So I’ve put some of the random little resin things I’ve made up on my shop (the same place the Aromaparody candles and Genii Locorum prints are!) and I’ve been having way more fun with resin than I originally thought I would so there may be more stuff in the future. All of these things have imperfections here and there but I feel like it wouldn’t be me without that, hehe.

You can find the Neon Shores shop at Waxing Sky Studios!

I have a shirt that has a Boo on it — scared Boo on the front and sneaky-coming-to-bite-Mario’s-ass Boo on the back — because it’s Boo and I love Boo. He’s up there with Luigi, Shy Guy and Toad in my “favorite characters from the Super Mario Bros. series” list. I also love messing around with meltable beads. I have all kinds of colors and sizes and when I originally made this necklace, Perler wasn’t making small beads so I had to order tiny ones from the U.K. Perler is making mini-beads now so this tutorial will be made using those! They can be found at Michael’s or pretty much any craft store where you can find Perler beads.

The necklace is like the shirt — scared Boo on one side and sneaky-coming-to-bite-Mario’s-ass Boo on the other — so you can use the necklace to share how you’re feeling by wearing it on whichever side is applicable that day!

Here’s what you’ll need to make this necklace!:

• • → mini Perler beads (112 black, 30 red, 160 white — they come in packs of 2000 so you should be set with one pack of each)
  • → tweezers (very tiny ones! Perler sells tweezers especially for the small beads. Look how tiny the tips of the tweezers are! That’s the size you’ll need!)
  • → mini-bead pegboard
  • → some sort of chain for your necklace
  • → 2 jump rings
  • → jewelry pliers
  • → Perler ironing paper (a small sheet of this is included in the mini pegboard pack)
  • → an iron
  • → a surface to iron on (not pictured)
  • → hot glue gun (not pictured)
  • → a pin or an awl (pictured, but possibly not needed — you’ll see why!)

Let’s get started!

1.) Here are the patterns you’ll be using for the front and back of Boo! Put these somewhere where it’s easy to see while you work (whether you want to keep them on your screen cause you’ll be working in front of your computer or tablet or you want to print them out — whatever is easiest for you since you’ll be looking back at them constantly)! I’ve marked with arrows the places you’ll be putting in the jump rings.

2.) You can fit both on one mini board if you place them right — it’s up to you if you want to do one or both at the same time. It’s also up to you how you want to put the beads down. I put the outline in the black beads down first, then add the other black beads needed. Then I move on to the white and finally the red, as you can see in the photos below. If it’s easier for you to go a row at a time, picking up and placing the color bead you need as you get to it, that works as well!

(Note: I also like to do this work on a paper towel so that it’s easy to fold it up and funnel the extra beads I poured out back into the bag when I’m done. Picking up a bunch of tiny beads gets really old, really fast.)

3.) Be very careful once you get all the beads on the board — one knock and they’ll all go flying! Carefully move the board over to your ironing surface and place one of the sheets of ironing paper over the board and beads. Iron over the designs slowly, making sure to check here and there as you’re ironing. When the beads fuse together, they’ll show through the ironing paper. The places marked with the arrows on the pattern are where the jump rings are going, which is what will hold Boo to the chain. Don’t iron over those specific beads too much. You want them to fuse to the others but you don’t want to close the holes in them so completely that you can’t get the jump rings through (or be able to open them back up a bit with a pin or awl).

4.) Once you have one side ironed (these are the sides that will show), gently pull up the paper. The Boos should be stuck to the paper and come off of the board very easily and you should be able to turn the paper over with them still stuck to it to look at the back. As you can see, on the backs the beads aren’t fused together. It’s up to you whether or not you want to put the second piece of ironing paper over the back to fuse the back parts of the beads as well. The backs of the Boos are going to be hot glued together so it might not be needed as much, but I ironed the backs for extra hold.

