我染上了拼豆 is a xhs hashtag and also uhhh my life currently. i didn't have any interest until i saw this exact piece (and another similar one!) and then it was allll over for me ahdhahs however i told myself that i should try it out before making the financial commitment, so i roped a friend into going to a 拼豆 place last week!!
notes under the cut:
firstly hahaha ok this was literally just two 留子 running a 拼豆 parlour out of their dorm room. i had to add one of the laoshis on wx to book a date n time but otherwise the most mafan thing was finding the place 😅 however they had enough space for the both of us + lots of supplies + most importantly. very affordable rates. so it all worked out!!
the beads my friend and i used were 2.6mm. i didn't realise how easy it was to knock them over; in the videos they always look solidly slotted into the 拼豆版...
definitely harder than i thought ahdhah but also wayy more fun!! no show commentary today because i was too locked in to watch anything
4. i didn't wait to get a hang of the bead pen 😔 i think you can see it in p1? maybe i should've, but i found the tweezers more intuitive. they're long and thin so that you can stack beads onto the prongs and drop them onto the board in long rows/sections!! it was pretty neat using all these 拼豆道具 after drooling over them online ^^
5. my favourite parts were placing in the beads that made up his eyes/his hairline because there were a lot of individual colours alfjaks i thought it was much more interesting than filling in the larger swathes of his skin. i'm v glad that i got to go to a 拼豆 place for this particular piece because omfg there are sooo many random one-off colours
6. i'm planning to stick this one onto one of my bedroom walls (altho i love doing elaborate wall collages with posters and such so i'm lowk running out of wall space rn ahaha) however there were a lot of keychain rings to choose from which tempted me greatly
7. feel free to dm if you want the design!! i just don't want to repost it here
the laoshis were very nice ❤️ i learned that one was from Chengdu and the other was from Shandong hahah we talked a bit towards the end while one of them helped us iron our pieces. although i don't see myself going again, this did strengthen my resolve to buy a set for myself!!!! super super super excited to do so
made a 晴天可可 keychain!!! for my first go at polymer clay, i'm very satisfied ^^
ft. a 晴天可可 doppelgänger?!
process pics + random show commentary under the cut:
had the idea in the back of my mind after seeing mizi make mini keke sculptures on xhs, but i didn't have a particular motivation to make one myself bc clay's not rlly my thing
however.. do not go art supply shopping w friends ✋ they will convince you to buy all sorts of stuff
^ the insp!! it's one of the official 小深情 keychains (namely, 漫漫) that are available at ssd popup store gachapons
3. i haven't touched clay in a very very long time. and this was my first time using it for a project, so i didn't know what to expect!! gathered a bunch of unused blending stumps/q-tips/a bottle of rubbing alcohol/a spray bottle of water/some old clay tools i think were from a clay dessert-making kit (??) and went in w zero planning
4. discovered that i was very very lucky to have the spray bottle on hand haha and the blending stumps were very useful in smoothing out his hair 👍👍!! the hair was probably my favourite part to work on, so many little pieces to cut and add
5. i didn't use aluminium foil to make his body and than layer clay on top of it because i wanted solider 质感 ahdh and i don't have any other clay projects in mind so i wanted to use up as much as possible w this one
^that's him on the cap of my mini spray bottle
obligatory show commentary!! atm i am still watching 令人心动的Offer2 and it's still way more enjoyable than i thought it would be ^^
first and foremost. eating every single random zs anecdote omfg random zs anecdotes are my favourite things ever ❤️❤️ #myknowledgehoarding
i wouldn't say his styling is standing out to me like it did on changcheng, but given that it's Offer and not, like, ssbx (side eye) i can forgive it 👍
went into the show completely blind and i was surprised to learn that the lawyers and the commentary room were completely separate???
but there's women!!!!!!! i missed women!!!!!!!!
and i'm always excited to see what they're up to from episode to episode!! said this before but i imagine that it's challenging to both make interesting TV and not gamify the actual work that lawyers do.. interesting to see what the showrunners come up w
so far i'm lowk rooting for ding hui. or uhh whatshisname the standford one??
sa beining/he jiong my ultimate straightman/wine aunt dynamic
6. anyway after i was done i looked up if polymer clay cracks while baking and found out that it does if you don't prime it enough. and i was like wait. did i do that.. but it was completely fine ahahah
7. added eyes w marker + blush (eye shadow) on his cheeks and hair (that's where the shimmery effect comes from!!) (should i have done this before baking (?)). i thought about glazing it but i only have nail polish and white glue (neither of which i gather are very good for glazing) and i don't want to spend money on resin ahaha.. but i will if i need it for more than one project in the future!! rn i'm the soft, glaze-less look tho
嫑怀疑我!!finally got around to a bunch of zs projects i've been wanting to do for a while ///i didn't realise they were all biaobiao-themed until it was too late..
biaobiao bag!
handstitched this for basically 4 days nonstop in some dissociative state while watching over 20 hours of 声生不息·家年华* 👍 in terms of a tutorial there was no tutorial (i just gathered as many pics of wips/the finished thing as i could and hallucinated really hard)
the laoshi i got my templates from was super nice! although i had finished the project by the time they answered the question i sent them.
there's a handle and velcro at the back. the evening i finished him was spent walking around the apartment, holding him up and repeating 是(ssī)个孩子……是个孩子…… in some sort of exhausted trance (?)
*and i'm STILL not done with ssbx, fml,
2. biaobiao beret!
met a super cool 米姐 @ the sydney 应援 who was wearing something like this (but made of felt) and decided that i Had to have one
(who knows when it'll see the outside world, though.. maybe at the next 应援 i go to) (the loml for modelled for me in p1)
3. biaobiao earrings!
these were custom phone shaker charms onto which i hot-glued earring backings, which means i actually made ~5 pairs of each design instead of just the ones in these photos.
super glad that i had extra, though, because a friend of mine who went to nanjing/taiyuan gave me one of her nanjing merch envelopes + her 物料 for the two stops and if i didn't have anything to give her in return i would have died?
(those pics under the cut)
the lightstick works!! i'm gonna love this lady forever