Snow Queen Headdress

Pieces are stiff interfacing, silver cotton for backing, and Japanese silver brocade from fabric swap on the front. I made the headband from electrical wiring scrap that I stabilized with painters tape and covered the top with silver brocade and the inside with cotton flannel from a nightgown. The painters tape seemed like a good idea at the time (it was fast and easy), but when I was sewing things onto and through the headband, the needle would pick up some of the adhesive sometimes and get a bit tacky. Manageable but kind of annoying.

Dragon Con 2015 - A few thoughts

Family matters and other things led to a busy summer and I fell behind on costuming. I ended up not doing Sun Lee, although I'll see if I can do more on that this winter/spring. A lot of struggles and setbacks trying to work on that... I think I'll continue with the parts I have at this point, but in the future I may work with different materials. I have some thoughts on armor - smaller pieces, anyway - but it's going to require me to do some experiments.

I worked on the Snow Queen cloak on the road, which was okay. It's a long drive and I can't read books aloud to L for 16 hours straight anyway.

What I wasn't happy with was having to bring a glue gun and all the possible bits for working on the Snow Queen headdress. It didn't really add to the amount of luggage we had, but it did take up time at Dragon Con and made for a more stressful time.

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I'm also looking at either not making anything for sale to folks at the con next year or at least not in chocolate. It's a challenge keeping chocolate at the right temp for a long drive and then over several days in GA, while trying to get people to pick up their goods. If I do bring something next year, I'll set one or two definite times and places, and people either get their stuff or they don't. The nice thing about food is you can always eat the leftovers on the trip home.  I'm contemplating maple-coated pecans...

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The hand fans worked well with the costumes and it was nice to be able to cool off as needed.

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This year, I'm already well on my way to finishing one of my costumes. Cinderaptor has a dress, plain black choker, head, and wig. I've just about figure out how I want to do the arms and hands - and will likely attach them at the shoulder to the under-dress, which means I'll probably need L to help me put on the over-dress, but we'll see.... and I need to make slippers.  Haven't decided on if I'll have a tail or not.

I think the slippers will be next, and then start work on the Azure Dragon. L still hasn't made up his mind on what he'll be for Chinese Mythological Creatures. I'll give him until February....maybe. It can't be pulled out of his existing wardrobe like most of his previous costumes, so no waiting until next summer :D

So that's two costumes for me for sure, and one for L. I should be able to do Sun Lee this year....I feel like I'm forgetting something....sigh. Well, besides the possibility of doing an Amidala.

Dragon Con 2015 - Part 4 - Twisted Disney

Also on Sunday.

Not New:
- Dress I got as part of modeling for Goth Fae a few year back.
- Net hose (same I wore for Cyclops).
- Slipper shoes from a local clothing swap - like new, so guessing they didn't wear them much or 
  wasn't right size; cute and comfy.
- Jacket - Goodwill find. Cut the sleeves off but saving them for Sun Lee. The jacket is open in the back, laced up with a strip of faux leather through large grommets. This was perfect for putting my wings through
- Wings are from a set of wings I wore for Halloween some years ago, as the Economic Wishful Thinking Fairy. Originally three lobes for a butterfly look, I took out one set of lobes, re-using the straps and part of the joining structure. Had to add more felt to re-build the structure from stash.

Mixed:
- my hair ornament was an old fake weathered butterfly from a floral arrangement I'd made for my mother-in-law years ago (yes, she got a new arrangement this summer), plus jeweled chain I got at Wolfie's (place that sells new stuff but I think a lot of it is past trendiness or something), some new skull beads I put on with wire, and a couple of "leaves" I cut out of scrap from "Shiny". Attached to new alligator clip. Color in photo isn't good -- butterfly is actually blue and silver.

- Weapons and leg sheath. The icicles are used, from eBay. The straps are from L's old ninja uniform. The sheath is from one of my kitchen knives. The two new things are the light -- a little led switched light I stuck in the bottom of the sheath -- and a glue dot that I used to keep the icicles in place.

