Cerise Magazine

One of my many slightly weird hobbies is making one of a kind (ooak) fashion dolls. This means, basically, that I take mass-produced plastic fashion dolls (such as Barbie dolls), then alter them by restyling or rerooting their hair, stripping off and/or adding paint to their faces, remolding limbs and making new outfits. It can be a pretty involved process. Some of my dolls took me weeks or months to complete, and I know a few ooak artists who do handmade chain mail armor and tiny forged weapons for their dolls in addition to fully hand-sewn original outfits, which can take months. Doing totally custom dolls is really fun, but it’s definitely not a project for the occasional crafter.
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The inspiration for this month’s Craft Check came from my current tabletop game, where the players and I are using some of the polymer clay tokens that I taught you how to make in “Make Your Own (Easier) Miniatures.” One of the women in my game is playing a character who just obtained a mount, and we’ve spent several sessions representing the horse on our battle grid with scraps of cardboard, large dice, and anything else roughly the right size that comes easily to hand. It works well enough, but the random object solution to the mount problem is hardly elegant.

So I came up with a better answer.
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If you’re like me, you have a lot of gaming geek t-shirts. And if your t-shirt collection is like mine, there are plenty that have bleach stains on them, or holes, or are otherwise unwearable except on laundry day. If there’s an image on the shirt that you like, though, you can recycle it into a nifty patch for a geek-punk jacket easily – no sewing skills required!
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For the thirteenth Craft Check column, I thought it would be fun to go back and revisit all of the crafts featured in Cerise this year and share some ideas for elaborations and variations. So if you’ve tried some of the crafts and want more, or if you’ve been holding off and waiting for more inspiration, be sure to check out all the ideas in this column!
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I was browsing through a craft store the other day and saw these awesome beads. Brightly colored, translucent dice! They’re way too clunky and plastic-y for classy earrings or anything like that, but the bright, 80’s-style colors reminded me of a different kind of jewelry, one that was really popular when I was a kid: friendship bracelets.
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Back in our very first issue, I told you all how to make your own miniatures. Since then, I’ve had lots of people tell me that they love the idea of sculpting their own miniatures, but don’t have either the time or the sculptural creativity. I just started running a new game and I wanted to use something a little more personalized than extra dice or plastic tokens on the battle grid, but didn’t have time to create elaborate new miniatures for every character. So I came up with a method for doing very simplified “miniatures” that may appeal to those of you who find the original “Make Your Own Miniatures” tutorial too daunting.
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What makes a princess? Is it the heritage? The upbringing? The attitude? Nah - I think we all know it’s the tiara! This particular tiara is a special one: it’s a (very) simplified version of the one I made for Robyn to wear at her wedding [Editor’s note: see “Just Gimme the Tiara,” in this issue]. Although that tiara was much fancier, you can see the beginnings of it in this straight-forward design. It’s also tremendously versatile, appropriate for princesses of any age, gender, or personal style.
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I improvised this fingerless “glove” (they would be more properly called wrist-warmers, I believe) pattern when my heater broke down one winter semester and I had a lot of papers due. I needed something that would help keep my hands warm, but which left me freedom of movement so that I could type. Later, I discovered that these gloves work as well for gamers as they do for students, allowing one to keep toasty while handling a controller, stylus or pencil just as easily as a keyboard and mouse.
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As the weather gets cooler in my part of the world, I feel the urge to do some baking – it’s a perfect time of year to make cakes and cupcakes, and decorate them with spray-on food coloring. And with the creative application of stencils, I can create baked goods with gaming themes. And so, as it turns out, can you.
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If you’re a gamer with a non-virtual sex life, you probably already know the value of good hygiene. Soap is your friend! And, it turns out, bars of glycerin soap with a gaming theme are easy and fun to make. Also, the clean-up after crafting is super easy. w00t!

For this month’s Craft Check, I was lucky enough to have the assistance of my normally craft-allergic best friend, Karen Healey. You’ll see her shapely hands in the illustrative photographs, and her commentary about the crafting experience in bold text throughout.
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