Gold Dust Woman

 I know, man, this is crazy. I go like six months without blogging and then I just fucking spam you. 

Anyways. So, you might know if you exist on planet Earth right now, the world sucks. Just, really sucks. Damn pandemic. So as a result, I didn't get to go to a real Halloween party this year. God I miss cons. I need to make costumes! It was the perfect year for Halloween too. It was on a Saturday, there was a full moon, and I just bought a house. Combine that with the fact that my birthday is the week before Halloween, and I desperately wanted to have a housewarming/birthday/Halloween party and actually be the host for once. But no. No parties for us. My closest friends and I did decide that we would have a little private party though, we can't just not do something. So it was just going to be me, Cari, Rachel and Sarah. And we were still going to dress up. 

Obviously I didn't want to do anything too crazy. Recently you may have noticed I've been leaning into a boho witchy hippie feel for my style, and I'd even recently made myself a cool fringed kimono that felt very Stevie Nicks. That thought made my costume plan simple. I was gonna be Stevie Nicks. It would be easy and cheap, I had most of what I would need on hand already, and the dress I made could just go into my regular wardrobe, since Stevie Nicks is my style inspiration right now anyways.

I did more shopping than I should have, I just can't resist going the extra mile for the accessories and the details. 

I wasn't trying to get an exact look, more just channel her style, but you could say I was more or less going for this:

I could spam you with a hundred pictures to show you what I was thinking, but really I was just sort of averaging out Stevie's hippie gypsy look.

To start with, I had debates on the hat. I thought about doing a floppy brimmed round hat, even bought two options from the thrift store and went to great lengths to put a supporting wire around the excessively floppy brim of one of them and get some fabric spray paint to paint it black, which was shockingly difficult to find probably due to all the fucked up supply lines for stores right now. (FUCK COVID)

In the end I decided I wanted the top hat look which I should have just gone with from the the beginning because hilariously enough I already owned a black top hat. Some time ago Rachel and Cari and I thought we were going to dress as the girls from the Lady Marmalade music video, and I was going to be P!nk, since I'm a big fan of hers. And she wears a top hat. I had bought a few supplies for the costume when our fourth person completely bailed out on us right before Halloween, leaving us stranded and me with a handful of supplies I then had no use for. (We KNEW she was a flake, we KNEW that was a risk, but we really wanted to do it, so we just hoped really hard, and in the end got nothing.) Luckily I'm a crafter and no supplies ever go to waste, so I didn't bother to return the stuff I bought, I just held onto it thinking I'd find a use for it. One of those things I bought was a black top hat. I bought some fancy feathers and dug up scraps of lace and velvet from my fabric stash, hot glued some stuff to the hat and I was good to go.

For the record, I removed the rhinestones, I decided they looked too showgirl-y, not what I was going for. And yes, that rose IS made out of scraps of my Captain Hook coat! I swear, that thrift store fabric find is just the gift that keeps on giving. 

I also had a pair of black lace gloves that I bought during my steampunk phase and literally never wore, I just cut the fingertips off of those and they were perfect. 

For jewelry, I bought several thrift store rings, nothing special just some fun big flashy pieces, and I knew I needed to layer several necklaces, most importantly was a crescent moon necklace of some form, Stevie always wears a crescent moon. I already had one pretty filigree pendant I'd bought ages ago, and I should have just gone with that, but I wanted something solid, and I love an excuse to focus too hard on details. I actually had a hard time finding a solid silver crescent moon, in the end I ended up with one made out of a cluster of pyrite crystals that was pretty cool looking. I'm also happy to have that in my jewelry collection. I also bought a gorgeous fluorite crystal to add to it. That was just cuz it was pretty, I have plenty of other crystals I could have worn. I just wanted it. I layered that with a long round stone pendant and a gold chain with a tiny opalite bead that my daughter got me for my birthday and had a nice layered necklace look. 

For shoes, Stevie usually wears massive thick platforms of some form, but as I am almost a full foot taller than her teensy little 5'1" frame, that wasn't really gonna work for me. Luckily in one of my thrift store adventures I found this absolutely gorgeous pair of black suede knee high boots with like a 1"-1.5" heel in basically new condition in my size that I would have bought even if I didn't want them for my costume, they're beautiful. And so comfy!

Now, Stevie is blonde and in the past I have had trouble with blonde wigs. I was going to just wear my old Princess Peach wig to avoid spending money I didn't have to and just deal with a kinda shitty wig, but in the end I couldn't do it. I cracked and bought myself yet another shitty cheap wig from Walmart, but weirdly enough this cheap shitty wig had a nice natural blonde color and and good looking wave and was actually surprisingly flattering on me. I think the problem with the Princess Peach wig is that it's YELLOW not blonde and turns out I look awful with yellow hair. I'm probably going to save this Stevie wig and replace my currently Princess Peach wig, it looks so much better on me. I guess I shouldn't have tried to look like cartoon Princess Peach. Y'know, cuz I'm not a cartoon. 

I didn't bother at all worrying about Stevie's eye color, this wasn't THAT intense of a costume. 

