New project: Screen printing t-shirts for Cosplay Club.
Note: Before looking back and thinking I had no life, please remember that at this point, future self, I was driving down I-10 in the Mississippi pan handle about 15 minutes from Alabama on my way home from Thanksgiving holidays in NoLa. Remember that? You couldn't fully enjoy your last day cuz your siblings kept teasing you and then that terrifying WWII 4-D movie just ended your sanity? Yeah.

Ok, this one has confusion, a lot of me being stupid, and even a little drama behind it, and from its name, doesn't sound like me doing much else other than coordinating, which isn't the kind of thing I put here.  Allow me to explain in a "brief" time line:

1. The cosplay presidents and I map out a design for a club t-shirt. I throw it together in photoshop.

2. I go to the Skills USA sponsor, Mr. C, who happens to be the graphic arts teacher. He's also my teacher for the first time this year, but I had interacted with him extensively over the big screw up that resulted in the epic robotics team t-shirts for the 2009 peachtree regional. I ask him if he can do the shirts for Cosplay club, still a little nervous over the whole robotics thing (dude's pretty intimidating for a 5-foot-nothing skinny bald jewish kid from new yawk), but since the project board is mostly empty at the beginning of the year, I figure I'm good.

3. We present the design to the club, who are pretty down with the idea. We then take an estimate of the number of shirts we'll need. About 11 non-officers showed up to this meeting, and so we put the estimate at 20 shirts, leaving us some extra shirts. Only like 3 or 4 people had paid dues at this point, but we figured once the shirts showed up, they'd be a good incentive (no shirt till you pay, etc.) BAD IDEA.

4. I go to Mr. C with our order and the design. He files it away, and gives me an estimate of about $200. Um, ouch. I don't remember how we got there, since I seem to recall his standard 3-screen rate was about $6 a shirt... Whatever, I could be wrong, my memory sucks. Anyway, I told the presidents, and they were like, "ok cool we'll get him the money."

5. A couple weeks (might have even been a month or two) later, I begin to wonder why our shirts, which I put on his project board myself, hadn't been marked as started. Concerned, I asked him. He said that he never recieved the money. Of course, I'm the treasurer (The club is more like, here are the presidents they do stuff. Katt wanted to do tshirts so that's her job i guess."), so I'm freaking the fuck out. I run to Sara, one of the presidents, and ask her if she ever paid. She says she thought Jessica, the other president, did. I know this is not going anywhere good, but I find Jessica and ask her if she paid. She says she's not sure, but she seems to remember paying. Panicked, I go back to Mr. c (this is all happening over a series of lunch periods), and ask to see his receipt book. He lets me, but there's no record of Jessica ever paying. Um. I go back to Sara and Jessica, who are together this time. They're perplexed, since they recall that when they went to withdraw the money for the club sewing machines, they just managed to scrape out enough money for the purchase. It seemed that about $200 had been removed... for something. So, one lunch period, we go to the Cosplay Club sponsor, and ask her about it. She says she submitted no such request for money out of our club account. Shit shit shit. We've still got time before the lines start to go down (when you have 5th lunch, there's like a ten-minute window that is the perfect time to get lunch: after the lines have gone down, and before the lines close for the day. After the lines close, we still got a good half hour to eat), so we do an about-face and run to Mr. C. He says he never requested any money either. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK. So $200 is missing. Great. Ah, now that I think about it, the records room that keeps club accounts probably has a log of all the transfers. Duh. >_< I'll put that on my to do list for Monday. ANYWAY!

6. Here's where the project comes in. Time has passed. No one really cares about the shirts anymore, but I still have to sit right under that project board every day in Graphic Arts. :( So graphic arts class got around to its big screen printing unit about two weeks ago. I worked hard on my shirt, and was happy with the result. I loved the whole process (as soon as I was off the computer. That part's annoying sometimes), and as I prepared to do my final print on my actual shirt, I had a brilliant idea, but I'd need a lot confidence to pull it off.

7. I approach Mr. C after class one day (since we both have lunch right after), and I propose to him an idea. Trying not to stammer, I ask how much it would cost me to rent equipment, ink, and emulsion if I were to purchase T-shirts at Michael's and, outside of class time (meaning lunch/after school/wEB), screen print the Cosplay Club t-shirts myself? They're about a three-screen job, but with just black ink and a little bit of white. He looks contemplative for a bit, then tells me if I am willing to do all the work and line it up myself and not use class time for it, it'll cost me about a dollar a shirt.

