So this week I go take the Comptia A+ exam, so not much is happening until after that is done.

I did try to assemble my scale maille, but there was too much of a curve so I had to cut them further. I haven't had time to try to assemble again, and I won't until after the exam on Friday.

I am also making rings as I have time. When I need a break from studying I will make 20 or so more rings. I have to get back to studying so I am going to just do a photo dump and come back later to explain.

So...update on the scales.

Do you know how long it takes to cut and melt a hole in 400 spoons? Apparently 10 fricken hours. I sat at a table outside from 1pm until 11pm. Fricken hell that was painful. My joints are still feeling it.

I decided to change the design of the scales a little bit. I was having issues getting the lacing down, so I decided to do them scale maille style instead. That involves one giant hole in the middle instead of several small holes.

Image borrowed from Khelgar HERE

Looks simple, right? Not as simple as I thought.

So I did look into how much it would cost to buy metal scales, just to see. SO for 800 spoons I paid $12. For 1 giant spool of wire I spent $7. For metal snips to cut rings I paid $5. So total, assuming I only need 800 scales, it has cost me $24. Plus the time I put in.

Metal scales all have a pointed tip, and I need them rounded to look like fish scales instead of dragon scales. So the cheapest I found them, pointed not rounded, are $7 for 100. So scales alone, with no rings and not exactly what I want, would be $56. If I wanted to get them rounded I could, but that would be considered custom, so I would be looking at $5 for 10. Yeah, that is completely out of price range. Not even doing the math n that one.

And then rings. Rings are mainly 7mm. After playing around I learned I need 12mm rings. I could not find 12mm rings anywhere. In fact, it was difficult most places to determine the size of the ring sold. They tell you the guage of wire, but not the size of the actual ring. That is extremely frustrating. It might be ok if I were to pay for prefabbed metal scales, but as I can't afford that, I get to make my own rings as well. Fortunately that is not that difficult.

So...as I said, last Friday I spent all fricken afternoon and evening cutting spoons. And I only got halfway through all I needed. I still have 400 left to cut.

That thing I am using to cut the spoons is a woodburning tool with an exacto knife tip screwed in. It worked really well. That part went really quickly, actually. Once I figured out to use a template and draw the lines with a Sharpie it went pretty fast.

The part that was tedious was the hole. I swapped out the knife tip for a punch tip. The punch tip was way too small, so I also used the large end to melt the hole. The biggest issue was the melted material. When I was cutting, I was removing unmelted material. That was easy. When punching the holes, I had a ton of melted material. And it just didn't easily scrape off the tool. I had to sit and wait for it to drip off it. And if I didn't wait long enough, it would deposit the excess plastic onto the next spoon. It was so fricken difficult. I did not get any pictures of that part of the process.


But the next phase was to prime them. A while back I was gifted an air brush unit. One of the small ones used for painting minis. I had a 3 oz bottle of black air brush primer, so I used that. I got through all of the front, and the majority of the backs. I need more primer.

The next step is to rub them all down with silver gilders wax. That part takes forever but is worth it. I will then put a light irridescent coat of powder on the top to make them look more like fish scales and less like plain metal. Here is how they look now.

Will update when I get more progress.

So I am still working on Talleg. I have a few pieces in the works, but I decided to talk about the scale armor today. I am also almost done with her tabard. The belt is shaping up. I will post about those when theya re closer to done.

So I have been trying to decide how to do the fish scale armor. I wanted it to look like shark scales. I just don't think I have the level to do those yet. I love what I started, but it is not practical at this moment. So I found a partial package of plastic spoons I got from the dollar store, and it started me thinking. They sort of look like fish scales. If I want to put some time into it I might be able to get them to look like shark scales.

So I pulled them out and cut off the handles. Then I pulled out my soldering iron/wood burning tool and turned it on. I used it to punch 3 holes in the spoons.

The idea being the 3 holes are used to tie them together like lamelar. Looks like it will work pretty good. I need to figure out how to get the rows to attach properly so they are offset and not lined up, but otherwise I kind of like how they look.

So next I need to make them a different color than white. It is currently dark so instead of wasting Plasti-dip I opted to use my new air brush to spray them with black primer. I was really surprised. A little goes a loooong way.

They look alright. I think this will work. I next tried out the gilders wax I bought earlier so see if the primer will take the wax. Looks like it might work ok. All I have is silver and emerald. I did a test with them. They are ok. I think I need to see if I can find a light metalic blue instead.

But this will work and I am kind of excited. I ordered 800 spoons off Amazon, and as soon as they get here I will work on getting the fish scale armor done.

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

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.

So I have been busy on working on Talleg. I started out trying to figure out how to do the breastplate. Boob armor...my nemesis. Sigh.