I struggled with the shawl. I had to have a shawl of course, that was so required it's not even funny. My original vision had something black with a red or pink flowery pattern and a fringe. Maybe with sequins, a little sparkle in the shawl is totally acceptable. And in chiffon or something similar, for good drapey flowy ness. I searched thrift stores for weeks. I bought three different scarves, a skirt and a dress in an attempt to at least find fabric I liked and turn it into a shawl. I even straight up bought some black chiffon and fringe trim thinking I could sew appliques on it to get the flowers. 

Right. Sew appliques onto chiffon. THAT sounds like fun. 

It was never right. 

Side note, the reason the dress didn't work:

The dress was a very nice full length halter top chiffon flowery thing that was really very pretty. It was blue, and the color wouldn't work, but I figured I could dye it.

Ignore the fact that I'm clearly wearing the wrong bra for this dress. Isn't it pretty? 

So I bought some red fabric dye specifically for artificial fibers. Hell, I bought TWO bottles because this dress is 100% polyester and I knew from experience it didn't want to be a different color. (RIT DyeMore, if you're curious, in whatever they call the red color. I don't remember.)

After a long bath in a hot pot of super strong red dye, I got this:

Looooooook at those pretty pinks and purples! I love it so much! Once I put this on and took pictures I knew I had not bought myself fabric for a shawl, I had bought myself a new dress. There was no way I could take this apart for a shawl.

Anyways. Finally I bought a scarf off of Amazon that wasn't too expensive. I really was trying to keep the cost down for this costume and I wasn't doing a great job. But when the scarf arrived it was so SMALL. Barely any wider than one of my basic winter scarves. That did not make me happy. So I returned it and in a fit of frustration just bought a nice one that finally made me happy.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07C18G86J/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

There were literally three other Stevie Nickses in the reviews of this shawl. So clearly this was the way to go. It's beautiful, by the way. Sparkly and flowy and gorgeous, I love it. No red flowers, but that's okay. I'm very happy with it and I'm not sad I have it now. 

So, the last and the biggest piece, the dress!

I debated for a long time whether I should do like a tiered flowy skirt and a tank top or a dress or what, but in the end I settled on dress. I tried to just buy something, but didn't find anything quite right. And then I stumbled across something that had the exact fabric look I wanted.

Is that not. Just the worst. Thing you have ever seen. God, I don't think I've ever worn a more unflattering dress, I look like I'm wearing a goddam green lace potato sack. And what the hell is that weird lace insert at the neckline? The damn thing is nearly choking me as it is, you afraid someone is gonna see my collarbone? I hate it so much. It's so bad. The horror this picture fills me with is indescribable. However. The lacy fabric is super pretty and the alternating godet panels have a nice flowy gauzy texture, the skirt is a full circle skirt and the dress. Is 100%. Rayon. Which means it will just looooooove to change colors for me. So. I throw that dress into a boiling hot pot of black dye and let it simmer to get some of the horrible out. (regular RIT dye this time, god I love a natural fiber.)

Yessssssss. Boil, you abomination.

When it was done I had this:

Okay, let's be honest here, we all knew it wasn't the green color that was the real problem.

Originally I had thought I could just remove the sleeves, but after putting it on I knew I would need to completely redo the top part of the dress. So I cut off the top of the dress an inch or two above where the godets ended and just.... just..... just fucking THREW the top part away from me. I didn't even want to look at it. 

I started on a new top, I wanted just a basic V neck tank top style top. I did consider just making this a skirt and wearing one of my black tank tops with it, but I knew I could do better than that. 

In a box of old vintage patterns Sarah had given me a while ago, I found this:

Literally a pattern from the 70s, which is wildly appropriate for my 70s singer costume. It's so old, look how yellow the paper is! But it was a very simple basic shape and that's all I needed.

For the fabric, I dug scraps out of my scrap box. The solid black lining was actually the jersey like fabric liner from the skirt I bought thinking it could be an option for my shawl. And I decided I wanted to do a layer of lace over that just to add more lacy texture to the dress. Luckily I had several large chunks of black lace in my collection from my steampunk phase.

Why, yes, that large chunk of black lace is a piece of a dress! This was a thrift store find ages ago that I had taken apart for other reasons, and luck of all lucks, this is a STRETCHY lace! Which means no zippers or buttons or anything, this can be a pull over the head dress! And I had EXACTLY enough to make the bodice. 

So I sewed that all up, I made the shoulder straps by just cutting the hem off the original sleeves of the dress, they were almost exactly the perfect length. I did have to add darts to the bust that the original pattern didn't, and I'd just like to say that those were the most perfect smooth darts I've ever done in my life. They were the same length, came to a nice smooth point that didn't create sharp points on my bust and they made a perfect fit for my chest. ON THE FIRST TRY. I didn't have to adjust them at all, I just pinned and sewed and was done. It was glorious. I've never had that happen before, and probably never will again. Really, this whole thing was going so smoothly I should have been suspicious. 

So I had the bodice done. I could have just attached it to the skirt and called it good, but I really wanted something layered and flowy and frilly. So to start with, I pulled out the black chiffon I had bought, and basically cut out a circle skirt, except I didn't round off the corner so it would be square shaped, giving me an uneven handkerchief hem. I then sewed black satin ribbon all around the hem. I put the bodice on my dress form and pinned this part of the skirt below it so I could see what I was making.

So, next I wanted to layer the original dress skirt overtop of this, but I also wanted it to have the same square handkerchief shape as the chiffon layer. So I folded the skirt into quarters and laid it out on the floor. (DAMN I need a proper cutting table.)

