Geek Snowflake Roundup

It's the Christmas Season and every year I intend to completely deck our house out with fantastic paper snowflakes. For whatever reason I never seem to get it done. However I've rounded up as many geeky snowflakes as I could find and posted them here. Just in case you needed a little inspiration for your own holiday decorating.

Start here for basic instructions for paper snowflakes Creek Line House.

Movies and TV

Star Wars

This collection from Matters of Grey includes 33 Star War themed flakes.

Anthony Herrera Designs has released a new set of snowflakes every year for the last several years. Each set contains templates for 6-7 designs.

The site also has templates for Guardians of the Galaxy.

Star Trek

Wings on Water posted pictures of several Star Trek snowflakes, unfortunately templates are not included. That being said with the inspiration you should be able to create a templated or design of your own.

There is a template available for this Enterprise snowflake featured on Buzzfeed.

Harry Potter

Harry Potter flakes from Suzy Homeschooler

Jen Draws It on has some snowflakes on her page at deviantart.com. (No Template)

Superheros

Templates for several Superheroes from Comic Book Resource

Superman Snowflake from Flickr

Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones by Kyrstal Higgins

Lord of the Rings

Leaves of Lothlorien by ldhenson (No Template)

Cation Designs has a version of the Evenstar and the symbol of Rohan.

Dr. Who

I personally am not a huge Dr. Who fan but I have lots of friends who are and there are a ton of snowflake design out there for the show. These are just a few a google search will find others.

Oddly Crafting tumblr has several posts including the following:

Who Flakes

Who Flakes 2

Tickld.com shows this elaborate design. (No Template)

The Anti-Craft also has templates for several designs including this Sonic Screwdriver Flake.

Firefly/ Serenity

My favorite in this entire post is this Firefly snowflake found on Geek with Curves. I would like to see more Firefly based designs out there... Maybe that's something I'll have to work on for next year?

Stargate

From Fool of a Touque

Video Games

Fallout Series

With the recent release of Fallout 4 I had to include this Vault Boy flake by Stacey Herron.

Legend of Zelda

Zelda and Mario by The Nifty Nerd

Hylian Shield design found on Instructables (No Template)

 Zelda Templates found on Pinterest.

Zelda Flake

Zelda Flake 2 

Final Fantasy

Moogle found on imgur. (No Template)

Skyrim

Skyrim design with Template

Skyrim Flakes from Nerdapproved (No Template)

Skyrim (No Template)

Minecraft

Minecraft by The Joys of Boys

Miscellaneous

Steampunk Gearflake from Tish Tosh Tesh

Download templates for these Lego Snowflakes by Pink Stripey Socks

Nobel Physicists via Geek Art Gallery

And finally this fantastic Transformers snowflake on deviantart.com (No Template)

Hope you enjoyed the designs I found. Please feel free to add links to others you may know of in the comments sections. I'd really like to see some Dungeons and Dragons or other RPG type snowflakes. That's another set that I could work on for later. Dragons or maybe polyhedral dice designs.

Updated 12/20/15 to include Stargate and Gear Snowflakes
Update 12/23/2015 Wizards of the Coast created snowflake templates! Including one for a gelatinous cube which is hilarious and awesome. You can download them here. Scroll down to see a few I just made.

Note to Self- Progress is Progress

I have to admit that I've been a bit uninspired lately. Not about my Star Wars projects (I'm super excited to get those done) but about what comes next. I have lots of ideas but not alway the follow through needed to turn them into reality and that can be frustrating. So I'm taking a moment to remind myself that sometimes the attempt can be just as valuable as success. That the process of creating can be meaningful even if the finished product doesn't turn out exactly as planned. The simple act of trying means you can learn from your mistakes and create something better next time. Hopefully I can refocus and keep creating. As I was driving home from work I was thinking about my lack of inspiration and the fact that it's been awhile since I shared a cloud photo so I took this one before I walked inside. I'm trying to see inspiration in the everyday.

However I do finally have a finished product to show. My dress is done and ready to go.

Closeup of Bodice

I am still working on a tulle underskirt to help give the dress more shape but right now its still just a pile of tulle.

