Costume Update

Current Music: Beyond the Sea by Celtic Woman

This costume had officially taken over my life. It is slowly, bit by bit infringing upon my space, creeping out from under my bed and overflowing my craft table. I cannot say how glad I am that I bought that bed from my roommate instead of staying on that air mattress. If I had not I don't know where I would keep all the supplies, craft bits, and miscellaneous odds and ends that I seem to attract like a magnet while I am working on this. It is really quite terrible.

...and I love it.

As things usually go, I am still digging through the smaller, detail bits before I start on the bigger, less detailed parts like gluing all those scales on! Yikes. I finally got the balaclava today that I will be using as the foundation for my mask, so I can finally start on the meat of that. Hooray!

I have all the detail parts of the mask more or less finished now: the eyes, ears, teeth and horns.

I am really happy with the eyes, even though they came our more gold then green. These also have the tracking effect like the blue one I showed you before. The green is iridescent also, though you can't really tell from the picture.

Those black things at the bottom are the foundation for the ears. The picture does not show their detail very well. Eventually the ears will be covered with scales and have a fur fringe along the bottom edge. The ears will be attached to the mask with springs so that when I shake my head the ears will move. HA! I saw the idea online and loved it. Both the horns and the ears are made from sheets of craft foam. It makes them very lightweight but also surprisingly durable. I painted the horns about three times. Primer and two coats of glossy grey. The foam sheets are very absorbent and it took a surprising amount of paint to both cover them and make the glossiness come out.

The teeth were a fun project by themselves. I ordered a wolf jaw-set from a taxidermy website, sculpted the teeth the way I wanted, made a mold with OOMOO 30 silicone, and then cast them out of white plastic. It was very satisfying to make for some reason. perhaps because they look scary. Heh. (That blob of yellow on the right is the clay-stuffed original teeth model with the top and bottom pieces stuck back to back.)

I have made some progress on the feet. Originally I was thinking of making digitgrade stilts to go with it, but after I went through all the time and trouble to buy the stuff to build them I decided that stilts would be uncomfortable and a little overkill. I mean I am making articulated wings! If that is not already overkill I do not know what is.

So the feet look kinda like clown shoes (at least they are long enough to feel like I am wearing fins.) Since this picture was taken I have added green vinyl to the bottom with "gecko pads" to give the bottoms a reptilian look. I have also since added a black vinyl "sock" that covers the ankles of the feet and gives me a skin where I can glue on scales.

This is the progress so far. I really need to just sit down and glue the scales to it and get it over with. Having an artsy-fartsy brain is both a boon and curse. You get all these amazing ideas on how to make the project look cool, but the hard part is deciding which idea to keep and sometimes even how to do it. That is where I am now with the feet. I have the vision, just not so much the ability to get it there. Oh well.

I finished the claws by making a mold of my original Sculpey model and then casting a whole bunch in black plastic. The foot in the picture above is sporting some of them. My goal is to get the claws glued to the gloves tonight. It shouldn't take too long.

Casting the claws was an adventure. I discovered that my bathroom makes an ideal impromptu ventilation chamber for such odoriferous projects as mixing and casting resins. Just pop a fan on the counter, keep the vent running and you are good to go.

Because my mold was only for a single claw I had to mix the plastic for each one. All those cups along the back are individual mixes. The plastic sets up really quickly so practically as soon as I was done pouring the leftovers in the cup were beginning to solidify. After five minutes the sticks were glued to the cups. I finally cast the resin parts of some of the jewelry, if you can call it that. The blue piece is called Shi'thara'ben and the green is the accent stone. Once they finally cure completely I will wrap them together using silver jeweler's wire.

That purplish blob in the bottom of the picture is the silicone mold for the green accent stone that is sitting on top of it. The funny thing about casting resin, the smaller the piece is, the longer it takes to cure. I cast these pieces almost a week ago and the green one is still sticky.

So that is what is taking up my free time. I have started on the wings, and hope to get the skeleton together this weekend.

Current Music: Un Giorno Per Noi by Josh Groban