I marked the middle and then about 9" up on either side. It wouldn't be a perfect square, but it would have a similar shape that would echo the chiffon layer at least. I then cut from my 9" mark to the middle.

I could have gone higher up to get a perfect square but I didn't want to lose too much length. To hem this piece, I actually took a long, long piece of ruffly black lace that I believe also came from my steampunk phase, I think it was leftover from that short burgundy bustle skirt I made, and sewed it all around the hem. I had to manually gather in a few places and carefully space it out, but I managed to have EXACTLY enough lace to do the whole hem. Man alive, I cannot believe how often things worked out exactly right for this outfit. 

I pinned this to the dress form over the chiffon layer. Next I had some big chunks of a different black lace that I just sort of free form pinned overtop, creating a little hip swag on one side and just some random extra lacy layers. I wanted the whole thing to be a little hodgepodge. 

I even like the way the shades of black aren't all exactly the same.

For the waistband, I didn't have any plain black elastic, but I did have this sparkly gold 2" wide stuff. I considered using the gold side, but decided I just wanted it to be all black, so I just made a black fabric tube for it out of scraps of the black jersey that was the lining of the bodice, since it would stretch with everything else. 

Attached the skirt and the bodice to the waistband, carefully pinning and going slow on the skirt to make sure I'm getting all the layers, and in the end I had a cool goth hippy witch dress!

I'm sorry, guys, black has got to be one of the most frustrating things to try to take pictures of. It just doesn't want to show the details. 

Halloween came, and I put it all together!

Oh right, I also added this little black corset style belt overtop, I already had that and it fit in well with the outfit. 

I was super pleased with how it came out, and I had a great deal of fun swishing around in all my flowy layers. Although I did learn I need to shorten the shoulder straps, I was adjusting those all night. It was a great costume, and now I have a sweet black lacy dress!

Xena: Warrior Princess!

Well, here it is!

As you can see, everything turned out amazing. This being my second time wearing it there were a few signs of wear, some gold paint rubbing off on the outfit, the foam pieces on the knee guards peeling up a bit, lost a rivet on my chakram hook. So all good learning experiences on how to improve things. But it held together just fine for the party and I got tons of compliments. The blue contacts were... interesting. I think I should have gotten more natural looking ones, these were a little cartoonish. The blue parts were actually opaque and I could see the edges of it on the edges of my vision, which was not entirely pleasant. After I'd worn them for a few hours my brain would sort of tune it out so I didn't notice it anymore, but I wasn't a bit fan of that part. Looked cool though.

I kept my hair very simple, I used semi-permanent dye and dyed it black, (I had like three quarters of a bottle left from when I dyed my hair black for chain chomp) and I had bought a braided headband on ebay- the one I got is here:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Women-Girls-Braided-Faux-Wig-Elastic-Rope-Pretty-Plaited-Hair-Band-Headband/162266321538?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

So all I had to do was blow dry my hair straight and put in the headband. I can't tell you how nice it was to not have to wear a wig. For once I didn't hate the way my hair looked. And I really honestly like the way my hair looks black, I might keep it this way for a while.

I'm gonna be honest here, this costume is not comfortable. It's not the corset that's the problem, a properly made corset is actually a very pleasant form of support, if a little restrictive. It's a combination of the pleather and the plastic armor pieces. That pleather doesn't breathe, not even a little. Which I suppose is to be expected. And the armor pieces are hard and inflexible and definitely get in the way of free movement. I found that despite how much skin is showing, the slightest exertion had me instantly overheating. Don't expect to be doing any dancing. I tried once for about 30 seconds, and had to spend a half hour outside in the cold to cool off.

Regardless of it's flaws, I am super proud of what I did here, and I can't wait to use everything I learned in future costumes.


Also- quick minor flashback- the photographer that took our pictures at Rose City Comic Con sent me my picture.

https://www.susanonyskophoto.com

I love having a professional photo of my costume. I need to find her and take all my costumes to her, this is what I've always wanted. I put so much work into these, you know? I really want good photos to show them off.

I'm still working on my actual Xena tutorial posts, those will be up next. Feel free to ignore them if all you wanted was my posts that show my process rather than a detailed breakdown.

I have many skills.

It's finished! I still need good pictures of it all put together, I have one with some of my friends for the party last Friday, but that's the only one I have so far and I need more. I think what I'm going to do is on Saturday for the other party I have to go to I'll get a bunch of good pictures of me in the costume and then I'm going to make a more organized Xena tutorial post. Don't worry, I'll post the pictures first so if all you want is to see the finished thing you can skip over the rest since I'm basically going to repeat these last few posts, but I want to basically write a beginning to end tutorial on making the costume. I had a few resources I worked with but the instructables used a totally different method for the armor, and Kamui Cosplay's video, which was the finished product I liked most, flies through it really fast, I really would have liked a more detailed organized breakdown. So now that I've done it, I'm going to make one, detailing everything in order and what I learned and what I would do differently if I was going to do it again. It's the same thing I did when I made that Rinoa jacket. You get to see my process, and then I make a nice neat tutorial in case anyone needs it in the future.

So. I was nearing the finish line as of my last post.

