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For the past few years I’ve wanted to get a lace parasol. There was one site in particular where I fell in love with the lace parasol they carried, and I planned on purchasing my parasol from them. Unfortunately, that shop ran out of stock, and at the time, I couldn’t find any similar parasols anywhere else.

I recently thought about that parasol I wanted, so I decided to try my search for sites with lace parasols again. I was looking for solid black lace parasols, but I found an eBay shop that had lace parasols that were white with different colors of lace, including a few with black lace. Since I dyed a pair of gloves for my husband to use in his sword fight a few weeks ago, we had a bit of extra crimson colored Rit dye left. Seeing that the white part of the parasols is made of cotton, I decided it would be perfect to dye my own to black and red.

I ordered the parasol, then went out and bought a bottle of Rit dye in wine. The bottle of crimson wasn’t going to be enough, and I wanted something with a bit more purple than crimson. I planned to mix the crimson and wine dyes to get a nice something in-between when it was all done!

Continued in Part 2

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First Anniversary

by CrystalKittyCaton August 15, 2010August 15, 20101 Comment0

This day marks mine and Eric’s first wedding anniversary. We’ve had a wonderful first year of marriage, which has included several firsts for us: our first time going overseas, the filming of Eric’s first movie, and my first year having part-ownership of a shop at a renaissance faire. Of course the ride is bumpy, but we are getting through it together.

Eric, I love you.

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A new lens

by CrystalKittyCaton July 12, 2010July 12, 2010Leave a Comment0

During college, I realized that I would need a digital SLR camera for my photography to have better control of my photos than I had with the five megapixel Pentax Optio point and shoot I bought while I worked at the local camera shop. I ended up getting a Nikon D50 right before they were discontinued. It’s been a great camera for me, and I take all of my photos with it. But over the years of use for college and everything else, my main lens got knocked around too much. The manual focus loosened, and I’ve had trouble focusing with it since.

I started looking for prices on the same lens on all the photography supply websites I have bookmarked, only to not find my lens. Apparently they aren’t actually made anymore. Since it’s a bit hard to do photography jobs with a lens that doesn’t work properly, my dad found the lens I need on eBay that had yet to be used and bought it for me. I got it in the mail today and decided to try it out on a necklace I just put together for one of my best friends. The focus works wonderfully, as you can tell by the pic! The necklace has two rose quartz pendants as well as a small iolite pendant.

Dad, thank you so much!

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Victorian Cuffs

by CrystalKittyCaton June 13, 2010June 13, 20102 Comments0

If you could see my workroom, you’d probably notice the pile of scraps that has taken over one corner of the room. I’ve saved all the scraps that are large enough that something could be done with, but I hadn’t actually tried to do anything with them until this week. Over the past several years, I’ve loved the tattered cuffs I’ve come across, wishing I could pay the (in my opinion, overpriced) amounts of money the makers wanted for these cuffs with ridiculous amounts of layers and strings coming off them everywhere. There’s something charming about items made with raw edged fabric. When I first fell in love with these cuffs, I didn’t have the materials to make them, and it seemed really silly to go spend money on something that didn’t take much of the fabrics I would want to make something similar out of.

I recently came across a website with a basic set of instructions on making some of these cuffs, and I realized that now I do have the materials to make these! Or at least most of them. I don’t actually keep lace on hand. Or thin elastic. But I have everything else! And I also had a JoAnn gift card I had yet to spend all of, so I wouldn’t even have to pay out of pocket for the materials I didn’t have. I figured out the fabrics I wanted to make my cuff out of and started making it. Thing is, the types of fabric I decided to use definitely were not what the person writing the instructions used. Whoops…but I made it work! I changed up a few things, and after an evening and a couple of hours the next afternoon, I had my cuff! I loved the combination of the fabrics I used for my hubby’s wedding outfit, purple satin, and black lace, but it was missing something. I thought for a bit what to add and remembered a brooch I had bought from Spencer’s years ago that I had never done anything with. It went perfectly.

So then of course I showed it to Marianne later that night and asked her if she wanted to make one for herself with some of my scraps. She did, so we made this awesomely green cuff! Soon I’ll be working on one for my sister as a present (I’m hoping I’ve given it to her before I post this!), and I’m considering making some to sell in the shop as well. After wearing mine for a few hours, I got tired of it shedding all over me and the couch so I fray checked the edges. I’ll have to find a better solution if I make ones to sell!

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The reoccurence of an icon

by CrystalKittyCaton June 6, 2010June 6, 20101 Comment0

Okay, well, calling one of my own items an icon seems to me a bit silly, but anyone who’s visited my website and shop or had one of my business cards has seen this image.

It’s my favorite image of any of the Hair Jewels I’ve created, and clearly a favorite to those who frequent my shop. Any similar Pirate Hair Jewels that I’ve used this as the main image has always been the Hair Jewels with the most item hearts. It didn’t take very long after listing the strand in this photo to sell, and since then I’ve had several requests to recreate it. I’ve had a few problems with those requests, the main one being each strand of Hair Jewels I create is one of a kind. I feel it devalues the individuality of the strand, and I really don’t want to remake the same thing over and over again. This is also apart of why I don’t make Jack Sparrow replica Hair Jewels.

Another big part of recreating any strand of Hair Jewels is that I don’t always have the same materials. The beads I use I have limited quantities of, and when I’ve used them up, I don’t get any more. But the beads are only part of the creation, since a huge draw of this piece is the tribal pendant it features. The tribal pendants I use are often of a kind themselves, so finding a pendant similar to the one I used before is very difficult. Oddly enough and definitely to my surprise, I did recently find a pendant very similar to the one in my photo.

Obviously I wouldn’t make the same thing over again, but I could make something similar with the same organization to it. I used carved bone where wood had been, used more colors of beads where metallic glass had been, and created a new one of a kind strand of Hair Jewels that has the same feel as the one in the above photo. I’ve listed this new strand on Etsy, and it can be found by following this link: Specialty Pirate Hair Jewels.

Let me tell a story Steampunk

Steampunk Ball : Airship Disaster

by CrystalKittyCaton May 28, 2010May 28, 20104 Comments0

Every so often in the past year or two, Elysium (Austin, TX) holds a Steampunk Ball. The most recent one was last Saturday night. My sister and I of course were very excited to go, since we both are working to “complete” our own outfits and love to see what others come up with! The past Steampunk Balls we’ve attended at Elysium have had many people who dressed up, but not to the extent you often see on sites where people show off the costumes they’ve put together. There would be frills, some gas masks, a bit of leather, and a few top hats, but most of what we observed had more Victorian influence than Steampunk. We’ve always been disappointed that there isn’t much of a hardcore Steampunk community in Austin, but then again we’re not really hardcore ourselves.

When Elysium advertises the Steampunk Ball, they always advertise a costume contest. The previous time, I and apparently most of the crowd, severely disagreed with the outcome of the costume contest. The contest dwindled down from several ladies and gentlemen which, for some odd reason, included some zombies. It came down to a young lady who wore a wonderfully put together outfit of pieces she had bought and a young lady who’d made a dress from scraps of what might have been vintage clothing pieces. Although the announcer said he would go by the crowd’s cheers, he decided the lady with the tattered outfit won the contest since she had made her own outfit.

Maybe I got the idea wrong, but I’d think that to participate in a costume contest at a Steampunk Ball your outfit should at least show some semblance of Steampunk influence. This may have been because they had advertised the contest too well, which could possibly explain why I saw so little advertisement of this past Saturday’s Steampunk Ball. The first mention of Saturday’s event I saw was actually on another blog rather than any of Elysium’s official announcements. I’m sure this is why there weren’t as many people dressed up or even attending the ball, but those that were dressed up exceeded what I had expected based on the previous events! So much work and skill went into some of the pieces I saw, which of course completely made me jealous of what I don’t have the equipment or the skill to do. Unfortunately we missed the costume contest for the night; I’m sure it would have been much better this time around. But the event always makes me want to work to complete my outfit even more. I have items planned to purchase as well as sew for myself, but all of them will have to wait until I have more cash I can dedicate to my outfit. I did get to wear my newest skirt this time, and I modified the collar on my sister’s shirt from a simple folded collar to a shaped stand-up. Hopefully we’ll be closer to having completed outfits next time around!

There were a few vendors there, one of which was Turner’s Tokens. I received one of the coolest business cards I’ve ever gotten, a piece of brass stamped with their information. They have some gorgeous jewelry pieces, I highly encourage y’all to check them out! We had a great time on Saturday, and I look forward to the next ball Elysium hosts!

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Ab Initio

by CrystalKittyCaton May 7, 2010May 7, 20101 Comment0

I began Faire Treasures as a little side project while I was finishing up my BFA in photography at Texas State University. My first idea was actually to make purses and cloaks, giving me a good excuse to sew items I couldn’t 1st Pirate Hair Jewels justify making for myself. I had started building my pirate costume at this point and was trying to collect the perfect accessories for my look. I searched for beads large enough to fit over a small braid in my hair, but I kept finding the perfect beads that were much too small. Realizing that a removable strand of beads would work much better for repeated wearings, the first strand of Pirate Hair Jewels was created!

Thing was, I had to buy many sets of beads to get the mix I wanted for my strand. My idea had been that a pirate wouldn’t have had a full set of similar beads. He or she would have collected these trinkets over a long period of time, so although they should go together, they shouldn’t necessarily match. Then of course I wanted to keep away from plastic beads, trying to use what could have been available then: glass, shell, stone, wood, horn, bone, and metal. Collecting so many of each for just one strand wasn’t practical, so I decided to make more and offer them for sale through a site my sister had set up a shop on, a site called Etsy. I opened up my shop “CrystalKittyCat’s Faire Treasures” in July of 2007. Since then I have been selling my Pirate Hair Jewels to people around the world.