5.) Hot glue the backs of the Boos together so you have a tiny bead Boo sandwich. Make sure the holes that are marked on the pattern meet up so you can get the jump rings through them!

6.) Take your jewelry pliers and open the jump rings, then slide them through the holes marked on the pattern. I mentioned needing a pin or an awl or something of the sort if the holes on the marked beads got fused shut too much. If they did, just carefully poke the holes back open enough for the jump rings. Detach the middle of the chain from itself (where the Boo will go) and then attach the two sides of the chain to the jump rings on Boo. (For this tutorial necklace, I started with a really long chain that wasn’t part of an already made necklace chain, so I also had to attach the jump rings and clasp on the back. You should be able to find chain necklaces with clasps already on them in craft stores if you don’t want to deal with adding the clasp!)

7.) Wear your necklace — pick a side to show off!

So that’s all how it came about — but what exactly is it? It started as a set of photos but has sort of grown into a multimedia collective of Jacen/Tenel Ka related works and things we’ve made. Costumes, photos, fanmixes, gifs, alternate universes — there’s a whole number of things we added into our planning/ideas list and began to work on when we decided we were definitely starting this whole thing.

To stay updated with the project, you can check out the main site for it or follow the tumblr, pinterest or instagram!

Here’s a glimpse into just a small part of what we’re doing for this project — the alternate universes!

  “You know you absolutely cannot post this photo anywhere, correct?”
“Ugh, I know. Political matters, families, blah blah blah. Just let me pretend we’re allowed to be normal for once. And it’s not just any photo, it’s called a selfie.”
“That sounds ridiculous. Who came up with that?”

Yesterday In A Galaxy Next Door is a modern AU and includes Jacen the photography nerd plus his pets as well as his super-secret girlfriend TK – both of whom would rather not be in the public eye but usually are thanks to the politicians in their families.

“Some called her Lady Caedus for a time until there were whispers of a new designation, which came only after rumors of traitors in the Hapan Council. Those against her went after the most important things: first, her daughter, then the control of her court and finally the safety of her people. She had been a force to reckon with as Tenel Ka Chume Ta’ Djo, but now with supposed new powers and Darth Caedus – often rumored to be Allana Djo’s father – on her side, her grandmother’s supporters finally began to do what they should have done from the start. Fear the Queen Mother.”

The Galaxy Can Burn is a Sith AU and gathers some highlights from some odd timeline where Tenel Ka joins Caedus after something happens to Allana. We know that TK would never go dark/give scrublord Caedus the time of day at this point but it’s always fun coming up with this crazy stuff so why not have a Sith AU?

   “I know you aren’t really big on jewelry, but I figured this might hold some value to you. Somehow. Maybe.”
“Is that a piece of gort eggshell?”
“What else would it be? Come on, Your Majesty.”

I’d Give You The Galaxy takes a look at some universe where Jacen didn’t go on his five-year journey after the war with the Yuuzhan Vong and instead helped rebuild around him — physically from all the devastation and emotionally with everyone close to him. Also, he visits Hapes a lot for some reason??? Really though, Hapan traditions be damned — these kids are gonna get married somehow (most likely in secret) and this is the AU where it’ll happen!

    “You know you terrified Allana, right?”
“I know. When I see her–”
“If. If you see her.”

The Galaxy’s Good is a what-if of epic “Jaina not killing Caedus and him possibly being redeemed” proportions. Allana’s with the Solo family (as Amelia), Isolder is dead and the Queen Mother of Hapes wonders if there is a chance that the Jacen she knew could fully return. Ruling the Hapan people for so long though, has stifled any optimism she might have had over the years, so who knows? Maybe Jacen Solo will be a scrublord FOREVER. ETERNAL SCRUBLORD DAMNATION.

That’s just a small peek at all the stuff we’re working on for this collection. Keep an eye out for updates at the links listed up above if you’re interested! (Also, woo-hoo if you’re interested! More EU & J/TK fans! <3)

On Halloween of 2015, I got married to someone who loves BioShock as much as I do (we have a lot more in common and I love him for more than that, but that’s the part that relates to this post so lololololol whoops).