First of all, I'm going to once again demonstrate what a crazy person I am. I gave the weapons and breastplate two coats of sandable filler primer, same stuff I used on my Sailor Pluto staff and my Captain Hook hook. It works really well for perfecting the surface. But everything only got two coats because that's exactly how far a single can goes and I didn't want to go buy more. I decided any imperfections at that point were battle damage. I didn't need a mirror finish like I tried on my hook, Xena's a warrior, not a fancy pirate captain. Her weapons see a lot more rough usage.

I gave the sword and the breastplate a solid coat of Plastidip, to make the base black.  Before I was going to do that to the chakram though I wanted to get the designs on there. I planned to use a wood burner to carve the designs because honestly, I have terrible control with my dremel. There was a zero percent chance I'd be able to carve those nice straight lines. A wood burner would be easier to work with. And I didn't think the fumes released from burning Plastidip would be good for my health.

So I cut out my pattern for the designs using the pattern from the first instructable that had been resized to be roughly 10" across. I laid the stencil on my chakram and...

Can you see it? Can you see why I recoiled in absolute horror with an absolutely sick feeling in my stomach? Can yoU SEE IT? CAN ANYONE SEE IT BUT ME?

LOOK. Look how wobbly and uneven the edge is. Look how it's farther from the edge of the design on one side than the other. It's. So. Bad. And I don't care if anyone believes me. I've shown it to a few people now and most people just smile and nod and take a few steps slowly back. BUT I KNOW IT'S THERE. AND IT'S BAD. I'M NOT CRAZY. YOU'RE THE ONE THAT'S CRAZY.

So I started over. From scratch. Two days before the party. I just completely 100 percent scrapped this one.

I ended up cutting a new one from the 5mm foam because I had kind of thought I might like it if it were thinner, and since I had the thinner foam anyways I figured I might as well. And honestly, I had the new one cut and worbla covered inside an hour. I had to add a little extra worbla around the edge to create a blade, because it was rather late at night when I was doing this and I wasn't going to dremel an edge on the foam at this point. I think I should have though, my chakram is just a bit wider than I would like.

And just loooooooook how much more even and round that one is! I had a slight problem getting it to be perfectly flat though. I heated it and pressed it flat, flipping it repeatedly and pressing on both sides and it cooled warped. I heated it and held it down in one place and it cooled warped. I heated it and pressed it flat on the table and covered it with my flat cutting mat that I put a large frying pan of water on top of and left it there for four hours, and the damn thing cooled warped. So I gave up. My chakram is a little warped. But at least it's evenly round.

I then had to gesso and sand the new chakram, but I only had enough gesso left for two coats.  And as you know, I was already out of spray primer. So to get it smoother when two coats of gesso wasn't enough,  I spent some time using Kwikseal to even out the blade edge. If you get your fingers wet after applying it you can actually get some pretty impressive smoothness. To finish everything evenly and smoothly I pulled out a little tub of spackle Stu had and covered the whole damn thing in it. And it totally worked. Nice smooth surface. Kinda made me wish I'd done that to the sword as well so it would be smoother, but my sword just ended up impressively worn.

At this point I taped down the design pattern to the stencil and just started carving it in with my wood burner. I discovered as well that if I carved out the circle where each of the beads were supposed to go and just sorta stabbed the spot a few times until the worbla was nice and mushy, I could just press the beads directly into the place where they were meant to go, hold them there for a moment, and they would just set right in place, flush with the surface and fixed in by the natural adhesive properties of worbla.

I had learned from some experiments earlier that I can totally sand over the beads, and just putting a glossy topcoat over them restores them to their previous shine, so I didn't have to worry about sanding over this a bit to make everything smooth.

For the record- the reason I put the beads in now before painting was the same reason I did it before the Plastidip- burning paint chemicals. I did all this with the sword as well, it has several beads set into the hilt.

I don't have any in progress pictures of the other side of the chakram because honestly that side didn't go as well. The spackle coating would kind of crumble away in the places where the design came to a sharp point. I definitely wouldn't use spackle again but it served well enough at crunch time.

Because the beads were already set in, I also spent some time cutting out little circles of painter's tape so I wouldn't have to try to paint around the beads. It didn't take as long as I thought I would and worked perfectly, allowing me to spray with Plastidip, cover with Rub N Buff and airbrush details.

During this time I also got my back armor piece and breastplate covered in Rub N Buff. I was using the Antique Gold color and ended up using the entire tube once I was done with all the armor pieces. The breastplate took most of it.

This is what it looked like with just the flat gold. Pretty awful, right?

And this is what we got after extensive black airbrushing. Damn, that looks cool, even with my amateur-this-is-only-the-third-time-I've-used-an-airbrush skills. I covered them with a coat of semi-gloss polycrylic, that actually ended up coming out too shiny, so then I sprayed them with a clear matte topcoat which removed that shine beautifully and gave it the perfect dull metallic shine I wanted, I was super pleased with how that came out, especially since that was unplanned. You'll see that in the finished pictures, it was still shiny here.

I also remembered about this time that all my accessory armor pieces needed rivets around the edges. Now, I wasn't able to drive the prongs of my studs directly into the worbla. If I wanted to do that I should have remembered to put the studs in before painting so I could warm the worbla a little. It just cools to a really hard plastic, and you really can't do too much with it then. And heating it would ruin the paint job. So using wire cutters from my jewelry tools I just cut all the prongs off of a bunch of studs and glued them down with E6000. A little bit of black Rub N Buff to make them also look worn, a coat of polycrylic to seal them down, and we were good to go.

