Here we are again, another Monday of Dragoncon progress and nothing else to talk about. Seriously we’re in con crunch mode now so neither of us have done anything but eat, sleep and work on dragoncon stuff.
I was mostly churning out the Jessica headpiece.
Here’s what I started with. It’s built around a headband with kobracast and worbla parts. (I started with kobracast, it was too flimsy, switched to worbla). The forehead piece, part that comes down over my nose and the parts at the temples were the parts I decided needed some backing so that’s where those parts are. There’s also a part that goes around the back of the head just to help support it.
Then I started gluing my trim on. Once i had the trim glued onto the base I started attaching the lower sections.
This is the final look. I made the part that covers the head/neck/shoulders separate obviously if you saw my last post.
Then I spent the next few days beading the hell out of this thing.
I ALMOST had it done by Friday afternoon.
I still have a few more lengths of the smaller beads to attach.
It’s not 100% accurate but it’s never gonna be because I opted to go with trim. But I think it looks cool as fuck so who cares.
This was earlier in the week when it was just partially beaded.
I also finished up the shoes but I have no pics. I did do 2 pairs of shoes – a walking pair and a standing pair LOL. The standing pair is the 5 inch platforms. I did try them on in the photo above and promptly nearly rolled my ankle stepping on fabric. I realized the main issue is that there is no ankle support at all in the platforms so I plan to wrap my ankles when I’m wearing it – not my first rodeo, I used to have to wrap my ankles regularly in my teen years because I was constantly rolling my ankles. Haven’t had an issue with it since…. uuhhhh last time I wore platforms at Dragoncon LOL when I wore Starfire in the parade I rolled my ankle walking to the parade start. It was fine tho.
But yeah just to save myself some trouble I dug out the old pair of wedge boots I was going to use for Johanna years ago and never finished. They’d been cut off at the ankle and had holes down the sides where I’d removed some decorative cording. I painted them the same as the platform boots and covered up the holes with some nailheads. Finished the top edge with some bias tape. They don’t look as cool as the platforms but I did have to put more work in to them to clean them up LOL
(I did try making boot covers prior to painting them. I had some pale gold spandex I tried to make boot covers out of. I got one made and realized it looked cheap AF and why wasn’t I just doing the same thing to these boots as I’m doing to the platforms? So I scrapped that and started painting).
So all that’s left on Jessica is finishing up the last bit of beading, put a snap on the headband for the top veil, and I also want to put some buttons on the sleeves for holding up the smaller shrug piece so it doesn’t move out of place. (That reminds me – I made matching buttons out of the scrap charmeuse that will bustle the length of the dress and also hold up the excess length of the longer veil while I’m walking. I forgot I did that since the last post. Time no longer has any meaning)
Onto Padme —
I FINALLY got the closures redone on the vest. The whole thing just snaps on now and works much better though it was once again a lot of back and forth of putting it on and taking it off and adjusting this and resewing that and it was really annoying.
I am kinda thinking popping the top edge of the beaded piece off, opening up the back and trying to stuff something in the upper point to make it more pointy. That would be really annoying to have to break into all of that. Will play it by ear. If it’s something I have time to do – maybe.
I finally made myself start working on the hairpieces.
Rather suggestive
I made the basic shape out of some cuts of kobracast, with the inside part filled out with some foam, then covered in fleece. Ever since I did my Amidala parade hairpiece back in 2015 with fleece I’ve really liked it for this – it’s more tactical than other fabrics for allowing hair to grip onto it, it’s easy to use, it adds thickness to the piece to cover up any lumps, and you don’t need to hem it if there’s raw edges.
I picked up some wefted extensions Saturday. I was trying to wait until I knew what colour my hair would be at dragoncon – but my colour appointment isn’t until next week, and it would leave me with only… a day and a half to make these and I didn’t want to do that. So I just tried to pick a colour that was sort of an “average” of what my hair tends to look like.
The only thing I could find with a colour I liked was this curly set, so I got that. Trying to get the curls OUT of this was a pain. They just barely loosened up ever after being steamed. I finally took my crimper to them and that worked. I got them sewn onto the inside edge of the hair pieces and then it was time to start foaming the hair around.
Have I ever mentioned how much I hate making hairpieces/styling wigs, etc. I hate working with hair. This pic is NOT a finished thing, I just wrapped the hair around it quickly to see how it would look. And then proceeded to spend about 3 hours last night struggling with it, starting over, trying again, hating it, starting over, etc.
I think the biggest problem is that this hair is SO heat resistant that my hair dryer isn’t hot enough to really make it form over the shape. So knowing that the crimper at 400-something degrees was the only thing to get the curls out, I’m going to test the heat gun on a piece I cut off and see if that makes it behave.
I’m really hoping I can finish them tonight or tomorrow, then all that’s left is assembling the headpiece and finishing my armbands.
What else did I do this weekend? I made a hamburger
Chase needed a hamburger for his Gene costume. He bought the cotton for the “bun” at walmart last week and yesterday I just went ahead and put it together for him. The lettuce is green silk leftover from my Belle library dress – fancy! The ketchup is red spandex and the meat layer is leftover from his Luke poncho.
It would’ve looked better if I could have put a solid layer under the top bun, but we’re trying to avoid making this something GIANT that has to fit in our car. With it all being squishy it’ll be easier to pack.
Also here’s some progress on his Leto armor:
Let’s go over the to-do list:
Padme:
attach panel to vest
Closures on the vest
paint headpieces (started, Chase painted them yesterday)
assemble headpieces on headband
make hairpieces (started…)
paint armbands (started…)
Jessica:
finish beading the shoulder head thing
make frame for face jewelry
bead that thing too (sooo close to being able to mark this off)
finish bustle points
Luke:
Closures on poncho
attach wraps on boot covers
Leto:
Figure out the jumpsuit
Finish putting arm pieces on jumpsuit
Other:
PACK!!! OMG
Make mask for Jessica
I was telling Chase yesterday that I’m not really excited for Dragoncon. Like I feel no anticipation, none of this:
Usually at this point I’m getting butterflies in my stomach. Right now just kinda feel… blah. Not that I’m like, anxious or scared or don’t want to go, just like, nothing. It’s like my brain hasn’t registered it’s dragoncon time yet. Will it? I dunno. It may not be til we pull into Atlanta and see the poop lions.