February 2011

I See Red People

by Sab on February 28, 2011

Back in early February, Aly and K-chan asked me to help them out photographing their cosplays Scanty and Kneesocks from the crazy anime: Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt.

I passed all the original RAWs to the girls on the day and over the proceeding weeks, they did some post work on their favourites. Posted below are my own edits of the same photos, see links below to view their versions, which also feature a little more information about the outfits.

K as Scanty

See K-chan’s deviantART version of her Scanty cosplay:
http://k-chan009.deviantart.com/art/PSWG-Scanty-197260197

Aly as Kneesocks

See Aly’s deviantART version of her Kneesocks cosplay:
http://cescat.deviantart.com/art/Kneesocks-Double-Gold-Spandex-197515381

Scanty and Kneesocks

See Aly’s deviantART version of this group shot, which is a further edit of the version pictured above.
http://cescat.deviantart.com/art/Skanty-and-Kneesocksssssssssss-197262952

Scanty and Kneesocks with Fastener

The lighting was not as easy as I had imagined, it was a challenge to light people inside what was essentially a narrow, dark box with anything except flat fill lighting. No trouble with the modelling side though – Aly and K were well armed with poses and ideas :)

For the uninitiated, here is a reference picture of the characters from the anime:

Scanty and Kneesocks reference picture

Thank you so much to the enlisted helpers for the day, you guys were invaluable in and around the stretch hummer holding the flashes!

{ 3 comments }

Boys’ breakfast

by Sab on February 27, 2011

I stayed as a guest in Albany over the weekend; not only did I encounter a fresh batch of people to be disturbed by my compulsion to photograph food before I eat it, I was also lucky enough to sample a cooked breakfast made by the boys living there.

Breakfast in progress

They really knew what they were doing, the food was delicious. The poached egg was perfect and the bacon was crispy around the edges.

Breakfast

Here’s proof that the hash browns were made from scratch:

Hash browns in the making

{ 7 comments }

Bay Merchants in Albany

by Sab on February 27, 2011

When you go out of Perth to Albany for the weekend, sleep is quite a high priority. At Bay Merchants, they understand – they serve all day breakfast, so you never have to worry about sleeping through conventional breakfast time. There is also all day lunch available so there was an almost overwhelming number of food options to choose from.

Cranberry Chicken Toasted Sandwich

I opted for the cranberry chicken sandwich, which balanced sweet and savoury flavours. It was crunchy and filled with fresh ingredients.

Inside the sandwich

For my drink, I ordered an iced chocolate which had all it’s sweetness on top in the vanilla icecream and chocolate sauce.

Iced chocolate

One of the foccacias:

Some kind of foccacia

Eggs benedict with smoked salmon:

Eggs Benedict with Smoked Salmon

Inside the store, there are a number of baked goods on display:

Floretines and other tasty things

Little Cakes

The staff kindly allowed me to take these photos inside while they were busy serving customers!

Bay Merchants

{ 0 comments }

Breakfast at Toast – East Perth

by Sab on February 20, 2011

A couple of snapshots from breakfast at Toast this morning in East Perth. This cafe is clearly very popular; by 8:30am on a Sunday the place was already bustling with customers and orders. We were lucky to spot a recently vacated table fairly quickly. Staff were quite prompt to clear old plates and cutlery from the table and replace them with some cheerfully orange plastic cups and a jug of water for us.

Eggs benedict

Ordering is placed at the counter and from what I can remember, it did not take too long for the food to arrive. Here, Skye’s slender hands tuck into Eggs Benedict.

Poached eggs

I ordered poached eggs on wholegrain toast, which had oats coated onto the crusts. It came with 2 servings of individually wrapped butter, not pictured. To counter the savoury menu option, I decided to order the chocolate milkshake, which was described on the menu as “almost a litre of goodness with icecream”. It had a light consistency to it which made finishing the almost-litre much easier!

Milkshake

This is a rather unimpressive photo of the milkshake: this fate befalls photographers who cannot be bothered to move out of their chairs to take photos ;)

{ 0 comments }

Laser Cut Jewellery – Part 2

by Sab on February 14, 2011

This post concentrates on custom made goods, rather than premade designs, so if you’ve always wanted your own name, netspeak, an unpronounceable jumble of letters or some expletive hanging around your neck, you’re in luck!

Customised designs

For custom acrylic lasercut nameplates, try the personalised designs from Sugar and Vice, based in the UK. Sarah and Matt have a variety of designs, fonts and colours to choose from. If these do not tickle your fancy, they are happy to create completely custom acrylic jewellery to your own specifications. They also have interesting non-personalised merchandise: I was very amused to find necklaces that reference phrases from Big Bang Theory and IT Crowd.

Sugar and Vice - Double Layered Mirrored Custom Necklace

Sugar and Vice - Custom Mirror Necklace

NB’s closet is another option based in the US. They create customisable nameplates for necklaces as well as custom nameplate knuckle dusters and custom nameplate earrings! NB’s closet also sells non-custom acrylic and wood lasercut pendants: I have my eye on this deer necklace, and these cool Pretendo and 8-bit necklaces.

NBs Closet - Barbie Font Custom Mirror Necklace

For somewhere close to home, Cupcakes and mace is a viable option, as they are based in Wellington, NZ. They offer 4 different fonts but contact the sellers for more details if you do not like these, as they have other fonts available. Cupcakes and mace also offer a variety of other premade pendants.

Cupcakes and Mace

Completely custom woodcuts

Meanwhile, if you wish to have a design of someone’s head laser cut into an engraved wood pendant or brooch, look no further than VectorCloud on Etsy. VectorCloud also provides a variety of beautiful wood pendants such as a cute hot air balloon and a customisable camera necklace where you can slot your own photo into the lens part!

VectorCloud - Camera necklace

VectorCloud - Head Engraving

VectorCloud - Adorable Dog Engraving!

Bulk laser cutting services

Hypothetical: you’re interested in designing and selling your own pendants, and either do not know anyone with a laser cutter or are not game enough to approach a local laser cutting company that appears to be geared heavily toward production of industrial materials. You could try Ponoko. Ponoko not only has a variety of materials and tutorials to help you through the process, it also offers the ability to set up an online shop and sell your own custom-designed jewellery.

I’ve found two more sites which allow you to produce batches of your own, custom designed laser cut pendants: Cut Your Way and Zap Creatives.

Cut Your Way, which offers free shipping to the US and Canada, has a range of materials available including some unique glitter acrylics and an impressive range of specialty woods, as well as stencil mylars, which would be ideal for craft projects and wall stippling.

Cut Your Way

Zap Creatives, based in the UK, offers a range of acrylics for laser cutting, including mirrored acrylics in almost every colour you can imagine as well as specialty acrylic such as this funky, retro space invaders pattern. What makes Zap Creatives particularly interesting is that they provide the ability to create ”charms” which are coloured designs printed onto acrylic pendants, whereas the majority of other sites I have found offer only cutting and engraving.

Zap Creatives

So that’s all I have. I hope these two posts were interesting or helpful, this is the kind of post I would have liked to have had when I was trying to find sellers of laser cut jewellery and then was curious about the possibility of making my own. I trawled through pages of designs on etsy and google searches to put this together!

See also: Laser Cut Jewellery – Part 1

{ 0 comments }