Will I ever tire of putting Star Trek related stuff on clothing? It doesn't seem so.

It's surprisingly complicated to scan your hand. Took forever in photoshop to make it look half decent, but I really like how the whole thing turned out in the end. And I totally cheated and made the size difference between my pinkie and my ring finger less freaky (my hands look like someone stole the little fingers of a much smaller person and just stuck 'em on the edge.)



See? Freaky hands, man.







This is a t-shirt I made around the time of the eleventy-thousand geek t-shirts, and just somehow forgot to post it until now. It amuses me because it's the word Trekkie in the Star Wars font, but the fact that I feel the need to explain that probably points to just how bad a visual pun that really is. It's pretty much down at the level of "Dad-joke". But, hey, I still find the spiel on the Jungle Cruise funny...

Oh, blogosphere, how I have abandoned you of late. I really do mean to post more often. Anyway...

Took a week or so off stitching Serenity as I'd hurt my shoulder due to poor crafting and computer-using posture . But thanks to some wonderful family members and a handily timed birthday, I now have a kneeling chair so I can't slouch at the computer and a graphics tablet so I don't end up with what I refer to as "mouse claw". Both are taking some getting used to but my body seems grateful for the change.

And now that I've gotten back into my stitching rhythm Serenity is really starting to look like a spaceship!

It's all going so well! And so fast! I am afeared of the moment it all goes horribly wrong. Admittedly she is about half the size of my Enterprise cross stitch, so you would hope it'd be quicker and easier than that one. But I am using many of the exact same thread colours (yup, my waste-not-want-not philosophy extends even to thread) so I may experience just as much angst before it's done. Aaaaargh. Why do I feel the need to turn every craft project into a battle? Bah. But she is looking pretty. Woot!

Is there such a thing as crafting-bipolar-ness?

Today:



Two days ago:

After my first foray into two-tone stencils I decided to try something a little more complicated. Which then turned out to be a great deal more complicated. I never learn, apparently.

I decided I needed a t-shirt with the Enterprise sweeping majestically across it, as you do. The first hurdle came when I discovered that photoshop won't print a large image over multiple pages without a fight. (Thank goodness I'm related to a graphic designer.) Once that was dealt with this, of course, resulted in a very large and very delicate stencil, which, of course, the cat wanted to attack. So once I had rescued the stencil from furry, clawy doom it would all be plain sailing, right? Wrong. Grey fabric paint seems to be an endangered species, so I had to mix that colour myself. And matching the second stencil up proved to be quite annoying. (To the extent that it became a stencil made of five separate, overlapping pieces.) And I hurt my arm by holding it too tense to try and get perfect lines. And... And.. I'll stop moaning now.

In the end, as ever, it turned out really quite pretty. It would seem that I have some sort of ridiculous need to hate a project whilst actually doing it, in order for it to turn out well. I'm not sure that's a good thing. But my Enterprise t-shirt is beautiful and I love her! So nyeh.



The t-shirt has the whole floaty, asymmetric thing going on, so the Enterprise sort of wraps around me. From some angles it looks a bit strange and abstract, but from others it shows itself off nicely. I hadn't anticipated that, but I like it.



It kinda looks like the Enterprise is about to attack my head, doesn't it?



I'm particularly pleased with how clear and precise the lettering came out - sometimes when you make a mistake or something gets smudged in the design you can go back later and touch it up, but that's often much harder to do with something you don't paint on, something that's more like negative space. But this, thankfully, came out lovely.

This picture's the only one where you can see the slight hint of something that's a little more obvious with the naked eye - sparkly lens flare on the nacelles!



One more pic and then I'll stop!



Many more photos here (I went even more snap-happy than usual with this one!)

If anyone would like me to do a tutorial on this sort of thing (like I did for "bleached-out" t-shirt designs) please let me know and I'd be happy to oblige!

Saw Flight of the Conchords live about a month ago (almost exactly a month ago in fact) and for some reason it's taken me this long to post about it properly. I fail at prompt internet-usage. Anyway. It was, unsurprisingly, a hilarious and highly entertaining evening. The boys were looking particularly yummy, and the songs sounded fantastic. Many more instruments on stage than I had expected (and some that didn't get used - they don't follow their own set list much from what I can tell. I'm pretty sure we got an unplanned rendition of Albi, and Jemaine was constantly mouthing song titles at Bret, who either would nod or look at him like he was a madman.)

Highlights of the gig:

• Heckler: “Where’s Mel?” Jermaine: “She’s fictional. So she’s hanging out with Bart Simpson and... Taggart." (cue huge cheer from the crowd as Scottish crowds do when you mention anything remotely Scottish.)
• Three new songs. Three! (Fave moment: "I said, 'I don't have any I.D. on me / Who even carries I.D. in 1353?!' / 'I maketh not the rules,' quoth he.")
• Jenny! Woo! I love that song.
• Sparkly jumpsuits.
• Tiny piano!
• The New Zealand orchestra. His name is Matt. He does odd jobs (but not strange tasks).
• Three part audience singalong to Epileptic Dogs.
• Many other things that have fallen out of my brain at this moment in time.