We didn’t have a huge budget for our wedding so we did a lot of the stuff ourselves when it came to decorations, invites, etc. The photos in this post take a look at some of the things I created and worked on (including a thing I worked on well after the wedding) – all of which came out way better than I thought they would!

The two photos above are of the centerpieces we had on all the tables. I cut a city skyline out of thin clear plastic with a Silhouette Cameo (those things are magical), spraypainted them black and then attached them to themselves to make them circular. Those went in a vase of rocks, water, and sand and had a blue light stuck in the middle of the city while the vase itself sat on a charger plate decorated with shells and blue butterfly confetti (had to get our love for BioShock 2 in there!). The table names were all places in Rapture and the names were cut out (again, with the magical Cameo) of folded blue paper, then I attached a piece of vellum on the inside of the card and set them each over a tealight (battery-powered, not a real one! XD) so you could see the glow through the vellum.

The next three photos are our RSVP card and our actual invite – which I designed and ordered from Vistaprint. The fancy address labels came from there too! The purple backings for the invite were cut to size by my mother-in-law (who was my soon to be mother-in-law then!) and then I punched the corners and sides with an art deco-style punch. My hands were sore after all that punching.  The printed part of the invites (which was the part ordered from VP) were then attached to the purple backings with photo corners.

The last four photos are of a picture frame I made for our one-year anniversary that had a favorite photo of ours from the wedding. The first two photos of it are similar, but you can see the texture from the paint job on the frame way better in the second photo. The whole thing was two wooden frames I bought, painted and put together. The touches I added on it were all related to the wedding – the paint colors, gem colors (on the silver mask) & peacock feather included our wedding/decor colors, the silver mask was for the whole BioShock/masquerade thing we had going and obviously the pictures added on the side are Rapture-related!

I didn’t even have space here for all the photos and rambling of the masks! Maybe one day I’ll post about those crazy things too.

(Many thanks to JeremyDesignz for the centerpiece photos and the wedding photo I put in the frame! :D)

I made this for a costume a few years back (you can kind of see it in the first photo here!) and I’ve been meaning to make more in different colors/styles/chain types/bead & gem types/etc. After I get some more made I’ll throw them on here & a shop too, maybe, if anyone wants one for a costume. Or just for fun.

If you have something similar in mind that you want, feel free to shoot me a message! <3

We’ll start with a quick paragraph about Katsucon. We went on Saturday to mainly see people we knew – not to do anything con related. We were kind of thankful that’s what we were doing because it was a madhouse zoo full of people everywhere and we pretty much hung out in the fountain area talking to lots of awesome geeks. We also went down to the giant hall that led to the pool because that was the only place where there weren’t a billion people and we wanted to at least get a couple of photos of our costumes. We’ve had these costumes done forever and we FINALLY GOT TO WEAR THEM. Byakuya Togami & Toko Fukawa from Danganronpa!

Thanks to Roger for getting these photos (SERIOUSLY THANKS TO ROGER FOR GETTING LIKE ALL THE PHOTOS IN THIS POST)! And also for hurrying and snagging these other goofy-ass photos from the back of a photo machine that did “example” shots of people standing behind the machine. They were only up for a few seconds after they were taken so he would always rush over with the camera and try to take a picture of the screen. SUCCESS!

That’s really about it for a Katsucon report, haha. Maybe one day we’ll actually go back to the con, but we aren’t sure as of now. We like seeing people we only see once a year though! This year we knew it was a no-go because of how much money it would be for hotel/badges for cons two weekends in a row and MAGFest is our favorite time of year (next to Halloween and Christmas… and MAGFest Classic ;D) so we knew which one we had to stick with in the back-to-back con issue.

