Forest Fae

Still playing catch up, but hopefully some new projects will make their way in sometime soon. So I posted
this pic in my year cos review, but didn’t really talk about it:

(Photo by Chris Erickson) I talked about progress on the jacket and waistcoat here, and basically did more of the same until it was in a wearable state.

But I never posted about the horns and mask, so I’ll do that! And a few more pics from the event.

I started with forming the loose shape of the horns with aluminum foil, after looking at some pictures of antlers. Once I had a shape I liked I wrapped the foil in masking tape.

The next morning I discovered that masking tape was old D: and peeling away.

So I glued all the peely bits down and also coated the whole antler in a few layers of plain elmer’s glue.

Then I covered the whole thing in paper pulp, which is basically paper mache, but… pulped. I used that because I had it already 8D And it was sandable, which I thought could be useful.

Okay so the package did say there would be some shrinkage, but there was a LOT of shrinkage!

I ended up doing another layer or two, trying to really slather it on. That seems to be the end of my progress pics of the antlers. So after it was all dry, I had slathered sooo much pulp on, they were pretty lumpy 8D;;

So I did file and sand them, but in the interest of time and laziness, decided not to get them smooth. And instead I dry brushed them with metallic gold.

For the mask I started out with a sheet of green craft foam.

And drew a rough mask shape on it, free hand (which is why one side is much taller than the other… but I’m gonna write that off as “artistic”). I roughly shaped it using a hair dryer, putting the nose ridge and brow ridge in, and semi shaping the “branches.”

Then I painted the whole thing, front and back, with a mixture of black and gold paint as a base. And then I just took a variety of brown paints I had on hand and started painting streaks, mixing colours as I went.

I just kept going until I liked how it looked.

There’s a cell pic I posted earlier, which is basically how it turned out.

To finish it off I glued it to a plastic store bought mask I had, because I realized the foam would tear where the holes/ribbons are. Then Convolution!

Judy used her Regency dress and added wings and a fabulous headdress and I love it!

With flash~

Judy wasn’t keen on how her wings had turned out, and literally threw them away on the way out!

Then a wild Mette found them 8D I don’t know.

Aaaaanyway, I definitely still consider this costume a Work In Progress! I have grand plans for it, and am thinking about returning to it soon…

So my next day in travel is really daunting ‘cause we took like 1000 pics (we did the Rome circuit at a run basically) so I keep putting it off. So much so, that I’m actually going to post progress pics of what I’m working on right now.

Whoooo current! So this project is pretty much a challenge to myself, on multiple levels. I wanted to use up fabric (so no buying anything fabric for this), I wanted to work more with creating my own textiles (inspired by the awesome art quilts I keep seeing), I wanted to create something out of my norm (organic and not about the clean lines), and I wanted to create a fairy that wasn’t a corset with stuff shoved under it.

Right now I’m succeeding with using up fabric, and not being clean about it (uh, it is, in fact, a mess). So just a heads up, a lot of these were taken at night so the lighting is just… weird. And I didn’t want to muck about with fixing it. I started with a pile of fabric:

And went from there!

The same pile, with flash:

Okay actually I started with cutting a loose vest shape based on a diagram in The Cut of Men’s Clothes, a 1770s-ish one if I remember right.

And a roll of stabilizer. I intentionally cut it big, for shrinkage, but actually I ended up cutting a LOT off later (which I should have taken a pic of, but didn’t). Anyway, then I just kept cutting strips in the various fabrics and semi places them.

And stitched the strips on!

I had a full size pic of it more complete, but it was super blurry. Here’s the back:

Oh here is a cellphone pic:

Anyway, so then I thought this needs pockets.

For the back of the waistcoat I was going to put lace ups… here is a really not great pic to show how I failed at grommeting.

So I did button holes instead, but I don’t seem to have taken a pic of that. And then on to work on the jacket!

I cut leaves while watching Batman: Under the Red Hood (again) and crying on the inside.

This was not enough leaves, and I still have more to go, but it was a start!

This was again loosely cut out after looking at the diagrams in my book, and modifying the pattern I made for my 1850s coat for Dickens last year.