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cimoreneI've never been to the UK before and this past weekend (Fri-Tues) was my first visit!
Wax has been several times and spent a year living in Ireland, but until 2004 Japan and Canada were the only foreign countries I had visited. It's a bit funny because of the huge amount of books, tv, and movies originating in the UK that I've read in my life. So seeing England in person kept making my eyes bug out. I was heard to say things like "It's really real!" and "Everything is so... ENGLISH" at the slightest provocation (most buildings, strangers' accents, the names of every station on the trains from Heathrow & to Birmingham and back).
The bus ride to Helsinki is 2½ hours, while the flight from there to Heathrow is between 2:15 and 2:45. (It's a great deal less pleasant, too, since Wax and I get motion sick and can't read or write in a bus.) The plane ride could have been worse. There was no free tea, my feet turned numb with cold, and there was a loudish child in front of us, but at least he wasn't actually screaming or crying. And now that brings us to: CUSTOMS.
I've been through it in Europe 6 or 7 times now, in Brussels, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Paris, and Munich, and it's always been a question of standing in a very short line behind a few other people - "arrivals from within the EU" lines in the latter two cases being so short that the officers just glance at the passport, confirm that I have a residence visa and wave me on. I've never had a conversation on these occasions apart from "Yes, I live here" and "Have a nice day".
But customs in London was like standing in line for a ride at Disney World. EU citizens got through in 30 seconds, but the entire rest of the world, regardless of whether they flew from within the EU or not, was funneled into a huge line snaking back and forth across an area the size of my high school cafeteria. I was standing there for probably 45 minutes to an hour behind several jumbo jets' worth of Chinese people, about half of whom were on a package tour for extra confusion (ie they didn't know where they were going and in some cases didn't understand the question, but for some reason it took ½ an hour for the customs officials to catch on that they were together and just ask the guide, even though the guide was equipped with a little flag), with a liberal sprinkling of arrivals from elsewhere. I also had the funniest Customs conversation ever, even beating that time when I squealed at the cuteness of the American Border Beagle Patrol beagle and asked if I could touch him and the handler said very solemnly, "Sorry, ma'am, not while he's working".
When discussing this conversation with other fangirls at the wedding, they suggested several alternative comebacks such as "No, my imaginary friend", "Can't you see her? She's right here", andcalathea's "No, she's an inflatable friend. She's in my luggage."
We took the Metro into London, and figured out how to switch trains to a District line eventually (not without some embarrassing tourist confusion). (The first person to speak to us on the Heathrow platform was a little dude with a Scottish accent. I made urgently, incredulously excited faces at Wax after he said "Cheers!" and turned away, and she later informed me that I actually turned red from my efforts not to burst out giggling with glee. I can't help it! The accent is just SO CUTE.) Then we got lost walking around the block (literally around two corners) tojamjar and birdsflying's flat, but we did make it, where jamjar plied us with soothing black tea before bed.
The next day we got up bright and on time to catch a train to Birmingham withjamjar's expert guidance! We took a bright red double-decker bus ("OMG! A real two-tiered bus! It's red! It's so ENGLISH!") all around town to the train station, driving past some interesting architecture, Oxford street, a lot of traffic, and some amusing statuary, and had time for a café before the train. It jostled and rumbled more than a Finnish train, so waxjism found she got motion sick after all and had to give up writing her Lambliff Big Bang. I spent most of the time gazing at things like sheep and hedgerows ("Hey! Is that a hedgerow? OMG, I just realized why it's called a hedgeROW! It's really - row-y!") and cows and the signs at the other stations along the way.
Also I dyed Wax's hair red and then somewhat ineptly buzzed the sides of it the night before we left!
I put eyeliner onwaxjism for the third time ever at her request ("I guess I could since it's, like, Bex's wedding"), and consequently ran out of time to paint my own nails. Then we met up with all the other fabulous-looking fangirls staying at the same hotel and shared a couple of cabs to the venue, a renovated custard factory.
