The Turnip Girl's newest costume

So The Amazing Turnip Girl has been working for weeks on a new costume. Now, if you've been following The Adventures of a Turnip Girl , you know that all her costumes are what's called "closet cosplay". It's an inexpensive form of cosplay that uses things that are easily available in creative ways. She's not casting rubber, or spending hours drafting patterns to sew. She starts with an idea, and heads to thrift stores and garage sales to pick up the pieces she needs. It takes a fair amount of creativity, and involves sees possibilities in the shapes of things. For this particular costume, the only brand new items in it are the buttons, spray paint, glue and a zipper.

The shirt is a lightweight sweater, that was modified heavily. she removed one arm to make room for the armor, and created tac style pockets for it and added a full length zipper. All hand stitched in. The knee pads were a huge find. She got those at a local garage sale- 50 cents for the full set of pads. The others are set aside for other costumes. The armor on her arm is made using paper mache, so is the knife and gun.

The glove was a good find too. She found that actually alone in my things and asked if I was going to do anything with it. Um.. not so much. A pair of gloves, I might crochet an edging for, but a lone glove? She happily took it.

All those straps? She bought a lot of belts. One was the wrong color, but a quick coat of paint fixed that! She used fabric to make a harness back piece for some of the belts. The holster and sheath are hand stitched from black vinyl.

She's getting really good at paper mache isn't she? 

The mask is paper mache glued to fabric. The star was stenciled on, using Frog Tape to get a really clean edge.

So in the process of working on this costume, we found out that part of Barnes and Noble's Pop Culture Nights was a Marvel night! She was excited, no waiting to wear her costume, she even had to hurry to finish it! There were a LOT of Captain Americas, it was hero night at B&N.

The Winter Soldier won, and people stopped and complimented her costume.

Catching Up with June

June gets to be really busy really fast. With festivals and fairs, and with things growing in the garden and other stuff that needs to be done. The photo above is from Pride Fest 2014. The woman to The Amazing Turnip Girl's left is Daphne DoAll LaChores- a short film about her was nominated for an Emmy in the Cultural category, and you can see that here. If you've never been to your local Pride Fest- it can be a whole lot of fun. It's been a family event for us since TG was very little, and it's something she looks forward to every year. The last couple of years, instead of having a parade, there is an Equality March, and TG dressed up like the Doctor and painted that sign to carry.

More Amazing Turnip Girl! This time at our local ren faire. The first day, even though she didn't know it, was a PIRATE theme. She had decided on her costume without knowledge of that, and closet cosplayed Captain Hook from Once Upon a Time. For people as seriously non-cosplay as I am- closet cosplay is when you put together a costume using what you have on hand, and what's in your closet rather than going all out for an exact replica. The hook is made from a plastic cup, a "gigantic twist tie" (I didn't see it, that's what she told me), layers and layers of the ends of various rolls of Duck tape, and spray painted. 

The newest of my swatch dolls. Recently Spoonflower let people who ordered one of their knit fabrics try a swatch of their performance pique. I really love this stuff for swatch dolls, it prints gorgeously, and it's very soft feeling. A little trickier to sew, but worth the extra care. You can get this swatch here.

Today was dandelions- but what we did was gather seeds.

Just wrapped our fingers around the puff balls, pull, dump the little seeds and fluff into a gallon zip bag. Then after we had denuded a lot of dandelions of fluff and gotten some very odd looks from the neighbors- I brought the bag inside, closed it tight, and just started playing with it. Rolling it in my fingers, rubbing it, and shaking it. After a bit I wound up with about a 1/4 cup of seed defluffed. So now we are going to try sprouting the seeds. Also, somehow I wound up covered in dandelion fluff.

OH!!! and the BIG news!!!

Look look!!! Pre-orders are available now on Amazon, and the books are coming out in November and December.

Affiliate links help pay for this site, and seeing these ordered would also be personal exciting. Really.

So how is your month going?

Book Review- The Official DC Super Hero Cookbook

BAM! POW! CRASH!

Matthew Mead is a designer, crafter and theme cookbook writer with a great eye. You expect a book from him to be attractive with good photos and ideas, and this is a great example.

Done being all grown up now. It's DC SUPER HEROES! It's old school. None of this New 52 stuff, none of the angst of the 90s, it's Dick Grayson's Robin in green shorts with elf boots, it's the heroes you remember from Super Friends on Saturday mornings if your my age. It's retro and it's awesome.  Of course, I'm biased. I grew up on DC comics.

So what does my daughter say about the look? She's Batman the Animated Series, she's Nightwing and all about the modern comics.  She likes it, she grabbed this as soon as it arrived and gave it her seal of approval.

See? Right there. Her seal of approval.

So it looks great. The bright colors and layout are fantastic and I'm totally digging the retro thing. The whole book is in full color with tons of super hero goodness. So now about the recipes.

I have a fairly good collection of children's cookbooks, and what I look for is easy to prepare food, healthy choices, good safety tips, foods that will appeal to kids, and something that will teach them how to follow recipes and learn new skills. 

This is well done in that respect too, the recipes are rated by difficulty level, and that's explained in the introduction. So a from scratch pudding is rated 3 stars because it involves more skill. The pudding is Plastic Man's Pudding and one of my daughter's favorite recipes in the book because it's white chocolate and vanilla decorated to suit Plastic Man. The Kapow Punch is 1 star because it's very simple to make, but the glasses are cleverly masked to look like the Boy Wonder and the Caped Crusader. 

Healthy entrees include things like Seven Seas Saute which is a mix that grown ups will enjoy too, and features a nice amount of vegetables. The bright Plastic Man fettuccine has peppers for color and a fun, play with your food texture.

There are a lot of recipes for drinks and desserts, but also enough meal recipes to balance it out.

Where this book absolutely shines is in the decorating ideas. In the back of the book are card stock figures and stencils to use to decorate the food, and a lot of recipes that use food- like the Superman burger on the cover, or things like duct tape to create a super hero theme.

The heroes include all the classics, Wonder Woman, Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, The Martian Manhunter, Aquaman and the Flash and some that you need to be more serious fan to know like Plasticman, Atom and Firestorm.

Do I recommend this? Absolutely. It's one of the best themed cookbooks I've ever seen, even when I put aside my total comic book love and consider the recipes. 

Full disclosure- I got a copy of this cookbook to review at no cost. This review reflects my honest opinion of the book.

Fuller disclosure- My family is full of comic book fans with a strong preference for DC. We can spend hours talking your ear off about the personalities of the different Robins, or why Aquaman is actually awesome, and you never want to get us started on Batman because we can talk about him forever. I have Wonder Woman sneakers and my husband has a huge collection of super hero comic shirts. 

Want this book right now? You can get it from Amazon using my affiliate link and help support this site.

U.S.A. U.K.

TG's Doctor Owl

Michaels had these wonderful vinyl owls to paint last time I went there. Unfortunately, they only had 2 at my local Michaels, so I bought one each for TG and William. This is the TG painted, a little 11th Doctor Owl. The background is my test print of a ditsy design for an upcoming Spoonflower contest.

EDIT: Ditsy Print Now Voting @Spoonflower

Just had to show it off. She'll post it to her Cut Out and Keep account later too.

April Rain Mandala Boxes

As promised! Print on card stock. These are at 300 dpi, click on the images for the full sized versions.

This is the Turnip Girl, who is a little put out because I stopped her to take the photo while she was going to the comic book store. The shirt is part of her new favorite pajamas, which are available here, along with some other stuff with my mandala type designs on them. The jimjams (as my husband calls them) for women are going to be just a little long if you're a petite woman. But apparently they are super comfortable.