Argh emergency repairs (also, long post is long)

This past week Pere and I went back down to OR to pick up some of my stuff from my brother's apartment. We probably got maybe half, maybe. About a third of that was stuff that got moved into the room, the rest got stuck into storage (a hearty huzzah for the storage place having a deal going on, first two months are 50% off). Only brought one of my costume trunks up, but I put a fair amount of my ren fair stuff into it since I have no idea if we're going to be able to go to the Highland Games or the ren fair this year, but I wanted to have options just in case. There's enough room for my to stick Kora's purple kit in it, but first I need to kit up and take some pics for the CK clan just to show I'm still official quality I guess? (Sorry guys, I really don't completely get it, but I'll do it anyway. lol)

However, a problem had developed. After the NWC clan picnic back in August, I stuck my kit back into the trunk, and it pretty much hadn't moved since. When I pulled it out to place it in separate bags to make sure it got into the room rather than storage, I noticed that the shoulder bells had some funky patterns on them from the cape fabric. I figured, hey, no big deal, it's just a glue or residue from the fabric (it's one of those faux leathers). Oh no. As I discovered when I started trying to remove the "residue" the fabric had actually imprinted onto the paint. Aaand of course the only spray paints I brought back up this time around were my primer, satin black (to paint my rifle), and ivory (to paint the steampunk armor). *sigh* So I resorted to sanding them and running out to find yet another can of the metallic red I used on my helmet visor and hand plates. Thankfully Hobbytown had some, and it wasn't so expensive it made me cringe. So Kora's shoulder and diamond plate/s are now red. I admit I painted the diamond red only because I figured it would help balance out the red since I've tossed the girth belt for now. Short torso and big hips make girth belts a bit of a challenge. I also finally made the covers for the elastic on my shin armor; yay armor scrunchies. XD

Anyway, ultimately, when I switch back to the 2 piece helmet, all the armor is getting repainted to the airbrushed purple rather than that rattle can shade. The helmet will still be the same red/purple combo, and the hand plates will still be red, but all the other swirlies will go back to the correct swirly shade. Hoping to get some armored up pictures soon, but I've got to make a run to the storage unit first as I apparently forgot to take my gloves out of the armor box.

I've gotten some work done on the sniper rifle. Now that I have my dremel again it's a lot easier to move forward on some of this stuff since there is no way Pere's would have lasted (silly dremel with it's dying battery). Going to need some time in the garage to do some of the sanding though as I don't really want epoxy and bondo dust in the room. Need some of the epoxy Pere uses to fill in portions of the barrel. I think the body is mostly filled in given that a lot of the gun is going to be wrapped in fabric so there's not much of it that's ultimately going to be showing. However, because there is no way I will have it finished any time soon, I'm thinking I'm going to splurge a bit and snag one of those $10 Cad Bane blasters for kids. I'm small enough that I can use it well enough with some simple mods, and, luckily, I discovered today while digging through my hard greebly box that I have a barrel that may work as a barrel extension for it.

Aaand, I've even made some progress on the Early Crusader Beast Master helmet for Tiika. I know, it's kind of astounding that anything has been done to it. lol Let me tell you though, that sintra was a pain in the ass to get on there. I've still got to trim the sintra down (a LOT in the case of the back shroud), and after that it will probably sit there again for a time until I have some of that epoxy putty to get to work on smoothing things into the helmet, adding some of the small horns, and over all making it look like bone. Also still debating methods for making the larger horns. So what started out as this:

Has become this:

And on the "costumes that are not mine" front - Thanks to Sidd who sent me some gauntlets insanely cheap, I now have some of Imperial Outpost Armory's gauntlets to mod for my brother's mando kit. (For the record, I love IOA's stuff; it's there GM knees I use for Kora's purple kit and plan on using for the winter kit, as well.) I stripped the paint from two more Hasbro clone helmets for Pere (these two were actually not purchased originally for his purposes entirely. . .the RFs were traded for some other parts he needed). And if you're wondering how many clone helmets that makes now, I think that's about 6? Eh, somewhere around there. Still have a fair amount of the parts to finish sanding before stuff starts getting glued together and epoxied and all that fun stuff. I'm looking forward to that if only because it means there won't be plastic bags of helmet parts sitting around. lol

I think, shockingly enough, that's it for this week. If I manage to get some pictures later today (I almost said tomorrow before I remembered what time it was) I'll make another post to showcase that stuff. Here's hoping by the end of the week I'll also have a suitable pistol and gotten the rest of the clone helmet parts sanded at the very least.