We were greeted at the door by the groomsmen and the groom,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
omniguy, who is even cuter than past pictures/the fact that he's married to Bex would suggest - one of those attractive yet slightly hobbity people who seem to have "CUDDLE ME" tattooed on their foreheads, like Patrick Stump or Bob Bryar. (I hugged him in an excess of excitement.) All of the groomsmen were wearing metal Star Trek badges on their waistcoats, and Omni and the best man were wearing sneakers. The Tiniest Groomsman, who was handing out paper flags with "YAY!" stenciled on them, was also wearing a tiny little fedora, which just about slayed me. The programs, in addition, were emblazoned with "HOLY MATRIMONY, BATMAN!" on the covers, which was obviously awesome. We jittered around in nervous excitement for a while until the bride floated in radiantly to the dulcet tones of the Beatles Guns'n'Roses, dressed in an off-white 30s-style beaded net tea-length gown with a loose bun under one ear, a fascinator perched on her head with a spray of net and feathers poking out in two directions like a giant, pointy bow, and the aforementioned Vivienne Westwood/Melissa shoes:
And, of course, an epic :D-face. I was craning desperately to get a better look at her through the whole thing. Much adorableness was still perceptible, what with the officiant's charm (even if he did infect me and half the other guests with black lung) and Bex's uncle reading aloud fromThe Wind in the Willows Frog & Toad. Also epic was when birdsflying, in her role as Maid of Honor, handed over the ring, as she was bawling and couldn't produce words. What I heard was something like "[Mumble] WAAAAAAH - er, [something] - Oh, just take it, Omni!"
The fangirls, of course, led the way with vigorous waving of the YAY!-flags. I waved mine so hard that the paper flag, which was affixed with hot glue, flew off of the bamboo stick.
Beautiful fangirls at the reception (though not all of them), my de-sticked flag and my sheepish face
More pictures from the well-lit part of the reception:
xx
sad fangirls/happy fangirls
There were three couples of lesbian fangirls present and everybody kept saying how cute all of us were. Here are the other two.
The food was delicious, the speeches hilarious and overwhelmingly adorable (they reduced nearly everyone at the fangirl table to tears and me to grinning till my face hurt and fanning myself: I never cry from happiness, it's just a wiring thing), and the dancing pretty rad. It lasted for hours, contained plenty of MCR and Lady Gaga and Queen, and stimulated pretty much everybody to cut a rug including some adorable, tiny little old ladies. We took a couple of taxis back to the hotel in the wee hours, rubbed our makeup off and went to bed. I danced way too long, until I was jiggly-limbed and nauseated from over-exertion, and had to sneak off to take Pepto Bismols before we left and again before bed, the latter time with a Xanax, which finally got rid of the incipient Attack of Acute AnxietyTM.
We fangirls, with the exception of the bride & Maid of Honor, had made arrangements to meet up for breakfast beforesunsetmog had to catch her bus. Several were sick and/or sleepy, so it was only Wax & I, sunsetmog, olivia_circe and jamjar who did battle with the Cafeteria Lady.
sunsetmog required sustenance with which to meet her bus and olivia_circe required breakfast before going back to bed, whereas Jamjar, Wax and I were still planning to go out to brunch with the remaining four fangirls before our train; so we decided we would just get tea while they ate. We found the hotel restaurant, a large half-empty room where English breakfast was in full swing. We were intercepted by a bustling cafeteria lady with a clipboard and harassed air who informed us that one cannot simply walk into the hotel restaurant. This, she explained, wasn't normally the case, but applied today because they were so incredibly busy. (With their half-full tables and complete lack of queue.) So olivia_circe paid at reception, but on our return she got offended and tried to kick out the tea-drinkers anyway to drink in the bar instead. We stayed through two more arguments before she called Reception and came back and informed us, rather accusingly, that we had paid for our tea (as we'd only told her like four times) and Reception should have given us another receipt. Then she flounced away.
For brunch we ended up in the busy center of Birmingham, at a tiny café-sized pie shop. They did tiny individual-serving sized pies of various vegetable and meat flavor combinations, and served them with mashed potatoes, corn, peas, etc. THIS WAS DELICIOUS. The mushroom and chicken pie and mashed potatoes surrounded by buttery pastry! It melted in the mouth. I ate way too much but it was SO SO GOOD. Then we went to a free art museum to look at the Staffordshire Hoard and a display of National Geographic photography, and then Jamjar and we hiked interminably back across the entire town, in the rain, to the hotel to get our bags. Because our feet hurt, we decided to get a cab to the train station. MISTAKE. The cab was motionless in traffic for at least five minutes in various spots, and we ended up missing our train - non-refundable - by ONE MINUTE. The replacement train had a transfer at Northampton and a lack of hot beverages, and the bus ride across London was extremely crowded and took over an hour thanks to traffic. We chatted and drank tea, then went to bed and slept like the dead until nearly noon.