WOAH WOAH WOAH. A dollar each!? Excellent! I had to double check several times. He probably thought I was mentally impared. Beaming, I leave the classroom after thanking him profusely, and report my success to the presidents at lunch. They're absolutely ecstatic about it, too. We decide then to send out an email saying due-payers don't have to worry, and if you haven't paid dues yet, you can still get a t-shirt dirt cheap! They'll just have to pay $30 to join the MomoCon cosplay group in addition to the t-shirt charge. Ah... I just realized... we should have put in a profit margin... crap. Whatever. I'll just jack up the price on Wednesday.

Anyway, I'm super excited about this project! It's going to be difficult because I've only done a one screen job before, and that thin ipod cord is going to be REALLY hard to line up. I should probably look into doing that using that paint roller method I talked about in my intro post. Just have a stencil of the ipod cord, since it can be lined up more easily than a screen, and roll it straight over the black ink. Maybe... >_<

Thomas (a girl who wanted to be called Serenity before, but her real name's Alisha), who is the Secretary and who helps to organize tutorials, and Jessica say that they're going to help me. They've both taken Graphic Arts years one and two, and Thomas made a two-color shirt awhile back that was lined up really well. I'm hyped!

New Project (and completed project): Screen-Print Canvas Tee

So around 11:00 the other night, I got an excellent idea. I understood what was going on with screen printing, since I'd by this time done it before with proper equipment in Graphic Arts class (project that i turned in today yay). Anyway, I took a gray tee shirt I hadn't worn in about two years, and my small bottle of white screen printing ink that I'd bought awhile back and never used (smaller than a bottle of tacky glue. $10. A little goes a long way). I wrapped the tee around my old laptop, the one with the broken monitor, putting the side I would be printing on face up. This was a little tricky because I had to make sure I didn't stretch the fabric in the process. To create the effect of a painted-on canvas, I threw formality to the wind, and just dumped about half the bottle onto the shirt, starting from about a fist length down from the collar. Using a folded piece of paper, I spread the ink out into a rectangle. Then came the interesting part. I had WAY more ink than I needed! I took down the REM New Adventures in Hi Fi wall scroll i have hanging up in my closet, since it's held up via a triangular piece of wood. I used that piece of wood as an edge, and placed it at the top of the print area. Then, I took a scrap of cardboard, folded it in half, wrapped a piece of paper around the fold to keep it smooth, fashioning myself a sort of squeegee. Finally, I took the squeegee and pushed all the excess ink up against the wood. I then scraped the edge of the bottle up the wood to collect the excess ink, and repeated. Squeegee, collect, squeegee, collect, until the print was nice and smooth. It still looked a bit thick, but any thinner and I wouldn't be able to write on it when I was done. I then collected the ink from the squeegee and excess pieces of paper. The canvas look was naturally achieved during squeegeeing since I didn't put down any tape (a mistake regrettable at the time but that I now realize was a blessing), and because I kept wiping my fingers on the edge of the shirt.
Finally, I propped the laptop covered shirt upright once it had dried a little, and blasted my fan on it, then promptly passed out. After school the next morning, I came home and ran a hair dryer over it for about five seconds over each section of the ink it covered. This heat seals it so that when you write on it in sharpie/magic marker, the marker will wash off, but not the canvas. I am currently wearing it. It looked great with just the canvas, actually. Then I added, "Dear Cullens, Piss off, you posers. Also, don't mate with your food. Sicko. -Dracula"

Pictures and instructions to follow.

Personal update: implants. Well i had my wisdom teeth out and implants put in on wednesday. Went to school friday; bad idea as i felt like vomiting the whole time. My left stitches feel really loose but otherwise fine. I can't eat or drink citrus though cuz my right stitches seem to be open still. Mom and dad have been great about the whole ordeal though. My cheeks are still a bit puffy but i feel fine so i'm going to school tomorrow.

not-so-weekly. whatever.

