Geek Girl Brunch + Comic Book Ornaments

Geek Girl Brunch

I don’t think I’ve yet shared the awesomeness that is Geek Girl Brunch. I discovered it via the Female Geek Bloggers G+ Community, and was immediately intrigued. Ladies getting together to share brunch, drinks, and geek-talk? Sign me up!

The group started in New York City, with its own meetups. They had so much fun together that they decided to roll out chapters, not only across the U.S but worldwide! Sensing I had found my geek tribe, I signed up to be notified about news of the Kansas City chapter. I got an email a few months later notifying me that chapters were forming, and would I like to be an officer to help launch the KC chapter? Because I love my hometown and want to nurture its geek culture, I said yes!

We had our first brunch in July – an informal meetup at the Cheesecake Factory, followed by Star Wars Day at Barnes & Noble. In September we gathered at the Renaissance Festival and strolled the grounds together. Other chapters have enjoyed a wide variety of themes, from a Zombie Crawl to a Xena-themed yoga session to a Pixel Perfect ode to video games.

Next week is KC’s third event, with a “Let’s Get Crafty” theme. My co-leader, another brunchette, and I are each leading a geek-craft. My craft is comic book ornaments, as seen in the examples below. I figured it was an easy introduction to decoupage, but infinitely customizable to whatever comic brunchettes might favor, along with whatever ornament base they might choose.

Comic Book Ornaments by Angie Pedersen

Basic instructions:

  1. Select ornaments in shapes that will showcase an identifiable amount of comic art, in shapes that should be easy to cut out.
  2. Page through your comics for images that will fit your ornament. TIP: If the image you want is too big, you can scan it and resize to fit your ornament. That’s what I did for the Dr. Horrible cube above.
  3. Place the ornament on top of the comic page and trace around it. Cut out with scissors.
  4. Brush Mod Podge (I used matte, but glossy would also work) on the ornament and position the comic cut out on top. Smooth out any wrinkles (a brayer helps here).
  5. Brush a coat of Mod Podge over the surface of the comic image to seal.
  6. Optional: embellish the edges of the ornament with decorative washi tape (see Buffy example above) or acrylic paint (see TARDIS example above). For the Dr. Horrible cube, I colored the top of it with a bronze metallic Sharpie (top not shown).

I hope you will check out Geek Girl Brunch and join in on the fun! If you’re in the KC area, stop by and say hi!

Links of Interest:

DIY Geek Wedding: Comic Book Bouquet

Comic book wedding bouquet by Amber Lackey

Talk about sisterly love! For her sister’s wedding recently, Amber Lackey of Sissy La-La created unique bouquets using comic book pages.

She cut each comic book page down to two 4×4″ squares and folded them into petals, using five squares to make each flower. The bride’s bouquet featured more than 300 petals and measured about 12-1/2″ across. It took about 150 pages and 14 hours to make. She went on to make two more bouquets.

three comic book wedding bouquets by Amber Lackey

Amber also created a garter using Marvel fabric:

Marvel fabric garter by Amber Lackey

Did you have any geek elements in your wedding, or have you seen some fun references in weddings you’ve attended? Please share in the comments!

Links of Interest:

 

Shirts.com Deadpool Shirt Giveaway!

Congrats to Ella! Keep your eye on your inbox! Didn’t win? Go to Shirts.com and order your own, they ship worldwide!

 

image

 

Hello friends!

Today I come bearing an awesome giveaway from Shirts.com! They have generously offered up one of their amazing shirts! Not just any shirt, oh no, I managed to pick the best shirt for you. Don’t believe me? Feel you could have picked better? False, it’s Deadpool riding an alpaca.

deadpool-retro-comic-on-an-alpaca-t-shirt(photo courtesy of Shirts.com)

Even the description for this shirt is amazing: “Superman can fly. Batman has a Batmobile. And Deadpool? That guy doesn’t have such fancy modes of transportation so he has to improvise. With this Deadpool t-shirt you can show everyone that this guy isn’t too good to ride around on an alpaca if that’s what he needs to do.”

How do you get in on this? Easy! Follow Shirts.com on Facebook or Twitter, and then come on back and comment with your e-mail address for your entry. If you don’t leave an e-mail, I can’t send you your stuff, so be sure to include it! You have until noon ET on Thursday, May 14. Also, a huge thank you to Shirts.com for allowing this to be a world-wide giveaway! So go get liking!

DIY Comic Book Collage Silhouettes

Comic book silhouette collage by The Nifty Nerd

With so many great TV shows and movies out, there’s a lot of attention on comic books these days. It’s always nice to go back to the source material for the full backstory. While you’ve got your comics out, you might want to use some of the extras for this cool collage project, brought to us by Jessica from The Nifty Nerd.

Jessica has kindly put together a Nerdy Craft Tutorial on how she created her striking silhouette collages to adorn her hallway, including cutouts from Spiderman, plus a really cool Rohan horse banner crafted from Fellowship of the Ring book pages – you won’t want to miss that!

She also talked about other cutout backgrounds, like the Hogwarts houses, or Game of Thrones family crests. What fandom would you like to collage? I have a TARDIS in mind, from Doctor Who comic book pages…

Links of Interest:

 

 

A Bracelet DIY Using Old Comics

ComicBookUpCycleBracelet

I have a friend who creates awesome jewelry by recycling old comics, which got me thinking . . . what else can a person make with old comics? That’s how I found this tutorial on Oh! Rubbish! Blog. It’s a super easy DIY, with great pictures.  Plus, I’d bet magazines, newspapers, and old photos would probably work well with this idea too.  Just think of the possibilities!

Female cosplay worthy of the name of Thor

Female Thor cosplay by Anna Lee Mueller

With Marvel’s recent announcement that the Thor comics will soon have a female lead, I thought it might be fun to see if there was any female Thor cosplay out there. The internets did not disappoint.

Not only did Anna Lee of Glitzy Geek Girl put together a great Thor cosplay costume, she also provided a tutorial for creating the winged Thor helmet and beveled armor plating out of craft foam! I would not have thought of using gesso for a primer before spray painting – great tip!

What do you think of Marvel’s choice to make Thor female? What do you think of females cosplaying as male characters? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Links of Interest: