Look at these cute earrings I made! Made with rose beads from Japan, and some glass pearls. I strung them together with fishing line and glued them onto earring backs.
Cute new earrings!
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Lappy
I got a new lappy! Isn’t it cute! It’s a new Apple MacBook. Super great compared to my old iBook G4. I bought it because it’s new and fast and shiny, but also because it has an inbuilt camera. I will need that so that I can do video chats with Charles when he moves overseas in TWO FRIGGING MONTHS. He’s also visiting America for 2 and a half weeks starting this Saturday, so it will be good for then too.
He bought me a laptop sleeve to go with it – it’s bright pink! Cuz I’m a GIRL!
Next I’m going to buy a cool laptop skin. I really want this beautiful Snow White one. I used to really like Snow White as a kid and I think it’s clever usage of the apple logo.
I looked for the Snow White skin on Etsy and found lots of different sellers selling the same thing, with even the same photo! How do I know if they’re legit? I’m pretty sure you’re not allowed to sell something on Etsy unless it’s vintage or handmade. They could all be handmade, but not all by the same person! Something weird is going on. We’ll see what happens when I buy it.
But I might have to wait until I get my tax return back. I just bought a laptop, you see, and I’m kind of feeling the pinch.
Labyrinth Party! Costumes!
About a week ago, I held a Labyrinth themed birthday party. Labyrinth is my favourite movie ever! I don’t know why I didn’t think of having a Labyrinth party earlier. Some people might think it’s a bit juvenile for a 23rd party. I guess I just like dressing up? I should say that I got a lot of useful pictures from the Labyrinth page on this website – the Costumer’s Guide to Movie Costumes. It’s a wonderful website! It has pictures of costumes from a lot of great movies, and sometimes instructions on how to make them. It’s super great, I can’t recommend it enough.
Jareth and Sarah in a promo photo from the film. This is how I decided to dress Charles and myself – as Jareth and Sarah from the crystal ballroom scene. Note puffy sleeves and huge dress on Sarah, and ridiculous hair and blue sparkly coat for Jareth.
Here’s our costumes. I was a bit skeptical about Jareth wearing cons, but whatever. My entire costume is handmade except for my singlet top, and I also made Charles’ tiny jacket. I made it while he wasn’t there, which is why it’s tiny. I tend to think I’m a normal size, which means I think everything else is tiny. Turns out that I’m the tiny one. His jacket was made out of stretch crushed velvet, which was fortunate.
A Jareth still from the movie, including mask.
My Jareth with his mask from the masquerade. I made this mask using a plastic mask from Lincraft and paper mache. I made the nose bigger and gave it some character around the eyes. I completely forgot about the horns and hand thing on Jareth’s mask, but I did remember to paint it red. It’s also glittery.
Sarah’s dress in the film. It’s amazing. It’s sparkly gauzy fabric with lots of embroidery on the bodice, and sleeves that are twice puff’d. It’s a highly horizontal dress.
Me. After that photo of Sarah this looks so saggy in comparison! I think to have the right level of puff in the skirt you need some hardware under there.
Each part of the “dress” is separate. It’s hardly a dress at all! The skirt is basically a long rectangle of gathered satin overlayed by a long rectangle of gathered organza.
The sleeves are a loose fitted sleeve down to my hands, with a faux puffed sleeve on top. I made that by making two wide cylinders – one organza for the outside, and the other some cotton I had around. I gathered them at the top and bottom with elastic and voila! In the film she had sleeves with TWO puffs, somehow.
The bodice is the best. I made a corset! Well, the facade of a corset. It’s not lined, but it is partly boned. The fabric is some beautiful off white cathedral satin (I don’t know why cathedral, it’s just quite thick and luscious). It was a remnant at Lincraft – cheap! I’m going to do a further post about this corset, so no more here. It was rad. Underneath that I wore a lacy singlet top, and the lace bits spilled over the corset top.
How many pieces is that? 9 pieces, if you include the giant petticoat I wore underneath!
Me eating a fairy cake in front of Sir Didymous. I tried to have Sarah hair, but it’s difficult with a fringe and without dark hair or a team of stylists. I curled it with my curling iron, used a BumpIt (look it up) to create height, some bobby pins to hold it back from my face, and a LOTof hairspray.Despite my dress not looking as huge as Sarah’s, it was still massive. It was really hard for me to move around during the party, and I got quite puffed when I had to get out of a chair etc. I can’t imagine what Jennifer Connely went through.
I also made a kind of “shaft of hands”. I dyed some latex gloves green (as best I could), stuffed them, and stapled them onto a black cloth. Glitter was applied liberally. I clipped it to the front wire door. It actually looked really dumb, but Charles has taken a good photo here that makes it look spoooooky!
Lots of other people came and dressed up for my party. I had a really great time! A weird thing is that I was the only one who made my costume. It’s weird – whenever I have to dress up for something in particular, I just make whatever I have to wear. I forget that nobody else thinks this way. It’s often a lot easier than searching the shops for what you want – all the shops ever have is what’s in fashion right now. Which is whyyyyyyyy I was the only ballroom Sarah at my party!
Thanks for looking!
Complaints Choir!
So today I remembered a cool thing that I saw in Japan!
We went to an exhibition in the Mori Building in Roppongi (am i right charles? i forget), and there was a cool video of choirs from all over the world complaining about stuff. My favourite was the Birmingham Complaints choir. So good! Go to the website and click the video link next to each choir. Here’s the direct link to the video for the Birmingham Choir.
I want my money back
My job’s like a cul-de-sac
And the bus is too infrequent at 6:30
Why don’t they pay me more?
Life was good before
And I’m thirsty!
I recall that the Sweden one was cool too. I forget the others! Probably rad.
The situation was this: we’d just come through a grisly exhibition about I dunno, death or something, and there was this theatrette with music coming out. After being weirded out, grossed out, and in the middle of having some kind of existential crisis about the previous subject matter, I cracked up and couldn’t stop watching for like an hour. It was amazing. Then it was sunset and we looked at Tokyo from a million feet in the air.
In other news, I recently had a themed birthday party. The theme – Labyrinth! I dressed as Sarah in the ballroom scene (obviously). It’s only 5 minutes of the film, but it has the coolest costumes! I’m going to share pictures of that costume in my next blag. It was all handmade.
Here’s the news!
So I hear that somewhere in the world it’s something called “summer”. Meanwhile, in my part of the world, we’re totally not in that season. Some people have all the luck!
Srsly though I love winter. My birthday is coming up soon! I have a theory that people’s favourite season is always the season their birthday is in. Mine is winter, Dad’s is summer, Mum’s is spring. It works for a bunch of my other friends as well.
Recently I’ve been doing a lot of uni assignments and exams. I had a neuroscience talk on “Time in the brain” recently. My part was on the suprachiasmatic nucleus – the part that controls circadian rhythms. I had to talk for half an hour! Zounds! The exam for that subject is next Tuesday, which should be a hoot.
I’ve also been playing Nagoya Marimbas with my friend Yvonne. We’re playing it in her recital next Friday. It’s going so well! Such a cool piece. Friday is also the day of my Written Japanese exam. Woo! 120 kanji! Saturday is my spoken Japanese exam – who has exams on Saturdays? Those Japanese.
Then it’s my favourite time of year – Arts and Crafts show! I’ve been working on my jewellery a lot. It’s going to be very different from last year, and I’ll be selling my old pendants for about half price. I don’t want them anymore.
Oh and Charles is maybe moving to Sweden. Frig! Could that be any further away? Way to make my life spectacularly difficult.
Holidays soon!
Christina Hopgood 
