Cutie Moon rod – Eye Catch Custom & Restoration

This eye catch inspired a great custom project, but in order to get to the end product we have to start WAAAAYYYY back at the start, with a damaged wand base that was donated by a friend. Hold on to your hats, friends. I’ve got a roller coaster for you. This wand was a TRIP.

The Beginning

Several months ago a friend contacted me and told me they had a Cutie Moon Rod in VERY poor condition. It belonged to an ex friend of ours that neither of us had contact with in years, and to be honest, it was one step away from a trash bag. He asked if I wanted it for a custom/restoration project, and I’m definitely not saying no to a challenge.

The wand looked like THIS:

It was dirty, sun damaged, worn, and no longer functioned. No big deal. If I could fix it I would, but I have plans to learn how to do that later. I will eventually come back to that.

When he dropped it off he commented that he had noticed it was dirty and had bleached it. Our conversation was a little uh… unsure, so I promised I’d wear gloves (and I did). My plan moving forward was to first, get that yellowed plastic back to as close to the original pink as I could. Clearly it wouldn’t stay pink as my intention was to paint it… uh… *checks notes* yellow, but I wanted to see how much Retro briting could benefit me. My tutorial was subtle in difference, but my friends, this changes EVERYTHING.

If you are unaware of how bad this wand is, the wand on top is my wand from my personal collection. It was in-box and new when I bought it. The wand on the bottom is our project wand. The top wand is also by Irwin, while the bottom is a Japanese Bandai wand, but they’re pretty identical inside and out.

In order to restore this wand I am going to pull it apart, clean it, retrobrite the handle, and then put it back together again.

Right? Sure.

The Tweet below links to a thread including a picture of the inside of the wand and a bit of the cleaning process. I warn you now. It is DISGUSTING. There’s a warning before the picture if you want to be cautious.

SOMEHOW I made it out of the hell hole that was disassembling this wand, and cleaning it. It took a week to crack open, and 24 hours to retro brite as far as I could push it. As a small assurance, this wand was sterilized in bleach, dish soap, and in the retro briting process. I wore gloves while handling it until I felt confident I wouldn’t get anything from it.

…And then I got a mysterious rash on my arm that no one could explain anyway, so LOL WHOOOPS. I contribute it to the wand because before I cleaned it and knew how disgusting it was inside I braced it under my arm while trying to remove a screw. Shortly after my arm in that exact area turned orange, began hurting when touched, and became textured in a way I’ve never seen before. Since no one knew what it was we left it for a while and it actually went away on it’s own. Somehow, my arm is still attached and no longer orange.

Fortunately, 24 hours of retro briting actually brought this wand a long way. Because it was sun bleached the final wand is lighter than the colour it should be. You can see in the top of the handle, where it was hidden behind the wings that it’s a little bit darker than where it was exposed. That shows me that the lighter handle is not from the RB process, but from the initial sun bleaching damage.

This was as far as I went in the restoration process. I wanted to see if I could at least fix the handle, and I definitely could to an extent. I couldn’t fix the reflective paint because there is a process to applying it that I don’t know yet, and actual reflective paints are hard to achieve. At this point my intention was to just paint over it.

On to the paint!

Painting

To paint this wand I took each piece, lightly sanded it with 1000 grit sand paper, and began layering. I regret not priming the handles. Every time I sanded down to the pink I had to work to cover it again. This happened a lot during sealing when I had some issues with the gloss coat cracking. But for a first custom wand I expect some mistakes.

I loved everything except how the gold looked on the blue bulbs. I bought a spray paint that matched the colour of the wand, but came out of the can a much darker gold. It’s actually kind of infuriating? The can says bright gold, the lid is similar to the wand, the colour sample in the picture looked like the yellow gold, but I still got THAT.

So I contemplated a fix, and decided to branch out and try something new.

Gold Leafing

Adding gold leaf was a great idea, but I decided quickly that I couldn’t just do those lines. Everything gold needed GOLD LEAF!

This was much easier than I expected it to be, and a little infuriating at times, but I think next time I’ll know what I’m doing a little better. I Did try to gold leaf the buttons, but it didn’t stick well.

The last picture shows when I tried to seal the paint and leafing in. The paint on the wings cracked down to the gold. I had to sand it all down and start over. To keep it from repeating I used a brushed on gloss sealant, and then I sprayed it again.

