Still working on Talleg. It is a very looooong work in progress. :/ This is way harder than it looks. Or seems like it should be. Or whatever.

This week I am going to talk about scales. I had decided I was going to put fish scales on her breastplate and upper arms. Fish scales seem so....boring. But they are simple enough.

I was still unsure how I was going to implement that part. Last time I did scales, the leaf scales tore the shit out of the rest of the outfit. I need to fix Aoifa's top before I can ever wear her again.

So I thought about other ways to get the scale look. The first thing I tried was cutting scales on the foam and throwing the heat gun on it. It looked....kind of cheesy. Might work for something else, but this? Nah. Besides which, it wouldn't work for the sleeves.

A friend of mine was going to 3d print a fish scale cookie cutter so I could use it as a pattern, but his printer stopped working and doesn't seem fixable. For a while there I was in a quandry. I guess I was just going to have to cut out 500 fish scales and go with that.

Then I went to a meeting. Here in Portland there is an active cosplay community. I have struggled to find anyone who wants to help me or work with me. But I found a group on Meetup.com. It is called the Portland Cosplay Crafter's Association. I went to my first meeting, and it was AWESOME! The people were nice. They are maybe more serious about cosplay than I am. I love to do it, and working with others, but I don'tknow that I would ever want to make a business out of it. But they are talking a cosplay co-op kind of situation. Which I think is a WONDERFUL idea! We can buy supplies bulk for cheaper. We can get together a communal space. We can help each other, fill in gaps in our specialities. This is good. I am all in. And one of them said they have a 3d printer, and if I get something scanable they would print out scales for me.

Eureka! That is awesome and totally waht I need. So I decided instead of going plain fish scale, I would go shark scale. Shark scales are different from fish scales. Shark skin itself feels like sandpaper. That is because shark scales are smaller than fish scales, and pointier.

That looks so badass. After looking at tns and tons of pictures on the interwebtubes, I decided to make then kind of like the one on the left in the picture on the right. So I got to sculpting.

So now I just gotta get them printed. It is going to take a lot of work, but I think it will be worth it in the end.

So this week I worked on elbow and knee armor. I am still having issues getting rid of the fricken seem. One day I will be triumphant. Today is not that day. Sigh.

I started by making a mock up of what I wanted to see how it would turn out. It doesn't look bad, but the stupid obvious seem is still there.

I need to get on with the other parts of the armor, so I decided to try one more time. If the seem was still obvious I would just put a strip and spikes on it. I had black plastic spikes I got at target around Halloween that I haven't used, so I thought those would be a good idea. Um, nope. They refuse to stay put. I tried to glue them twice. Argh sigh. So now I am going to go get googly eyes and try to glue those on. I don't know if the glue will stick now that I have the gilder wax down. But as I said, I need to get moving on the other parts of this outfit.

After I finish the googly eyes, or whatever I finally decide to do with them, I will glue velcro dots inside the corners, so I can attach them to my leggings. Before I work on the leg armor I need to figure out where to place the velcro so I leave that patch open.

So this is the part I have been really excited about. I decided to get my first cosplay wig!

As Talleg is a water genasi, I decided to make her hair blue. As much as I would LOVE to dye my hair blue again permanently, I am still looking for a job. I probably should wait on that. So the next alternative was to get myself a wig. I looked at a bunch of different wig sites. I looked on Amazon. Most were either waaaaaay too expensive or not what I was looking for. The 2 most common places to get cosplay wigs are Arda and Epic Cosplay.

Arda did not have a long haired wig in the shade of blue I wanted. Epic, however, had a wide array of styles in the blue-black color I wanted. And they are mid ranged as well. You can expect a wig from there to run you between $30 and $60. Not cheap, but not top of the line either. Still affordable.

This one is the Hera in blue-black. I found this one on sale, so I grabbed it. It was way longer than I wanted it, but I figured if I don't like it I can cut it down. Was still cheaper than a shorter wig that was no on sale.