Once the paint job was done on the breastplate and backplate I was also ready to attach them to the shoulder pieces. I made straps for the back using pieces of an old brown purse I had scavenged for hardware ages ago and saved the strap pieces because I always thought they'd be useful someday. (Which, coincidentally, is the motto of my people, the crafters. "It'll be useful someday!") The side straps were going to be made from straps and buckles that were originally decorative elements around the tops of the boots I used for Xena, obviously with boot covers covering the whole boots those didn't need to be there, and they were just so convenient for buckling me into my armor.

The front of the armor pieces are connected by little squiggly pieces of wire. I had bought some pretty hefty copper wire from the hardware store and using a wire mandrel from my jewelry supplies, was able to bend it into perfect little loops.

Buuuuuuut I had only bought two feet thinking I'd need roughly a foot for each side, and turned out I needed like a foot and a half. So day before the party (And my birthday, coincidentally) I had to stop at the hardware store to buy more wire. I covered the wire in a paint called Patina meant specifically to paint metal- I had some from way back during my brief steampunk phase I had used to paint an overly shiny pocket watch. I'd also used it on the snaps on the back of the skirt, I couldn't have that bright silver or copper showing, it wouldn't match! I also gave the squiggles a clear top coat. The worbla tubes I had made in the breastplate and shoulder pieces were nice and snug and everything fit perfectly and securely.

So, I still had to paint and weather my weapons. I had sort of started with the sword, but the chakram had only been plastidipped. And then I had to go and have a birthday, where, like, people wanted to hang out with me and whatever. Weirdos. I agreed, I but I never agreed to stop working on my costume, since my birthday was literally the day before the party. I went to Cari's, we had a low key thing with dinner and cheesecake and a few friends.

Also, oh my god, look at this cheesecake they made for me. Cheesecake is my favorite cake, Cari makes delicious cheesecake and Sarah is a cake decorator. Isn't is amazing? And it was delicious.

I ended up managing to finish my sword, and I got the gold and silver down on the chakram, so it just needed weathering and clear coat. And then I stayed up until like sunrise with Cari drinking wine. It was my birthday, dammit!

I went home the next day, rubbed the chakram down with some watered down acrylic paint- that worked better than the Rub N Buff for some reason on both the sword and the chakram- sprayed it with a clear coat, and then attached the straps and buckles to the sides of my armor. All of this I did while letting some semi-permanent black dye sit in my hair. I still had like three quarters of a bottle left from when I dyed my hair for Chain Chomp, and I already have Xena's hair style, with the braided black headband I had bought some time ago. If I could get out of wearing a wig I was totally going to. I got those last few steps done, rinsed out the dye, and then laid down and napped for like three hours.

See? I had plenty of time to spare.

The leather grip on the sword, by the way, is just the super cheap leather cord I bought from Walmart and used for the braid on the sheath, lightly rubbed down with black Rub N Buff to darken it.

You can see that the spiky side of the chakram is messier, but it's not awful. I did what I could with paint. Part of me wonders if in a future version I could do a shiny clean chakram. Xena's honestly doesn't look that worn. But that's for a future project.

The party was a great deal of fun, although I discovered while getting ready that the shoulder straps on the corset were like an inch too long and floated right off my shoulders, so I had to take it off and shorten them. Shortening them wasn't hard, getting in and out of that corset was. Man, I hate getting in and out of a corset that doesn't have a front opening. I got myself properly drunk, learned that I really can't dance in this outfit because I overheat instantaneously, and impressed everyone with how cool I looked. I also overdid it after staying up drinking the night before and ended up with the Worst. Hangover. Ever. It was bad. Several of my friends had planned to go downtown yesterday night to a Halloween bar crawl but I literally spent all day puking. It was the worst hangover I've ever had and I tapped out hard at the idea of A: standing and walking around, B: Wearing a corset, and C: Drinking anything alcoholic ever again. Yeah. It was one of those never-gonna-drink-again hangovers. We all know those promises never last, but god. That was not fun. And I'm still not completely recovered. But it happens.

Anyways. I will be back with all put together pictures very soon. Now that I'm done I feel so.... lost. Like there's something I should be doing, but I don't know what it is. That kind of intense project focus is one of my favorite things, and now it's just..... gone. But you know me. I'm sure there will be a new one soon.

In a time of ancient gods, warlords and kings, a land in turmoil cried out for a hero.

She was Xena, a mighty princess forged in the heat of battle. The power...the passion...the danger. Her courage will change the world.

It's finally time. I've wanted to make Xena's outfit for a long time, but I've always been intimidated by the armor pieces and the weapons. Prop making is hard, man. And I've struggled with both the props I've made, but I feel like they came out well in the end and I learned a lot. So I'm going for it. I even have a Gabrielle, Amanda and I have always wanted to do a costume together, and I'm tall and dark and she's small and blonde. It's gonna be so great. If I don't lose my mind in the details.

Good god, the details.