SO MAGFEST 2016! We got there mid-afternoon on Thursday and the first thing of note that happened was Nate dropping what was left of a handle of Fireball Whisky (it was leftover from the ADAM drink at the wedding) which shattered on the tile and left the Gaylord National hall smelling like Fireball. I wish I had a dollar for every person who walked by while the staff was cleaning it up (the Katsucon & Gaylord staff who helped out both were amazing <3) and went, “IT SMELLS LIKE FIREBALL.” I could’ve used all those dollars to buy my food for the weekend. A couple hours later we were in the Ninja Sex Party panel, flipping our shit because NINJA SEX PARTY WE WERE IN THE SAME ROOM AS NINJA SEX PARTY OKAY. The panel was hilarious (as expected) and if you wanted to watch it, it is up on YouTube here! Their cover album (Under the Covers, yesssssss) was about to be released shortly after the con so there is some fun talk about that as well as all kinds of other hijinks. Overall, the panel was great and just served to get us super pumped up for the concert that was taking place the next night.

On Friday morning we put on the Saints Row 2 costumes we’ve had done FOREVER, DJ Veteran Child & Shaundi and we were joined by Denis who put together an SR2 Johnny Gat! He didn’t do the frosted tips because FIRST OF ALL, FROSTED TIPS, and second, his hair was already dyed purple even before he was going to join us as Johnny and it looked amazing. His hair fit the Saints perfectly so why not run with it?

Friday was full of playing video games, wandering around the vendor room/artist’s alley, and freaking out over awesome/adorable/perfect art and items and then Friday night was the NINJA SEX PARTY CONCERT AHHHHHHHHHHHH! TWRP joined them (since TWRP played on the cover album and there’s going to be a lot of awesome work between them and NSP in the near future) and we got to see both bands rock the hell out. The concert is up on YouTube too — check it out! It was effing great and as an added bonus, DJ Cutman shared a new remix he did of my favorite NSP song, Samurai Abstinence Patrol after the concert was over. You can listen to the remix here — it is a perfect remix of an already kickass song.

After the concert and more MAGFest madness, our room managed to get more photos of the Five Nights at Freddy’s/Hotline Miami costumes we originally brought to MAGFest Classic last year — we got to use the awesome wifi shutter app for the camera for some of the photos (like the first one below) and it worked out very well. These were taken around 4 in the morning? I’m not sure how that happened but our explanation for stuff like that is always just MAGFEST!

Saturday was playing more video games (because MAGFest) with Fallout 4 costumes in the morning and Until Dawn costumes with an amazing group in the evening. Fallout 4 is magical and we knew we wanted to make costumes from it but didn’t have the time or budget for anything crazy. We ended up going with Nate and Nora pre-Vault 111 — aka the two characters at the beginning that you can rename and change looks-wise and all that jazz. We also had a little baby Shaun which was a baby doll from the thrift store. It was the least creepy looking baby doll we could find there and it was dressed all in pink so we ended up calling the baby Shaunita all day. We even made the baby a theme song.

We met up with an awesome group of costumed people later who all loved Until Dawn as much as we do and we goofed off with them at a photoshoot and then thanks to Denis we got a couple more shots of us, also goofing off with the danger totem I made. Nate is always on his cell phone so him as Chris and me as Ashley worked out really well.

Roger helped us get photos for a Jacen Solo/Tenel Ka Djo (Star Wars: EU) photo thing we’re working on later that night. We had to time it just right so that there weren’t a bunch of people around the Gaylord National’s main fountain in the atrium, but the lights and water features were still going. We caught it about five minutes before they turned off. Woo! Here is a shot from that evening. The whole photo project should hopefully be online THIS YEAR AT SOME POINT HAHAHAHA. Look, see, I’m being realistic here.

Sunday was more video games. We need to stop writing con posts months later because we forget everything that happens, but HOW DO WE NOT PROCRASTINATE?