New:
- Bought the gloves, used them for this costume and also Snow Queen.
- Temporary black hair spray. I totally regret this purchase, should have just gone with my hair unaltered. That stuff got on everything, I had a wicked time cleaning up my skin before getting dressed, and it _NEVER DRIED_.

Even though I enjoy the fancy costumes, it was nice to have one that wasn't too much work (hair color spray aside).

Dragon Con - Part 3 - Steampunk

Sunday!

Steampunk:

Bought shirt online. 

The jacket is modded from a used clothing shop find - cut bottom half of sleeves off, opened upper sleeve to add clock material, reattached lower sleeves and covered seam with decorative stripe on stripe.  Changed out brass buttons for silver ones.

Underbust corset/girdle is made from faux leather, backed with linen, boning is plastic, so it's really more of a fashion thing, but I put a lot of it in. I'll try to take pictures of it later, as it was a kind of weird design I suspect, but I like it.

Skirt is all-new fabric, except for some of the black bias tape, which I got in fabric swap or was left over from a quilting project.  I bought the clock material a few years ago, when we were starting to get into going to Steampunk events. I'd made a vest from a variant on this design (brown as well as black and white), and gotten "helpful" comments from someone at SPWF and put the rest of the fabric into storage. But I love the clock fabric and decided I didn't give a damn that some people might think it was a novice fabric for Steampunk.

The mini-bustle needs some more work; winter project.

The spats I made earlier this year and I use them around the yard when I'm gardening and have worn them hiking as well (tick protection). Two decorative button at the top outside on each, matching the buttons on the jacket. The actual closures are a long velcro strip, because I wanted to optimize tick protection. The buttons do still serve a purpose, in that they inform me as to which leg each one goes on. Linen, lined with tight-weave cotton, both from stash.

Bloomers are up-cycled from a skirt I used to wear for doing garland dancing.

Two hair ornaments. The upper one is made from new organdy and scrap "silky" fabric from the girdle book supplies, pleated onto a piece of felt from a friend's scrap stash. The red jewel is actually a clip-on earring I got from Ocean State Job Lot some years back -- I cut a small slit in the felt and put the clip part through, that's it.  The other ornament is a bow made from some bits I decided I didn't need on the mini-bustle and had trimmed off, plus a bit of silky scrap that I put over the middle -- some type of pleating I think -- attached with a bobby pin run through the stitching.

Close-up of ruffling on the skirt.  Pretty happy with the pleating and the black and white layering; wish I'd made it a little lower down on the skirt.  Perfectly comfortable for a long drive in a car with it's sloped seats, but have to sit closer to the edge of the seat if I'm sitting upright on a regular chair.





I've worn the jacket and skirt since, working 7+ hour days standing at a cotton candy stand, and they function well as clothing.

Dragon Con 2015 - Part 2 - Snow Queen

Saturday:

In the morning we saw the parade and I managed to get a pic or two of Leah Lloyd and the Obscurus Crusade crew. We should have gotten there earlier than we did -- if I go to the parade again it'll either be because I'm in the parade or with contractor stilts on. Still, it was cool seeing Nichelle Nichols:

I think we went to Comic Book Alley in the afternoon? Not sure.

At night was Snow Queen, solo. Too bad that I couldn't get it together for the afternoon, then I could have seen Leah in-person instead of through photos. But I did get to meet a new person, Ivy Star, so that was good.

I should do a separate post on the hat, and will try to do so later. Mostly from scrap and stuff I saved from getting tossed from neighbor's greenhouse, plus the jeweled fiber optic barrettes I made last year for "Shiny".

The cloak is out of the train from my first wedding dress, cut and draped, with little fur "tails" I made from some fake fur -- more of which you can see on the hem of the dress.

The fake fur is trimmed like an ermine or mink coat, cut to have "rows" of fur. Since the skirt is more or less a circle I had to cut the fur in short pieces and cut the sides of each piece at an angle to keep the "rows" going horizontally all around. 

