I Started Using The Internets To Teach Myself Hobby Electronics A Little Less Than Two Years Ago And

I started using the internets to teach myself hobby electronics a little less than two years ago and struggling with whatever random 101 sites, blogs, tutorials, and instructables I could find. Slowly piecing together info that is never presented in an incremental-increase-of-difficulty way because its not class... It's always a continuous struggle to find information that is at your level when it is pretty much always going to be something you've already sort of learned, and therefore less useful, or something way too advanced and HOW do you fill in the gap, its always there at every level as you learn more things

I think it's useful to point out that I'm not really a self-taught artist. So while there is a TON of stuff I taught myself (particularly digital art/photoshop/coloring), I had the benefit of classes in the fundamentals (lifedrawing, construction drawing, figure drawing, etc) and that makes it SO much easier to expand from a solid knowledge base. So I'm sayin it is not the case here, while I learn to make gadgets and it is taking FOR EVER and driving me up all of the walls. But I want it so badly.

Then Adafruit put up their revised learning system site and I s2g every time I have a neat idea for a project but not sure how I'd make it, they put up a relevant tutorial basically the next freakin day. This has been happening without fail for SEVERAL MONTHS! I LOVE ADAFRUIT AND ADAFRUIT LOVES ME BACK

I always have a cosplay/props/gadgets wishlist that is miles long and an ever-expanding list of ways to make things blinky, beepy, and/or animatronic and going NUTS because I don't yet have the skills to accomplish what I want to do (which is everything), learning a skill is HARD, harder still if there are parts of it that are not interesting but sort of a necessary evil- which for me is programming, I hate it so much, its so painful, ughhg uugghhh it hurts, I have not studied this hard to learn something I dislike so much EVER but there is a blog I like called HOW TO GET WHAT YOU WANT and that has stuck with me all this time. It's how to get what I want and I'm not gonna let my hatred of programming actually stop me from typing up terrible buggy code and uploading it to a microcontroller to make leds blink and animate and change colors because I love lights and I love COLORS. Join me!

LETS PUT LEDS IN THINGS

Costume DUMP because I had to move and put most of my stuff in storage so I don’t know when I’ll be able to resume work on this :C Also cos I was CUTE

The fiber optic HAIR is 110% of the reason I wanted to cosplay her in the first place. DREAM WIG, still can’t fully believe I’m making it happen… tho uh. You know how no amount of planning can replace what you learn by doing and gaaawsh there are. Many. Things. I would like to do differently. And I’m nowhere near done but also too far along (and too over budget) to start over, eeeeegh.

It’s a 168 neopixel led matrix controlled by an arduino pro mini. Also have a few attinys to control a servo (wiggly robot antenna 8D), and some sound-reactive led circuits, and just, so many other things I have been banging my head against desk all year tryna make this stuff work, tbh the biggest challenge has been figuring out how to power it properly, and uh, safely…?? I learned a LOT about how batteries work this year let me tell you

Final outfit will be visible from SPACE

Hey there! I've chosen the recent SPG Poster art you created for Fan Art Friday this weekend - it's spectacular! I generally reblog these from the person directly, but your post includes the word "hell," and we generally avoid any sort of cursing in what we post. As of now, I've set it up to reblog with the paragraphs you added removed, so it'll just showcase the art. I hope that's okay! If you'd rather I not reblog it at all, please let me know! It'll post Friday at 12pm PST.

lol I don't mind if you remove my several paragraphs of blathering, I can't help but inflict that stuff on my own blog/followersHow are y'all enjoying the poster? I still haven't actually printed a copy for myself cos I can't stop spending money on cosplay. It is an addiction

I'm about to draw 27,842 robot outfits and YOU CAN'T STOP ME

Got a cutie to watch over my new sewing area 83c

If you want to paint yourself and your friends weird colors for Halloween season (OR if you’re a nerd who cosplays at every opportunity, or even when there aren’t opportunities because you’re obsessed with makeup like meeeee) I would like to reccomend airbrushing :D

Top photo is my airbrush kit which fits in a toiletry bag from ikea. It includes a mini compressor which you can get for about $40 on amazon.

I use a $20 Badger airbrush from Michaels. I honestly use it more often than my nicer double-action professional airbrush because ngl I get tired of cleaning that thing out. Paint doesn’t actually go through the Badger air gun at all so its easy to clean.

BEST of all, if you also make props or paint fabric for costumes, you can stop spending money on spray paint! Seriously, airbrushes are where it’s at.

THE KEY ITEM is the Badger to Master brand adapter! The most annoying thing about airbrushes is there’s no standard sizing and shapes for ANY brush item or accessory between brands. I got mine in a set from Amazon for about $9. This way you have the choice to use any compressor instead of the expensive air cans.

Anyone who’s tried to do white makeup knows how ANNOYING it is no matter what! Creme makeup has good coverage but it’s gross and gets everywhere no matter how much powder you use to set it! Airbrushing lets you get 100% coverage with water-based liquid body paint. I got the best results with two layers of white and two of Ben Nye final seal (a layer of sealer FIRST helps the color stick and adds a small amount of protective barrier from sweat/oil). The key is to get full coverage with the thinnest possible layers, it flakes off more easily the thicker the paint is applied. Diluting liquid makeup with sealer instead of water or mixing liquid helps too, I don’t have a brand preference and have Ben Nye and Mehron colors, and some more expensive alcohol-based brands for experiments.

Examples! My QT frans (and me, whatever lol) :3 I painted em and they did the rest of makeup and powder. Powder pigments for colors and shading seem to work best before paint is entirely dry, if it gets too dry for blush/shading/etc, I’ve had good results with a light spritz of sealer to make it tacky again. Riles glows in the dark because Mehron has glow body paint so I had to try it, NATURALLY! Also used pure glow pigment as ~gremlin blush~, TKB has it I want to buy it by the pound, lol LOOK AT THAT SPOOKY GLOW THO

OK hope that was informative enough, I’m trying not to make this twenty pages long ok? K.