I know leatherwork AND Kung Fu

It's true. I took my first (of hopefully many) Kung Fu class today and it was super fun. My legs feel like noodles, but it's all good.

Anyway, just a quick update on my Leliana cosplay; I finished the quiver and I'm so excited with how it turned out.

Like the rest of my armour, it's made from 5/6 oz vegitan leather. The front part is 3 layers: The first I painted silver, the next is antiqued and cut in a lattice pattern and the third is the vertical stripes that have been tooled, antiqued and riveted in place.

The sides are tooled to give some dimension between the red and the silver; I was going to add actual straps for the silver part, but I figured that would be a lot of extra leather and might not fit right.

The sides and the front layers are all stitched together, as well as glued, and the strips hide the lacing. The back panel is riveted in place.

Since video game characters are crazy and illogical, there are no straps or anything to actually attach the quiver. Instead I have 3 snaps on the back panel that snap directly to the back of my armour. I haven't tried it on with the quiver attached yet so I'm hoping the snaps hold, but so far they seem pretty stable.

The proportions seem a bit big in relation to the rest of my armour, but I think it still looks OK....probably just me being a perfectionist.

I also got my rivets in the mail today for the pauldron, so that should be done sometime next week. By the way if you're cool with paying $16 in shipping I definitely recommend standardrivet.com they have some epic stuff.

Now back to cosplay and other adventures!

Revamp!

I've changed and updated a few things and this is what I've been working on the past few months (among other things ;)

For those of you who don't recognize it, it's Leliana from Dragon Age: Sacred Ashes :) One (of many) of my dream costumes, it's about 60% done. The hardest part so far is finding decent reference pictures...


The armour is 5/6 oz vegi-tan that's been tooled, dyed, wet-formed, glued and riveted together. The red part on the chestplate is off-white deerskin I dyed several times to get the right shade of red. The silver pieces on the panel skirt are made from sculpy. I made one, then made a plaster mold and cast 10 identical pieces. It's the first time I've ever done that and it turned out pretty awesome.

The daggers are made from balsa wood and the details are paperclay, craft foam, bias tape and metal brads. And I think they're pretty.

And finally, the scale armour of DOOM. It weighs about 9 pounds, which is pretty heavy on one's shoulders. Luckily when I lace up the sides, it's not so bad. Made from large aluminum scales from theringlord.com, it took about 8-10 hours a day for 3 days.

I should have the pauldron done soon and after that (hopefully) a dress rehearsal ^^

In other news I have a ton of costume orders (most of which got finalized yesterday) so I'll update more as I get those finished.

Oh, and the Bay Area Renaissance Festival is fast approaching, so I'm busy stocking up for that and trying to keep my Etsy shop afloat.

There's so much going on! :)