry.

*Paint the top part of your nail magenta.  The purple stripe on the bi flag is often thinner than the pink and blue stripes, but I've seen a lot of people use equal widths too.

*Paint the middle of your nail purple.

*Paint the bottom of your nail blue.

*Apply a clear or holographic top coat.

Ring Finger: Asexual Pride Flag

One thing to know about asexuality is that it is a spectrum.  While some people who are asexual have zero sexual attraction, others (sometimes called gray asexuals or gray aces) do experience some sexual attraction.  The attraction could be infrequent or limited to a small number of individuals.  Demisexuality is often considered as a subset of asexuality.  Demisexual individuals have to form a connection with someone first before they can become sexually attracted to this person.

Another important thing to note about asexuality is that sex and romance are not the same.  People who don't experience romantic attractions are called aromantic.  While some asexual people are also aromantic, many are not.  Much like some people can have sex without developing romantic feelings, other people can have romantic feelings without a desire for sex.

Materials:

*Nail polish base coat
*Black acrylic paint or nail polish
*Gray acrylic paint or nail polish
*White acrylic paint or nail polish
*Purple acrylic paint or nail polish
*Fine nail art brush
*Holographic or clear nail polish top coat

Directions:

*Apply a clear base coat.  Let dry.

*Paint the top of your nail black.  To figure out how wide to make your stripe, take the length of your nail and divide it by four.  The resulting number will give you the width of each stripe.

*Paint a gray stripe below the black one.

*Paint a white stripe below the gray one.

*Paint the bottom stripe purple.

*Seal with a clear or holographic top coat.

Pinkie Finger: Pan Pride Flag

For people who are pansexual, gender is generally not a factor in their attractions.  While some people who are bisexual may experience the same thing, and some use the terms interchangeably, pansexuality makes it explicit that people who use this term are attracted to a multitude of genders, not just two.

Materials:

*Nail polish base coat
*Magenta acrylic paint or nail polish
*Yellow acrylic paint or nail polish
*Blue acrylic paint or nail polish
*Fine nail art brush
*Holographic or clear nail polish top coat

Directions:

*Apply a clear base coat.  Let dry.

*Paint the top part of your nail magenta.  To figure out how wide to make your stripe, take the length of your nail and divide it by three.  The resulting number will give you an approximation of how wide each stripe should be.

*Paint the middle of your nail yellow.

*Paint the bottom of your nail blue.

*Apply a clear or holographic top coat.

[1]https://www.workers.org/2006/us/lavender-red-73/
[2]https://unerased.mic.com/