Moving along

I've decided to move my blog over to Wordpress.  You can check out my latest posts about jewelry, costumes, and everything else at kalibutterfly.com.

Scale Mail Halter Top - Part 3

Linking all those scales together can be a chore, but the result is so lovely, it's hard to complain.

Updates this week will be light and I'm building up inventory for Madison, but I'm looking forward to jumping into this project again when I get back.  Look at those cap sleeves!  I just want to spend all day working on this.

But for now, I'm making plenty of new designs, like little star earrings:

Scale Mail Halter Top - Part 2

This will be a micro-post, but these bronze scales are so yummy.  The muslin template is a nice guide for the work, too.

Vanessa Walilko
Handmade chainmail jewelry

Scale Mail Halter Top - The Beginning!

I'm lucky enough to know a lot of talented, interesting people.  One of them, MsPixy--burlesque hostess, performer, and producer extraordinaire--commissioned me to make her a scale halter top for GenCon.  After a couple meetings, we settled on a bronze/gold number with a fake leather back. 

I started working on this in June after teaching at Bead&Button, but here are some photos of my creative process so far.

I try to keep all of my ongoing projects in little plastic bins.  It's a small attempt at staying organized.

With scale projects, I always start by linking together many pairs of scales.  I get the quick feeling of accomplishment with every pair I link, and it makes the scale mail process more efficient.

Patterns... I don't know why for the first several pieces of clothing I didn't make any patterns.  I guess the struggle of putting on and taking off bits of scale mail was exciting to me.  In any case, when working on a piece for someone else, that's not possible.  Thankfully, Pixy had some muslin and cut out some pieces like a sewing ninja at our meeting.  Here are the shoulders:

I love watching a piece come to life.

I'll be posting daily updates until the piece is finished.  Stay tuned tomorrow for images of the front of the piece!

Vanessa
Handmade jewelry
Chainmail jewelry

Deadlines, chainmail, and all other things

I wish there were enough hours in the day.  While I was working on the costumes for Queen Amarantha, I wanted to make a chainmail headdress out of aluminum.  Sadly, because I need to eat AND sleep like a mere mortal, I didn't have enough time to finish it.  However, now that I've properly recovered from Bead&Button (and the unfortunate food poisoning I suffered from there, ugh), I was able to finish it.

Hopefully it'll make an appearance at Bristol Ren Faire.  Or, maybe I'll wear it while I practice belly dance moves to feel a little fancier.

Vanessa
Aluminum jewelry
Handmade chainmail jewelry

Stars of Empire Kickstarter

The fine folks at Hive, Queen, & Country launched a Kickstarter for the second edition of their RPG Stars of Empire.  They were kind enough to use some of my work in The World Beneath the Clouds, with my friend K serving as one of the Venusian Sky Wolves and with me in my chainmail shrug serving as an example of Venusian fashion.

Pretty neat, right?  Aside from creating a brilliant, fleshed-out world, they are also really wonderful and supportive collaborators.

So stop by their Kickstarter and pledge some money to get their second edition off the ground. 

Vanessa Walilko
Dynamic Chainmail Jewelry
Handmade Jewelry