After that we moseyed down to Kensington high street withbirdsflying and her charming gentleman friend and ate sushi for lunch. Wax and I then spent an hour or so walking down the Kensington high street, bought a giant tin of biscuits at Waitrose, and went back to spend the afternoon reading and napping. birdsflying & jamjar made it home, and we ordered ½ a meter of pizza and watched Some Like It Hot because I said I'd never seen it. (It was fantastic.) It's also worth mentioning that we drank a lot of their tea up. Sorry guys! Thanks for surrendering your sofa and all your tea!
I first realized even beforebexless got engaged what I wanted to give her for her wedding. Way back in 2007 or 2008, the two of us together wrote a collective 100,000+ words of sugary fluffy My Chemical Romance AU called The Nesty Verse - bexless's hilarious and wonderful Frank/Gerard novel Conclusions and my two Bob/Ray prequels. My prequels were just a side-effect of normal cheerleading duties and getting stupidly over-invested in the background Bob/Ray in her story, and the wreath was due to another one of those fangirl moments, both of us no doubt sugar high or sleep-deprived or something, where one person says "Oh my God, and Mikey needs to give them a wreath or something!" and someone else says "YES!" and somehow you decide that misspelling "Welcome" would be the funniest thing ever. It made it to the story:
I don't think it actually occurred to me while she was writing the story. It was probably one of the 10 times I reread it in the week it was posted or something like that that I turned to Wax and said that making the wreath in reality would be like the perfect present to make for Bex if she ever got married. Fortunately, when we got the Save the Date announcement in 2009, I still remembered the conversation... and of course immediately decided to do it.
In fact, I didn't reread the story again in the whole planning and making of the wreath: I didn't think I needed to. I've had such a clear vision of the wreath in my head all this time that I was quite surprised when I reread the story last night and discovered that the letters were described as being suspended in the center. I'm kinda glad though, because that would've been harder to make - maybe not impossible, but definitely much harder, probably more expensive and possibly too fragile to hang on the door.
Considering how relatively simple the wreath actually is, it took me an embarrassingly long time to make. It took me two or three months to get around to buying the glue gun.
My first thought was to use one of those foam floral wreaths as the frame, but when I went to the craft store, they didn't have those and they did have wooden ones made of woven sticks. I bought a brown willow frame because it was about the size I wanted. I bought the balsa wood letters there individually as well - they're usually used for putting on doors and mailboxes of course! I was hoping for slightly smaller ones, but I couldn't find any, and I don't have a badass enough craft knife to be cutting my own balsa wood. I painted each letter on both sides with white acrylic paint. It took about 4 coats.
Meanwhile, I bought a meter (or maybe a ½ meter, I don't remember) of black tulle from the fabric store to wrap the wreath. At that point I noticed you could actually see the wreath through it, and I had to revise the plan slightly and paint the wreath black. Spray paint would've worked better, but I didn't want to wait for another trip to the store. I painted it with acrylic instead, which took a lot more work and didn't give as much coverage because the brush couldn't exactly poke down into all the gaps between the twigs. But once covered in layers of tulle, it doesn't really matter.
I anchored one corner of the length of tulle on the wreath, threaded the rest through the center, and then wrapped it diagonally, moving it around until it seemed more or less even. I tried gluing the first corner and then the last edge in place with hot glue, but I discovered that the glue hardened into a white blob instead of being clear like I wanted. Instead I chose strategic spots along the last edge of the tulle to anchor it in place, pinched a few layers together, and sewed them together with a single stitch in black thread going through all the pinched layers. There are maybe five of these or so holding the tulle together.
At this point in my purchases I said to myself, "And now all I need is a ton of tiny plastic skulls!"
Then I realized I had no idea where one could buy a ton of tiny plastic skulls.
