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Proud to be a child of God, a faithful son (I hope lol) a trying to be hardworking student, a part-time worker, a nerf/milsim enthusiast, a crafting and music lover and an awesome friend. to you :) Hope you have an enjoyable time reading about my life, as much as I have fun living it! |
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I am a university student who loves chocolate! Coffee is my best buddy when it comes to taking on my finals. I have a tendency to want to try and do so many different things at once and as a result, I've found my hobbies to be as such!
Nerfing is one of them, but aside from that, I also love arts and craft. I have my own startup, Thumbforlego at: where I sell my works! 
I love to do all sorts of crafting, so you will see me uploading posts of my leathercrafts, thumbdrives, replica guns, nerf gun modifications and gundam models! I'm fortunate enough to be blessed by really supportive parents and given the chance to explore many, many parts of the world and try out a plethora of activities. This is also how I discovered my love for film photography, videography and piano. 
The film photo above is unedited! My family loves cold countries xD. We managed to catch the northern lights twice! 
I've also gotten the chance to experience many of nature's wonders 
And my most freezing experience to date: riding a husky ski sled into the sunset (It was -38 to -40 degrees celsius and the huskies were pretty fast.) 
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Why 36000feetabove? This is the altitude that commercial planes cruise at and I have always loved the view up in the sky, being amongst the sea of clouds. :) Personally, my favourite favourite food has got to be airplane buns! Does anyone else feel the same way?! With a slice of butter and looking out of the window, I have yet to find an experience that can beat that. 
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Monday, February 06, 2017
It's been the longest time since I've been toying with this idea of doing this to my car: crystals on the roof. and so far, it looks pretty good I would say! This blog has quite a lot of craft works here and there and to add on a new section, it would be crystals on a car roof! It's definitely a first for me, hence the long deliberation but I felt that certain sense of satisfaction when I stamped the hot steam iron onto the roof. It is meant to simulate the stars in the sky and even though in the day it sparkles not as much as when it is on your clothes, it still looks good and may be a tad distracting. Having said that, I've driven with it for some time and personally do not find it distracting. In the night however, the roof really blends in nicely with the night sky and it really gives it that starry sky look that I am trying to achieve. After all my effort thus far, it boils down to the last part, which is the ironing on of the Swarovski crystals. Yup, all of them are Swarovski crystals! Partly because I like the shine of them and have been using them on separate occasions which great success. Currently working off my memory on which crystals I used, and can only recall the sizes, which are sizes 6, 10 and 12. I shall walk you through all the steps of my crafting adventure (craftventure?) and tell you my impressions of it thus far! Note though, that it is still incomplete. Need to buy more crystals!
THE BUILD.
Here is how my "workstation" looks like. I've been dying to get a proper workbench in the study room but have yet to go about doing so. Currently, my workbench is also filled with plastic bits from the many lego keychain thumbdrives that I've been making over the week. Yknow how there is always this semi-organized mess when you do art and crafts, then you clear it at the end of the project because #productivity. Unless OCD strikes you in that way. I am perpetually doing craftwork so the mess will be long lived. I have a pair of tweezers to use just to pick up troublesome crystals. If not 90% of the time I am working with my trusty fingers. I have an image of the milky way to have a sense of direction on how I want my crystals to go. eg. some parts have more whites and some parts with blacker crystals. etc. Although honestly, after they all go on the roof, you can't really tell the spatial differences but you can tell the difference in tones of white, therefore giving it some depth. I have the crystals grouped together so as to keep things simple. The white mat you see is just a transfer sheet on top of my more portable cutting mat.
You place the crystals where you want, not the mirror image, and lay them out nicely on the transfer sheet after peeling off the sticky layer. Therefore, you are working on the layer which isn't sticky. In this case, I measured that I would need approximately 6 transfer papers to cover the small roof of my car. The paper is about a4 size. Since you can always reuse the sticky paper, I figured that I only required 6 รท 4 = 1.5When you are ready, just place the sticky portion right back on top and press evenly throughout to make sure all the crystals stick to it! After which, carefully transfer the crystals to a flat board, like my cutting mat to transfer them to the car to be ready to be stuck to the roof.
Introduction to the crystals! Or rather, a really brief one, has me using 3 different sizes of crystals, as mentioned; 6, 10, 12. 10 and 12 are used as the "main" crystals to bring out that starry sky, whereas 6 is meant to give that little tinch of colour and variation to the whole piece. I do have two different colours of white and smoke as the main crystals and a light pink (i will get the proper colour notations at a later date) as the highlights. I
 So here is a quick pic of how the crystals look on the transfer paper. I stuck it to the roof of my car with masking tape which wasn't so much of a good idea as that left the roof with sticky marks after using the iron. Apparently when I use the heated iron to activate the glue on the backings of the crystals, I ended up activating those on the masking tape too and hence the glue transferred on the roof. No worries! As repeatedly sticking a masking tape to take off the sticky portion saved the day. Pretty much like how you remove those sticky marks on other surfaces. The roof also has this bulge in the middle, hence when taken from that angle, it makes it look like the crystals are really clustered in the lower middle portion when it actually isn't the case. I started off with a milky way picture and I ended up with this. Even though it looks nothing like the milky way pic (LOL) I am still pretty pleased with my first and daring try of sticking crystals to the roof! Also, I realized that if you hot press it down for a long period of time, at the start, the transfer paper begins to wrinkle and shrink a bit. The surface also becomes very hot to touch, but by applying pressure and holding it there, you let the crystal really sit nicely into the fabric of the roof thus allowing it to bond nicely to the surface. I would say that a lot of force is required, which gets the arms in a good workout as just a bit less of force used, and I noticed that the crystals did not adhere as well and some began to fall off. Nevertheless, you can always go back with a second round to try letting the crystals stick on the roof. One way of telling whether or not the crystals have stuck on, is first noticing whether they have left the really crimped transfer sheet. Then, the second step would be to use the hot iron on the crystals itself and press it down firmly so that it sits really nicely. As skipping the second step might lead you to having falling off crystals as the glue has yet to bond or worse, since the crystals can get very hot under the iron, they do feel a bit like fireballs falling out from the sky when they hit your skin. Not like I've seen fireballs in the sky. 
Overall, I am really pleased with the result thus far! More pleased than my A level results. And doing this so far really pushed my confidence level up, wanting to do more in the future! The next step would be to set aside time and money to buy the remaining crystals, new transfer paper and finish up the roof. Afterwhich, I am expecting it to look a whole lot better as it would be more encompassing with the entire roof covered instead of just the middle portion! Like when something is covered end to end, it tends to look more grand that having it done with an empty border around.
TO BE CONTINUED! |