As we looked at dates (after getting engaged in June of 2014), we realized that in the next year, Halloween would be on a Saturday! We went with Halloween because it’s one of our favorite holidays and it’s in our favorite season. That took care of our date. It also took care of the fact that we’re the worst procrastinators ever so it gave us a lot of time to figure things out and work on stuff. We found a place (thanks to my mom for taking me over to it so many times since she needed a key from the office that owned it to get in!) and a caterer fairly quickly. This was awesome to us because we had already taken care of two of the biggest things we were worried about. Of course, we still didn’t have any idea what this wedding was going to be like. We just knew it was going to be on Halloween. One night we were sitting at dinner with my mom and her boyfriend and he said – jokingly, “Why not have a BioShock wedding?” Nate and I looked at each other with wide eyes and my mom and him were like, “Oh, oh that was a joke lol” and we’re all, “IT’S TOO LATE YOU ALREADY SAID IT AND THE IDEA IS PERFECT.” They both like BioShock though too, so even though they were joking, they didn’t try to talk us out of it.

Besides being one of our favorite video games of all time, BioShock was one of the very first things we talked nerded about when we first started talking. In fact, one of the first things Nate said in a message to me regarding a photo in an online profile was, “IS THAT YOU DRESSED LIKE A LITTLE SISTER FROM BIOSHOCK?” It was.

Anyways, we had people ask if they should come to the wedding in costume because it was on Halloween. We said no, but they were welcome to come dressed with a 40’s/50’s vibe if they wanted. We explained BioShock on our wedding info website so everyone could get an idea of what it was — although, a lot of the people who were there knew because they are fellow gamers. We were also on a very tight budget since I had lost my job in February of 2015. So it was fun (most of it was fun, some of it was “fun”) to try to figure out everything we wanted/needed and how to keep it all not too expensive. Trying to do something related to swanky Rapture parties on a budget GOOD LUCK, US.

So fast forward to the wedding (and a little bit before the wedding)! Here is a slew of pictures and explanations on what we did with everything.

Our invites and RSVP cards were a lot of fun to fiddle around with and make. The invites were hand-cut and border-punched by me and Nate’s mom then we added the printed info on with photo corners. The RSVP cards were postcards and they were designed to look like they came from Rapture. We waited for a sale on Vistaprint and got the RSVP cards, invite info, and address labels printed! We thought the address labels worked well with the theme and then wouldn’t have to handwrite our address so many times. Also, we of course had to include Would You Kindly on the invite because that has to be somewhere! To people who didn’t know, it sounded sweet and classy and to people who did, hahahahah we’ve conditioned you to come to our wedding.

And I didn’t get a photo of these at the venue, but these pictures are usually on the wall in our dining room and we took them with us with the rest of the decorations for the venue. There was a fireplace in one of the rooms and we put these on the mantle with a blacklight in front of them! (Here is a link where you can see them under a blacklight. :D)

The other thing that I got photos of (the rest after my janky photos will be really nice ones by the photographer at our wedding) was the box we made for people to put cards in — somehow we wanted to pull Circus of Values into the decor and here is where we did it. We got a box with a magnetic flap from a craft store, cut a hole in one of the sides, spraypainted it, turned it upright, and added a weathered picture (or pictures since it’s four pieces of paper put together) of the Circus of Values clown. We also added a sign to let people know it was for cards so they didn’t just think it was a creepy clown staring at them from the back of the room. The sign and the CoV picture were splattered and smeared in rust/green/yellow/black/etc. ink – there are some closer shots below! (We wanted to make it so that when someone slid a card in the box would say WELCOME TO THE CIRCUS OF VALUES but we didn’t have time to try it out!)

The photos from here on out (except for the very last collage of photos which I took very recently) are from the wedding day and were taken by the very awesome and talented Jeremy of JeremyDesignz!

