Work work work

So, this past week I have made some more decent progress. Spring is a problematic time for me though; on one hand, it's now getting nice enough out that I can paint stuff. But on the other hand it's getting nice enough out that I want to go for walks and hikes and put off costume stuff for another day. XD I suppose as I'm also aiming to lose at least 10 (though preferably 15-20) pounds by D*Con, I suppose I can argue that going hiking is sort of working toward costume goals. <_< >_>

Well then, on to what I've accomplished. Shoulder bells, collar, and backplate are all painted silver. Though the backplate still needs a bit of filling and sanding work on a spot I thought was taken care of (way back when when my dad and I were first forming it the heat gun's nozzle tapped it and left an imprint I'd hoped my past sanding had taken care of).

Lots of fiddly work done for the helmet. Sanding, plus working out the greeblies for the earcaps and the piece I'm putting over the keyslots (which is sort of similar to what I did for my red helmet, only not the comm unit look as I've got the antenna on the ear cap now in place of a range finder). I'd live to be able to move on to painting it within the next couple of weeks, but it's probably going to depend on what money I can spare (ie- if anything else of mine sells soon) since I need some more epoxy putty.

Some work done on Chesty. Not a lot, I'll admit because I've been cringing when I think about it. The plastic takes forever to heat up to form, and I've just not been looking forward to forming it as best I can then either having to make extensions or a second set of plates to go above the chest and below the collar. Urg. >_< Smoothing the join will not be fun if I do an extension. So I'm kind of eying just making a second set of plates. Got the nipples mostly smoothed out; just waiting on the current layer of glazing putty to dry so I can sand it smooth. From there it's cutting them apart and into the shape of the plates.

Got a coupon from Joann's for 50% off one thing of fabric, so I'm planning on getting at least enough for my vest in a couple of days. (Haven't planned out how much we'll need to make my kama, and I know I'll get other coupons so *shrug* may as well just get the vest material.)

Brief post tonightO

Not so much because I've accomplished nothing though and more because at the time that I'm typing this my blood sugar has dropped enough to make me queasy and light headed and I'm tired on top of that. Pere is making some tuna salad sandwich melts which will hopefully help with the blood sugar going all wargorble on me, but I'll still sadly be tired.

So, in brief, made some pretty good progress this week. Lots of pattern work done on my mystery costume (which is pretty much all Pere since I've no clue how to tailor patterns; I just transfer them once he's done making the pattern). Also happy I won't have to (strenuously) look for boots since the ones I have now will work just fine until my budget allows me to purchase the kind it really needs. More pieces of it will be arriving this week, so yay. :)

As for the Protector kit, I've dyed and weathered the cape up. It's subtle weathering in pics, but it's at just the right level for what I'm going for (ie- less than my red kit had lol). Also, I'm very very happy with the shade of green the dye turned it. ^-^

I've trimmed my red kit's shoulder bells down substantially to use as the new ones. And I've prepped my old very first collar plate and back plate to be painted. No pics of the armor portion as it stands now, but there are some of the collection of plates I currently have to use for the kit at least. (Yes, there are three ab plates there; I can't figure out which one I'll need to work with until I've got Chesty cut into the separate plates.)

And finally I got the paints I need. Well, sort of. Gabrin informed me that the darker metallic green I picked up is actually the same paint she used for her first kit which tends to photograph blacker. Which is not the look I'm going for as I need a brighter green than my vest will be so the plates pop off it (the vest material is Ponderosa Pine shade sateen btw). So, going to return that paint while I'm in Silverdale this week and pick up one of the brighter metallic greens I was looking at. Shame really as that darker one is very pretty, it's just going to be too dark for my purposes.

Ok, so some could argue that's not really a brief post, but it is actually briefer than I had planned on. It'll do for now.

Hectic Week

Has been hectic. Once again I realized I forgot to post on Sunday but no big loss, I suppose. We spent the last half of the week down in OR again, with my brother, partially to grab some more of my stuff and partially to do some of the preliminary work on my brother's kit.

The vest mock-up/pattern Pere made for my brother's vest fit wonderfully. He's just considering increasing the size a bit to compensate for the flight suit underneath and allow my brother a bit more mobility. Other than that, thumbs up on it. Won't be starting the vest until Pere gets his fabric in though, but at least the pattern is ready. Also decided that in order to fit the gauntlets to him I'm going to need to trim the left one down some so it fits better on his arm. With some heat forming I think I may be able to get the bottoms to form right to use, but if not Pere was going to print out the bottom templates and scratch build some bottoms that will fit better. I'm sure I can find another use for the bottoms if we end up going that route. Some of the greeblies have been sorted out, and doing some more work on the gauntlets is on my "to do" list for this week/weekend.