Final

The final wand is not perfect, but it’s perfect enough for my shelf, and I LOVE how it came out. I took some artistic liberties, adding a gold ring above the buttons, and on the bottom piece. All of the buttons, lights, and gems have been polished. Overall I am very happy with how this came out.

Unfortunately, the wand does not work. If you saw the horror that was the inside of this wand, all of that gunk ate through the bottom battery terminal and wire. I need to learn some new skills to repair it first. That might actually be a goal for this summer.

It’s very likely I’ll accept a commission or two for these wands. Now that I know what I’m doing They’re going to be stunning.

If you’re interested in a restoration or custom piece check out my about page to contact me.

Happy New Year!

As usual, better late than never! LOL

I haven’t posted any articles because I’ve been busy with some personal projects, as well as the holidays. For Christmas I painted all of my gifts in water colour. In 2 weeks I painted 5 full paintings. It drained me for a while, but now that I’m up and going again I’d like to show them off.

This piece was created for my dad based on a picture I took in Newfoundland 13 years ago. It was sentimental and a view near his childhood home he recognized immediately.

Not yet Available on Redbubble.

Painted using Sakura Koi watercolours and white pen ink.

This one was made for my mom of another photo I took about 13 years ago in her garden.

Buy it on Redbubble!

Painted using Sakura Koi metallic watercolours, and white ink.

This is another watercolour I did of my in-laws. They miss travelling, so I picked a shot they had posted on Facebook of the two of them.

This piece will not be available on Redbubble, but I am available for commission!

Painted using Sakura Koi watercolours, white ink, and pencil crayon.

The last piece I worked on was for my brother. It’s of Ahsoka from Star Wars. Shes a favourite in my family and seemed fitting.

Ahsoka will not be available on Redbubble.

She was painted using Sakura Koi watercolour paints, and white ink.

I hope your New Year is going well despite the state of the world, and that your holidays were great. I also turned 32 on January 16th, so I finally got my Covid birthday in. No art for that one though ❤

If you’re interested in supporting my art and this site I post it on deviantArt, Redbubble, and SpoonFlower.

Sailor Mercury Denim Jacket

Hey there Sports Fans!

Turns out I was very busy while I was gone, and one of the hobbies I picked up was painting on clothing. I haven’t done a lot of it, but what I have done has lasted at least 2 years of very regular wear, and I consistently find myself reiterating the processes to friends and people on Facebook, so I figured… what the hell. Lets just write it down in a way that I can link it, and not explain the same thing 200 times. Of course, we know that now that I am doing this, no one will ever ask me again, and this post will never see the light of day.

THIS TUTORIAL DOES NOT APPLY TO PLEATHER AND OTHER SLICK FABRICS.

Planning

First, I suggest thumb-nailing several design ideas and then picking your best piece. I have 3 pages of designs in my sketch book that came out of this initial process and I’ve kept for future ideas, but for this jacket I settled on the design above. You can tell I hadn’t decided what text I wanted on the ribbons, and I actually battled with that until the very end. Once I settled on the design I drew a couple refined versions [I can’t find anymore] to better decide on the bow shape, ribbon placement, and placement of the transformation stick. Once that was settled it was time to prep the jacket for painting!

Materials

To prep and paint your jacket you’ll need:

A hard surface that fits inside your fabric
Binder Clips
White Pencil Crayon
Paint (see below for type)
Paint Brushes
Your actual item you want to paint on

Paint

If you’re unsure what kind of paint to use you absolutely have options. The secret to painting on fabric is that it needs to adhere to the fabric, be opaque enough to be visible, and be flexible when it dries. My favourite two options for this are actual Fabric Paint and Acrylic Paint.

Fabric Paint

The clear starting point for anyone willing to spend the money is fabric paint. You can buy all sorts of different types: glossy, matte, satin, and even 3D or glowing paint! There are all sorts of metallics and pearls to choose from. All of these will come with their own instructions on use and how to bond it to the fabric, so if you go this route I recommend reading them carefully. It might also vary by brand.

Acrylic Paint

If you’re cheap and broke AF like me I highly recommend using Acrylic paint. Acrylic paint on its own can dye fabric VERY well depending on the quality of the paint you’re buying, and there are options to help your paint last longer. You likely also already have some in your craft supplies. There are all sorts of price point options from dollar store paint, to craft store options, student grade, and professional grade paint. You will also find seemingly endless shelves of tubes in thousands of colours, textures, and finishes. Honestly, I’ve had to curb my paint buying.

