Pre-bout crafternoon

Season's Beatings is this weekend!! Squee!!! I am super super stoked. It's offically my first bouty type thing; but I wouldn't say a real proper bout since they're only half hour bouts, and it's not like with a team I identify with. But still, smashy time! I feel like I'm behind the curve on this one really.

It's being hosted by the River City Rollergirls, which is a pretty awesome team. I am skating in three bouts, and conveniently in each I picked the team that would mean I've only got to bring one shirt (red). Heh. It's also the newbie level ones, but whatevs, I think intermediate by US standards is a bit out of my ability range right now. Plus I am just coming off a munting so it's not like I want to get REALLY smashed.

Anyway, what is getting me excited is the fact that the team sent out one of those mass emails when you get to know the other people on your team, and everyone is so excited about this bout. I hope it's okay and that we don't suck super balls, but we'll see. They're from all over Virginia and even Maryland and North Carolina. And I painted my shirt last night, which was super fun. This post is all about arts and crafts, yay.

Basically, I didn't want to fork out money for fancy printing and whatnot, so I was going to do a homemade version. But I have pretty shit art skills, but I don't want something that looks super shit, you know? Beth (who is at NRV and also skating in all the same bouts as me, yay!) bought some fabric paint to do her shirts, so I borrowed it. But I have shit paint skills too, so what to do? Well, I have fabric paint, and I just need to get the paint onto the shirt in a not crap way. Some people suggested stencils, but 1) I'd have to make/buy stencils, and that is annoying, and 2) last time I tried stencilling anything we were doing the Prisoners of Smashkaban shirts and we ended up doing the inverse instead of the print.

But it turns out that there's an easy solution. I printed out my name, cut it out and pinned it to the shirt. Then, with a sharpie, I just pressed onto the paper until it soaked onto the shirt and did the points on the edges of the letters. The font I use for my helmet is pretty much all triangles, so it wasn't that hard to do. Then it was a question of just joining up all the triangles.

Of course, it wasn't super fantastic looking at that point because it was just the outline of the name and all done with a pile of triangles. It actually looked pretty ghetto. But it was working. The spacing wasn't too bad either; I put a phone book under the shirt to keep it from wrinkling too much when I was drawing the outline, and the pins kept the paper bits in place.

When it was done it looked something like this:

A kindergartener could maybe have done better, I suppose.

Okay, but that's just the outline! Then it was painting time! I got a super cheapo paintbrush for like 28 cents from the art store, and it was just a question of putting the paint on the shirt. The paint actually had a really thin nozzle so I could do the outlines and then just color in with the brush. But the brush turned out to be a bit fatter than what I required for painting, plus if I wasn't spreading the paint evenly you could still see bits of red under the black, so I had to ditch the paintbrush and I ended up using cotton buds instead. What a waste of 28 cents.

Hi, my name is Chai Mo.

And then, it was done! Beth said hers took like 3 days to dry, but I did my one a lot thinner than hers and set it to dry over a heater when I went to derby practice. Then I did little touchups when I got back and today it is more or less dry although a little crunchy. I just don't want to wear it on Saturday and have the paint transfer permanently onto my back or something, that would be gross.

But yeah, here's the finished product:

I ended up freehanding the number because that was easier.

 Yay, so I get to wear it on Saturday! Also there'll be a couple of people going up to Richmond (like 3-4 hours away) where it's beind held. We're leaving here Saturday at like 6am and driving up so we'll get there in time before my 10:45 bout. I'll see if I can get some pictures of me wearing it on the weekend. Whoo! I am so excited to get my smash on.