 

I also cleaned up the tent canvas for my Protector's cape. That all involved washing it three times (twice I actually did remember to use the stain remover on it lol) and some trimming/clean up of the frayed edges. First picture is before I trimmed it; second picture is after I trimmed it and cleaned up the edges. The third time through the wash was after that picture, so the edges have been slightly re-frayed again. While we were down in OR I did find a plastic tub that I think is a good size for dying, so I'd like to get around to dying it in the next several weeks. Just need to see if the iDye stuff works for tub dying or if it's washer dying only (since we can't use the washer for dying). I'll be sad it so; RIT doesn't have the shade of green I really want.

Other than that, we pretty much spent the week chilling. Hit up the Hillsboro Public Library sale, twice. Pere got some books he'd been looking for to fill in holes in his own collections (or in two cases replace some softcovers with hardcovers). I only ended up getting three little recipe magazines to dig through; I'm most excited about digging through the Christmas one, really. Those always have interesting things to bake in them. While touring the antique shops downtown to see if there were any cheap and useful bits for any of our costumes, we did make one very nice find. Pere found an anvil, still in pretty good condition (ie - definitely usable) for $250 (did I mention, yay that Oregon has no sales tax?). Yeah, getting it means we're having to skip a lot of other things we had hoped to get this month, but at the same time that's a huge step closer to being able to work with metal armor. . .especially as Pere needs to do some minor shaping to his plates before he can paint them up. It's on lay-away, too, so that helps somewhat; we'll, fingers crossed, be bringing it back up when we go back down to OR again in early June to get some more of my stuff. 

So, I'd say it was a decently productive week, even though I'm still annoyed I didn't get to troop anything for May the 4th. Such is life. Here's hoping I'll have some more things done this week to show off, as well.

Eeep.

Sorry, I got rather distracted and didn't realize I'd forgotten to do my weekly update as usual. Fail. Pere and I have spent most of the last week dealing with real life stuff and, *gasp*, more cleaning of the garage. It's surprisingly a lot more sorted out now, though we've still got to move the couch down into it as well as figure out where (or even if) we can put my shelves for my costume stuff.

On the costume front, still haven't done much really (rather, I don't feel like I've done much compared to how much I know I can do when I have the money to spare). Pulled my old backplate out of storage and started the slow process of striping the paint from it so I can use it for my Protector mando kit. (I am quite happy with the backplate, incidentally. It was from the Cyanide kit I originally used, only my dad and I trimmed it down and formed it a lot better to my body. I loves it.) Also got my canvas tent cape in (like Boba's shoulder cape), sort of a very faded aqua color now, but I'm going to try dying it a deeper green. I do hate that I have to clean all the weathering off it though; it was very nicely weathered. And since one of the local Mercs is selling his old Fett style knees, for a really nice price despite them being simple, I'm snatching those up to use for the Protector as well. Going to have to flesh the knees out some, add the blocks and what have you to the sides, but still. Less hassle than getting more sintra and printing the templates, and all that. Still debating some style issues which will determine what kind of boots and style of kama I use but really not a kit I'm expecting to make a ton of progress on any time soon.

As for upgrading Kora, all we've done is get the back part of my new vest pattern drawn out. Yeah. Slow week. Also, the light in my helmet somehow broke. *sigh* Of course it did. I swear I've had nothing but problems with that kit since moving out here.

Did some more greebly hunting for my brother's gauntlets. I'm quite happy with most of the greeblies I pulled out of Pere's boxes to use for them, though there are still some things I'm hunting for. Going to make the muslin mock-up of my brother's vest today (we hope) so we can bring it along with his gauntlets down with us to Oregon tomorrow and fit them for him. I already know the gauntlets are probably going to require a ridiculous amount of trimming since both my brother and I have small arms, but I'm not going to complain about almost free gauntlets. (Still many thanks to Sidd for shipping those to me. :) )

Going to be sorting through some more of my costume (and personal) stuff this week. Already added one more bodice to the list of stuff I'm selling, might even end up adding my one from Damsel in this Dress (which will greatly pain me if I do. . .I love her stuff and don't know when I'll be able to afford another one). Will probably also be tossing up my commissioned mando vest that I never ended up using. *sigh* My costume closet is slowly getting more bare, but I need the money and no point hanging onto stuff I'm not using/not going to use.