One of the mixed messages I got from reading reviews and watching unboxing videos was regarding the thickness of the wig. Some people complained that you could see through the wig easily because it was so thin. This wig was not thin at all.

It has a dark wig cap, and I have a white foam head. I figured it should be easy to see the thin spots. I had to dig pretty deep to get white. I am pretty happy with that.

It was darn hard to catch a picture that really looked like the real color of the wig, though. It came with really long bangs, as they all do. They expect you to cut the bang to fit your face and the style you want. That is fine, except cutting bangs is not my strong suit. I made an attempt. I will probably try to find someone to fix it for me before I actually wear it.

 As you can see, it goes all the way past my butt. My opinion is Talleg would cut it off with a dagger before she let it get in her way. Still deciding if I want to cut it or leave it. But overall, I am happy with the wig. I still need to make minor adjustments to make it fit right, but overall it is comfy and not heavy.

The next thing I needed to worry about was wig caps. I wanted the netted wig cap and the overcap. I ended up getting 2 different brands from 2 different sellers on Amazon. Both sets cost the same, but they were very different in quality. One set, the net was sewn on one end and the overcap is yellowish and flimsy. The other is the open ended net cap I wanted and the overcap is more flesh color and feels sturdier. I want the kind that is not sewn on the end, at least for the netted one. My hair felts easily. If I have to sit and tuck and tuck and tuck to get the hairs up and in the cap I will experience felting. But if the end is not sewn, I can bring it all the way down under my chin, then pull the end that is not elasticised up and over, trapping all the hair inside with not tucking involved. Then I can pin the unsewn end into my hair with the pins I use to keep it back. It is not a total waste though. I found I can use the sewn end ones over my spoolies to keep them from rolling around and unwinding at night. Works great.

As Epic Cosplay wigs don't have clips already in them, I also got some of those. I don't know if I like these kind though. I will have to try them and see how they work long term.

I did try styling the wig. It has been a long time since I last did a braid, much less not on my own head. I am going to have to redo it. But I like the style. I still may want to cut it down a bit, but it will definitely be a loose french braid. I did have a lot of trouble with the ends, though. No matter how hard I tried they kept tangling. I used to have hair that was really long. I have hair that is really felty. I am used to having to work to detangle hair. This was difficult. I think the synthetic fibers mixed with the length made it difficult. I had to cut a couple of chunks out completely. Even using detangler did not help those parts. But for the most part, it is a good wig. Go me.

So I found a refurbished iPad on the Apple site for really cheap.

My old one...the one that I won as first prize in the Douglas Adams contest back in 2012.....she has had a long a fruitful run. I blogged it all if you wanna look back at it. I believe it is Jan through June of 2012. She was a Ipad gen 3. I won it like 4 or 5 months before the gen 4 came out, but right after it was released. Yeah that year they released them really close together. It is a signal of my accomplishment. It is a reminder of what I can do. It is a memory of Stephen Fry (aaaaaaah) calling my work a love letter that was cute but not too precious. It is a memory of Bob Stein looking me up and giving me a call and saying he thought my comedic choices were good, and that he thought I had talent and potential. He told me to contact him when I was ready to go pro. It is also a reminder of how petty people can be, as it is the only part of the whole prize package I actually recieved.

She has served me well. However, years and years of use and a buse has made her....weary. I have struggled for years to keep her going. I personally replaced the battery andthe bluetooth, and I replaced the screen and digitizer at least 4 times. I have an issue with my joints, and that means from time to time my hands just release and stop holding whatever it is I am holding. Sometimes that means the ipad she ended up on the floor. 😞 When I had a good case for her it was fine. When I didn’t....well that is the reason the screen and digitizer was replaced so many times. This last time when I went to replace the screen I found some internal damage that was fatal. Well, almost. She had been dropped so many times the metal tags that hold the LCD screen in place were completely sheered off. Even though the screen works fine, this means it is floating around inside the iPad and it cannot sync with the digitizer. I can’t just get new tabs....I have to get a whole new LCD screen. Which no one has. iFixit has them off and on, but now is not one of those on times. They also charge $45-$50 for one, without the shipping.