We couldn’t have a BioShock wedding without masks! My mom found these awesome cracked cat masks online that were very fitting so of course, we had to put them up in the venue. Couldn’t have a BioShock wedding without the Rapture New Year’s Masquerade print either! Sure, it was a party for NYE, but it was still a party and it was BioShock so we had to bring it. Also, Jeremy got a nifty photo of our rings on the bunny mask.

We weren’t able to theme everything BioShock, but it was okay because everything was fitting for us as a pair, which was very important when planning this whole shindig. On our program, we used the same fonts on we used for the invites/RSVP cards – we also used a lot of peacock feathers in decorations around the venue. That delicious thing with an angry Donald & an adorable Daisy Duck Tsum Tsum (dressed for Halloween!) on top is a brownie cake. Which was basically a tower made up of different types of amazing brownies. We talked about getting a super fancy cake but those can get really expensive and I always feel bad eating them because they’re ALWAYS SO PRETTY. We also had a candy bar – we had to keep the traditional Halloween in there somehow – with all of our favorite candy in it. (Other things we snuck into the wedding that weren’t BioShock but were us included the DJ playing Alone in the Town from the Silent Hill 2 soundtrack during the cocktail hour. There had to be SOMETHING Silent Hill in the wedding. ;D)

We kept touches of the game in places like the guestbook table (where there was also a robot frame full of pictures of us being derps) and the signature drinks we had.

We had our favorite little Big Daddy doll on our table up at the front. Those amazing weathered/distressed/Rapture-is-leaking-and-rusted letters were a gift from our really good friend Ashley, who is also a BioShock fan and was sad she couldn’t make it (she had gotten married the previous month and also lives in Texas which made it a little hard for her to just pop on over to Virginia ;D). I had a set of H & N letters I was going to cover in BioShock images but I never had time to do it, so when these showed up in the mail it was beautifully perfect. Thank you again, Ashley! <3

We couldn’t have done any of this without our amazing friends and family. They helped out with everything from masks (which we’ll get to very soon!), decorating the venue the night before the wedding (climbing on ladders for lights and finding places to put decorations we brought), keeping me sane (AS MUCH AS IT WAS POSSIBLE) — I love them all dearly. Up there with us are our super best pals Denis, Ronnie, Bryce, my fabulous sister Valerie and Erin (who gave an amazing surprise toast I HAD TO TRY NOT TO CRY). And Roger (who you’ve seen in some of our cosplay pictures) came as a splicer!

When it came to seating everyone we wanted to make something that fit with BioShock. What was big in imagery of Rapture and the game? The masks! The interrupted New Year’s party was one of the first areas you visit in the first game which had masks galore and of course, there are splicers who still roam around Rapture wearing them. We made everyone a mask (made = painted some of them, added gems/feathers/flourishes/etc., added wooden sticks) and put a tag on each of them that said their name and where they were seated. We made special ones for our family and the wedding party (they all got cats in our wedding colors and had ridiculous stickers on the insides of them) and they took some time and effort but we’re really happy with them and we were really excited for people to get them at the wedding.

We had masks for ourselves too even though we knew where we were sitting, hehe. We wanted crazy ones so we modified some that we bought from a store online that has A GAZILLION DIFFERENT TYPES OF MASKS. We knew we wouldn’t have time to make ourselves crazy ones. And we made a tiny mask for my nephew (who was also our ringbearer :3)! It was held up to his face for .02 seconds before he backed his head away with a “WHAT THE HELL DID YOU JUST DO” expression.

Obviously we couldn’t take the venue and sink it somewhere in an ocean (or could we) so we had to figure out a way to at least remind people of the ocean somehow. We rented a bunch of uplights and turned them to blue and strung little blue lights all the way around the main room – it wasn’t much, but it was enough for us and it ended up looking a lot better than we expected. (Also the DJ’s dance floor lighting was A+!) We had a whole mess of glowsticks we had been collecting so you might see those scattered around in photos too. In fact, you can see my nephew in the photo on the upper right dancing with a giant foam glowstick in one hand and Uncle Ronnie’s hand in the other. The bottom left is le nephew again and my mom and I just wanted to post this picture because it’s really cute (also there’s a bat on his face from when I kissed his cheek). Bottom right is Mace Windu. My family would be very disappointed in me if I didn’t bring Mace because he goes everywhere. (We need to update that so bad because he looks great in his tuxedo, okay.)