Rather than Googling it, I decided on polymer clay, which has really always been one of my favorite toys, so it's not a hardship. I grew up on Sculpey for making jewelry, doll house accessories, and tiny dragon figures, but Fimo was what the local craft store carried and I can now confirm that they work exactly the same. At first I was thinking I would make one of those long rolls that you slice up to create beads like millefiori, but I decided it would ultimately be simpler to sculpt the skulls individually.
Each one started life as a sphere, which then got pinched into a lightbulb, flattened against a sheet of parchment paper on the table, and scored with a toothpick to make the teeth. I used the end of a toothpick to hollow out a triangle for each nose and a little circle for each eye socket, then pinched off tiny fragments of black clay and poked them into the holes with the point of the toothpick. Then I baked the little bitches in the oven and left them to cool, at which point they were ready to rock'n'roll.
I then simply hot-glued the letters and skulls each to the wreath, making certain to press firmly so the glue would stick either to the underlying frame, or at least firmly to several layers of tulle. And... voila!
All wreath pics courtesy of Bex and Omni and their door
I was quite anxious about it traveling and took it in my carry-on even though it didn't fit - the wooden letters are a bit thin, but there were no problems. It's actually probably fairly sturdy.
On Tuesday, thanks to me forgetting the time difference, we were ready to leave exactly 2 hours early.bexless had contracted the Black Lung and was sleeping, which is probably just as well or we would probably have been late. Instead we bought tea and chocolate in Duty Free and took it easy, had a pleasant flight back which did include free tea although my feet once again were numb, and hopped a bus to Helsinki behind a hilarious Canadian bound for bb's Nokia factory in Salo. By the time we got home - tenish pm - my throat was sore, and I woke up Wednesday with the Black Lung as well. I still have it, so this post is probably exceptionally disjointed even though I have tried to edit it for concision and directness. Whatever. Also I don't seem to have a "Fangirl Weddings" or "Amazing Vacations" or even a "Travel" tag...
Wax has been several times and spent a year living in Ireland, but until 2004 Japan and Canada were the only foreign countries I had visited. It's a bit funny because of the huge amount of books, tv, and movies originating in the UK that I've read in my life. So seeing England in person kept making my eyes bug out. I was heard to say things like "It's really real!" and "Everything is so... ENGLISH" at the slightest provocation (most buildings, strangers' accents, the names of every station on the trains from Heathrow & to Birmingham and back).
The bus ride to Helsinki is 2½ hours, while the flight from there to Heathrow is between 2:15 and 2:45. (It's a great deal less pleasant, too, since Wax and I get motion sick and can't read or write in a bus.) The plane ride could have been worse. There was no free tea, my feet turned numb with cold, and there was a loudish child in front of us, but at least he wasn't actually screaming or crying. And now that brings us to: CUSTOMS.
I've been through it in Europe 6 or 7 times now, in Brussels, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Paris, and Munich, and it's always been a question of standing in a very short line behind a few other people - "arrivals from within the EU" lines in the latter two cases being so short that the officers just glance at the passport, confirm that I have a residence visa and wave me on. I've never had a conversation on these occasions apart from "Yes, I live here" and "Have a nice day".
But customs in London was like standing in line for a ride at Disney World. EU citizens got through in 30 seconds, but the entire rest of the world, regardless of whether they flew from within the EU or not, was funneled into a huge line snaking back and forth across an area the size of my high school cafeteria. I was standing there for probably 45 minutes to an hour behind several jumbo jets' worth of Chinese people, about half of whom were on a package tour for extra confusion (ie they didn't know where they were going and in some cases didn't understand the question, but for some reason it took ½ an hour for the customs officials to catch on that they were together and just ask the guide, even though the guide was equipped with a little flag), with a liberal sprinkling of arrivals from elsewhere. I also had the funniest Customs conversation ever, even beating that time when I squealed at the cuteness of the American Border Beagle Patrol beagle and asked if I could touch him and the handler said very solemnly, "Sorry, ma'am, not while he's working".
DEADPAN BORDER OFFICIAL LADY: How long will you be here.
ME: I'm leaving on Tuesday.
DBOL, apparently about to fall asleep with her eyes open: What is the purpose of your visit.
ME: One of my closest friends is getting married! :)
DBOL (with a flicker of eyebrow movement): ...Your friend... she's here?
ME: Er, yes. She... lives in London.
DBOL, lapsing back into uninterest: Enjoy your visit.