So I had to make a decision. Do I persist in keeping her going with bubblegum and duct tape, or do I move on? Moving on felt...wrong. Like cheating on a spouse. She has been a loyal friend, and a memory I will cherish for the rest of my life. It feels wrong to just give up on her. But she is now old enough I can’t update her further than ios 9. And it will be harder and harder to keep her in action. But.....they engraved “Don’t Panic” on the back of her. But if I have to keep putting $40-$50 into her every couple of months, and she will still only be limping along, is it worth it?

Well, perusing the Apple site and finding the cheap refurbished iPad made my final decision. I bought it. And now I am testing Weebly’s newer app by posting from it.

It is sad. I feel like I betrayed a friend. I feel like we have been through so much together and I am just tossing her aside like yesterday’s jam. There is so much I have been able to accomplish just because she was there in my life. So much more I plan to accomplish, and she won’t be there by my side (or on the floor).

​ I am not going to just throw her out though. I will eventually get the new LCD screen and make her work again. Or I will gut her and put her shell in a shadowbox for my wall. For now I feel like I am mourning a friend. Is that wierd?

So

A lot has happened this week. I think I am going to concentrate on one thing per post, though. And today I am going to talk about...you guessed it...the tabard. I did do a mock up tabard to figure out how to make it work. I learned what does work....and what doesn't.

I found 2 sheets on Amazon for cheap. Fabric is flippin expensive these days. I think I paid around $10 for both together. One was red, one white. I think that those will be enough to make the white center and the red strips on the sides. I am an idiot when it comes to sewing, so I decided to use the frabic glue strips I used for Aoifa's skirt to hold it together.  I cut the white bit a little too short, so I decided to use it to test the construction and weathering techniques.

I then cut some of the red into strips. One side of the sheet was already sewn, so I decided to try to use that. I put the freyed side out though so you can totally see the cuts.

After I did both sides, the next thing to do was to practice weathering techniques. I have seen many YouTube videos of people doing it. I thought I would try tea staining, rubbing in dirt, and adding paint blood spatter. Some of it worked, some didn't.

The first thing I did was to cut the edges and frey them. I did not get a picture of that or the process. Sorry. But I just cut it up with scissors then rubbed the hell out of it with a steel wire brush. Just a quick note here, when I can I always get my supplies for this at the local dollar store. My scissors came from there and they are still reasonably sharp after a year of abuse. I also got a set of wire brushes from there. The set had a steel, a brass and a plastic bristle. I used the steel because I felt it would do the most damage in the shortest amount of time.

Next I tried tea staining. Instead of putting the whole garment in a boiling pot with tea, I opted to make strong tea in a mug with salt and blot it on to make the staining less than uniform. Apparently I don't know what that means because it turned out way too uniform. Next time I will make it much blotchier.

The next part I had to wait a few days. I tried to use the paints I have, but none of them had the right color. So I went online and found a paint for DnD minis called Dried Blood. They also had a Dark Rust and Fresh blood, so I got those too. I couldn't find where I put the fresh blood one, but it looks roughly the same as these two, with the exception of the title and a slight variance in the color. I added a bit of water to make it runnier, and tried it out. To be honest, this brand's dried blood is a bit too burgundy. I added some of the rust paint to the dried blood color and it came out perfect. It was roughly one drop rust to 2 drops dried blood.

So overall, I think I know what I am going for now and how to create it. When I do the next one, at the same time I will also do the side pieces for the belt that are meant to match. I need to figure out how wide to make them. Do I make them the same width as the tabard, or wider? I dunno. We will find out. :) I still have no bloody clue how I am going to make that belt work either.