One of our absolute favorite things we pulled together were the centerpieces. We wanted to tie the centerpieces back to the city itself. Each table was named after a place in Rapture. The cards that said which table was which had the names cut in one of the same fonts we used on the program and then a piece of vellum was attached behind the letters. A tealight (battery operated!) was put under the folded card and gave an effect we really liked! In the middle of each table, there was a charger plate with a cylinder vase on top. Each vase was filled with water and had sand, rocks and then a cityscape we cut using a magical CAMEO (electronic cutting tool thingie), that was spraypainted black and attached to itself. The cityscapes sat in the gravel and had a blue submersible light in the middle of them. On the chargers around the vase, there were seashells and blue butterfly confetti. We had to stick blue butterflies somewhere since we loved the way that imagery looked in the second game. The last photo up there was the city on our table (we were Minerva’s Den because that DLC is A+++++). We had a long and short vase and our city ended up being too tall for our vase so it stuck out of the water. Whoops! We were close.

As for us, Nate ended up going with a vest and no jacket (the wedding party guys did the same) and a tie that matched my dress. Why dark blue? Since I was a kid I always said I didn’t want to wear white at my wedding. I don’t know why – maybe cause I knew it got dirty easily, it wasn’t my favorite color, I just never wanted to. So I didn’t! I found this dress and fell in love with it and it came in a bunch of colors but I kept going back to this one. I knew I wanted a dress that was a classic style, could fit with the theme, and wasn’t super over-the-top extravagant. My mom found an awesome place that did my hair because we weren’t sure we wanted to try our hand at styling a 40’s/50’s look with my hair the day of. My makeup was done by Beth, who is amazing at this kind of thing and needs to get paid all the time to do it. My necklace was an art deco style pendant and the shoes– well, I looked for 40’s/50’s style heels and such but none fitted what I was looking for or matched the dress well. I have a pair of shoes like these in burgundy except they’re flats. When I saw that they had heels in the same style on sale and this silver shade… usually I don’t flip out about shoes but I was pretty excited about these. D: SO MY SHOES CAME FROM THE FUTURE AND DON’T MATCH THE THEME AT ALL.

Overall we know there were more things we probably could’ve tied in with the BioShock theme but budget constraints (and time constraints after we finally figured out an idea of what our wedding would be like!) kept us from going forward with all of them. What was important to us was that the wedding fit who we are and celebrating the marriage with our family and friends. Both of those things happened and were a helluva lot of fun so we’re 100% content!

(100% content even with the fire alarm at the venue going off in the middle of the reception!)

A good friend of mine got married back in September and I was honored to be asked by her to make something for her centerpieces. I occasionally paint tiny wooden peg people (the Peg Posse!) up to look like people or characters from movies/games/books/etc. and she asked if I could paint some for each of her tables at the reception. Each table was going to be themed after a different fandom that she and her now-husband (who is awesome just like she is <3) are into and there would also be some on the table where the two of them were seated.

Above are a couple of photos of the tiny peg madness & the process and below are what sets I painted and photos of each of them!

Left 4 Dead – Bill, Louis, Zoey, Francis (This video game was something they bonded over a lot when they were first dating so these were the pegs for their table — and also why they are the only bigger ones).