When discussing this conversation with other fangirls at the wedding, they suggested several alternative comebacks such as "No, my imaginary friend", "Can't you see her? She's right here", and
calathea's "No, she's an inflatable friend. She's in my luggage."We took the Metro into London, and figured out how to switch trains to a District line eventually (not without some embarrassing tourist confusion). (The first person to speak to us on the Heathrow platform was a little dude with a Scottish accent. I made urgently, incredulously excited faces at Wax after he said "Cheers!" and turned away, and she later informed me that I actually turned red from my efforts not to burst out giggling with glee. I can't help it! The accent is just SO CUTE.) Then we got lost walking around the block (literally around two corners) to
jamjar and birdsflying's flat, but we did make it, where jamjar plied us with soothing black tea before bed. The next day we got up bright and on time to catch a train to Birmingham with
jamjar's expert guidance! We took a bright red double-decker bus ("OMG! A real two-tiered bus! It's red! It's so ENGLISH!") all around town to the train station, driving past some interesting architecture, Oxford street, a lot of traffic, and some amusing statuary, and had time for a café before the train. It jostled and rumbled more than a Finnish train, so waxjism found she got motion sick after all and had to give up writing her Lambliff Big Bang. I spent most of the time gazing at things like sheep and hedgerows ("Hey! Is that a hedgerow? OMG, I just realized why it's called a hedgeROW! It's really - row-y!") and cows and the signs at the other stations along the way. Also I dyed Wax's hair red and then somewhat ineptly buzzed the sides of it the night before we left!
I put eyeliner on
waxjism for the third time ever at her request ("I guess I could since it's, like, Bex's wedding"), and consequently ran out of time to paint my own nails. Then we met up with all the other fabulous-looking fangirls staying at the same hotel and shared a couple of cabs to the venue, a renovated custard factory. We were greeted at the door by the groomsmen and the groom,
omniguy, who is even cuter than past pictures/the fact that he's married to Bex would suggest - one of those attractive yet slightly hobbity people who seem to have "CUDDLE ME" tattooed on their foreheads, like Patrick Stump or Bob Bryar. (I hugged him in an excess of excitement.) All of the groomsmen were wearing metal Star Trek badges on their waistcoats, and Omni and the best man were wearing sneakers. The Tiniest Groomsman, who was handing out paper flags with "YAY!" stenciled on them, was also wearing a tiny little fedora, which just about slayed me. The programs, in addition, were emblazoned with "HOLY MATRIMONY, BATMAN!" on the covers, which was obviously awesome. We jittered around in nervous excitement for a while until the bride floated in radiantly to the dulcet tones of And, of course, an epic :D-face. I was craning desperately to get a better look at her through the whole thing. Much adorableness was still perceptible, what with the officiant's charm (even if he did infect me and half the other guests with black lung) and Bex's uncle reading aloud from
birdsflying, in her role as Maid of Honor, handed over the ring, as she was bawling and couldn't produce words. What I heard was something like "[Mumble] WAAAAAAH - er, [something] - Oh, just take it, Omni!"The fangirls, of course, led the way with vigorous waving of the YAY!-flags. I waved mine so hard that the paper flag, which was affixed with hot glue, flew off of the bamboo stick.
Beautiful fangirls at the reception (though not all of them), my de-sticked flag and my sheepish face
More pictures from the well-lit part of the reception:
xx
sad fangirls/happy fangirls
There were three couples of lesbian fangirls present and everybody kept saying how cute all of us were. Here are the other two.
The food was delicious, the speeches hilarious and overwhelmingly adorable (they reduced nearly everyone at the fangirl table to tears and me to grinning till my face hurt and fanning myself: I never cry from happiness, it's just a wiring thing), and the dancing pretty rad. It lasted for hours, contained plenty of MCR and Lady Gaga and Queen, and stimulated pretty much everybody to cut a rug including some adorable, tiny little old ladies. We took a couple of taxis back to the hotel in the wee hours, rubbed our makeup off and went to bed. I danced way too long, until I was jiggly-limbed and nauseated from over-exertion, and had to sneak off to take Pepto Bismols before we left and again before bed, the latter time with a Xanax, which finally got rid of the incipient Attack of Acute AnxietyTM.
