Cthulhu for President, making of some cultists robes and masks

I am sorry I have been so neglectful of this blog, I got a new job in January and the adjustment has been slow.  The new job is taking almost all of my free time, although I do love it!  I have only managed one costume set and one costume event since starting the new job and that was a set of cultist robes, masks, tentacle fingers and campaign signs.  You see the theme for Wild Wild West Con was Cthulhu for President 2017. I figured if Cthulhu was running for President there would need to be some cultists running around. 

Applique on the hood

The robes are really very simple shapes basically just long sleeved robes with hoods.  I did not use a pattern for these but Meiljolie of All Things Crafty has a very good pattern on her site.  The robes are made of red linen and appliqued with tentacles in black linen.  To the left is one of the hoods.  The tentacles were designed free-form to ensure that the robes would each be unique. There are tentacles around the hem, the cuffs and the face opening in both my robe and my husband's robe.

Leather mask pieces

Next we needed some masks with tentacles.  I modified the plague doctor leather mask pattern I used for the Poison Doctor and Sugar Skull masks to create two different looks. For the first one, I shorted the beak and added 2 circular vents.  I also cut tentacles along the bottom edge of both face pieces and added a tentacle to the bottom the nose ridge.  You can see the cut piece to the left.

shaping the tentacles with warm water

I used very light weight leather, 3 oz, so I could shape the tentacles.  The tentacles were shaped with warm water by hand. Below you can see one face piece without shaping and one with the tentacles shaped.

adding vents

After shaping, the mask was dyed green, the vents were riveted on as seen to the left.  The vents are cut from brass screen. The mask was sewn together with heavy duty thread and the eyes and straps riveted on after sewing the mask together.  The eyes were made by doming copper screen

First mask

First mask

I wanted the two masks to look completely different, so I spent more time playing with the pattern for the second mask.  Unfortunately, I got so distracted making the mask, I did not take any pictures of the construction.  Basically I cut off the nose from the first cultist pattern and added a triangle shaped piece to the front to fill the created hole.  I then added tentacles to this piece and a triangle shaped vent.  The shaping, dyeing and construction were done the same way as the previous mask.

Second mask

Second Mask

Here is a picture of the robe and mask one together and my husband's giant wooden hand he was working on.

Next I designed some campaign signs.  Since we though we might want to use these costumes beyond 2017, I omitted the year.  The signs were designed in illustrator and printed at FedEx as yard signs. Once printed we stapled them to square wooden posts so we could carry them around all day.

The slogans of "Why Vote for a Lesser Evil" were printed on both signs.  However, my husband wanted "Make America Green Again" and I wanted "Answer the Call." So the signs are slightly different.







Next, I wanted tentacle fingers.  I used some plastic finger puppets and some scrap leather to make over gloves to hold the finger puppets onto my fingers while letting me retain motion. Finally, I wanted some harnesses that would allow me to carry around some Tentacle Kitty Little Ones for more tentacle goodness.

Here are a couple of pictures from the event. 

We had so much fun as cultists we wore the outfits 2 days out 3 of the event.  The other day we pulled out the Dia de Muertos and the Plague Doctor outfits.

Steampunk poison doctor accessories

With the Poison doctor coat complete, it was time to add some accessories.  I figured as a poison doctor, he should wander around dispensing poisons to people.  To make the poisons portable, I got some used glass vials left over from my work and cleaned them thoroughly.  While  I loved the look of the glass vials, the caps were either grey plastic or white plastic and really really ugly.  I decided to hide the caps with polymer clay.  This is probably only my third project with polymer clay so I am pretty happy with how they came out.

Large bottles filled

The white caps were hard plastic and as long as I removed the soft inner lining could be place directly into the oven.  So I simply molded the clay directly onto the caps.  I tried to follow the plant theme, and used leaves, wood and vines as my inspiration for the polymer clay.

Largbe bottles from the top

Since the poisons referenced in the embroideries on the coat are both plants (hemlock, wolfbane, ect) and elixirs (Extract of wolfbane, Invisibility elixir, ect), I decided that some of the bottle should contain plant material and some should contain liquid.  Since the larger bottle are much easier to fill, we filled them with assorted plant material from our yard.  We then baked the plant material to dry it in the oven.  Once the plant material was dried, we glued the tops onto the bottles to prevent any accidents.
The small bottles were then filled with liquid.  In this case the liquid is distilled water with food coloring added.  These bottles were also glued shut to prevent spills.

