Paint your Dragon!

Gonna use an oil base paint, because my Dragon's pine!! Or craft foam and paper mache...same thing!

Two last minute creations that I wanted to add to this costume ensemble! Because who doesn't like working under pressure? First, we have the battle axe for Astrid! Yay! My friend said she would paint it, so my part is done!

Second, the tail! I originally bought a storm drain pipe as a tail, but it was disastrous....so disastrous there is no photo evidence! Mwahahaha! So, I used the leftover chicken wire I had from the head construction and covered it with leftover craft foam! Ta daaaa!

Next, painting everything! Face masks are my friend!

Generally assembled body!!! Ha ha, I totally forgot to include the head in any of these photos, so I guess it'll be next time!

Dragon feet and wings!

So my basic form was all crafted, I just had to add some great little details to the feet!

I used a lot of the leftover foam I had to cut longer strips and glued them on.

They became a core to the craft foam claws I needed to add.

Much hot gluing later (too much hot gluing later!) the happy pair! :D

Next was painting them.... I thought that if I put a base coat down, it would fill in a lot of the holes and dry, then I could add the blue on top! Yes...it didn't work.

It looked horribly splotchy (and this is one paint can later!!) in the dark brown... I let it dry and then added the light blue layer...which ate up another paint can...

Then I painted the dark blue on the bottom (which ate up that can) but everything was looking great! And then....I accidentally grabbed the wrong can and sprayed white on there!! So, yeah. Going to let that sit until I'm un-mad at myself!

The wings were simple, arrange, pin, sew by hand!

I sat it on the chair to make sure the wings were generally the same.  One wing was off, but I hadn't started sewing, so it was an easy fix!

Dragon wings and test run!

I was hanging up some clothes when a hanger (plastic) snapped under the strain. It was annoying, but then I realized that the hanger was the exact length of my shoulders! And all of a sudden, I knew how I was going to make those wings attach to the dragon!

First I melted the hula hoop over my stove to the exact shape I wanted. (Heat gun=expensive!) Then I cut a piece of foam that was slightly bigger than the hanger.

Next I cut up another hanger and sort of wove it back and forth between the foam/hula hoop and the main hanger. I enforced it with some leftover wire I had!

After that, I found a removable strap that belongs to a purse I never wear, so I used that as my harness!

Quick check with the head to see if the wings were perfectly spaced!

Test Run with my friend as Astrid!!!

The costume moved really well, everything stayed in place, and it was comfy! (Well, considering I'm wearing a giant dragon head!)

Bottom of the Barrel!

Supercon is coming up, so I need to get the body of the dragon finished so I can paint all of it! :D

I decided that the head and feet are the most important part of the dragon, so the body just had to generally hold up the head and be able to attach things to it!

I used a hula hoop and craft foam to create the body! Ha ha, I feel like I'm wearing a barrel!

Foam became sort of suspenders, they also pad my top so the head can rest comfortably!

Next, foam legs!
They were so cute, I almost didn't want to add the feet!

But I did anyway.

And here we have the basic outline! It's all coming together!!!

Zee lovely Ears!

I am so happy to show off my lovely ears!!!  They peeled so nicely off of the clay and there were no tears in the latex!

Yay! Now all I have to do is paint them skin colored and they will be so pretty!

On another note, I finished Agitha's necklace! It's really adorable! Maybe I could wear this normally? Hum....

Foam Butterflies and Dress Construction!

Agitha has these beautiful butterflies going up her dress so I wanted to make them super durable, so foam seemed the obvious choice!

Draw, cut and pop! Butterfly ready!

Except I wasn't too happy with how this one turned out....

So I took it apart and tried hot gluing it together....but I wasn't a fan of that either.

Next I made another one, and I thought it was cute but it looks more like a bow than a butterfly... I can't decide!!

Instead of deciding, I moved on to the bodice of the dress! Recognize that blue dress? Yes, it's the trashy one I picked up at the thrift store and cut apart! Yay! It had this great boning in the boob part, so I reused it in the dress!

Then I decided to start sewing the scallopy part for the top and middle part of the dress!

I kinda burned myself out by cleaning my apt and doing errands and stuff, so I just put my dress generally together....meaning I just laid out the fabric pieces and and took a picture! Ha ha ha!

I was thinking of adding that pink lace to the top and bottom, but I'm not not convinced.... It looks pretty cute as is! :D

Latex Ear Making!

Instead of buying some latex ears, I decided to use the two bottles of liquid latex I had lying around my house and make my own!

It wasn't actually all that exciting....I had to keep layering and layering it!

Twenty layers in....I hope this works!

Agaitha costume time!

So in between waiting for all those layers of glue to dry, I have slowly been making my little Agitha costume!

So puffy, so cute!
Anyway, so I had to make a petticoat to make sure my super heavy fabric would be nice and poofy! I was going to buy a classical puppets petti, but it takes four weeks to get here......

It really was just folding the fabric and sewing and folding and sewing etc... The most exciting part was cutting apart this trashy dress for the top of the petti and using this super cute elastic!!

Okay okay, I lied, the most exciting part was actually having a new petticoat!

Next I am going to make latex ears for her, (since I don't have massively, adorable, long ears) so I decided to make the skeleton out of chicken wire and coat it with polymer clay.

First skeleton was very....well..a true skeleton frame!

Second skeleton was bolstered up more with wire. Honestly, I think they were both about the same to work with...Next time I'm just using tin foil!

Then I baked my ears! Ha ha ha ha!

Tomorrow I'll probably finish up the latex coating part. I want at least five layers for the ears!