My still-not-so-finished costume project currently presents itself as a giant, fluffy monster, lingering in the corner of my bedroom. The pile seemingly is just about to devour my bed, and then me. Probably in that order. (But maybe, if I manage to defeat the white beast, it will eventually become a petticoat.)
Also, there’s a peak at another, less frightening part of the project. It involves wood turning and playing with leather scraps. And paint:
Last week I worked on the steel bones (I even bought a crazy expensive shiny new bolt-cutter-thingy that makes cutting strange metal bits really enjoyable!)
Then I spent a few hours torturing my neigbours – in an attempt to get all those rivets to behave. A “tool” had to be built in order to beat them into submission (quite literally). Also, I hurt myself. There was blood.
I wonder if the corset will be finished by the 8th. I am almost done with the embellishments, but there are a few things I haven’t worked out yet.
And then there are the skirt and the petticoat … I haven’t even started thinking about them, but we’ll see …
… it also involves a lot of elbow grease. And swearing. And heat shrink tubing. And power tools. And fire. And maths.
sewing
great outfit, no?
and a little bow :)
These are for a costume and will go under a petticoat/skirt. I’m also working on said skirt, the petticoat, and a corset right now. There will probably be some sort of ruff (and I would really like to make a jacket to go with the outfit, but that seems highly unlikely).
They are based on the Madeleine Bloomers, but I modified them quite a bit: I added height in the back, and also made the legs slightly longer.
The pattern is nice and I absolutely love that because of it a lot of people are sewing bloomers now. But I have to say that it does not really work for my body shape. Nothing that can’t be fixed with adding a bit of height though … I also noticed that the inseam-lenghts of the front and back pattern pieces are quite different, so be careful.
I was going for frilly and lots of lace, so instead of sewing a channel and buttonholes for the ribbon as the pattern suggests, I sewed on some sort of buttonhole tape (together with 3 other kinds of black and white lace and ribbon) and threaded white ribbon through it.
My Halloween costume from 2011. I used the same technique, but made everything quite a bit bigger (14 point instead of 6). The antlers are painted blue and silver, then aged with a bit of black paint.
This is the pair of antlers I made for the tutorial.
+++ I posted this tutorial on Craftster quite some time ago, but I thought it wouldn’t hurt to have it here as well +++
They make a great weekend project, as the small amount of papier mâché takes just a few hours to dry. I think the pair for the tutorial took about 5 hours, but that includes picture-taking too.
At first we’re going to build the base out of wire/cable:
Decide how big you want your antlers to be and how many points you want, maybe it would be a good idea to draw a sketch first. The size of your finished antler is the length between the tip/end of your wire and the first bend. Don’t cut the wire yet!
Now bend a piece of wire for every point of the antler. Use your pliers to get all the tips as pointy as possible.
Twist all your individual pieces together. Then wrap a single strand of wire around the very bottom of the antler to get that bulge where the antlers attach to the deer’s skull. Play around until you get a shape you like, then just secure the loose ends – I made loops so I could hang them to dry later.
Now add a layer of masking tape. That will get you a smoother surface and the papier mâché will stick so much better. It’s a good time to get the overall shape right, but make sure that you don’t add too much material to the tips.
If your antlers look at least remotely like that, it’s time for the papier mâché ;D
Prepare lots of narrow strips of torn newspaper. You will also need the wallpaper paste and a paint brush now.
I think that part is pretty self-explanatory. Add newspaper strips until both pieces have a nice even layer of papier mâché. Work on the general shape but don’t bother about the details too much, we’ll get to that in a second.
Now that the base is done, we will work on the surface: Take fine strips of newspaper and twist and fold them a little. Then attach them to the antlers with your wallpaper paste using a screwdriver or something similar to give your antlers the typical, slightly furrowed surface.
Now you can hang them to dry for a few hours – I just left mine overnight. It won’t take too long, but make sure everything has dried thoroughly before you start painting.
Antlers usually have this little dots/balls/whatever they are called. Starting at the bottom, gradually starting getting smaller and fewer towards the top. I get that effect by adding lots of tiny dots of hot glue.
It can be a bit tricky to get the paint to adhere to the hot glue in the next step, but it really helps to give everything a coat of hair spray before you start painting.
Paint the whole thing in a bone-ish colour and let it dry. I mixed ochre, white and a tiny bit of red to get the colour I wanted.
After the bone-layer has dried, paint everything dark brown. For that one I mixed ochre, black, a bit of white, a bit of green and a bit of red. Wipe the dark paint off from the parts where the bone shows through while the paint is still wet. Just imagine how the deer basically does the same by rubbing his antlers against trees and fighting with other deer ;) Just don’t take away too much of the brown.
Now the last step is to give your antlers a protective finish. If you are using water soluble paint, try to be careful when applying the first layer of varnish. I used a matte one, but my antlers still ended up being too glossy, so I put a bit of face powder on top of the finished antlers.
I somehow forgot to take a picture of the completely finished antlers, so here they are pre-varnish.
Tadaaa, you are done!