Ever-so-slight disappointments of the evening:

• No Bus Driver's Song. Denied yet again.
• No keytar. (But there were instruments up there I could not identify for the life of me.)

My cheeks hurt from laughing by the end of the night. And the crowd was on fine form. Not too much random heckling. Found a few good youtube clips of the show - so here's kilt towels and a very different version of Sugalumps.

And of course I had to go in a homemade Conchords t-shirt. Who would I be if I didn't? This was my first attempt at a two-tone print. It required two stencils, which didn't end up matching as precisely as required, so it was a slightly aggravating process. I think I ended up making t-shirt!Jemaine look far grumpier than he did in the original photo. But it's something I'm going to keep experimenting with.



Slightly wonkily coloured close up:

.

And even more pics here if you're interested.

Despite my fears she's really starting to come along nicely now. And no unpleasant unstitching situations since my unfortunate jinxing in my last post. It could still come back to bite me in the arse at any point though!

Me and the macro setting on my camera are getting better acquainted, so the colours are more accurately represented, but the focus has gone a little less, well, focused. I'll get a tripod at some point and everything should look much better. It seems like for every new crafty or artsy skill I learn, it just opens up a new area of things I need to investigate. It's like falling down the rabbit hole.

Here's how Serenity looks today:



And here's how she looked earlier in the week
7th of June:


4th of June:


Eleven of the twenty colours are in there now, and some of them you can even tell apart! The blue part in the top left is the light of Serenity's port engine (if that makes any sense to anyone). I'm starting to see the shape of her, which is quite exciting to experience this early on. And I've only had one incident so far that required the unpicking of stitches and copious swearing. It's all going ridiculously well thus far.

I really shouldn't have said that, should I?



Here's how it looked on the 27th of May:

:

And on the 30th of May:




"We live in a space ship, dear."

 

Day One of stitching Serenity.
 

There's four different colours in there so far. Honest. Me and pale colours look set to resume our grudge match. But she's smaller and therefore this should be less head-hurty than the Enterprise.

 

One day soon she ought to look like this:

It's been a bit of an odd week for me, and so all my crafting plans have been somewhat randomised.

My plans to cross stitch Ripley wearing the power-loader thingy from Aliens have been rather waylaid by my inability to find a high enough quality picture from that scene. Not only do I need a picture of just the right moment, but it also needs to be a pretty huge photo in order for me to make some changes to it so that it'll work all pixelated. My google-fu has failed me so far. I may have to resort to making my own screencaps from the DVD. I think I know how to do that. Eeep. The delay has made me move forward on my plans to cross-stitch Serenity though, which I've been meaning to do ever since I started the Enterprise one.

On the plus side, I saw Flight of the Conchords on Saturday and they were fantastic. More thoughts and pics of my homemade Conchords t-shirt (I could not help myself!) soon!

In the meantime, these two Watchmen badges came out quite nice. I think I need to adjust the colours in the Rorschach one (the purple and the orange both need to be browner) and maybe the smiley would look better if it were a stitch or two bigger so it goes right over the edges of the badge. Or maybe I just need to align it a little better the next time I put one in the badge making machine!

I have a terrible tendency to pick up a few extra t-shirts that grab my fancy whenever I'm getting something for a custom order. So a couple of weeks ago I rounded up all the random shirts piling up around my craft room and decided to come up with something simple but cool to actually use them for.

And thus this happened:



This one's my absolute favourite. Both the stencil and the printing worked out so perfectly, and the design's really clear and sharp, as you can see here (although that pic doesn't capture the gold as well as this one):


A comics' fan geek:


Another Lord-of-the-Rings type geek:


This Blade Runner-esque geek came out with a weird ragged white border which you can see better here. I think the stencil must have contracted some while the white base was drying. It's totally unintended but I actually really like how it turned out.


Matrixy geek:


Buffy geek (why do I keep making Buffy type crafts on bright pink? Buffy isn't a hot pink kind of show, so why do I keep making that association? Exhibit A, Exhibit B, Exhibit C.) :


And of course we need an Angel one to go with:


A Supernatural geek:


Star Wars-y geek:


A Battlestar Galactica geek (while I was working out the font I also made a shirt with 'frak' on it, which I'll post soon):


I am so keeping this one for myself:


Oh hai, nerd! How did you sneak in here?


Why on earth did I ever buy a day-glo orange t-shirt? Why?


More retro geekery:


Back to the Future:


Again, Terminator doesn't make me think purple sparklyness but for some reason this made sense to me at the time:


This Aliens geek has a gold trim to it, which doesn't show up so well in this pic:


Yet more Lord of the Rings inspiration (so much good typography in the books and the movies!):


And of course there's geeks aplenty for Star Trek, in original series, the motion picture, and next generation flavours:






And then I had to print some bags too:





As always, there are more photos at my Flickr album here. And since I'm being particularly shameless today I'll point out that most of these t-shirts will be available to buy from my etsy shop here. Custom orders are always appreciated - if you want something uniquely geeky to you, I'm happy to make it!