Costumes, Comics, & Cake

This is what you need if you want to make pretty gems!

OOMO Silicone Rubber: This makes the silicone mold (the blue rubber thing). I used a sulfate-free clay (<- important!), formed the semi-circles to the size I wanted, and built a wall around it using the same clay. Then, following the OOMO instructions, I poured it! An hour later, I’ve got myself a mold.

EpoxAcast 690: Clear epoxy resin! This requires a scale, but was still very user friendly. I used the So-Strong dyes to tint the resin - very potent, one drop at max needed for a small project like this. I got the primary colors so I can mix to my heart’s content, and those bottles will probably last me the rest of my life, hah!

After the resin cured, I used my Dremel (WEAR PROTECTIVE EYEWEAR AND TIE YOUR HAIR BACK, ALWAYS, DO IT) to sand away any major imperfections, then used sandpaper (220, 400, 800) to gradually buff them up. After a coat of clear nail polish (roughly 1/3 bottle used for this project), they will be see through.

See that yellow guy out front? That’s how see-through (yes, that’s a d10). So in order to give the gems a backing that will encourage them to shine, I put that highly metallic-silver ventilation tape on the back. You can see the tape on the flipped-over, large red gem in the center of the pic. None of the yellow gems have a backing - they will get gold backing rather than silver.

This is for Witchblade. Those foam pieces with the large red gems are the knee-pads.

Or! If anyone doesn’t want to mess with this themselves, feel free to shoot me an email (bellechere@hotmail.com) for any gem needs! I can make any color and would be happy to make other sizes.

Witchblade all sculpted! Not too shabby for my third sculpt ever, eh? I just need to do some slight touch-ups and then I’ll be casting it. Wish me luck!

I’ll be wearing Witchblade at DragonCon. I can’t wait!

Guess who! Hint: She’s not on my costume roster for 2012, but I made her costume last year. I was going to wear this last weekend at Boston Comic Con, but life has a way of defenestrating my plans.

This is the medium I had mentioned last week. This is lighting gel, a very thin, transparent polycarbonate that comes in a HUGE array of colors, and is used in theatre to change the color of lights. It comes in sheets of 20”x24”, around $6 a sheet. I used 6 sheets for this project in 6 subtly different colors.

The base of the head is Wonderflex, molded to the shape of my own head (the wig head is smaller than my head). I got it to fit snugly enough with all my hair underneath it that I don’t need to even pin it in place! I cut the gel into graduating triangles, with the deepest orange at 12”x5” and the palest yellow at 4”x4”, and LIGHTLY treated it with my heat gun on LOW heat. The gel will melt if too much heat is applied, but if lightly heat-treated it will hold its shape. It’s rigid but not breakable - this actually got tossed around in the back of my car, and though it made a lot of crunching noises, the shape never changed. I then took the cones and hot glued them onto the goldenrod-painted Wonderflex dome, then finished it with the heat gun, tweaking the shape of the flames.

The plasma blasts were created much the same way. However, I wanted my fists to be seen inside them, so instead of the opaque Wonderflex I used clear packaging tape. I took a small balloon inflated slightly larger than my fist and wrapped it sticky-side-out with packaging tape, then wrapped it again sticky-side-in. I popped the balloon, and though the shell was a little flimsy to begin with, once I hot glued all the cones on there it turned surprising durable.

The scraps of gel I applied to the tops of my gloves and the tops of my boots.

I can’t wait to get a shot in this completed costume! I have other applications for gel that I’m excited to show, too!

(This is for Binary, BTW. I’m not going for the traditional Binary costume, but the Binary/Warbird she’s been seen as sometimes. My friend wondered why there was such an onset of Ms. Marvel costumers last year, and that got me to thinking that no one’s done a Binary before…and then I kind of got a little obsessive over the idea. I based the fiery-plasma off the adorbs Binary Kotobuyaki figurine.)

Witchblade, WIP! Slowly but steadily the sculpt is coming along. The tops of the fingers, thumb, and forearm are not close to being done, but the top of the hand is good. The large hole in the center will have a red gem in it, and the smaller hole right above it will have a golden gem. I’m basing this sculpt off of this gorgeous art.

The mannequin is my own arm - I made a cast of my own arm and filled it with a two-part foam. Then I sealed the foam with several coats of clear acrylic. The clay is Plastalina by Van Aken - an oil-based clay that never hardens and is free of sulfates, which makes it good for both plaster and silicone casting.