Pinhole cameras

Posted on August 5, 2010 by Chezlin

I have been a photography nut for a long time, and I knew it was just a matter of time before my crafty side collided with my photographer side. Well this just so happened to take place just a few days ago when I found a website with instructions on how to make your own pinhole cameras. I was so excited that I ended up making three of their pinhole camera designs; two for me and one for my little sister. Unfortunately the first roll of film from their “Photos of Your Mother” camera was kind of a bust because I punched the shutter hole way too big. They say to use a needle to poke a small hole, but I shoved the needle through, causing the hole to be gigantic… for a pinhole camera. If the hole is too big the pictures will turn out blurry. You really want to just barely poke through with the tip of the needle. For shits and giggles, here are some of the photographs that came from that camera:

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Hey man, nice shirt.

Posted on July 30, 2010 by Chezlin

I just made this shirt yesterday and I couldn’t help but post it up here right away!

My older sister is always getting me in to comics and graphic novels, and most recently she got me on Scott Pilgrim. If you haven’t noticed, they’ve made a movie based on this series – Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Because of my excitement for this movie, I decided to make a shirt from Vol. 6, Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour. I had been wanting to make it after I finished reading that volume, but the other day I saw some footage of Comic Con where they were screen printing a whole slew of shirts, the one I had been thinking of making being one of them. So obviously that made me get off my butt and make one for myself!

Ta da!

I’m in the process of making one for my younger sister. I also want to make a Sex Bob-omb shirt as well.

Check out my other tutorial on how to make stencils for your own shirts!

Rwar, Dino-Necklace!

Posted on July 30, 2010 by Chezlin

Okay, well this little guy is actually a dimetrodon which makes him a pelycosaur rather than a dinosaur, but we can just pretend. I’ve seen this idea before, stringing up little trinkets and toys to create new jewelry, and for some reason I decided I needed a dinosaur necklace. I was quite surprised at how hard it was to find small dino toys, but eventually I found a big pack of them for 3 bucks so I snatched it up. Most of the dinos in the package are too large for what I wanted to do, so I need to figure out what to do with them. There were, however, about 4 or 5 guys in the package that would work just fine.

Here’s the little guy I picked.

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Tweet?

Posted on July 28, 2010 by Chezlin

I’m finally going to catch up with the times and get myself on Twitter. Unfortunately I couldn’t have my good old name “Chezlin” because I was too slow to jump on the bandwagon. Boo, oh well. So if you people want to, you can now follow me @ChezlinTM.

Keep a lookout for a new post coming up on Friday!

Ay Sus!

Posted on February 27, 2009 by Chezlin

I’m Filipino-American so I know a few silly Tagalog words here and there that my mom says now and then. My little sister and I like to combine some of these words to make completely nonsensical phrases. One of these gems is “Ay sus ginoo, sapatos puwet kugmo!” Any Tagalog speaker now should see that this doesn’t really make any sense, but that’s the point! “Ay sus ginoo” is an expression.. kind of like saying “oh my god.” I’m often greeted with that expression from my mom when I’m just goofing around the house. The rest of it is literally, sapatos= shoes, puwet= butt and kugmo= booger. So yeah, as you can see, it makes no sense. Spanish speakers may notice the influence their language has had on Tagalog.

Anyway, the point of this post is that my sister and I wanted to make shirts with this phrase on them. We would always talk about it, but never really do anything, so randomly I decided I was going to make mine at least… I didn’t know what shirt she wanted to use, and I didn’t know if she approved on the final layout of the letters.

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Here’s the printout.

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Drawing on mugs is fun!

Posted on February 1, 2009 by Chezlin

So this post today is for two reasons. First and foremost, I made some kickin’ rad one of a kind mugs. I got this idea thanks to craftster, roboarsonist. She used a ceramic paint pen by Pebeo called Porcelaine 150 and used it to draw some designs on a few mugs. Once I saw that I knew I had to try it. I went to Michaels and grabbed myself one pen and then to Goodwill to grab up some mugs and then went to town on them. Well, actually only two of them so far… and here they are!

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The poor mans dress form

Posted on January 22, 2009 by Chezlin

Soooo, not everyone has enough money to buy a dress form.. especially nowadays. Luckily for those of us who would like one, it’s not too hard to whip up a cheap one if you have the right stuff. There are a zillion tutorials on how to make one for cheap.. whether it be with paper-tape, paper mache or duct tape.

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Busy bee!

Posted on December 1, 2008 by Chezlin

I’ve been busting my butt lately with school work that I haven’t had time to craft I thought I’d at least post something to let you all know that I’m still here! And to give a little peek at what I’ve been doing.. art wise.. for school.

I had a semester long assignment where we had to do a color study of 30 colors for each week of class. Of course, I put it off and had to do almost all of them during the Thanksgiving break. Yay, 300+ colors!

Here’s my final for painting… four paintings, inspired by different artists. I’m so glad to be almost done with this class!

On top of those, I have to print and bound a book and print around 10 more prints for my book arts class. There’s also the color theory assignment I have where I have to re-do an old piece that I’ve done where I’m not happy with the colors… twice. Oh yeah, and studying for my two other classes. Woo, the end of the semester!
Hopefully I’ll be crafting and posting in a week or two, when classes are done!

Cassette tape coin purse

Posted on November 19, 2008 by Chezlin

So, many of you know that I make cassette tape wallets.. After a few weeks of using mine, I found out that they’re not ideal for storing lose change. It slides out of the sides when you unzip it causing you to scramble around on the floor to collect your change. Or maybe that’s just me. In any case, it inspired me to make a coin purse version of the cassette tape wallet. I wanted a metal purse frame clamshell thing as a closure instead of a zipper, but I didn’t want to pay 5+ bucks for one (yeah, I’m cheap) so that was really the only thing holding me up from making one. However, after cleaning my room the other day I found an old wallet which happened to have a coin purse attached.. perfect! The wallet was already falling apart, so I just ripped the frame out and got crackin’.

These are my materials:

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a cassette tape, a metal purse frame (I’m not sure of the size because I just ripped it out of that wallet) and fabric.

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Wind me up!

Posted on November 3, 2008 by Chezlin

Phew, it’s been a while! If you guys hadn’t noticed, this blogging thing is pretty difficult for me to stay on top of. Hopefully soon I’ll be able to post somewhat regularly, haha.

I’ve done a few things between now and my last post.. one of the biggest things being attending the Austin Maker Faire.. and I know I’m going to be a few weeks late, but I’ll eventually post a few of my pictures from there. I also made a duct tape dressform for my little sister and I’ve started a jacket.. which has been sitting in my room half finished for about a week. Oh yeah, I just made these awesome earrings, but you’ll just have to wait for those pictures because this post is really for my… halloween costume!

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