New Gambler’s Hat

I liked this hat enough to work on one for myself. I’ve got the base together. Working on styling the brim a little still. I may also find something more interesting for the lacing and to use as a hat band.

Guitar Top Hat

Over the weekend I finally found a few minutes to finish out a donation for the local music festival, Groovefest. I was originally thinking of doing something simple, but the idea for a guitar top hat hit me one day while driving to work and just would not let go. I managed to get the bridge and bridge pins from a local shop that does repairs and custom guitar builds. They actually just gave me one once I explained what I was doing, so long as I promised to show them the end result.

I left the strings with minimal tension, as I didn’t think it’d sound particularly pretty regardless and I was also wary of putting tension on strings that close to someones face. Leather is all hand-dyed as well as hand cut, punched and stitched.

 

Front of the hat, sitting on my record player

Angled view, showing strings

Full sized hat

X-stitching to finish the side.

 

Hopefully it will let them pull in some extra money for the event, since I didn’t really have spare money to throw in myself.

Mammoth Ivory Knife

This idea crept into my skull and refused to go away until I did something with it. I had seen some bone knives I was rather enamored with, but haven’t really worked with bone thus far, where as I have done work with mammoth ivory and happened to have at least one piece that I thought would work.

One side was already smooth, probably cut off from another project. I buy all scrap, so everything I have is odd bits. The other side was pretty rough, but the piece was thick enough that I wasn’t too worried about it. Initial shaping and cleaning up the one side made it look definitely doable.

Clean Side

Rough Side

So I cleaned it up more and gave it a full blade shape. I did the work with different grinding wheels on my dremel, as well as various light grains of sand paper to smooth it out.

I eventually settled on leopard wood for the hilt, because I liked the look and I had a piece in my stash. I narrowed the end bit down to a narrower strip and dremeled down the piece of wood to the thickness and shape I wanted, cleaning it up with a file and then sandpaper. Some of the shaping is a bit rough. I would like to use a belt sander in the future to make this kind of thing a little smoother, though some of the roughness I like.

I settled it into the hilt with a little epoxy to help keep it stable, and drilled a hole through the wood and the blade to help lace it firmly in place. It is done with artificial sinew.

Finished rough side

Finished clean side

 

Sheath is pending. Playing with ideas for something that is at least partly open, so the blade is visible even when sheathed, since that’s the part that makes it interesting to me.

New Custom Goggle Design

This project began life as a request to replicate some goggles seen in the Closer Music Video. I am told it is Trent Reznor that is wearing them.

With this set, I had to create a new pattern to accommodated a semi-different shape. The sides are longer and wider, the nose piece is more shaped and large, and of course the brackets.

The black plastic frame pieces had to be cleaned up to work with the shape and I had to cut and paint brackets to get something the size I was after, as well as building some “Washers” to space the brackets up to sit properly. Everything is done with hand stitching on these, as there was not much in the way of visible hardware beyond the brackets on the original piece. I am rather pleased with how they turned out.

 

 

October Crafting

This weekend I had the fun of a particularly interesting custom order. An individual who I had previously built a big plague doctor mask for came back to buy my steampunk queen of hearts mask.

They also had a special request for a Pumpkin Chastity belt. The idea is based off of the old nursery rhyme:
Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater,
Had a wife and couldn’t keep her,
Put her in a pumpkin shell,
And there he kept her, very well.

It took a little mental playing to formulate some ideas, and after working with them a little to narrow it down, I decided on a basic costume piece that I could finish quickly, as well as a pumpkin hat/fascinator from the top piece of the pumpkin.

I built it out of a foam pumpkin and did the ties in lightly felted green wool to create a semi vine-like effect with the ties. This also made sizing less of a potential problem.

Of course, I couldn’t find any green wool yarn. I did finally track down some white wool yarn and picked up some cake dye to do the coloring. There was a lot of simmering the yarn in water and dye, the eventual addition of a small amount of vinegar, and waiting. Here is the pot full of water, dye and yarn.

And then I rinsed it really well and hung it up to dry.

I did have a few spots that didn’t quite get dyed, but overall it turned out nice. Not bad for a first attempt with the cake dyes. I have done koolaid and wool batting, but yarn and cake dyes was new.

Then there was much foam carving. I started by carving out the top piece, which involved an amount of removing the small bit of dowel used to help attach the stem to the piece. There was sawing, but mostly just carving out the foam with a pocket knife, and some cleanup with an exacto and some small filing. I also attached some brown felt to the bottom of the piece to finish it out, before attaching a pair of off-set hair clips to make it stay well.

Then was the actual chastity belt making. I did the bulk of the carving with my carving pocket knife, though I did have to break out a kitchen knife to get through some of the thicker sections cleanly. Then it was lots of shaping and carving out extra foam. There was foam EVERYWHERE during this.

Once I had the shape down, I took the yarn and cut off pieces. The leg straps are thinner and mostly just felted tight at the ends, with some light twist and felting through the length. I put a little more into the thicker waist strap. I think in total, even with trying to be quick, the straps ended up being a bigger time sink then anything else. I cut holes and ran the leg straps through, where as the two waist strap pieces I actually looped through, then felted into itself to attach them. I then added a felt backing to the back and trimmed it down, same as on the hat piece.

I also took a little time to carve out a small keyhole, then painted the insides black to make it pop better than the white interior did.

And there it is! I decided not to model it for people, but hopefully I will get pictures from the event the item is for. Here is a second picture with the chastity belt and fascinator / hat together.

It was a fun and unusual sort of project. Thanks for looking!