Various Papercrafts - Little progress beyond pieces cut out. I think i left the pieces out on the cardboard one night and Sluggo got under my bed and kicked them around...
Snorlax Cosplay - No progress.
Making/purchasing a simple corset - Pattern cut out; fabric, some notions purchased; labor paid for in full.
Katt's Amazing Dance Mat - Stalled until I can figure out the wiring of that damn mat
Homemade xbox to usb adapter - Pieces have been found after about two weeks being lost. Will be soddered next time I can get my hands on a gun.
Leviathan's Flash Dress Up Game for Maya and Jenna - Drafts of line art of the front of like 2 outfits  have been stored in a .psd file.
Zombies in the School: A Java-based vis novel Yaoi game by Leviathan - May switch plans to C#.
Male Kaftan - Pattern laid out, mostly drafted.
Entering writing contests - Haven't entered anything lately; Reflections didn't go over as well as I'd hoped. I slid by with an "honorable mention," which means "4th place but you didn't place so haha sucks."
Applying to Colleges - Only Tulane is absolutely done. Agnes Scott's counselor rec is done. Waiting on teacher rec to send the whole package.

TWO project updates! Both good!

1. Male Caftan: Pattern has been pinned to the fabric!!! I have the edits for the body of the garment done, and the sleeves won't be too hard once Corn Pirate gets ahold of them. :D

2. CORSET!! I paid corn pirate in two bags of off-brand "gummy sour fruit slices" and two bags of York peppermint patties. By "bag" i mean those giant sacks you get at the grocery store. Then, yesterday, I bought the fabric for the corset. It only set me back $6, mostly because it's cheap satin lined with broadcloth, and the canvas i'm using in stead of interfacing is already being stored at the Robotics build site (No one will miss 5/8ths of a yard). I also bought the eyelets and bias tape, but the rest of the notions are really expensive. I need nearly 8 yards of boning, which is about $24 by itself. I also need a corset busk. Handcock Fabrics doesn't even sell those. Oh, also, it calls for ribbon, but I'm not going to buy that until I've actually seen how it turns out. The boning is what's going to kill me. But even if I assume the busk is $20 (no way it's more; if it is, i can bullshit my own), that brings the project cost (including bias tape and eyelets) to about $50 dollars. Add in the ribbon and laces and it's roughly $65 dollars. I know, sounds super pricy, but a fully functioning corset is $100, more if you want any sort of style to it. I save $35 dollars. For me, that's a new pair of glasses. No, future self, those aren't the frames I wore. You should know that since you still have the actual frames I wear now. They're bitching awesome!

Project Update: Amazing Dance Mat

The mat's been completely soldered up. However, I had to use a soddering gun that had a rather large tip and the solder itself was sort of big. It wound up being a two man job. David sent his dad to help me since he was in charge of the build site. Today's a teacher work day after all. XD
After exposing the connections, I discovered that the mat, being a third-party product, had differently colored wires. This is a bad thing. I went to the internet to try to find diagrams, but I was a tad pressed for time, and couldn't find a very clear one, so, like a genus, I GUESSED! :D Yeah... I prayed that the yellow wire on the mat was still the useless one, matched up the greens and reds, then guessed that black went to brown, and blue went to white.
 But, after attempting my first connection, we found that the gun tip was too big, so I just hacked off the entire xbox part (I don't even know where my original xbox DDR game is, and besides, Nathan just pointed out that the mat now works with a 360), and directly soldered the wires to each other. After soldering (David's dad held the gun and wires which had been twisted together, and I held the sodder), I put a small amount of orange electrical tape on each connection to keep them from touching. I had put sodder over every exposed bit of wire, so I was very confident about having no shorts (and even if I do, I'm screwed anyway). Then, David's father flattened the connections against the wire, and I just wrapped the whole thing in a lot of black electrical tape. The whole thing looks very neat and tight. I haven't tested it yet since I'm not even supposed to have it at the build site, but it looks great. I'll be very (m/s)ad if it doesn't.


*UPDATE* I currently have the mat plugged in to my computer. Nothing's blown up yet. ALWAYS a good thing. Windows detects that a USB device is there, but that its drivers aren't installed. Excellent, because when I plug in a hacked off USB cord with nothing on the other end, absolutely nothing happens. However, when I run XBCD, (X Box Controller Driver), it doesn't pick up the device. O_O

**UPDATE** The wiring is wrong. :(  I have two options: Build whatever the hell this is and use it to test what each wire in the xbox controller does, or just redo the connections until they're right. *sigh*