Week 1: Life's a Drag

This week's craft adventure involved making accessories for my friend Millie's first foray into the fabulous world of drag.  She wasn't performing, but she was going to a drag show in drag.  After we gathered all the gowns, undergarments, and padding that we needed I set about making some accessories to complete her look.  She was going with a blue / ice bitch thing, and these were my results:

Button rings

A hair clip with feathers

The button earrings were easy to make; I used my largest wire cutters to nip the shanks off the back of the buttons, then filed down the remaining stubs so they were level with the back of the button.  Then I just glued them to ring bases!

Clip on earrings (my first!)

A simple bracelet

I did the same thing for the clip on earrings.  The hair clip was simply gluing feathers and a rhinestone to a circle of felt, then gluing that to an alligator clip.  And the bracelet simply a bracelet.  I put beads on a wire.

Cameo and lace choker

Millie didn't want to be the only person in the audience in drag, so I decided to faux-queen up and go with her. I ended up making myself a couple of accessories to go with my outfit.

 

 The choker took the most work; I started with two rectangular pieces of ivory felt and two lengths of white ribbon.  On one piece of felt  I used Fabri-Tac to attach both the ribbons, and then used more Fabri-Tac to cover them with the second piece of felt so they were sandwiched inbetween.  Then I added a layer of black lace, which I had to cut down the middle into two strips to get it to not be clown-collar large.  Fabri-tacked those bad boys right on and sealed the ends with a lighter to prevent fraying.  I did the same with the white lace overlay.  Finally, I added the cameo charm (purchased from Michael's); it came with a pinback so I just pinned that sucker right on there.  I figured it would cover up my distinct lack of Adam's Apple.

The earrings were also simple; I got a set of two flowers from Michael's that had metal backings with two holes.  I connected an ear wire to the top of each flower.  Then I got into my stash and found some black tassels that I had gotten from Joann's upholstery department and never used, slid a jump ring through the "knot" at the top of the tassel, and connected those to the bottom ring of the earring.  Those things were HUGE.

So, this brings my total to six.  SOOOO CLOSE.  Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the necklace I made for Millie.  But I did make it, I swear!  You can kind of see it in this picture of the two of us at the end of the night.

It's half covered by her hair, but it's a large blue rhinestone pendant from Michael's that I strung onto three different layers of antiqued chain.

For a first week's attempt, not so shabby!  Especially because I spent most of my free time this week running around wig/dress/shoe/padding shopping.  I think I whipped up the entire accessory batch on the hectic, long Thursday night before the Friday show.

I do have some goals for next week that involve doing more than just basic "glue crap to other crap" type crafting.  Don't get me wrong!  It's my FAVORITE type of crafting.  But not super challenging at the moment.  So I'll endeavor to do something a bit more complex in the coming seven days.  I also think I need to work on improving my picture taking skills, though.  I think a good place to start would be to find somewhere to shoot the pictures other than in my apartment building's hallway.  high hopes!  We'll see what happens.