I gave myself a week off after con, because con is always a pretty major thing, and then I got to work. If I was gonna get all this done, I needed as much time as I could manage. Back in February when my group was waffling on our costumes for Emerald City Comicon and I was itching for a project, I had bought some pleather fabric, some boots, beads and hardware for the costume, and found a few online tutorials and even some printable patterns for the armor that I was pretty excited about. I had a decent plan. I didn't get any real work done because then I had con, and then we moved over the summer, and with my previous job being a dumpster fire all the time, I just didn't have the energy for anything else. But things are better now and Halloween is coming!

So, to get started, I made a duct tape pattern for the corset with Stu's help- you know the drill, covered my torso in duct tape and drew the desired seamlines on it and cut it out. I used that for a pattern to make a mockup, which fit pretty well, just a little big all around because I hadn't made the seams quite wide enough, an easy fix when I sewed the final thing together. 

I also drew a circle around the boob of the side I didn't use for a pattern and cut that out to be the pattern for the cup of the breatplate.  I had to make a few adjustments to the way the bust fit, but everything looks pretty good. I've got it cut out of the pleather now, waiting to be sewn. I plan to construct it like a regular corset, I made the pattern while I was wearing a corset, fully boned and lined.

Next, I had to make sure all my patterns were the correct size. I got the patterns from here:

https://www.instructables.com/id/Xena-Costume/

She has a pattern for the corset, but she must have a short AF torso, because there was never a chance that would fit me. I didn't even look at it twice, I always knew I'd have to take the duct tape pattern route.  She also had a lot of construction ideas, but I don't like the way she did the armor. I plan to follow Kamui Cosplay's armor strategy, that I got here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvTOZ3-guoc&t=222s

So. To make the patterns the right size for me, I took some measurements on myself to figure out  how big I wanted them, and then, using the information I got from the internet telling me that 96 pixels is 1 inch, resized the images to the correct proportions. I'm sure there's better ways to do this, I just don't know them so this is how I figured it out. I then took my images to https://rasterbator.net/ that would split my images into a multi-page PDF that I could then print off and use as a pattern printed out life size. All this really made me wish I had real Photoshop, because I'm pretty sure all of this is really easy to do with that.  Oh well. I got there. 

I printed out my patterns at Staples, since I no longer work in an office with a printer I can borrow, and I don't have a printer of my own.

Using some fancy math and looking at proportions of Xena holding her weapons, I figured out her sword should be about 27 inches for me, and the chakram should be 10, so those images were resized as well. I traced those designs onto some paper, took them outside and sprayed expanding foam all over them.

There's two so I could do top and bottom at the same time, since a can of spray foam is really a one time deal, there's no capping it off and using the rest later, it will seal itself. 

Well, I had miscalculated by using paper as the base. When the foam had fully cured, it looked like this:

It warped like CRAZY. I guess the top dried first and then the foam still wanted to expand so it went downwards and the paper didn't resist. I looked at that, and just thought, no. I don't have the skills, tools or patience to try and straighten that mess out. I went to Walmart and bought a plastic prop sword and figured I'd just use it as a base and overhaul it like I did for my Captain Hook hook.

Look at that sweet wolf head, man. That I'm going to completely remove. It was a child's toy, so too small for me, but that's just fine. I traced it on some EVA foam, and drew the outline of Xena's sword around that with the pattern I had made, I had to widen it a bit since this toy sword blade is a little wider than Xena's, but no big deal. I glued the foam to the edges with contact cement. Weirdly enough the edge of the blade was the same thickness as the foam. I planned to dremel down the edges to give it an actual sharp edge.

I think this also ended up closer to 30" long, but when I did 27", it felt short. So I exaggerated it a bit. 

I then ran a line of hot glue down the middle of the front and back to raise the center a bit so it could taper more to the edges, and then filled it in with Kwikseal bathroom and kitchen sealant, carefully smoothed down gradually to the edges on both sides. I cut off the wolf head and replaced it with a ball of thermoplastic beads carefully shaped into an oblong ball that I glued to the bottom. I don't feel the glue is super secure, despite it being e6000, but I plan to cover everything in Worbla to blend it all together, so that will hold it on. I think I'm gonna add some foam bits to the hilt before that though just to make the shape more accurate.

The chakram foam I had sprayed on posterboard and wasn't warped as badly, so I figured I could work with it. I started carving and it was going sort of okay, but there were some huuuuuuuuge bubbles in the foam. I started hot gluing discarded chunks of foam in the bubbles to get a more solid piece, but it was still really uneven. I started looking at covering everything in a layer of thin craft foam but it was still so bumpy and really, thicker than I wanted.

Uhhg. It's so ugly. 

I was about to try cutting it thinner, when I realized the thickness I wanted was about the same thickness of the floor tile EVA foam I'd been working with. So... I could... you know.... just cut a circle out of that.... and call it good.  And it would already be flat and everything. 

I felt so dumb. In the end I wasted an entire can of expanding foam. Not like it's expensive, it's just annoying. 

I cut some awkward triangle shaped strips that I glued around the edge with more contact cement just to give myself some vaguely pointed extra material to work with so I could sharpen it with my dremel as well. I did that and then ran more Kwikseal around the edge to smooth out the unevenness in places where the foam didn't match up well.

So, I mentioned I had bought some hardware and beads and things for this costume. About this time I decided I should pull that stuff out and keep all my costume supplies together. You might also remember I mentioned we moved over the summer.

