Makie Meet, the summarisinginging

Aaah. Now I've had a bit of sleep, I think I'm up to a summary of the fun and games had by all at the Makie Lab meet up.

We left Sheepland reasonably bright and early, and had a rather nice train ride down to London (especially in comparison to the ride back, see Twitter for gory details), then battled with tube line closures and not realising that for some reason Paddington Tube Station is in two bits (am a hick from the sticks and I HATE LONDON. There. I've said it.). The much-maligned mini A-Z book came in very useful in finding Scrutton Street; although the girls came from there, they were sulking too much at their travel arrangements (dinner napkin roulades) to give me useful directions.

After finding the lab, Steamplink and Madame Von Melchie were released from their prisons, costumes donned and much squeaking ensued!

Free! Freeeeeeee!

Plink had a good nose around Widget's lab...

Frantically calculating which big red button to press.

We met the twitchy-eared test subject SU3K4T and got a look at her braaaaains...

There are videos of Suekat out there, go look!

We discovered that Dave and Am look exactly like their humans! (Also Yeti is very, very tall!)

Modelling their Makie Couture original hats :) 

Count Dracuted didn't scare us and Millie the Witch was adorable.

Costumes by the talented Poklfil

Refreshments were provided by Chelsea, sugar, sugar and more sugar.

Dave lines up a shot.

We also got let into a few top sekrit MakieLab plans... but our lips are sealed! ... no, not quite as literally as sealed as the head in this photo.

SCARY

Then we got on with the gruelling task of trying to make everyone stand up for long enough to get a group photo!

Makies are wobbly!

Sulka had a much nicer camera than mine and stole all the Makies for individual portrait shots. Really looking forwards to seeing these, because at that point the light was going and I don't have a flash.

Smile, everyone! Say candy corn!

Thanks to all at MakieLab for tolerating us dumping our stuff all over your workspace, the epic goody bags of joy and giving up your Saturdays so's we could have a good time. Special kudos to Chelsea for the mint M+M cookies if not the punch which caused a MAJOR sugar crash on the tube back to Paddington!

There are more photos available in the flickr set, which is here. Happy clicking!

Steamplink and Madame Von Melchie

Ahahahaaa!

Finally, I can let you into the sekrit of the costumes we've been working on for the last month!

Just put some gears on it and call it steeeeeeeeempunk!

Steampunk is fantastic, as far as I'm concerned. I've got a whole Pinterest board devoted to the collecting of steampunky ideas, and I've been dying to make a Makie-sized steampunk costume for ages. Happily, the Makie Meet gave me the perfect excuse to make two!

Here's the Steamplink. Obviously involved in the science side of things, she's probably an airship engineer or the like.

Okay, yes. The gears have no purpose. So hit me with sticks. 

Her boots and belt are from Collectible Kitbash and are seriously high quality. The boots have even got hobnails on them!

Up, up and awaaaaaaay!

Madame Von Melchie is more of a lace-and-arsenic sort.

Shall we dance? Or shall I poison you? Either way is good...

Her hat is essentially felt, fabric, glue and more glue. The skirt has wire in the hem to help it hold its shape. There's a 3-layer bustle on the back, which is happily not held together with glue. That's a chicken feather in the hat, by the way.

No, she wouldn't take off the fluffy bunny slippers.

I'm delighted with the costumes, especially Plink's wings and goggles. Many huge hugs to the Jo for sending me the watch faces!