We fangirls, with the exception of the bride & Maid of Honor, had made arrangements to meet up for breakfast before
sunsetmog had to catch her bus. Several were sick and/or sleepy, so it was only Wax & I, sunsetmog, olivia_circe and jamjar who did battle with the Cafeteria Lady. sunsetmog required sustenance with which to meet her bus and olivia_circe required breakfast before going back to bed, whereas Jamjar, Wax and I were still planning to go out to brunch with the remaining four fangirls before our train; so we decided we would just get tea while they ate. We found the hotel restaurant, a large half-empty room where English breakfast was in full swing. We were intercepted by a bustling cafeteria lady with a clipboard and harassed air who informed us that one cannot simply walk into the hotel restaurant. This, she explained, wasn't normally the case, but applied today because they were so incredibly busy. (With their half-full tables and complete lack of queue.) So olivia_circe paid at reception, but on our return she got offended and tried to kick out the tea-drinkers anyway to drink in the bar instead. We stayed through two more arguments before she called Reception and came back and informed us, rather accusingly, that we had paid for our tea (as we'd only told her like four times) and Reception should have given us another receipt. Then she flounced away.For brunch we ended up in the busy center of Birmingham, at a tiny café-sized pie shop. They did tiny individual-serving sized pies of various vegetable and meat flavor combinations, and served them with mashed potatoes, corn, peas, etc. THIS WAS DELICIOUS. The mushroom and chicken pie and mashed potatoes surrounded by buttery pastry! It melted in the mouth. I ate way too much but it was SO SO GOOD. Then we went to a free art museum to look at the Staffordshire Hoard and a display of National Geographic photography, and then Jamjar and we hiked interminably back across the entire town, in the rain, to the hotel to get our bags. Because our feet hurt, we decided to get a cab to the train station. MISTAKE. The cab was motionless in traffic for at least five minutes in various spots, and we ended up missing our train - non-refundable - by ONE MINUTE. The replacement train had a transfer at Northampton and a lack of hot beverages, and the bus ride across London was extremely crowded and took over an hour thanks to traffic. We chatted and drank tea, then went to bed and slept like the dead until nearly noon.
After that we moseyed down to Kensington high street with
birdsflying and her charming gentleman friend and ate sushi for lunch. Wax and I then spent an hour or so walking down the Kensington high street, bought a giant tin of biscuits at Waitrose, and went back to spend the afternoon reading and napping. birdsflying & jamjar made it home, and we ordered ½ a meter of pizza and watched Some Like It Hot because I said I'd never seen it. (It was fantastic.) It's also worth mentioning that we drank a lot of their tea up. Sorry guys! Thanks for surrendering your sofa and all your tea!I first realized even before
bexless got engaged what I wanted to give her for her wedding. Way back in 2007 or 2008, the two of us together wrote a collective 100,000+ words of sugary fluffy My Chemical Romance AU called The Nesty Verse - bexless's hilarious and wonderful Frank/Gerard novel Conclusions and my two Bob/Ray prequels. My prequels were just a side-effect of normal cheerleading duties and getting stupidly over-invested in the background Bob/Ray in her story, and the wreath was due to another one of those fangirl moments, both of us no doubt sugar high or sleep-deprived or something, where one person says "Oh my God, and Mikey needs to give them a wreath or something!" and someone else says "YES!" and somehow you decide that misspelling "Welcome" would be the funniest thing ever. It made it to the story: "This is a wreath," Frank says unnecessarily, staring at it. It's made of black tulle and skulls, little plastic ones, all piled up on each other like they're peering out of a mass grave, and in the centre it says 'WELCOM TO OUR HOME' in tall, spidery letters. "You made us a wreath. Of skulls."
"I know," Mikey says gravely, pushing his glasses up his nose. "It's for your door."
[...]
Gerard puts his foot down after about nineteen million pictures of him, Frank, Mikey and Mrs. Way in various combinations, and takes his Mom inside for coffee. Frank touches Mikey's elbow as they follow behind. "You know 'Welcome' has an 'E' on the end, right?"
"Of course I know," Mikey sighs. "I thought it might give you something to be an asshole about if you ever run out of other ideas."
I don't think it actually occurred to me while she was writing the story. It was probably one of the 10 times I reread it in the week it was posted or something like that that I turned to Wax and said that making the wreath in reality would be like the perfect present to make for Bex if she ever got married. Fortunately, when we got the Save the Date announcement in 2009, I still remembered the conversation... and of course immediately decided to do it.