My suggestion is to buy what suits you best at the time. If you can only afford the $2 craft paint that’s absolutely fine. You just might need to put in a little more elbow grease to get solid coverage. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’ll work just fine.

Fabric Medium

Regardless of what kind of Acrylic you buy I recommend you mix a Fabric Medium (sometimes called a textile medium) into any paint that makes contact with your actual fabric, the base layer. This is not required, but will help your project last longer with more wash and wear. The layer of paint that adheres to your fabric is the only one that “needs” fabric medium mixed in. Everything else on top of that will be adhering to the paint below it, just like it would on paper or canvas. Fabric Medium essentially turns your paint into a fabric paint, helping it become more flexible and fixed to your project.

Prep Your Canvas/Drawing

Secure your denim to the board so that your painting area is flat and has as few wrinkles as possible. I used an extra shelf for a wooden bookcase I have hanging around. If your board isn’t big enough to show the full piece you want to paint it’s okay to work on it section by section.

I wasn’t intending on writing a tutorial when I made this jacket, so these pictures come from social media updates. The base layer I mentioned above is the white layer of paint I’ve laid on my jacket. It serves as the adhesive layer, attaching the paint to the jacket, as well as a colour boosting layer, so that the paint goes down on white instead of dark blue. You can achieve different saturation and easier coverage using different base layers to prep the surface. It’s most common to see white, grey, or black depending on what effect you’re trying to achieve. Depending on your paint, sometimes it’s impossible to build up to a level where your paint is opaque, and the dark fabric does not affect how your colour looks on the fabric.

You can see how the base layers I used affected the paint on top of it in this shot. The ribbons that are folded back are much darker than the other ribbons. I did not make those sections solid white, so it aided me in creating a shadow in those areas.

For the bubbles I took advantage of the lack of base layer to create a transparent look. Using a diluted paint and fabric medium mix meant I had better control over how much of the bubbles showed up.

For the light blue I had added fabric medium as I hadn’t yet discovered that I didn’t particularly need it. It made the paint blend INCREDIBLY well. The gradients I managed on the bow made me really happy. So that might be something you want to play with.

Setting Your Art

Setting your art is sealing your art to the fabric you’re painting on. Most fabric paint will have instructions for this, but acrylic paint will not. Do NOT wash your art before following those instructions.

For paints with instructions I recommend following them. If you use multiple I recommend using the one with the most work (longest dryer time, highest temperature, etc.). This will ensure all of your paint is safe to wash later.

If you’ve put a top coat onto your art set it after that dries, or re-set your art if you add to it. Acrylic paint does not necessarily need that for protection, but is fine if you are looking for a certain look (gloss, matte, satin…).

Final Art

This is my final jacket after about 2 years of wear. A close up will show some cracks in the paint, but nothing has flaked off. Slight cracking is to be expected on a fabric with some stretch. The fabric has many small gaps between fibers, whereas acrylic paint definitely does not. The less paint you need to use the better.

My only regret is my impatience with the text. It’s my own hand writing and I really don’t like my own writing. It’s also done in puffy paint, so extremely hard to paint over. PLAN THESE DETAILS OUT! I highly recommend penciling out your letters.

My hard work paid off though, because hot damn! Does it look good in person and worn. This picture is from a Super Heroes night at a hockey game. I dressed as a modern Sailor Mercury that was easy to “SailorMoonBound” last minute.

Sailor Moon Fan Art – Magical Moon Toys

If you know me pretty well you’ll likely not be surprised to know that I have a huge obsession with 2 things. Sailor Moon, and comprehensive, inclusive Sex Education.

I’m a weird and complicated woman.

For very obvious reasons I haven’t really mixed the two until recently. Honestly, I’ve had this idea for years, but I didn’t know how I wanted to execute the art without it being weird and problematic. Recently my inspiration struck HARD and these designs had to happen. First, they didn’t focus on the characters, they focused on accessories. Second, it’s like everything fell into place and I just knew what needed to happen.

I sketched out the designs and picked what I wanted to use. The anal beads are cute, but I have plans for them in the next round of designs ❤

While I transferred them to regular paper for organization and making corrections I also added a Stars design. It’s also being saved for later.