The dress is my first wedding dress. I removed the sleeves, opened the sides and put in strips of elastic (I'm not the same size I was then), and cut off the train. The over-dress is organza and silver lace. I beaded the edges of all the skirt panels as well as frost designs on some of the panels and on the snowflakes on the sleeves, plus a few simple ornaments on the silver trim of the neck opening. The snowflakes I made from pieces of the silver trim.

Foundation is a petticoat. Not bad, but I think it would look better with a stiffer foundation, to make the skirt go out more -- the fur weighed it down quite a bit.

The gloves I was able to wear both for this outfit and for Silvermist the next day. The fan I already had.

Overall I'm not unhappy with this costume, but I'd like to "ice" it up a little more. I'll have to think about that at some point down the line.  I'm pretty happy with the dress modding though, and keeping it separate from the over dress means I have the possibility of using it with some other costume in the future as well.  Oh, and the bow from the original dress became part of the mini-bustle for my black-and-white Steampunk outfit, so not too much waste from this up-cycle.

Dragon Con 2015 - Part 1 - Cyclops

Almost forgot to do this - been busy this autumn, between the house, barn, traveling to CA to help and visit with my mother, and more.

This year we just chilled on Thursday. I was behind on my Snow Queen, so I did a bit of work on that, and set up all the costume accessories for each costume so I could find them each day.

Friday was the Marvel Gender Bender Shoot:

Rockabilly X-Men:

Me and my sweetie:

Close-up of my spiffy shoes:

And one of the full outfit:

I ended up buying a dress, but not for too much. Also bought the shoes (on sale), and gloves. Fishnet stockings I already owned.

The shoes have buckles across the toes that unbuckle, so I made the rosettes with elastics on the back and slid them on and buckled them.

Made the belt and "buckle". The belt's actual closure is hooks and eyes. The "buckle" again has elastics on the back so I could slide it onto the belt and position it over the closure. Close-ups of the rosettes and brooch are in an earlier post.

The glasses I chose for the style and firey lenses. I put paper and painters tape over both sides of the lenses and painted yellow.

The wig is one I bought in the 80s. I set it in curls earlier in the year, tweaking it now and then, and then sprayed and pinned the heck out of it in August. Being an old wig it was kind of set in its ways, so I did have to adjust my original style to one the wig wouldn't fight so much. I couldn't get a completely smooth finish -- the hairs are kind of wirey -- but overall, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

I included a purse as well -- can't really tell in the picture, but it's red and black. It's a circle if you open it all the way, and would look like the X-Men symbol. The inside is blue -- I made it reversible so that I could also use it with my Twisted Disney Silvermist costume. I wanted to have a fan with my costumes this year, and that's where I kept it when I was posing in those costumes.  Some folks really liked the idea of a fan -- I just painted one black to go with both costumes -- might see a few more fans at D*C next year :D

I like this outfit more than I thought I would, and it was nice that I could wear it for more than one shoot.

Wings and other aerial structures

I had a few random costuming thoughts last week. I was messing with bamboo stakes for hanging some Chinese calligraphy pages and was thinking they might not be bad for supporting a wing structure of some type - they're pretty strong and lightweight, also cheap. They do have joints, but depending on the type of wings, fins, or other aerial-type structure, they could definitely work. Then I was thinking about how if you're traveling by plane/bus/train, how would you make them smaller for travel...

So, for something that doesn't require permanent attachment to the frame, one could make the pieces shorter and use joiners to assemble the pieces and then slide them into pockets. Which led to the next idea -- tent poles. You know, the ones with the shock cords joining all the pieces? You can buy them separately at some camp places, but might be something to keep in mind, if you have or acquire an old tent that's no longer serviceable for whatever reason. With a little care you could even take some lengths of pole out and shorten to desired length.

Also, depending on what you're doing, you might be able to use the shock cord poles without using slider pockets, like if you were doing something with lacey or stretchy fabric.