In fact, I didn't reread the story again in the whole planning and making of the wreath: I didn't think I needed to. I've had such a clear vision of the wreath in my head all this time that I was quite surprised when I reread the story last night and discovered that the letters were described as being suspended in the center. I'm kinda glad though, because that would've been harder to make - maybe not impossible, but definitely much harder, probably more expensive and possibly too fragile to hang on the door.
Considering how relatively simple the wreath actually is, it took me an embarrassingly long time to make. It took me two or three months to get around to buying the glue gun.
My first thought was to use one of those foam floral wreaths as the frame, but when I went to the craft store, they didn't have those and they did have wooden ones made of woven sticks. I bought a brown willow frame because it was about the size I wanted. I bought the balsa wood letters there individually as well - they're usually used for putting on doors and mailboxes of course! I was hoping for slightly smaller ones, but I couldn't find any, and I don't have a badass enough craft knife to be cutting my own balsa wood. I painted each letter on both sides with white acrylic paint. It took about 4 coats.
Meanwhile, I bought a meter (or maybe a ½ meter, I don't remember) of black tulle from the fabric store to wrap the wreath. At that point I noticed you could actually see the wreath through it, and I had to revise the plan slightly and paint the wreath black. Spray paint would've worked better, but I didn't want to wait for another trip to the store. I painted it with acrylic instead, which took a lot more work and didn't give as much coverage because the brush couldn't exactly poke down into all the gaps between the twigs. But once covered in layers of tulle, it doesn't really matter.
I anchored one corner of the length of tulle on the wreath, threaded the rest through the center, and then wrapped it diagonally, moving it around until it seemed more or less even. I tried gluing the first corner and then the last edge in place with hot glue, but I discovered that the glue hardened into a white blob instead of being clear like I wanted. Instead I chose strategic spots along the last edge of the tulle to anchor it in place, pinched a few layers together, and sewed them together with a single stitch in black thread going through all the pinched layers. There are maybe five of these or so holding the tulle together.
At this point in my purchases I said to myself, "And now all I need is a ton of tiny plastic skulls!"
Then I realized I had no idea where one could buy a ton of tiny plastic skulls.
Rather than Googling it, I decided on polymer clay, which has really always been one of my favorite toys, so it's not a hardship. I grew up on Sculpey for making jewelry, doll house accessories, and tiny dragon figures, but Fimo was what the local craft store carried and I can now confirm that they work exactly the same. At first I was thinking I would make one of those long rolls that you slice up to create beads like millefiori, but I decided it would ultimately be simpler to sculpt the skulls individually.
Each one started life as a sphere, which then got pinched into a lightbulb, flattened against a sheet of parchment paper on the table, and scored with a toothpick to make the teeth. I used the end of a toothpick to hollow out a triangle for each nose and a little circle for each eye socket, then pinched off tiny fragments of black clay and poked them into the holes with the point of the toothpick. Then I baked the little bitches in the oven and left them to cool, at which point they were ready to rock'n'roll.
I then simply hot-glued the letters and skulls each to the wreath, making certain to press firmly so the glue would stick either to the underlying frame, or at least firmly to several layers of tulle. And... voila!
All wreath pics courtesy of Bex and Omni and their door
I was quite anxious about it traveling and took it in my carry-on even though it didn't fit - the wooden letters are a bit thin, but there were no problems. It's actually probably fairly sturdy.
On Tuesday, thanks to me forgetting the time difference, we were ready to leave exactly 2 hours early.
bexless had contracted the Black Lung and was sleeping, which is probably just as well or we would probably have been late. Instead we bought tea and chocolate in Duty Free and took it easy, had a pleasant flight back which did include free tea although my feet once again were numb, and hopped a bus to Helsinki behind a hilarious Canadian bound for bb's Nokia factory in Salo. By the time we got home - tenish pm - my throat was sore, and I woke up Wednesday with the Black Lung as well. I still have it, so this post is probably exceptionally disjointed even though I have tried to edit it for concision and directness. Whatever. Also I don't seem to have a "Fangirl Weddings" or "Amazing Vacations" or even a "Travel" tag...