Now, before we moved, we lived in a pretty big house with roommates, and there was an otherwise unused front room where I kept my massive bookshelves and all my crafting supplies. It was basically my workroom. I had an extra bookshelf with a bunch of baskets for organizing my various crafts, and one was dedicated for all the stuff I had bought for Xena and wanted to keep track of since it was going to be months until I made it.

And then we moved. To a small apartment where my workspace is a corner of the living room and my craft supplies are shoved into two small bookshelves in the laundry room. And my Xena hardware and beads were just... gone. I swear, I tore the apartment apart looking for that stuff. I spent hours looking everywhere, digging up hard to get to storage boxes just to rifle through them, going through my craft supplies over and over again. Nothing. My darling boyfriend could see I was distressed by the loss, both because of my own carelessness at somehow not putting this stuff in a safe place and the expense of replacing it, so he offered to rebuy the hardware kit for me. Isn't he great?

The hardware kit is here, by the way:

https://www.toddscostumes.com/costumes/xena-warrior-princess-costumes/xena-costume/xena-dress-hardware-kit/

Most of the hardware you need for the dress. I still need some stuff for the armor, but I already had a lot of what I needed, because I just collect stuff, and was able to order whatever else. I rebought the beads myself, they weren't as expensive. I needed abalone shell beads for the decorations on the sword and the chakram. It ended up not being the worst thing ever to rebuy, I had come to realize the sword had much larger shells on it. I'd have just dealt with it with the ones I bought before, but buying more meant I could throw some bigger ones in there. So not so bad. But I am still annoyed with myself for completely losing something so important. So careless.

The shell beads are here by the way:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Natural-Abalone-Shell-Gemstone-Beads-15-5-Oval-Square-Coin-Oblong-Etc/372091050451?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&var=640978824390&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

So I've mostly been working on getting things cut out and ready to go. I cut out a waistband for the skirt, just measuring around my hips where I wanted the skirt to sit, and three inches wide, gradually widening to 4 at the middle, because Xena's skirt looks to have that kind of extra length in the front to me. I plan to use grommets and lacing to close the back, with some black booty shorts underneath.

I also cut out 13 big wide strips for the bottom layer of the skirt, about 15 inches long and 3 inches wide. (Protip: If you're making this yourself, the width of the strip with vary depending on your hips measurement. Just divide that measurement by 13.) Now, 15 inches is almost knee length on me, so I may shorten it. We'll see. I wouldn't want the skirt to get in the way while fighting, after all.

 

 I wanted each strip of petal thingies to be 11 pieces long, and I plan to allow 1.25" between the end of one petal to the end of the next petal. I have made myself a small square of wrapped up tape that is exactly that length, it was a trick I came up with when arranging the gold trim on my Captain Hook coat, having a small square of tape that was exactly the width I wanted between each piece of trim was way easier to maneuver than using a ruler or a tape measure.

I traced and cut out 146 small petals using the pattern from the instructable, which was no small feat, let me tell you what. And yes, I know that 13 strips of 11 means I need 143 petals, but I had just enough space on the strips of fabric I had cut for the petals to do three extras, and it seemed like a good idea, just in case I fuck something up.

Now about this time I was really getting bothered by the grey fabric back of the pleather I was using. For some reason, I was just haunted by how ugly it would look when I'm wearing it and moving around and the flaps of the skirt flipping over and showing that grey. It would be so out of place and clashy! And I realize I'm the only crazy bitch that would care about this! But it's my costume, I'll do what I want. And what I want is to spend several hours painting the back of all these pieces black. All thirteen strips and 146 petals. Technically 14 strips, because I was cutting them out 2 at a time on folded fabric and didn't see any reason to go to the effort of unfolding fabric, it wouldn't hurt to have an extra, for the same reason I cut out the extra petals. 

But look at the difference! I know there's no comparison for the petals, but look at the strips! The black looks so much better than the grey. 

I vaguely considered lining the strips and attaching the petals to a strip of black felt or something, but I didn't have any felt and didn't want to go buy anything else, this costume has cost me way more than it should have at this point considering how much I'd already bought for it. And I already had a bottle of black fabric paint, plus the textile medium I'd bought for Princess Peach and the gold paint details- I didn't have to worry about the issues I had with Peach's gold details, since I was painting the back of pleather. 

I've had some drama with the metal studs that go all over Xena's costume in various places. I found some that were the right color and size but dome shaped. I tried to convince myself that would be fine, but I just.... couldn't.... do it. It wasn't right. Xena's studs are flat. And I wanted the nailhead style with prongs, rather than traditional rivets, because I have to put a lot of these in this costume and rivets require hammering and I live in an upstairs apartment with asshole ceiling pounding downstairs neighbors. Now, because they're assholes, I don't go out of my way to be quiet, but I do try not to be a dick back, in case they ever want to complain about my noise. I don't want to give them a real solid complaint. Like hammering things on the floor. So when it comes time to hammer in grommets, I will go to Sarah's or Cari's or something and hang out there and do my hammering. But there are just... so many rivets in this costume. I need to be able to work on it at home, especially since my main crafting time is late at night while finishing my workday after Stu goes to bed. So I need to be able to quietly bend prongs. I also knew what size I wanted, I wanted something about 8mm, that was what size the dot was on the pattern for the petals I had printed out from the instructable.

