from shit and sticks

• they/them • arts and crafts mostly • but also just ☆stuff☆ and stories •

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so I bought a vacuum sealer (treated myself for Christmas), and I can't stop now

freezer restock is going great but I'm so tired

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the idea:

so far, it's going great

it looks way more cartoonish (I don't even know how I did it, making something look more cartoonish than a literal cartoon), but I like it

next step is to draw the stars dancing around the left knee

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stuff keeps happening

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adding more star people, and there's that weird gap on the inner side of the thigh where nothing fits, but that's okay cus it would have faded from wear anyway

aaaaand I'm done, the howl's moving castle jeans are painted and resized to fit my butt

good job me

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oh your shoes are tearing, breaking, and spawning holes after few months of use? just save and buy better shoes, don't you know the story about rich person spending more money on one pair and poor person spending the same amount over the years but they have to replace-

shut

shut the fuck up

do you even know the horror and soulwrenching misery when your expensive good shoes still break anyway? despite the care and attention you give them???

fuck it at least when my cheap shoes break I knew it was coming

due to the unfortunate way my skeleton is designed, and also because of my posture, all my shoes eventually break right in the middle of the sole. see the holes? that shit happens after about 4-5 months of use.

the red ones went into trash because I've been fixing them for four years now and they are way too dead to fix them again, unfortunately. I saved the shoelaces tho, might use them later for something.

ten bucks can get you a roll of sole rubber and a bottle of glue, and

the annual festival of reanimating shoes starts

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chainmail at work chainmail at work chainmail-

-is fucking exhausting to make

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would you look at that!

(the top part doesn't fold because we fucked up the measurements)

on to make seven more of them!

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FUCK THE CHAINMAIL

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it's honestly getting out of hand

but we've also made the leather parts, which were an even worse kind of pain

so here's the WIP so far; left is the game screenshot, right is what we have now

I'm so done my fingers hurt I want a raise

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usually, I try not to get attached to things, especially clothing items, but this thing

this poor thing outlived two relationships, several friendships, two changes of workplace, and one eviction. it's seven years old, if not older, and I hadn't had to fix it or sew a loose seam together once.

I'm bringing it back from the dead.

starting with washing it thoroughly. soaking the thing in the oxygen cleaner bath, running through a cycle in a washing machine, what do I get?

I get it in a new color, pretty much. it's funny how you can see spots of original color where the pins were.

on to dying it back purple!

forbidden soup is cooking

way more vibrant than I imagined, but that's okay. Now, decorate it back, better than before!

I wanted to add a Promare pin, but I didn't have any on hand, so making it from a sticker it was

and I fucked it up along the way, smudged the paint when I tried to prime it with alcohol before applying varnish, but the issue was fixed by nail polish and art skills.

also I made a TGSF pin just because

anyway, the end result!

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this is actually much more tedious than I thought

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yea so making it artfully big didn't work

so I made it smol

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ugly ass cups

don't throw away! make pretty!

maybe I'll add stems and leaves later

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look, the window hasn't loaded fully

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chainmail at work chainmail at work chainmail-

-is fucking exhausting to make

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I've achieved a ✨️box✨️

just one but I've made a lid for it all by myself. I'm proud of it. it's a good box. sturdy and dust-free.

now let's make five more of them, god give me strength.

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the boxes are multiplying

apparently god didn't have enough strength to spare for me to make five of them but three is fine. it's a good number of boxes to have.

anyway, I finally have the storage for all my fabrics and scraps!

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no morning, no outside

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I've achieved a ✨️box✨️

just one but I've made a lid for it all by myself. I'm proud of it. it's a good box. sturdy and dust-free.

now let's make five more of them, god give me strength.

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organizing shit in a new house is like playing a never-ending game of tetris, only with jigsaw puzzle pieces from seven different boxes, and you have no idea what pictures either of them are supposed to be.

but in the end, you'll get to call this new place a home, so maybe it's worth it?

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there's a certain something you feel on the first morning after you moved in to a new place

you wake up surrounded by cardboard boxes, most of them unpacked save for a few that you opened last night trying to find a towel and toothbrush (you didn't, and your mouth tastes like a frog died in it)

you hurt because your feet and your back were not prepared to carry all those boxes yesterday (the price for hiring someone to carry them was not to your liking, so you're paying a different kind of price now)

nothing is in the right place, and you've slept on the floor without your usual bedsheets (they got dirty yesterday on accident), and everything is a mess and nothing is like you're used to

but the morning is here (and it's a bit cold)

and there's work to do, boxes to unpack, things to organize and find a new place to belong to (including yourself)

but for now you just lay there and stare into the unfamiliar ceiling that you'll get used to (you miss the old, familiar ceiling, a little)

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"oh you're so eco-friendly zero waste reuse and recycle" bitch you wanna know a secret?

i'm broke

as in no money for new shoes so gotta fix these broken soles to last me another season

as in no money for pads so gotta make pretty reusable cloth ones

as in no money for chicken nugget so gotta reinvent fried rice with whatever veggies are going bad in the fridge

i recycle shit cus it saves me ✨️money✨️

it also helps the planet as a bonus point and yes i have my priorities perfectly in order