Bedazzler of Filth

I am in love with Cradle of Filth. This is not news to anyone that knows me. In fact, everyone is really fucking tired of hearing about it. They're also tired of hearing about Behemoth and Dimmu Borgir, which is too bad because guess who's coming to the Masquerade in May? That's right. I'm trying to enlighten you asshats so you can stop buying shit like KoRN and Linkin Park, so just shut up and take your medicine.

Anyway, this historic, life-altering show is going to be the perfect excuse to wear my new Cradle of Filth dress:
Kind of missing something, right? I decided I needed to Bedazzle the shit out of it. Here goes:
I used crystal rhinestones for the front and red rhinestones for the back:
Oh yeah. That's the stuff. It's way more evil this way, and I'm gonna be the belle of the ball at the show.

The rhinestones are kind of a bitch because you put the setting into the plunger and the stone underneath, instead of the other way around, so you're basically bedazzling upside-down. I wasn't happy with that arrangement because I wanted to see exactly what I was doing. So I did all this by hand. I kept the print facing me and pushed the setting through the back of the fabric, then put the rhinestone in the setting and pushed the teeth down with my thumbnail. It was indeed tedious, but not as painful for my thumb as I thought it might be, and my burning love for Cradle of Filth (or more specifically....) gave me the strength to pull it off. Afterwards I put each finished rhinestone into the base of the Bedazzler and hit it gently with a small rubber mallet to curve the points in like they would have been if I had used the Bedazzler to attach them in the first place. I ran my finger over them afterward and they feel pretty smooth, so I think I'll call this one a Mission Accomplished.

Hurry up and get your tickets for this show, dude. It's gonna be Satanlicious.

Keeping Sexy Time

Remember the Tu-Clock I made for Gaby? Well, I decided to make a Prince clock for my husband.

You'd be surprised how hard it is to find a poster for Purple Rain nowadays. At least I was. I ended up ordering this (gigantic, expensive) Japanese Iris print:
We were a little concerned about it being an Iris print and not a glossy poster because we wondered if the mod-podge would cause it to run. I ran some tests with some other stuff printed off an inkjet. The tests did not run, so we went for it, and it ultimately worked just fine.

I definitely wanted to concentrate on Prince's handsome visage, so I traced the wooden plaque right over the spot we wanted. I cut it out and decoupaged it onto the plaque.
After it dried I painted the outside edge black, because the gold paint I have is really transparent. Also you can kind of use the black to clean up the edges if they are rough.Then when the black was dry I painted two or three coats of gold.
Time to pour the EnviroTex Lite Pour On High Gloss Finish! (I have exactly one half of the 16 oz package left over from the Tu-Clock.) Which is horribly messy business, and your piece has to be perfectly flat on a raised surface (I put a block of wood under it), and you have to cover everything in a one-mile vicinity with plastic, and monitor for drips, and keep the temperature right, and be in a non-dusty area (which does not exist in my house), but is TOTALLY WORTH the payoff.Behold the drips. It pretty much keeps dripping the whole 72 hours. Do not worry about this, as there will still be plenty of acrylic on the piece. Even though it doesn't seem like there will be. Just trust me.

So he dried beautifully (except I got a gold fingerprint on the windshield before I poured the acrylic and it wouldn't come off that mod-podge for anything) and then sat around for about 3 months while I waited for my husband to do his part which was to sand the drips off the back and drill the hole for the clock kit. His desire for Sexy Purple Time in his office finally won out over his procrastination.

When he drilled the hole for the Tu-Clock there were absolutely no problems. He drilled a small pilot hole and then the real one while I cringed in the living room and tried not to cry. It came out perfectly. This time the acrylic did something weird -- there is a strange halo around the hole. I decided to make the best of it and used the halo to lay out the adhesive numbers. You can see it in this finished photo:The first photo I shot was totally a picture of me reflected back at myself. This baby is the very definition of "high gloss." Sexy high gloss.

The husband is very pleased. Now I just have to get him to hang it in his office.