The final pieces have been coloured with water colour, and pencil crayons.

The next step was scanning them and turning them into a pattern and t-shirt design for Redbubble. I don’t have step by step process for any of this part, but the final designs are below!

Crescent Moon Wand: a vibrator with 2 silicone parts for double penetration AND bonus rabbit ears for clit stimulation.

Luna Pen: a bullet vibrator with the gem for on/off and multiple settings.

Cutie Moon Rod: a Wand Massager.

Spiral Heart Wand: Clit stimulator.

KaleidoMoon Scope Wand: Vibrating dildo with rabbit ears, and curve for g-spot stimulation.

The patterns are available on Redbubble in the colours listed below. The shirts are also backed with an outline corresponding to the colour you’re looking at.

Redbubble
DeviantArt
SpoonFlower

Sailor Moon Redraw Challenge

Back in May the Sailor Moon Redraw challenge resurfaced, and since I was very much trapped at home like the rest of the world, I focused some of my extra time on art.

I recently picked up a pastel, neon, metallic, glittery water colour set from Sakura Media and, well, Sailor Moon invites infinite amounts of glitter into the world. It’s basically a requirement in Sailor Moon art.

Honestly, I think the metallic sheen really adds to the piece. The sparkle in the paint, and the matte of the pencil crayon compliment each other well.

Overall I love how it turned out in the end. She’s definitely drawn in my style, the colours are rich, and the original of the final piece is a lot of fun. It’s a shame the metallic doesn’t show up as nicely digitally.

You can find this picture below in my official galleries:

DeviantArt
RedBubble

Media Used:
Sakura Koi Water Colours
Prisma Colour Pencil Crayon
Liquitex Basics Acrylic

Custom Hot Topic Exclusive Sailor Moon Funko Pop

It’s a mouthful! I know!

When the Sailor Moon Funko Pops came in there were several things I needed to do… and they all involved painting customs.

At first, I painted just Sailor Moon’s hair.

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She turned out pretty cute, eh? See some process pictures below. I painted her hair white pearl, and added gold enamel to the gold details (her wand, tiara, and earrings).

That got me thinking. Maybe I should try customizing another one? I could sell it at my Artist Alley tables!

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It started with disassembling each figure and priming them! At this point I had no intention of painting anything more than blush on her face.

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Priming is always my least favourite part of the process. I mean, it’s a start, but it’s just not as cool. There aren’t any details. No colours!

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It was at this point that I noticed the HORRIBLE texture in Sailor Moon’s boot from over spray of the sealant, or the paint, potentially while something was drying. The good boot is from a different body, and that’s what it SHOULD look like.

This meant that that body would need to be repainted… I’ll be honest, that won’t be a part of this post. I haven’t finished that figure yet.

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Would you like to make a contract? XD I decided to paint Sailor Moon’s eyes realistically! It started out a little creepy. I thought I was gonna have to call in Homura to take care of the problem.

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This process turned out to be WAY more delicate than I originally thought. I spent HOURS carefully colouring layer upon layer of water colour pencil on sealant, and realized when I moved onto another project that all I needed to do was lightly WET the water colour pencil. Whoops! Learning curves. I still like the effect I managed to achieve, and will keep it in mind for future projects.

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Happy accident! I got some glitter from the gold enamel in her sealant when I washed my brush off in the same water. It frustrated me, but everyone seems to like it XD.

I also upped the blush on her cheeks with soft pastel.

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This isn’t a completed picture yet, but I assembled her without glue to see how she looked before I finished her odango and tails. Uh… SUPER cute! I’m SO happy with those eyes!

I didn’t photograph it, but while working on her I added soft pastel to her hair and left it matte.

The Finished Piece

You may notice that my box is autographed! So far she has Tracey Moore, Jill Frappier, and Linda Ballantyne. The finished photos are also sliiiightly different. The pictures above are for 3 different custom Sailor Moon Funko Pops. The main one in the custom was a commission for someone who didn’t appreciate it, and I wanted one for myself, so I’m updating with pictures of mine. Hope you like her!

Sailor Pluto Amie-Grand Garage Kit

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By: Amie-Grand
Artist: Minatogawa Amaha
Scale: 1/6

This Sailor Pluto kit has by far been one of my biggest challenges since starting garage kits. Having mailed her out only a few weeks ago and looking back I know I learned a lot, but I know I’m ready for much more challenging pieces because of it.

