The last week had begun and I was pretty stressed. I had until friday to finish my costume, to create a commission and to write an cosplay tutorial for a german magazine. So, I had to hurry a bit.
The main costume was already done, but as always the missing details and the tiny things are some of the most time consuming work steps. One of these steps were the bracers. If you've already read my older posts, you should be able to see that I used Wonderflex for this part. As always I used the sandwich technique and covered the result with some glue, fabric and bias tape.
Now it was time for the shoes. After a long, exhausting trip trough every shoe store in my city I finally found the perfect shoes for my costume. With some black leather and bias tape I added ankle boots and this part was done too.
The head piece was a bit more complicated. Or at least it should have been, but because of the bad reference picture I was not able to make out what I had to create. In addition I had very little time, so I didn't put so much effort in this detail. He he, the only thing I really like is the gem. I used the same technique I already showed you in my gem tutorial and the result turned out pretty nice.
Now I had to add a wig. I got an awesome one from myCostumes who was also the store I got my Alexstrazsa wig from. And again I was amazed by the quality of this wig. I guess, I cut one pound of hair away and there were still a LOT hair left. Well... take a look. :)
I'm also not sure, if I really create the same hair cut like the artist drawed, but I did my very best to come as close as possible to the reference. Or... at least, I tried.
Yeah, I really had a lot of problems because of the low quality of my reference and the dynamic in the picture, but I hope despite of all my mistakes it looks at least a bit like in the picture. And as always it was a pretty amazing feeling to wear it for the first time.
The only problem was, that I still needed a weapon. I tried to create the staff in these days, but just had no chance because of the lack of time. I also started to build the ice sword but I was not really satiesfied with the result. So, I used Friday for my very last chance to create a weapon. Don't wonder, you won't find this one on my reference. I was just sick of trying and used my own imagination this time. I thought, a fire sword would be also a nice fitting weapon for this costume.
Here you see a cut and sanded piece of balsa wood, which is just an awesome material for swords. It's pretty easy to work with, lightweight but also pretty breakable. To avoid any damages I covered the blade with wonderflex. You see, this stuff is usable for just about everything!
And as always I had to work with Gesso and to sand this, too. It was not a big deal, because I used an orbital sander but I'm pretty sure, this step is pretty anoying if you don't have one. Then I used hot glue to connect it with solid wood and create a grip. The rest consisted of some modeling clay for the blad details, leather and acrylic paint (which was made my husband by the way). It's a pretty easy prop, but Benni gave it such a nice paint job, that I really felt in love in the result. He is a really awesome painter!
And then just a few hours left for the last steps for my commission. I created the base already some days ago and now I was really happy, that I just need to add the details and the paint job.
As always the first job was to draw a pattern. A breast plate is a bit tricky and I didn't want to experiment as much as I already did for my Aion armor. So this time I used the same techquiue I already used for my Alexstrazsa top: I covered it with painters tape, draw the pattern on, cut it out and copied it at the Wonderflex parts. Now I had a perfect copy of my bra and was able to keep on working with it. Now I had to add some additional armor layers and the details.
And this was the final result. I also painted part of it, but didn't make any photographs. I was too ashamed about my paint job... Sadly Benni already worked on my sword at this moment and was not able to help me. Oh, I'm bad at painting. Almost as bad as I am at sewing...
Enough of the sad stories! Despite of the lack of many skills, I was able to finish my costume, my prop, my commission and my cosplay article in time. Yeah, I worked till 3 pm, but I was done. Sadly the weather of the following convention was not the best, but a photoshoot will follow soon. Hopefully I'll manage to get better pictures than this one. So, look forward for a nice upcoming gallery and my next project I'm already working on: Druid Tier 9! Be busy and creative, guys! :)