I also started working on the facinator but I'm not entirely sure I'll have time to finish it for the premiere. If not I'll still try to get it done and post pictures after the fact. At the moment all I have is a styrofoam ball that I covered with several layers of gesso. It will be painted to make a Death Star and I hope the gesso will help keep the paint even.

Going forward we have a pretty busy weekend ahead of us. I need to finish the petticoat and hat for Star Wars. We plan to re-watch the original Star Wars trilogy and get the rest of our Christmas decorations up. So far we haven't had any trouble with Curry and the tree but I'm sure that will change when it has shiny bits. At the moment he mostly sees it as a good spot to launch sneak attacks.

Prepared to Pounce

Merry Sithmas

I had fully intended to have my Star Wars dress finished and ready to show off. However, I came to a point where I needed to thread the straps through a gap left open in a previous step only to realize that I had accidently sewn the space shut. . .  For about the fourth time. That particular portion of the dress has several layers and its seems like every time I added on I had to go back and redo it because of that gap accidently getting closed. They have been reopened and all I need to do is stitch the straps in place and hem the skirt. It will take me a bit because they are supposed to be hand sewn, to help hide the stitching, and I'm not great at that kind of work.

I've been so wrapped up in trying to finish all the things I want to have for the Force Awakens that I've spaced out on Christmas. I don't mean to say I forgot about it. Christmas is my favorite holiday and I was disappointed that we couldn't get our tree last weekend. But I haven't given any thought to what I might be giving as gifts or when I'm going to find time to shop for said gifts. I suddenly realized that I have just three weeks to do everything . . . make the tulle skirt and hat I wanted to go with my dress, decorate for Christmas, shop and wrap all our gifts, and also read the next Star Wars novel that I have from the library. We are also rewatching the Star Wars movies, prequels this weekend and the original trilogy next.

We did get our tree up yesterday but no decorations yet. We had a bit of a problem when we brought it in because we realized that part of our stand was broken so we had to go back out and purchase a new one. Our tree last year was absolutely beautiful, very full and tall. This year we decided to get something smaller because we aren't sure how Curry will react. We've had wonderful luck with our cats so far in that mostly they just want to sit under the tree and look up at the branches and lights. Curry is much more rambunctious and we hope to minimize the damage in case he decides to climb it and topple everything. It's still a good looking tree, just tall enough for our ceilings and nice and full, just not as wide as last years.

Star Wars Shirt DIY

This week I took a break from working on my dress to make my husband's shirt for the Force Awakens opening. I should be able to finish up my dress over the weekend, leaving about a week and a half to make a tulle underskirt and hat.

Materials:

Store bought shirt for base
Fabric the length of your shirt
Piping in a matching color
Paper for making a template

This is the shirt I started with. He would have prefered a short sleeved but we couldn't find one and were running out of time. I also looked for one without a pocket but that was even harder to find. So

So the first step was to iron the shirt and also remove the pocket. It came off fairly easily but you can still see where the stitching was.

The next thing I did was make a template for the panels I wanted to add. I started by making a copy of one side of the shirt. I folded the paper to mark the curves along the neck and sleeve.

Then I used a ruler to mark the area I wanted to cover with the fabric. The stripe I made was 6 inches wide. I decided on that measurement in part because it let me avoid all the curves while still covering the pocket marks.

Now you have a template to use to cut your fabric. I marked the center at the top and bottom so I could use it to make sure I had the pattern centered. I lined the template center with the center of Vader's helmet.

Trace around the template about a half inch out so that you have extra for seam allowance.

Then flip the template over to cut fabric for the other side. Be sure place the top at the same point so both sides match.

Iron the seam allowance to the back of each piece.

Pin it in place on the front of the shirt making sure it lines up evenly with the center edge. I used a ruler to be sure I have the same amount of space all the way down. Pin the piping in under the center edge, carefully tucking the  top end under the seam.

Sew around the top and sides keeping the needle as close to the edge as possible.

The final step is to finish the bottom hem. Trim off most of the excess fabric. Fold the end over twice, hiding the unfinished edge inside the fold and iron. Again be sure to tuck in the end of the piping.

 Sew the hem in place and you are done. Enjoy your shirt!