More Beautiful Than We Think

There's been this video, well, several versions of a video, going around on facebook this past week. Since it's marketing for Dove brand products I'm not sure if you can say it is a viral video. Can advertising be viral? Isn't that the idea, and the marketing material is designed to entice people to share it? Anyway, I shared it, too, and I still think it is lovely and thought provoking.

The idea is that a forensic artist from the LAPD has a series of women he cannot see describe themselves to him and he draws them much as he would a perpetrator of a crime from the description of a witness. Then another person comes in and describes the person he just drew, after spending some time with that person. The artist then hangs the pictures side by side and the subject of the portrait is allowed to see, to her astonishment, that the picture of the self she describes is not only generally unattractive, but as we the audience can see, does not look like her. The portrait drawn from the objective observer's description is much more attractive and actually looks very much like the original subject.

The tag line tells us "you are more beautiful than you think." I think it's a wonderful message. Let me acknowledge that in watching the longer six minute version which is easily viewed on YouTube, there are not really any actually "ugly" people in the video. No horrible skin conditions, no truly unfortunate dental problems. Actually you might notice that no one is even overweight...they are all thin to quite thin. The men who are included as "observers and describers" are attractive. Here, you can watch it yourself:




I suppose the idea is that even people who are attractive, not stunning, not supermodels, but just pleasantly attractive, doubt themselves and have features about themselves that they don't like and would change. At the same time, people don't watch marketing ads full of ugly people. When I watch this, with the carefully crafted background music, I feel the contrived machinations of the team behind the production, and yet, at the same time I feel the genuineness of the aim.

If you have a positive message to spread in this media age, can you get it viewed if it isn't carefully crafted to appeal? Maybe not. Even the videos that are homemade are subconsciously or consciously created to fit our mold of what we think a cool hacker type "Anonymous" video should look like. I'm even starting to question the cute puppy and kitten videos- they look contrived to me, too! It's a rare thing to see something spontaneous these days that was captured. This is a great thing when it helps capture terrorists and reveals the faces of the perpetrators of crimes as we witnessed recently in the photos and videos taken at the Boston Marathon. Witness photos helped police tremendously.

Which brings me back around to my original point...the revelation of faces through the use of a forensic artist to show us that others see us as we actually look, while we ourselves do not. It makes me wonder what I look like. Did you wonder that, too, when you watched the video? There is a spoof video going around of men having the same "experience." It's pretty hilarious because the men all describe themselves as looking like Brad Pitt and George Clooney, while their female descriptors paint a very different picture of neanderthals and snaggle-toothed hillbillys.

I was in the shower last night thinking about all of this. Thinking about how much I hate my knees and how I think my hips are too big. So I was looking at my hips and I realized that they have been with me my whole life. Nothing that I have, other than my body, has been with me since the day I was born. Nothing else will be with me every second of the rest of my life. I am so much more than a body; no statement is truer than this. I am mind and spirit and intention and love. But this body is my home. It has kept my mind and my spirit safe all these years, and it will keep on doing so. There isn't a second of this life that my heart has not been beating. How many machines can you point to that can run non-stop for as much as a hundred years, often with no maintenance at all? I can't even think of one. These knees have knelt on the floor to care for my father in the last day of his life. These hips carried each one of my sons as I ran hither and yon with our full lives. I usually preferred to just carry them instead of using a stroller. They seemed to be less restless and we had great conversations and shared a view of the world. I know I will carry my grandbabies just the same someday, as long as I can.

I'm going to try very hard to love all of my parts. The power of the media that teaches us to hate ourselves is very strong. I can't remember what a non-airbrushed picture in the media even looked like. It's been that long. These women in the Dove ad...they are not airbrushed and they are real, even if carefully selected. I want to celebrate the motivation behind this ad campaign, behind the message from the beauty industry that says, for once, it's okay to love yourself the way you are. We think other people are judging us, and we think they are looking at all of our flaws...and maybe a few are. But on the whole, other humans are much kinder than we think, and they see beautiful things about us that we ourselves will never see.

Or maybe we can. Just a little. I love you, knees. I love you, hips. Thank you for carrying me all these years.

Queen of Spades Costume, Royal Flush Spades

I can't believe I'm still catching up on blogging about my costuming efforts from last year's DragonCon, but then again the internet is kinda timeless, so what does it matter. My post on how I made my green Jeannie costume remains my number one most view post of all time.