And, apparently, 8 mm, flat, round, antique gold/bronze pronged nailhead studs just. Don't. Exist. I spent ALL DAY looking for them. In the end, the best I could do was everything right but the size, but I could find 9mm. And really, one millimeter is almost nothing. And my petals have ended up slightly larger than the pattern anyways. So it's fine. It's fine. IT'S FINE. 

God, I'm so crazy. 

The studs I got are here:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/PRONG-NAIL-HEAD-RIVETS-ALL-METAL-MANY-COLOR-SHAPE-SIZE-TO-CHOOSE-FROM-SHIP-USA/122001349788?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&var=421002752634&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

I have also spent a not insignificant amount of time making some patterns for things that the instructable didn't have. Luckily, some time ago I bought all of Xena on DVD so in the evenings I just put that on and craft away.

So first of all, I needed a pattern for the knee guards. You might notice, the instructable
 doesn't include a pattern for those. So I just had to sort of figure it out. I guessed roughly how long they were from point to top and cut out a piece of paper and covered it with duct tape, rounded the top edge and brought the bottom to a point. I did it all as one piece, but I believe I'll separate them when I actually make them. 

The picture of my pattern isn't very good, I have two circles, and three small curvy spiky things that are approximately the right shape to be arranged around the circles for both the top and bottom half. I don't really have any process info for you here, I really just freehanded it and trimmed the pieces of tape covered paper until they looked right. Technically my pattern isn't finished, I need to actually arrange and trace the design pieces so I know where everything is going to be placed, maybe I'll do that tonight once I'm done blogging. Also, I don't think it needs that strip down the middle, I think that's just where the row of zigzaggy rivets go. I think I'm going to use elastic on the back of this. I'd like to use grommets and lacing, but I don't think that will stay up, and will be really uncomfortable on the back of my knee. I think I'd like some kind of attachment to the boots as well to prevent slipping, but I haven't figured out that part yet.

So, I no longer have easy access to a scanner or anything to digitize this pattern and add it to the collection, so if you're making this costume and want the pattern, leave a comment. I'm not going to bother going to the effort to make a digital pattern just for display purposes, but if someone needs it for actual use, let me know.

So, a natural followup to the knee guards, the boots!  I did manage to keep track of the boots I bought way back in February, somehow. That and the pleather fabric are the only things I didn't lose.

They used to have a buckle and strap across the top, but I've already removed that. And put it in a safe place. Those buckles might be useful when adding straps to attach my armor.  I knew I was going to make boot covers to make them look like Xena's, and to add lacing up the front, so I took the basic duct tape pattern tactic.

I didn't even make a mockup. I was feeling lazy and boots are a pretty simple shape. I'll sew these together, glue them to the boots, along with an extra strip up the middle front for the lacing to go across, and add some rivets and lacing in the back for accuracy. And yes, I realize I'm going to seal the zippers on the sides of the boots shut, and yes I already tested to make sure I could slip them on without unzipping them, so I don't need the zippers. 

Like that.

And of course I plan to spend a thousand years painting and weathering everything so it looks like it actually belonged to a warrior princess. I actually bought baby's first airbrush and plan to learn to use it for exactly that purpose.

I had more pattern work, of course. I spent a not small amount of time cutting out all the details on the patterns with an xacto knife. And I came to realize I'd been thinking about the armband pattern wrong. I've also realized that either Lucy Lawless has some hella thick wrists, or thin upper forearms. Probably thick wrists, all that sword fighting, you know. Anyways, the pattern for the wristband is very straight and my wrists just taper too much. I originally tried to print it as a narrow long image to just go across the top of the forearms, but I hated how that warped the designs. So I resized it, and came up with a much better shape that wraps around my arm more. I still had to pull the bottom edges more, which I just did with the distort tool on pixlr.com, but it's way better now.

Left is the first version, right is the new better version.

Next, I needed to work on the cup pattern, general shape and all the embellishments. That was... not so easy.

The cup I had cut out from my duct tape pattern ended up being weirdly flat, when I really wanted a more spherical shape.

Yes, I KNOW boobs aren't spherical, but it's armor. It's not perfect. Back when I was buying supplies for this costume, I had bought a foam ball to shape my breastplate around, so I actually ended up making a painter's tape model of the foam ball, and then trimming and adjusting it until it ended up as a rounded cup shape that was somewhat right for my bust. Then using many images of Xena's armor, I roughly sketched out the decorations on the cup, taped them to the cup and traced them, peeled the tape off and cut it out to make a pattern for them.

That's what the blue and green things are. 

The last thing I had to do is an extra piece on the breastplate. On the side of the breastplate there is a little curly bit off the sides that attaches to the straps that hold the armor on.

You can see it there.

Again, I just freehanded it. Again, and again, and again.

That's how many times I redid it. The last one on the left is the final. And it's still not as perfect as it could be, but it's very close and I like the shape. So I'm done redoing it. 

So, ummmm. I think that's all I've done so far. I still have many, many things to do. I'm making Amanda's Gabrielle costume as well, but that should be easy, it's just a crop top, skirt, boots and a staff. I already bought a length of PVC pipe I'm going to paint and decorate, and I got almost perfect fabric from the thrift store, I just need to get her to come over so I can make some duct tape patterns. Should be easy. 

Should be.