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Apologies for the lack of parts pictures. I didn’t intend on documenting this build and posting it, but here I am. Pluto is roughly the size of a 12″ doll.

The commissioner for this piece had 2 requests: That I sand down her boobs to a reasonable size (they’re rather pointy), and that I not make custom changes (I like to add eyelashes and rhinestones lol). Admittedly this made me sad, but that’s it. I DID have to custom make her brooch in the end as the piece went MIA, and her earrings didn’t fit as nicely as I had hoped, but it worked out nicely.

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Pluto’s prep work and tags were a little crazy, and VERY hard to get rid of. There were quite a few pieces where I cut the tags off, and had to repair the sculpt.

Next up was Sailor Pluto’s boob job XD. I didn’t sand them down drastically. Just enough to soften those super pointy nipples.

When I removed the tag from Pluto’s body I broke off a piece of the edging that’ll eventually be a part of her skirt. To fix it I carefully cut and glued down a piece of card stock in alignment with the missing piece. Then I puttied in the missing pieces. The seam line between that piece and her body had a LOT of pinholes, so I puttied those in as well, and sanded them down.

Everything was then primed, and I started painting. The black and white primer details are all spray painted by can, but everything else is hand painted by brush.

The most important part of painting Sailor Pluto for me was getting the skin colour right. The fandom is constantly at war about what her tone should be, and to be honest… it varies across all parts of the franchise, sometimes even episode to episode of the original animation. Naoko’s manga art does nothing but contribute to the confusion, but one thing is very clear, her skin tone is darker than everyone else in the Sailor Senshi.

I like the anime skin tone, but I feel like it’s much too orange to actually look… believable, or even good on a figure. So I mixed them. The colour I came up with as a mix of the brown from the manga image, with just a small amount of orange to pull from the anime. For comparison, the leg in the left picture is for a Sailor Jupiter garage kit I have in progress.

Painting was the easy part despite numerous issues. The major one was that when I sealed the black pieces I forgot to shake the can… so it came out white lol. I got that fixed up quickly though.

The hard part was pinning. I had never had to do it on a large scale before, and Pluto is SUPER top heavy (boobs aside lol). It took me 3 years to get Pluto in a place where I could actually pin her properly. In the end I actually ended up taking 3 nails from a batch of leftovers from an Ikea set, cutting off the heads, and using them as pin for her waist. I also used them for her head/neck joint, AND to hold her on her base.

Some of the photo editing REALLY pulls out some of that orange skin tone, but overall I’m still happy with how she came out.

MoonFigures at ECEE!

ECEE 2014 Ad

That’s right! I’ll be at the Edmonton Expo in September hosting a Sailor Moon Panel! Check out their website at EdmontonExpo.com.

ECEE will be the largest convention I’ve ever hosted a panel for, so I’m SUPER excited! Join me as I talk about Sailor Moon’s 20th Anniversary, Sailor Moon Crystal, and the future of Sailor Moon. I’ll share my favourite shops, answer questions, and display some of my favourite merchandise from the 20th Anniversary revival.

Get your Sailor Moon fix between episodes!

ECEEAA

I’ll also spend my third year in the Artist Alley! Find me at table B12 with LOTS of Sailor Moon prints, buttons, and more! You can preview my art at PaulineFrench or Mercury-Bubbles on deviantArt.com. Feel free to comment with print requests.

Here’s a preview of what I normally have.

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Free Comic Book Day 2014

Photo by Codie McLachlan of The Edmonton Sun

Saturday, May 3, 2014 was International Free Comic Book Day! It was also my first year not only as an artist for the event, but as an attendee! …though for the sake of argument I never got to do much attending lol. I spent all day (save for the 20 minutes I was horribly late, and a bathroom run) behind the table.

What’s really cool though is that I done some promotional work for this event! On the previous Thursday I was at Happy Harbor Comics promoing with Jay (the owner), Tracey (another artist), and some cosplayers for the event, and I was tasked with the job of drawing Ryan, one of the local hosts of Breakfast Television Edmonton, as a super hero.

Check out videos of the shenanigans here! (including embarrassing myself within the first second of me being on television lmao)

In 7 hours I dew 14 Frozen related pictures, 12 of them Elsa, and 22 pictures in total! Have a look at the ones I remembered to photograph below =)