So, last year 2012, I wanted to do a Dark Alice in Wonderland sort of thing for our group. I knew I wanted to be the Queen of Spades. As the idea evolved, we became A Royal Flush of Spades with me, Mike (King), Reid (Ace), Guy (Jack) and Grace(ten). Then we added Eva and James because they were coming in from Little Rock. SO now we were more like...the royal family of spades plus the nine and eight? I wanted to make this make sense and thought the royal party would of course include a dark "cheshire cat" and their wizard or suitable prognosticator, right? So the Nine (Eva) became a kitty with nine lives and a cat o'nine tails accessory. The Eight (James) carried a "magic 8 ball" for offering future predictions. Here's a picture of the whole party.

 You can see the colors stuck to black, white, purple, silver and harlequin.  Each person has every one of those colors and patterns, though it is hard to see on the Kitty. She has a purple bow on her ears and she had a harlequin bow on her tail. My Queen underskirt is purple. One important element I designed is the sleeve insets on the men. I will tell you how to make those later. The men's vests are all from the same pattern. McCall's 4321 View D.
   I sat down and wrote out a list of each character and what the main color of their vest would be, the lapels, and the lining. Then what color was missing from the vest and so what color shirt did I want to use, making sure each was different. Mike's King lapel and shirt insets had to be silver because he is the King. I knew I wanted to make the back of Reid's Ace shirt into an Ace Card, so his needed to be white. The Jack just had to be purple, and so that made sense for the 8 to be black like an 8 ball.

I wanted to use military style insignias and "collar devices" to signify rank. The men's collars have spades made of felt and outlined in glitter. The shoulders all have rank patches, including mine, that say the rank of the card. Mine said "Q", naturally. You can look for these details in the pictures.

 Eva did her harlequin mask in makeup. The hats and crowns were a big part of the costumes.
Guy and Reid had tophats already, so I just made hat bands for them, and the large cutout spades from glitter scrapbook paper backed in white paper to make them pop.

 Below you can see the Kitty's cat o'nine tail, which Eva and James made from pieces of black suede that I had and part of a dowel rod. James put in a huge effort on this!!!

 Kitty has rhinestone claws...

 Grace (ten) is getting her shoulder insignia painted on by Guy, since she didn't have sleeves. He had to meet us there, so he had a stencil precut to do this with.

 Grace's vest is made from McCall's 5682. All of these vests are lined, including the men's vests, and they all have coordinating lining, even though it rarely shows...that's just how I roll!

Her petticoat is two crinolines layered with the shorter, sequin on on top of a longer full one. The one underneath is the Leg Avenue 15" black crinoline.  I made our choker necklaces from things you can get in the scrapbook department at Michael's crafts. You can see that her hat has the number 10 cut from glitter paper, and the same spade as the men's hats. The crowns are custom made and I will discuss that later as well. You can see my shoulder "Q" in this picture. The white hat is a Leg Avenue top hat, and my Queen dress is also a Leg Avenue costume for french maid...I got in on Amazon, the only place I have ever seen this particular dress.

King of Spades and Medieval Batman

I bought both my sons the purple and black checkered Vans shoes for their costumes.  Guy made his staff...Jack has to have the staff!! He hand painted the design on a long dowel, and hand carved the spade on top.

With my friend Rob, who I only ever get to see at DragonCon!

I think you can get a lot of ideas from these pictures, about all of the details I put into the costumes that really brought it together.

Ok, the sleeve insets. The shirts were just regular dress shirts. Iron the sleeves flat. Mark two inches down from the shoulder seam and two inches up from the cuff. Measure that. Now take a piece of inset fabric you choose , approximately one foot wide and the length you just measured. Mike's jacquard metallic insets were less wide because the fabric was so stiff.

Pleat the inset fabric longways in about 3/4" wise pleats. Adjust to suit yourself. Stitch the top and bottom across to secure the pleats. Make sure the outer two folds of the pleats are not inverted, meaning the right side of the fabric is out. Now use a seam ripper to slit the sleeve in the center from top to bottom between the marks you made. Turn the shirt inside out. Insert the inset pleated piece. Now it's time to sew it in.

I have to tell you, this doesn't make a perfectly neat insert. At the top and bottom, it sticks out a wee bit.I have been sewing a long time, so I was able to finesse it pretty well. Stitch the top first, then proceed around. Don't try to do top and bottom, then the sides. That doesn't work. If you have to do a few stitches in tight areas, you can do that by hand or use hot glue. Once you turn it back right side out, it really looks fabulous.

