Once more, with feeling
Aug. 20th, 2016 11:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
auntiemeeshI'm very nearly done with the Death costume, I can't even believe it! I don't think I've ever been done this early before.
This week has been a bit frustrating because only the conceptually challenging bits were left so I spent a lot of time thinking about how I wanted to do something, trying it, discarding it, and starting over. But this is what I've ended up with.
The overall look (it fits better on me than on the dressmaker form):
I ditched the baldric; the pleather I picked out looked great but it was a bit too soft and didn't hold its shape well enough once I added the weight of the little purse. Instead, I sewed some little gear bits to the belt of the corset and attached the purse to them.
I wanted to have some fun little bits that screamed Steampunk despite the lack of appropriate colors or fabrics in my outfit. So I added some little glitter vials on a chain but I didn't want to, as the song says, Just Glue Some Gears On It, so I had to have some meaning/use for everything I added. These are the physical embodiments of the souls I've collected. The colors represent elements of the souls - black would be for dark, tortured souls, for example.
Now I'm getting to the bits that nearly caused me to give up in despair because I couldn't think how to do them just the right way. Every good Death needs her pale horse and obviously I'm not taking a real horse to DragonCon. The whole original prompt for this costume in the first place was to do a serious traditional death outfit (dark cloak with no visible face etc) paired with a child's hobby horse. Obviously I've drifted well away from that starting point. The idea morphed into doing an elegant horse head cane, and then attaching the scythe to the baldric so I wouldn't have to carry things in both hands. But I couldn't find a nice cane for cheap (surprise, surprise!) and eventually settled on a pendant with an image of a horse inside it. I spent several days searching images of horse skeletons and finally found this one - an articulated skeleton posed by Walter Varcoe. This, I have to say, is my very first successful photo manipulation - the original can be seen here.
The scythe - I'm not 100% happy with it, but it's good enough to use if I don't find the energy to come back to it later.
And last but not least, the hourglass. I've spent days trying to figure out the best way to attach this without it looking too clumsy or unbalanced. This is the one thing that still needs a little work - currently the harness for it is just pinned together, but it's a simple sewing job that will only take a few minutes, at some point maybe tomorrow when my eyes and brain are slightly more functional.
I'm still practicing the makeup and trying to decide the best approach. I like the full-on skull makeup, but with the costume, I still think the pallor look might work better. I might have to try both with the costume and hat on to get a full sense of what works best.
This week has been a bit frustrating because only the conceptually challenging bits were left so I spent a lot of time thinking about how I wanted to do something, trying it, discarding it, and starting over. But this is what I've ended up with.
The overall look (it fits better on me than on the dressmaker form):
I ditched the baldric; the pleather I picked out looked great but it was a bit too soft and didn't hold its shape well enough once I added the weight of the little purse. Instead, I sewed some little gear bits to the belt of the corset and attached the purse to them.
I wanted to have some fun little bits that screamed Steampunk despite the lack of appropriate colors or fabrics in my outfit. So I added some little glitter vials on a chain but I didn't want to, as the song says, Just Glue Some Gears On It, so I had to have some meaning/use for everything I added. These are the physical embodiments of the souls I've collected. The colors represent elements of the souls - black would be for dark, tortured souls, for example.
Now I'm getting to the bits that nearly caused me to give up in despair because I couldn't think how to do them just the right way. Every good Death needs her pale horse and obviously I'm not taking a real horse to DragonCon. The whole original prompt for this costume in the first place was to do a serious traditional death outfit (dark cloak with no visible face etc) paired with a child's hobby horse. Obviously I've drifted well away from that starting point. The idea morphed into doing an elegant horse head cane, and then attaching the scythe to the baldric so I wouldn't have to carry things in both hands. But I couldn't find a nice cane for cheap (surprise, surprise!) and eventually settled on a pendant with an image of a horse inside it. I spent several days searching images of horse skeletons and finally found this one - an articulated skeleton posed by Walter Varcoe. This, I have to say, is my very first successful photo manipulation - the original can be seen here.
The scythe - I'm not 100% happy with it, but it's good enough to use if I don't find the energy to come back to it later.
And last but not least, the hourglass. I've spent days trying to figure out the best way to attach this without it looking too clumsy or unbalanced. This is the one thing that still needs a little work - currently the harness for it is just pinned together, but it's a simple sewing job that will only take a few minutes, at some point maybe tomorrow when my eyes and brain are slightly more functional.
I'm still practicing the makeup and trying to decide the best approach. I like the full-on skull makeup, but with the costume, I still think the pallor look might work better. I might have to try both with the costume and hat on to get a full sense of what works best.
