It has been a very very busy month. I can't believe I have not posted in so long.

So, today I am going to share pics of my in progress rebuild of my breastplate. I am so tired. I finally got my stuff out of storage. I had to empty the Pod container all by myself, and ever since my joints have been randomly failing. I can't do anything to make it better. Carrying around heavy things is something on the rheumatologists no-no list. But Pods really soaked me on "fees" and I had no money left to hire anyone to help. I don't really know many people here, and didn't feel like guilting my coworkers to help, as I have to work with them in a small room in the middle of a noisy data center. This morning I was going up the stairs to do my hair before work, coffee cup in hand, when my right ankle and left knee gave out and I fell down the stairs and spilled my coffee everywhere. Da kitteh was SOOO excited. She found the biggest spot and hunched over it, growling if I got close.

Did I mention my kitty LOOOOVES coffee? She is so funny. The first time I drank coffee when she was living with me, she kept trying to put her head in my coffee cup. I explained to her that coffee is for closers, and she was a kitty so would never be a closer. She looked at me a second, meowed loudly then walked away. Ever since she has been desperate to get coffee. She will sneak over my shoulder and try to drink from my cup. She will sneak in the side and try drink it if I hold it too low. I have to hold on to my cup or put my hand over the top or she is drinking it. :/ I dropped some coffee beans. She found some I missed. She licks them or sucks on them...never chews them. I thought I confiscated all of them, but from time to time she shows up with one and starts tearing around the house.

Anyway....

So here ya go. I decided to tear apart my breastplate because it was ugly and not very functional. I couldn't find my dome patterns, so I just cut apart the old ones and used them as a pattern. I think it looked ok.

Then I took some armatur wire and plied it and made a frame. I used a glue gun to glue the boob cups in, then started to cover it with 2mm foam. I haven't finished that part yet. My idea for the rest of it is to cover it with kelp leaves. I was originally going to sculpt kelp leaves out of Foam-Mo. However that did not work out so well. So I ordered som plastic ones off Amazon, and I have started spraying them down with black primer.

So it has been a few weeks. I have actually been sort of productive. Along with working full time, trying to get my household sort of settled, studying to take the AZ 100 exam, and trying to finish my schoolwork, I have also been inspired to work on my Talleg cosplay.

If you remember, I kind of was at a standstill for a while. I am struggling to make the spoon maille work. I am struggling to make the chaine maille work. The breastplate was a travesty.

So...I was watching a Twitch streamer make some of her EVA foam armor, and I got inspired. I also got inspired to pull out the makeup and play around with it.

I have never been good with makeup. As a teenager it annoyed me, and as an adult I just never got it. This does not help with doing cosplay makeup. At this point all I do IRL is some coverup from time to time and lipstick. To be fair I love dark lipstick. But that is about all I do.

So this is the 3rd time trying to make it work, and I think I am getting a bit closer to ok. Here are some before and after pics of this time.

Better. Not great yet though. I went a bit too heavy handed with the dark blue for contouring. Under the eye is supposed to be a bruise. Yeah....noooo. Looks like blood though, so I may use that technique. Just not for a bruise. I think it needs more yellow and purple, maybe. And a little less heavy handed. My lips are also very lopsided. That is because they are. Looks like I have had a stroke or something. It is waaaay more pronounced in the makeup. I need to learn how to make that less obvious.

And the worst thing...the eyes. I have always reacted badly to eye makeup. I finally found stuff that will be ok, and I have no fucking clue how to apply it appropriately. The blue face makeup needs to get closer, and I need to learn how to do eyeliner.

I have a blue wig that goes with this, but I could not find it before I took the pics. I am still unpacking moving boxes and hadn't found that particular box yet. I did last night. I guess I need to try this again so I can see the full effect. I also need to get finishing/fixing spray and face primer. Those are both easily doable though. Just not till the next paycheck, as I am still trying to get my Pod outta hock. Well, not hock technically, just out of storage. They are expecting way more than they quoted when I first started storing it. I am hoping to get it and have all the contents by the end of this month.

SO the next thing I am working on is redesigning and redoing the breastplate. Because she is water genasi, everything in her armor is nuatical/water themed. I was watching this Twitch person making her breast armor, and got inspired to try something new. I found this stuff :

That is all for now. I will update as things progress. Which is slowly right now as I work through a ton of life stuff.

So I have a ton of holes in my armor that look really bad. I am running out of time to complete this, as the con is 7th of Sept. So I decided to just try to make some easy simple 4-in-1 chain maille to fill in those spots.

All I have is shiny aluminum 16 gage wire, and I have no more money to buy any, so that is what I used. I am in the middle of the second sleeve. I figured I would make a strap to tie them together and strap em to my person. That may not be what happens after I try it out, but that is the plan.

The principle behind the 4-in-1 is to put 4 rings onto 1 ring, then attach those 5 ring sets together to make the piece. It took me a while to get it, but after I finally wrapped my head around the concept it went fairly smoothly.

I am running out of rings, and I have completely run out of wire. I still have torso and legs to cover. So I have some 18 gage wire, so I guess that is what I will make the lower body chain maille out of. It'll be fine, right? I still intend to finish the spoon maille. I just haven't had time and I won't have time to complete it before the con. This is just intirim stop gap measure maille.

Neglectful blogger has been neglectful. But busy.

Talleg is supposed to be done for Rose City Comic Con, which is here in a couple of weeks. I do not think I will get the spoon maille done. But everything else is progessing nicely.

Mainly done, I suppose. The vambraces need leather straps and buckles. I am waiting for leather strapping to come in from Amazon. I am also going to replace the belt strap with leather before I attach that belt buckle. I am working on the thigh armor, which will look exactly like the vambraces only thigh sized. And I will rivet it in the middle as well as the edges. That too will need straps. Then I will just need to decide how to do the upper arms and torso. Cause those will eventually be the spoon maille. I may just try doing some kind of intirim maille look thing for now. I also need to get my +1 mace done. I am making it light up and it will be a flange mace with angry waves as the flanges. I am kind of excited.

But seriously...I am really really happy with how the gorget turned out. That is the last pic in that bunch of pics. I had a few false starts, but it got there in the end. I used a SCA leather gorget pattern and modified it. The first one I did out of 2mm foam. It looked great, except the trim looked like it had been done by a drunk person and it felt like it was too flimsy to last long.

I opted to use real rivets. They are cheap leather rivets, meant for decoration only not real work, but they will do. For $8 I got a set that had a hole cutter, 30 rivets and caps, an anvil and a setter. Amazon has those cheap buckles for 50 for $10. They are all different sizes, which is what I needed. I intend to use them for the vambraces, leg armor, etc.

OK this is getting long, so I am going to leave it here. One day soon I will do a post talking about the silver gilders wax I used to make the armor shiney. But for now, I need to get back to it.

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.

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 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.