The cuffs looked dull, so they got glitter paint treatments of spades, as well.

The crowns were custom made by the incredible Guy Martin!!  He has built his own forge, where he bent the sheet steel to make the head rings. He cut the spades from the same sheet steel and riveted them in lace with copper rivets. Mike's spades are all large sizes, where mine is large sized in the front only. Guy painted the head rings black, and added shadow detail in purple paint with a spade design. The bridge in the back that holds the ring together is a double sided spade cut from steel. Originally they didn't have the fur on the bottom, but they are on the heavy side and needed some padding. I attached the fur on the inside with something like gorilla glue that James gave me. Guy is pretty much a genius fabricator. I tell him what I want..we have a meeting to get measurements and work out the design elements... then what he gives me is better than I ever expected!!   Though you probably don't have your own metal work genius, you could make crowns out of other materials. Just don't ruin all your effort with some crappy pre-made crown. the King and Queen have to look the part!   

As always, let me know if you have questions you need answered. Have fun!

After the Next

Another Sunday comes,
promising shiny strings of beads from Mardi Gras,
or feasts of epic proportion,
it all looks so enticing.
Sundays should.

The menu, written in hieroglyphics,
these are pictures I know,
but I cannot place the words into the puzzle,
my skill at deciphering has deserted me,
there must be something to be done, but...
I do not speak the language.

Sunday should be something else entirely.
Such a big day, such a special name,
I would toil all year for a day,
named for a celestial body that gives us all life.
Were the sun worshipers so misguided?

I will leave this life with exactly what I brought in.
Some Sundays remind me that I am no more and no less than the elements,
but, I don't think these thoughts in a bad way.
Only in the way that lets me see the truth of my being,
one day after one day,
after the next.

No Burden at All

Into this sea I cast a note
much as a bell rings with no sentience of the listener.
I can see a crowd of fishes and loaves
but I cannot hear the whispers of heaven.
I am escaping pieces of vestigial skin I do not use
Layers dwindle to flakes and off into the tide, and pieces
become specks.
God hears me all the time
In response I try to watch what I say,
mostly,
as best I can.
I could say I am only human...
as if that is any limitation of any sort,
when indeed it is the greatest power
ever given
ever granted to any creature
to have a mind infinite enough to perceive
that God exists.

He has his eye upon the smallest sparrow,
and indeed He must, for the sparrow knows Him not, after all.
But I do...I know the sparrow, and the shark
the rose and the latin names of the trees surrounding the world
with oxygen. I know the chemicals, too, and I 
know them in the body and how they balance delicately 
more subtle and influential than you would care to realize.

Knowing becomes the essence of humanity
because we know that we know,
sapient,
and much like the bell that cannot be unrung,
self awareness becomes the purest humanity of all.
For that reason, I do as I do in this life...
and thanking God is no burden. No burden at all.  
               

Steampunk Saloon Girl Costume

I am "off" for Christmas Break, which is kind of a laugh because of the volume of stuff I have to do (as we all do at Christmas), but I want to catch up on a few blog things.

The post with details on my Green Jeannie costume from last year at DragonCon is so popular, that I promised way back to give details of my Patriotic Steampunk Saloon Girl and how I constructed it.

First pictures so you know what I'm talking about.

the jacket I purchased. It was from the American Icon collection which came from the American Idol TV show. The hooks that are the closure are a part of the jacket, but I wanted them to show, so I pinned the lapels back with antique pins. It also allowed more of the corset to show. I have a "real" (expensive!) corset that MJL bought me at the Renaissance Fest, but I also have a lot of corsets from Frederick's of Hollywood. They are definitely more costume and not authentic, but one can also afford to have a bunch of them, as they run from $ 40 to 60, depending on the fabric and pattern.

Doing research, I found that fishnets didn't exist at the time of the Old West frontier, they actually wore cotton or wool stockings. Well...I wasn't wearing cotton or wool to DragonCon. I chose these nude hose from Target. They had a woven pattern in the nude color and then the black dots. My boots are actually a very dark brown.

The skirt I made. It starts with a pattern, which I shortened. This is the pattern. Even if they don't make this one any more, you can see what sort of thing to look for. It is a full circle skirt with a yoke (like the two on the bottom). The yoke is very important. A full circle without a yoke will make you look like you are in a poodle skirt. If you shorten it, you will look like a 60s majorette. Plus the yoke allows you to attach things and stays sleek.

