For Banzaicon I put together my first Steampunk outfit. This is a presentation of the final result. Most of the outfit is made by me; skirt, hotpants, corset, watch-glove, monocle and arm guard.
In this last photo I am portrayed together with my talented sister Elisabeth. She won second place in the style competition at Banzaicon with this steampunk attire, make sure to check out her blog, bettcanarddesign.blogspot.com
The big sister costume was complex, but to all odds the process went surprisingly according to plan. For the different parts of the costume I will post work in progress photos and description of my process. When I'm lacking details, please comment and I will elaborate. For more "work in progress" pictures, visit my Flickr page.
I started of with a beach ball (50 cm diameter) which I covered with basic paper mache. I used old newspapers cut in strips, dipped in a mixture of flour and water, layer upon layer. I let it dry out beween covering it completely since I did not know how sturdy the paper ball would be. Since it only would support as a base for the glass fiber I stopped at 0,4 cm thick layer.
I left a hole open where the ball nozzel was, so when the glas fiber layer was dry it would be easy to get the ball out without destroying it.
Next step - Glas fiber
This is some nasty smelling stuff; you need a work area with good ventilation, mouth mask and gloves. (The rough man at the store said "this I do bare handed" - okey, but I like my hands soft and such, I'll wear the gloves). Standard latex gloved workes fine. I bought the fiber mat (1x1 m) epoxy and hardener at biltema.
The mat was cut in stripes and epoxy/hardner was mixed according to the instructions on the box. Note - you should not mix this in a plastic bowl, the plastic might react and melt.
Then I used a ordinary paint brush and painted epoxy on the ball, laid mat stripes over and painted again. I only needed one layer of glassfibre for this construction.
The surface of the glass fibre ball was roughly sanded and covered with plaster.
I then cut a hole for my head and another for the port hole in front. Then I added details. The edge around the port hole is a cork trivet, around it I glued a cable tube, the rest is nylon rope. More pictures on Flickr.
On the top there were even more details. This I have carved out of flower oasis, which very light weight and easy to shape, but very brittle. The output for the blue light on top of the helmet is the cut-off bottom of a cola bottle.
Now you have alot of sanding ahead of you. In the meantime I will guide you through how to make the lower part - the chest piecce.
The chest piece
This is a very improvised method. As a mold for my paper mache base I usen the bck of chair, dressed it up with a t-shirt stuffed with pillows, tighten with a belt to shape it, and a plastic bag on top. Voila - cheap bust mold.
Then I repeated the process from earlier with paper mache and glas fiber coated with plaster. To get that hunchback look I build up the back with shaped foam which then was sanded smooth to follow the curve of the back.
Fast forwarding a bit. The shape is done by hand after studying pictures of the big sister.
This is all for part one, more will come, see part two here.