Last time, I had several failures before I got a pair of oblong boobs that had a bunch of flaws. That did not matter, as most of them were covered up by leaf scales. This time round there will be no scales to cover my sins. I don't know why I did not get pictures, but I failed at trying to make a pattern 3 times. The last time I kept the tape boob as it was, so I had a model and basic shape to compare to if I get something else.

I then found a dome pattern set online, so I bought it and printed it out. That is what I have been playing with. I decided based on my mock up that I should do the 7inch for the boobs and the 5 inch for elbows and kneese. I started with the 5 inch patttern.

The white trim is door strip insulation. I was going to do trim with it, but I think it is too thick for that purpose. As you can see, the lines are crooked and puckery. Overall though, it is a workable shape. It is what I was looking for. If only I can get rid of the buckles and gaps.

So next I tried a 7 inch dome. this is for the boob parts. The seems turned out a little better, however there are still gaps. My biggest issue seems to be the very outer edge of each seem does not want to stay glued. It pull back just enough to make a visible seam. Argh.

It is the right size and shape, though. It looks good next to my tape mock up.

So I did a bit of research, and most people who have this problem use siliconized acrylic caulking to fill gaps in seams. So I pulled out my dollar store caulking and had a go. It was so hard. The end result....not so pretty. And just when I thought I got it looking decent, I sprayed it with Plasti-dip and rubbed it with silver gilding wax...and there I saw how terribly obvious that was. It looked like welded seams. Which would be fine if that were the look I was going for. But it isn't.


So try number 3. This time I used sandpaper to try to knock it down. After a couple of hours my hand got sore. It was not a practical solution for someone who has joint issues. Most people seem to use a Dremel. I don't have one accessible to me right now. There is one in my Pod, but I cannot get into my Pod easily, due to the nature in which they store the Pods. I hesitate to buy a whole new one. Especially when they are so expensive. I did a little looking around though and found a little 2 speeder low powered used one for $20. Even had a case.

So tonight I used the Dremel to sand down the latest test. Then I thought since I can't use the others as they are, I might as well see if I can sand them down too and rescue them. I ended up having to sand off all the Plasti-dip, and this cause divots and dents. Who knows...maybe it'll look like armor wear. As soon as we have a dry day I will go out and spray em all with Plasti-dip and rub with gilded wax to see how they look.

I did do Periscope livestreams of this process. In several different scopes. If you wanna see all the fails, feel free to go take a gander. My handle there is @TeaWeaselStopMO.

So my last one was tragic, difficult, frustrating and hella fun. I loved creating Aoifa. I still have a lot to do on her, but I wanted to try something different. I have decided to create a cosplay outfit for one of my DnD characters Talleg. Talleg is a water genasi soldier cleric. After reading up on water genasi, I have decided she looks mainly human, but her hair is dark blue. Her skin has a slight blue tint. I found a picture that sort of fits my vision of her.

I like the tabbard and the belt. This soldier looks so badass. Talleg won't be exactly like this, but I will definitely be making the tabbard and the belt.

I suck at drawing. I mean majorly, terribly suck at drawing. I did try sketching out the pieces I thought I would need, so I can tackle this a piece at a time. For better or worse, here they are.

I have no idea how to make half this stuff, but it will be fun trying. the tabbard will be made from white and red sheets. I found some cheap sheets on Amazon - spent about $10.00 for them both including shipping. I can't sew and I don't have a sewing machine. I plan on using Aleen's Fabric Fusion tape to stick the pieces together. It worked so well for Aoifa's skirt and sleeves.

I also have a cheap black fitted tunic on the way from Amazon. I plan to use that for the "gambeson". I will attach arm armor to the sleeves.

I decided because she is a water genasi, all the scales will be fish scales. I am unsure how I am going to pull that part off yet. The leaf scales on Aoifa's breastplate were fun, tedious, and tore the shit out of the sleeves every time I moved my arms forward. I don't want these to do that. I am going to experiment a bit. I found an stl file for a 1 inch fish scale cookie cutter. A friend is 3d printing it out for me. I will try either cutting into the foam with it and running a heat gun over it, or failing that put ink on it or trace around it then cut the bits and run a heat gun over it. I am unsure how that will work out. It may make em look awesome, it may make em look too 2 dimensional. We'll see. And that may not work for the sleeves of the upper arms. The scales will go on the upper arms and chest above the  breastplate, and the bottom part of the breastplate over the stomach and sides and back.

The forearms will be strip armor, as will the thighs. I have an extra pair of black leggings I intend to attach that to. Instead of greaves I am just going to make her boot covers so it looks like my ugly construction boots are actually knee length boots.