Here are the fabrics used. They were all from JoAnn fabrics, so you don't really have to always spend a lot of money or go to a special fabric store to make costumes.

The patriotic fabric was a big inspiration.
When I saw that fabric, I knew I had to do something with it.
The plaid is red, blue, green and a homespun looking brown.

This is a cotton quilting print.
The red was just right, and the background was cream. I didn't want any white, because white was
very expensive to obtain back then.
Less expensive fabrics had that homespun look of
natural color cotton.

This one was a bridal fabric.
It had the scalloped edge that you see on the skirt
already as part of the fabric. I got it on clearance for 8$ a year and I only bought 2/3 of a yard, so very
cheap to add a really nice element.

 I did use a modern zipper.
One, for convenience and time savings.
Two, because I've made this pattern before as a real skirt and I like the zipper in the back. It adds stability to the yoke. I went through my collection of buttons and pulled out all the metal ones to add as accents.

 I purchased keys and chains and these accents
at Micheal's in the scrapbooking section.
In the full picture, the antique gold watch is
real and it belonged to my great great grandmother.

 The tiny hat started as a $1.99 teddy bear hat from
JoAnn fabrics. They come black made by Darice.
I spray painted it bronze gilt.
I found a belt at a thrift store for one dollar.

It was a size 2x, so it had a lot of  these square metal
pieces. After putting two long pieces with two squares each on each side of the skirt, I had one left over. I had to sew it to the top of the hat, because even metal glue wouldn't hold it to the felt.

 I did hand gathering at two points in the front of the skirt, and more to the sides.

I did it by hand with a running stitch. It looked like a girl might have done back then.

I really wanted the natural unevenness of hand work.

The ribbon tail was just something extra. Most of the time it didn't show, but I always keep adding little things on a costume till
I just feel that it is finished.

 Feathers and embellishments all from Micheal's

You can see how it is constructed.

 This natural cotton is two layers. Stiffened with interfacing. I glued on on, attached the headband with hot glue. Reinforced that with ribbon. Covered that with the second piece of natural cotton. I could have spray painted it, but with all my hair...I didn't bother.

Originally, I thought I would do something in
Red and blue that perfectly matched the costume.

In working with the patriotic fabric, it has a rosy pink element in the background of some scenes and on the cheeks.

I just decided I wanted to pick up that element in the hat and also the neckpiece, which...if you look back,
is constructed of the buckle from the dollar belt!
Pink velvet ribbon is the accent on the choker, and it ties in the back with brown grosgrain ribbon.

I have to say, I loved this costume. I felt fabulous, and I received so many compliments from DragonCon attendees. It was comfortable. My favorite comments were from fellow seamstresses. They liked the
idea, the design and the execution. That's the best feedback!!

The skirt is layered panels that are really all curtain valance treatments in their construction. I used to make a lot of curtains, so I used those techniques. The front panel is a pleated center jabot, and the back lace panels
are trapezoid shaped side jabot panels. It is easy to google simple directions for these once you see what I did. The side jabot face each other instead of facing out as the would on a window.

The rear swag is just done like a long scarf valance would be over a curtain rod. I just did the side gathering with ribbon instead of the way it would hang over a rod.

Hope this inspires you if you are looking to do a steampunk short skirt!

Track

Nothing stands alone. 
It doesn't does it? 
Locomotives run on steel rails of strength disproportionate to imagination.
What if you could be the locomotive.
What if you could be the engine of all that happens,
your essence and force steaming off the top,
magnificent weight of words and deeds trailing behind farther than sight.
Wouldn't that be powerful beyond description...
looking down at the manacles on your wrists,
imagine naked pain and youth as they melt away into leaden trails
to form your track.

And this is when you find the fuel to overcome the friction and the gravity
of your situation.
This is when you move inch by inch 
until you are flying and pulling the world along with ease.
You do not stand alone, for
you stand for too much.
Accompanied, though...and beloved.

River Bend

She sold herself down the river
in such minute quantities
the fish never even got sleek or fat,
but simply swam away
in ignorance of what they had eaten.

The water too clear to reflect
anything but what she wanted to see;
it would remain a vision to haunt her,
of who was blind,
and who was left to see...
when she was there no longer.