The moment you have been waiting for...

Yes I know, FINALLY FINISHED. Raarr. :)

Current Music: Show me Love by t.A.T.u

These last few weeks were a bit hectic (an understatement) as I scrambled to add the finishing touches to my costume. I think I can now appreciate what insomnia feels like because I got an average of only 32 hours of sleep a week for nearly the entire month of October. With some nights I would not get to bed until after 3:30 am.

Sort of like going to Times Square for New Years Eve, I am glad that I did it, but I do not know if I ever want to do it again. At least not in the same way. My memory was shot, I had a hard time focusing, and I felt achy and slightly sick all day. But I got numb to it and chugged through anyway. Kids, don’t try this at home!

I made a lot of progress over that time despite my sleep depravity.

I finished the hands. Those claws are nearly three inches long and make it nearly impossible to hold onto anything that is not round. I had to be careful when I was around people so I didn’t claw them on accident.

I scaled the mask over about three days. I attached the ears first so I could be sure they were in the right place and then started on the nose and eyebrow ridges.

I covered the eye holes with pantyhose fabric which allowed me to see without others seeing my eyes. In hind sight, after wearing the mask around for a few hours, I should have chosen a different fabric or at least stretched it more. I was very difficult to see when I was anywhere but in bright light.

Due to the nature of my character I was playing (namely, being of the female persuasion) I covered the cheeks of the mask with white scales painted with pearly paint. (Female dragons in my novel have patches of white scales on their face while males have white stripes). The slight orange cast you see to the scales is due to the orange sharpie I used to trace the scales before cutting them out. I was disappointed by the effect at first but now I think the orange adds a little warmth to the otherwise dark mask.
Here is the mask with the mane and horns attached (more or less) to give an idea of the complete look.
Scaling in progress.

With the face more or less finished from the eyes down.

And here is the mask finished. I think the eyes are the best part of the whole mask. They are kinda arresting and wild.

While scaling the mask I burned myself again. This time on my left hand (thankfully!). It was one of those burns that took the skin with it when I wiped the hot glue off, but unlike my first burn it did not hurt, at least after I got the glue off. Must have fried some nerves this time around.

Here are the wings with the cloth cut out for them. (Kinda looks like a Batman symbol.) When open they are nearly the length of my room. Due to the complexity of the rigging and my inexperience working with metal and hinges and such I had to make a rather sad compromise with the wings and how they would function in relation to the rest of the costume. The original plan was to be able to pull a tab at about my collarbone and have the wings open. I was forced to re-rig the wings to be a bit less technical and more hands on. I ended up with a partial rig for the wings so when I opened them with my hands from a handle on the wrists the fingers of the wings would open on their own. This worked and ultimately it made me much happier because if I had tried the more complex way I would no doubt have broken the wings or been so worried about them malfunctioning that I would not have been able to have fun.

Here are the wings half done. These took me most of the night to finish.

Here are the finished wings, looking nice and pretty hanging on the back of my closet door. The blue part is a bit of exercise tubing jerry-rigged into a figure eight to hold the wings closed and together. Without it the wings would flop open and drag on the ground.

I was able to finally finish the pants after they had sat cold and lonesome under my craft table for more than a month. Of all the multiple parts of this costume, the pants are the most comfortable.
The big black patch there right on the rump is Velcro for the tail. It is less the primary foundation for the tail but as a mode of extra support. Even still, I had to walk very carefully so as not to jostle the tail too much as it bounced off my heels.

I learned a great many lessons when constructing the vest portion of the top. One being never use a shirt that fits you to begin with because once everything is glued on it cannot stretch anymore and therefore does not fit anymore! I had to make some allowances in the straps that held the back closed so that the non-stretchy vest would stay around my waist.
These are the chest panel scales—it was quicker and simpler than covering that same area with my rapidly depleting stock of cut scales and they also hid the offset vest opening. The offset opening allowed me to hide the edges underneath the belly plates. The white portion there is the backside of the plates.

I made the top of the costume in two parts on purpose, and that purpose was the wings. I had mounted the wings on bright white wood blocks that would be best hidden. The arms of the top are a separate shirt and the vest went over it and covered the wing blocks, the raw edges of the wings, and the elastic rigging.


Here is the vest with on the body dummy with the undershirt also. The shirt I used for the vest is long so I had to extend the length of the double to accommodate.

This is the finished vest from the front and the back. The slits in the back of the vest are for the wings. I am rather proud how the scales on the shoulders look.

Once the vest was finished I worked on how the silver scales and blue crystals would attach around the neck. Just to get the configuration right I pinned the scales to the neck first before any gluing happened. It is a good thing I did because the collar snaps of the vest proved to be a challenge when they coincided rather unluckily with the silver scales.


But it ended up all right in the end and I think it looks pretty good. I attached the chains to rings I had pierced through four of the silver scales. Since the rings were silver like the scales you have to look pretty closely in order to see the lines.

And here I am with the vest and sleeves on:


The reason I look like a pear in this picture is that the back of the vest is gaping wide open. Forgetting to factor in the fact that the shirt will not stretch once it has the scales on it I made the securing straps too short and they didn't stay closed without me hiking the vest high and making it bunched up around my waist. In another word: ugly. I fixed the problem with a set of stretchy strap extenders that solved the gaping problem nicely.

And put it all together and ta daa!! Done!

I love this picture. (Mom, Glenn, and me in the middle.)

Current Music: Palladio by Silent Nick