I also intend to make bowls for the elbows and knees, and I am hoping those match the boobs.

Which is a whole nother keetle of fish. I have struggled with that. I tried multiple different techniques for Aoifa's before I said good enough they will be covered by leaves anyway.

Talleg's will not. I want it to look like hammered metal that has been worn. I have been searching the intertubewebs, and most people who are doing tutorials for this part of the armor skip over the part I need....how to make the taped up bit into a pattern. They just say make a dart. A dart? Where? How? How big? How wide?

Several different interations later and I still can't get it to work. Aoifa's I finally just cut em down the middle. That created boob armor that was oblong instead of round. That was fine for Aoifa, but won't work for Talleg.

I finally got a tape pattern exactly how I want the final product to work. I just have no idea how to make it into a flat pattern that when glued together make that exact shape. I tried cutting it up twice. I hesitate to do it again. Especially as I have not picked up any new information since the last one.

I must admit I have a possibly undeserved bias against Evil Ted. If you don't know who he is, he has a heavy online presence regarding cosplay builds. He is ubiquitous, but most of his stuff will not work for me. Well, they might, if I was good enough to know how to alter his techniques for my body size and shape. But I don't. That was something I never could get in the 5 years I spent trying to learn how to sew. And no one really has added any clues as to how to make it work for me. Evil Ted generally does stuff for men and impossibly unrealistically skinny women. When I tried his techniques on smaller boobs I was successful. but I couldn't get it to translate directly to my size.

There are a couple of larger women who have tutorials out there, but they go straight from taping up thier boobs and torso to pieces of pattern. And they don't explain how they got there or why they cut where they did. I think there is some step in there that is obvious to everyone else but is the giant gap in instructions for me.

Anyway, today I was perusing Evil Ted's webpage, against my better judgement, and found he has created a dome pattern. In different diameters. Though they are not boobs pieces per se, I could make a dome that is around 7 inches and cut down from there. That is possibly doable. I bought the downloadable PDF and will try it tomorrow. Or Thursday, depending. This pattern might also work for the elbow and knee pieces. So possibly there is that problem solved.

As I am working on Talleg, I intend to livestream it on Periscope. I don't have set times and dates, but my handle there is TeaweaselStopMO. If you follow me you will get notifications when I am live. You can see all the wonderful frustrating fail I have been having lately. There are already 2 replays up.

Wow, this has ended up a very long post. I have a feeling when I talk about this build, it will be.

So Kumoricon was this last weekend. Sigh.

It did not go as planned. First of all...here is the iteration that ended up at the con..

The greaves did not work, so they are conspicuously absent. Other than that it looks almost what I wanted. I did not have time to get makeup worked out. Well, I tried. But I have not the makeup knowledge. And the white I got had adverse effects. I am apparently allergic. First it turned blue, then my eyes started swelling up. Then I got itchy lumps, and I am still dealing with those. Today they were so bad I couldn't walk and thus missed the last day of the con. :( And the top...

Well, it looks great, but that fabric is weak. So fricken weak. It disintegrated within a few hours of the con. Unfortunately, though they looks great, the leaf scales are also grabby fuckers. Every time I moved my arms, they grabbed the already precarious sleaves. After a while thye started falling apart. I ended up borrowing a tshirt from a friend to keep from exposing my shame to the kiddos. I need to figure out a better way to implement that.

But Saturday at the con was the DnD open. It was fun, but also frustrating. It was not well written, so there were huge holes in implementation. You don't have a timed side adventure with many, many arbitrary parameters, then expect the player to know the paramenters. You can't possibly complete a timed game like that. One fun part, though...THIS HAPPENED!!!

This, my friends, is a teleporting T-rex. And he rolled a mondo D20 the size of a baseball. the guy on the left is my friend Krush. My friend Krush was playing a character that has polymorph And he turned me into a great ape. Great Apes have 157 HP. They ahve an armor class of 12, so easliy hit, but can withstand a ton. So basically, we had a Kaiju fight on our hands. T-rex vs KING FLIPPIN KONG!! We almost won too, if the encounter hadn't run out of time.

But anyway, I wish I had more to report. I went to several panels on Friday. But because of joint pain I ended up going home early. The DnD lasted from 9:30am to 6:30pm on Saturday, and I did not get much time to do anything else. We even had only 30 minute break for food in the middle. Barely had time to get that.

So the torso armor and the horns worked well, the skirt is ok. But the shirt...I really need to rethink that. Krush suggested I try a bodysuit. See if I can get one that is flesh colored and glue the fabric to it a bit better so it doesn't get ripped off or disintegrate. I will think about it. For now, I need to go lay down and put my ankle up. I really wish this would jsut stop happening.