Face Painting

Well, here it is...that one day that always happens when I'm working on a long project. You know the one where I have no pictures of what I'm working on or anything new and interesting to say. I could have sworn that I took a picture of the mask at some point yesterday, but my phone says otherwise. So, I guess I'll babble a bit about my day and hope I don't bore you to death.

One of those dreaded mail order toy commercials caused my youngest to beg for face paint and since they sell the same product at Michaels, a fact she quickly picked up on, I was compelled to buy some and succumbed to face painting yesterday morning. While I fancy myself competent with a makeup brush, I am no face painter. The children were relatively pleased once they accepted and reminded me of this fact, repeatably.

After that pleasantness, it was off on an adventure to buy more sequins. I find it ludicrous that the little beasts come in packs of 800 and I use multiple packs on a mask. Seriously, it boggles my mind that I could sew on so many individual...well, anything. I know there are some tatters that actually list the number of stitches/knots that a piece contains, but I find those kinds of numbers to be insane to keep track of. Now sales, fans, followers and the like, those numbers I enjoy. Thousands of sequins, yikes.

When I got back from sequin retrieval it was all about sewing them on. The outside is done thanks to me finally, after all this time figuring out the perfect way to sew a line of sequins. I'm not certain why it took me so long to get this down, I've sewn a lot of them before, but it either took multiple passes or a strange back and forth with the thread. Turns out all it takes is a perfectly spaced running stitch. I was so proud of myself that I considered making a tutorial. I remember looking for one when I made the first mask and only finding poorly diagrammed ones that obviously were no help. Then I figured I was likely in a small minority of people who didn't 'get' it, so I probably won't bother.

I guess that brings us to the plans for today. Yep, you guessed it, more sequins. As I work on the fill in portions, it's taking a bit more creativity to get those sequins to behave. This is the same challenge I faced with the first mask, but this time the underlying structure is denser so there should be fewer floating sequin sections. So far the resemblance to the first mask is good and I hope that the deviations I've made thus far only improve on the design and not take away from the aesthetic that the customer admired. Just a couple more days I think and we'll find out.