glittersweet

Oh boy, I have been very lax here! I have though been working on and off, but getting behind of keeping track of everything.
One of the downsides to trying to do everything yourself- including techniques that really need a team of specialists- is that it vampires all your time and energy!

But I have been using Instagram as my launch for all social media updating as it lets me share to fb, tumblr, flickr, and twitter in one go. So with flickr I am able to share reasonably quickly to forums as well

Deviant Art doesn't really have the same format to allow WIP photos, so I tend to use this as a gallery for finished work. So that means pretty sporadic updates!

But today has been a day of much progress I have made casts of both of my hands. I really needed to make the molds longer, to cover more of my forearm but well I really need my palm so I can make some orthotics for each activity I engage in. I need to protect my tendons as I am incredibly close to rupturing all my tendons. I've had trigger finger since my first year but now I'm starting to have continued hot sharp pain at the base of my little fingers and that's classic start of the collapse of all my fingers: emedicine.medscape.com/article… and www.wheelessonline.com/ortho/r…

Well my website was hacked. Well, that's a bit more dramatic than it was. But yeah, someone exploited a bit of WP within a day of it being announced as an exploit. Basically someone logged in, deleted my posts and pages (but not the uploads- thank goodness!) and added some lovely malicious content. They deleted my pages so that any link to my site would redirect to the bad content.
Anyway. My hosts don't really like that so shut my site down within an hour from what I can tell. It may have been even faster.

So yes. It was a bit of a shock, and while I know it wasn't personal (it was purely to use my google ranking to get that linkage to the malicious content) it still hurt because of how much I shared of my darling kitty there. 

However this year I had begun the very long process of backing up all my files. All my photos, all my references, everything. And I was looking at my site to try and work out what I could do to refresh it. And well, now I had have to!

I am keeping my site as a portfolio with a site dish of guides, and I'll have a small memorial to my Boo. So far I have most of my portfolio presentable costumes up, with a couple of pages about Elsa options.

Today I finally got most of my photos organised in to years, and my website files tidied to find everything more easily. But I have found so many costumes I simply do not have any good photos of that I also tidied my wardrobe and have tidied my studio to make it possible to fix this So this was an important step

I did also find my scans of my costumes that I have patterned. But they are very low res as it was on my old scanner, so those too will be tidied.

And further to this whole refresh and restart thing- on the local laurels list (SCA artisans with a fancy in group award/responsibility) I am going to share my universal "works for all styles" 16thC German pattern. I use the base for my Swiss, Cleves and Saxon gear Anything with a neckline that goes to the shoulder point and with a round waist. It's very adaptable

With that will be some accessories such as headgear My Westfalen research will also finally get a home. That has also been stalled as I didn't feel my previous site really reflected the contents, but I have a super simple theme now and so yes, they will work

But after some delay and discussion (the actual discussion was amazing- hacking and slashing at the text!) the CRL for Asajj Ventress: The Clone Wars Betrayed has been added to the 501st Database. Also we wound up editing the CRL for the regular CW version, which has me going: well you have the make up... But yeah, being able to do some cool photoshoots as Action Ventress and not have a skirt to trip over is going to be super fun  I also am trying to work out a way t put up my Ventress hardware files out there. My main concern is not the average costumer, but those with an interest in making money- it's happened with my patterns before. 

It's been a month and a day since I had to say goodbye to my darling Kitty Boy.


It was only May last year that he had to have surgery to remove the skin cancers on his ears and nose, this was after a failed attempt to freeze them off (they just got more aggressive.) However in the last two weeks of January this year he lost over 2 pounds. While the surgery was very successful it turns out the cancer had changed and he had several aggressive tumours in his abdomen. He had been to the vets many many times in between so it really is very scary how fast these grew and how far from obvious they were.

We had 13 amazing years, which covers a significant part of my adult life and I still can't quite believe he is gone. And then it hits so incredibly hard. Every day.

He came in to my life unexpectedly as a kitten who had literally been thrown away. Within a few hours it became obvious he was deaf and that perhaps it was not a coincidence. It took months of training but he adapted to life and then was outside faster than I was willing to let him! I am grateful he were able to have the time we did, but he was otherwise healthy and I had no time to come to term with the news he was already far beyond intervention before I had to let him go.

He was there almost from the start of my life with a disability and he had 8 years of "extra" time after our house fire- it was a nasty fire and he was very lucky to not be indoors at the time. I still feel I failed him, I failed as his carer in a way I doubt I will ever forgive myself for.

I'm working on a gown that is going to reflect me as an artist a bit. So a tad cliche, but ultimately a little bit not quite one thing or another.
I've sort of talked about all my influences but basically I'm dipping in to a lot of my past and a lot of my interests.
And I've dealt with terrible reaction to allergy to make it!
www.arrayedindreams.com/tag/i-…
I'll try and post some updates here as well, it's just hard as it's not a finished project, I'm not sure if "Scraps" gets shared

Busy as of this weekend, though technically I should be busy well in advance
I'm offering a limited series of workshops at the Central Library here and this Sunday sees the first: the "Start your engines" type of workshop. Basically to hopefully dig a few ideas, not define what to do. Because seriously costume is as broad and wide and invested as human history. 
Anyway, in order to actually have some sort of collow up I have been updating my website, including my nearly complete list of costumes. This includes my very earliest works! So much improve! I'll never be embarassed by my early work, because I never judge people on their early starts. Only how they respond- because you don't hassle anyone for starting out.
Anyway: www.arrayedindreams.com
New featured content and a rejig of the menu. I do a lot of cross over stuff but basically if it has no magic or advanced tech then it goes in historic/historic inspired. Danielle went from one to the other a heck of a lot. But even though that gown is pure fantasy it could have happened in rreality just with a severe shift of materials available. Because Ever After was stripped of magic it is a better fit. And all the weird stuff in Moulin Rouge can be put down to hallucinations.