Steampunk Guest Book Pen

The EtsySteamTeam is currently putting together a Steampunk Wedding contest, featuring wedding based items and specifically new creations. It took me a while, and some helpful suggestions, to actually come up with something a little different that I liked. And that I really felt was an entirely new sort of project.

I give you my Steampunk Guest Book Pen. Perhaps not the most exciting name, but I’m big on minimalism and simplicity. Which I think this piece manages. While still being an elegant little item.

I started out with a simple silver metal pen that I found and added on the leather grip.

I toyed with a few other ideas for decorating the pen more, but in the end went with just the dangling gear off of the connecting chain. I used a similar gear to keep the chain from pulling back through the eyelet in the tip of the pen-holder.

The base is a fun little cog-shaped piece that I have used for a variety of projects. I think they’re normally called junction locks or something of the sort. Though I’ve mostly found them at thrift stores and the like and find they make great framing pieces for larger projects. I filled it with a leather core with a bit of epoxy to keep it solid, which I also added to the base of the cone where it fits into the leather. Keeping it all a solid unit.

Overall, I’m quite pleased with how the piece turned out. It has some extra flavor to it without being a really over-the-top sort of piece. Thanks for looking!

Groovefest

I’m totally behind on getting this particular post made, but I’m finally getting back caught up after Groovefest in general, including getting back to some new listings.

Overall, the even was a lot of fun and a success for me. I made some money, sold some cool pieces, listened to a lot of great music. I do enjoy live music. And their was much live music.

And a close-up of the table. Which includes the more specific wire rack setups that I put together for the event. I’m rather happy with how they worked out as a stand. Particularly for the goggles and eye patches. That took a little more rigging and wiring to make it work right, but it did hold things nicely. I think next time I will trade up to smaller price tags rather than cards so things tangle less.

Hopefully I will get the new fun big heavy brass goggles listed in the near future. I didn’t quite sell those, as much as I sold the standard sets. They are a bit heavy, which is less good if you aren’t just looking for a head-piece sort of thing.

Cuffs sold a lot less well then some other things. I did a lot of them extra early on. Though I did finally sell the two wool cuffs I have had around for a long while. Goggles did much better then I imagined. Black Top Hat sold. And I sold some odds and ends to a director from the Shakespeare Festival. Very cool guy. Looking forward to the next event. And thanks to anyone who stopped by!

Custom Leather Indiana Jones Hat

In the past I have done my crafting posts off on a separate blog. But I don’t tend to do them often enough to really justify the second space. As such, I’m planning to start just adding in the occasional post about my other bits of creativity here as well.

To start this off, newest leather hat!

It is, of course, based off of the classic Indiana Jones hat. It was requested done in leather, with a little bit taken off of the height.

After spending way too much time researching the dimensions and styling of the hat. It was a style of hat called The Poet. They changed out the ribbon to emphasize the height. They also left it unfinished so that the brim had more adjustability on the fly. (Hence why it occasionally looks like a different style of hat at different points in the movie.)

Once I had some measurements, both of the eventual recipient’s head and the original hat, I used those to build myself a pattern from cardboard. I’ve become a big fan of the cardboard mock-up as a way to work out some of the kinks in an initial pattern. The brim has narrower sides and is a bit longer in front and back. Which was done to assist with having it on camera.

I went with an undyed leather to start and cut out the brim, top piece and side piece using my patterns, a pencil for tracing, then an exacto knife with a fresh blade. I used a French-beveler on the edges of the brim and the side-wall of the hat.

Fore dye I went with a color called Bison Brown in an eco-dye. Because I like to not die from the fumes. And I inevitably end up with dye on me. The color turned out a little darker then I initially was looking for, so I did a top coat on all of the pieces with a mixture of the Bison Brown and a much lighter brown I had left over from a previous project. That got me the end result color, which I was much happier with.

I settled on eyelets for the side seem to give the hat a little bit of breathing and because I like how they look. I went with the antiqued brass for those. I also left myself some extra length in the internal leather in case I had to adjust the size, since I didn’t have an actual head measurement, just one off of another hat. Which I later found out didn’t fit him quite as well as I might have hoped.

For stitching, I first punched the holes I would need using an awl. Then stitched the brim to the side-wall with a waxed brown thread. I also set a strip of pig-skin lining leather into this seem so it could be folded up as a sweat-band. It took a little fiddling at the meet-up to get the brim to sit right, which is something I have found on past hats as well.

Initially I had planned to pick up a hat-shaper to do the shaping piece, but they were running behind and I am silly and impatient. So instead I just went ahead and wet-shaped it by hand while looking at photos.

This is a picture I took while I was working on it. Brim is still unshaped. And the hat still needed a little more shaping in general.

Once I had the shape right there, I folded down the top edge of the hat about a quarter of an inch for stitching the top piece into. I reworked the initial piece to better fit the shaped top and touched up dye on the edges. I punched holes and stitching in that piece with the reworking to get the shape I was after.

Then there was brim shaping, checking with the client, some touch up shaping and adding the hat-band. I managed to find a grosgrain ribbon in brown locally, which was nice.  It is hand stitched together and then slid onto the hat.

Of course, when I actually handed off the hat, there was the revelation of it being small, because the fabric hat I measured fit not so well and he stretched it some when he wore it. I did a little stretching with a hat stretcher, then eventually unstitched the brim, opened up the side and re-fit it before stitching it all back together.

All in all, it was a fun project. Looking forward to other potential hat projects in the future. If I don’t pick up any custom orders at the event this weekend, the next hat project I have in mind is probably a new bowler for myself, which I do in fact have a shaper for.