A Song of Ice & Fire/Game of Thrones – Dany, Tyrion, Jon Snow, Arya, Brienne

Star Trek – Kirk, Bones, Spock, Wesley Crusher, Picard

Star Wars – Chewbacca, Han, Leia, Luke, Carth, Revan

Doctor Who – 10th Doctor, 11th Doctor, Amy, Rose, 12th Doctor

Marvel – Thor, Captain America, Black Widow, Iron Man, Hulk

Lord of the Rings – Legolas, Gimli, Frodo, Arwen, Gandalf

Mass Effect – Shepard, Liara, Garrus, Kaidan, Wrex

Disney – The Beast, Belle, Mickey, Minnie, Goofy

Harry Potter – Dumbledore, Hermione, Harry, Ron, Ginny

Here are a few detail shots on some of the pegs. Tatooine dirt on Luke’s tunic, Corellian bloodstripes on Han’s pants, and the rank insignia on Picard!

I’ve been wanting to paint more of these recently but I won’t be able to start on them until some point in the near future because the Zhobot household is going crazy getting ready for Halloween this weekend. This year we’re doing something a little different than we usually do – we’re getting married!

We were finally able to finish up the last details on our Hotline Miami 2 costumes and bring them to MAGFest Classic! We got some awesome photos– in the heat! And humidity! Really, it was so effing hot but we adore all of the photos that came out of this shoot so it was worth it. I also got a leg workout while holding an ~almost action pose~ (it was done both with and without the mask and she could feel sweat dripping down her face SERIOUSLY IT WAS HOT ALSO LONG PANTS AND JACKET WHY COREY HOW– YOU ARE A GODDESS). You can see those and more shots from this set on our Hotline Miami costume page!

Thanks to Denis for getting the photos above and Roger of Monki Makr for getting the one below!

For more photos of these costumes, check out our Hotline Miami costume page!

Last month at InterventionCon we finally got the chance to wear the Hotline Miami costumes we’ve been 95% finished with for the longest time. We put the finishing touches on the costumes the week before the con (bloodied up the Jacket mask and other fun bits like that) and on the Saturday night of the con, went outside in the heat and humidity to get some shots! Many thanks to Roger of Monki Makr & Denis for playing photographer and photographer’s assistant (also the DJ, which we’ll get to in a moment) for us that night.

We wanted to make sure we got photos masked (errr, helmeted in Nate’s case ;D) and unmasked so we did the unmasked shots first. The wig I was wearing was the first wig I used for Carol Peletier. I knew it had to be more of a blonde color but the cut was exactly what I needed. Since I had a new wig for Carol, I figured I could experiment with this one and if I messed it up then I wouldn’t be too disappointed since I wasn’t really using it for anything. I knew Rit had recently come out with a new line of dyes that worked on synthetic fabrics and that’s exactly what I wanted to try for this wig! The line is called DyeMore and I ordered some in the color Sandstone. It worked out perfectly and colored the wig easily, making it the exact color I was hoping it would!

After getting the unmasked shots, we swapped the wigs out and started wandering around in those. Did we mention how hot it was holy cow. I could feel sweat dripping down my face but looking at the photos later I realized it was worth it. This “Supreme Chicken” mask I found on Amazon (for much cheaper than the original rooster one I was looking at and couldn’t afford to drop $50 on) – after being covered in makeup and fake blood – was perfect. I am short and made sure my jacket was a size that would look somewhat fitted so I was worried the mask would look really big on me but together it all ended up looking better than I thought it would!

While we were taking pictures in an empty parking garage, Denis decided it would be a good idea to play a song our friend Erin had introduced us all to. It was the 1987 Crystal Light National Aerobics Championship theme. He pulled the video up on his phone and through our mask & helmet we could hear the wonderful keyboard riff. What did Roger and Denis say to do after that? Dance, of course. And naturally, we did.

We’re hoping to bring these back to a con in the future. Preferably one in the winter so that we don’t sweat ourselves silly. But we had a lot of fun in them at Intervention regardless. It also made us get off our asses to finish our Hotline Miami 2 costumes (which will have their own post in the near future!) and even spawned a crossover costume group this past weekend. More on all that jazz coming soon! Also, I had way too much fun editing these photos – especially the 80’s-VHS-inspired ones.