Small bottles from the top

Small bottles filled

The brown bottles had soft plastic stoppers that would not survive baking, so I used a polymer clay cookie cutter to make some brown and green leaves.  Once the leaves were baked, I glued them to the top of the bottles.  As these bottles were dark, I did not put any contents inside.



Once the bottles were ready, I used craft foam and tape to create leather holsters for the bottles.  The idea was to make each holder unique to add some variety.  Once the pattern was made, the leather was cut out, edged and stained.  The staining was deliberately left streaky to go with the shady nature of a poison doctor.  We also stained a belt blank with the same green stain to match and used a random gear belt blank we had lying around.  Both holsters are entirely held together with rivets, entirely for aesthetic reasons. The holsters slip over the belt so the belt can be worn without them if needed.

 

Leather steampunk masks

I am working on historical sewing and on embroidery.  Unfortunately, these projects must be secret till their reveals so I cant post about them yet!  I am dying to share them......but I will be good and wait till they have gone to their new homes...

In the mean time, I have always wanted a steampunk leather plague doctor's mask.  I also love celebrating Dia de los Muertos and sugar skulls. For some reason these things go very well together in my head so I decided to do a sugar skull themed mask.  My husband decided to do his literally as a plague mask and be sickly green.  His mask reminds me of the 'ick face' green poison stickers, although everyone I say this to does not remember these.  I swear I am not making up these stickers! 

To make the masks, I bought a pattern from this etsy site Steampunk Masks. The pattern is a digital download and there is a video to help with construction.  I will say that some previous leather working experience is a plus, this mask was harder than my previous leatherworking projects but not too bad.  You need to be really really exact on the holes since there is very little play in the pattern.  There are a lot of pieces so the construction took quite a while, but the effect is so worth it in the end! 

To create the masks, we cut out the pieces and then edged them to make the edges really smooth.  Then I painted mine with leather paint, Eco-Flo Cova Color paints.  These paints are water based and very easy to use.  The only downside I found is that it took many coats to get a strong color in the pale colors; white, yellow and orange.  Since this paint is water based, I had to seal the mask to make it water proof.  Together with multiple layers of paint and sealant, my mask was really really stiff!

 My husband stained his with green leather stain.  Rather than use a damp cloth, he used a dry cloth which resulted a streaked texture to go with the plague idea.  The masks were then stitch and riveted together.

I am really happy with how the masks came out.  The only issues I have is that I would like the mask to cover a bit more of my face and they can be hard to see out of.  It is a mask with very little fitting so the vision issue is not surprising and not something I will worry too much about.  I may rework the pattern for next time to get the mask to come closer to my ears, the next time I make one. 

Making a Teacup Holster

When we dress for steampunk and if we are not wearing specific outfits (for example the Alice in Wonderland or vampire outfits), my husband usually wears a pretty basic gentleman's dress (vest, hat and cane required). Most of our outfits are very specific and and have very specific props, but it is nice to have a fairly basic outfit that one can easily throw on. Of course then the accessories become super important. Since tea dueling is so popular in steampunk circles, one should always have their teacup at the ready. To help my husband do this, we made him and teacup holster. I could not find very much on how to do this on the internet, so I am including step by step information here and feel free to ask me any questions. I will try to help if I can.

First, we bought antique teacups. Most people use china cups which are super beautiful, but my husband is really rough on his stuff. We found a set of old teacups or possibly punch cups made of thick glass at a bargain antique store. I thought these would be better for him and far less likely to break. We then went to the leather supply store and my husband picked out his closure. The closure dictated the shape and size of the straps, particularly since he picked one that was so large. 

To make the pattern we used thin craft foam. Thin craft foam works far better for mocking up leather projects that cloth or paper and is still very cheap. First, I pushed the cup with the open side down into the craft foam to give me the size of the cup.  This allowed me to draw out the shape of the back piece.  Then we played with the craft foam and duct tape until we had the straps the way we wanted. The image to the left shows the closure, one the glass cups and the craft foam pieces all taped together.  If you use duct tape to tape the pieces together, be careful pulling them apart as the craft foam can rip.


Here is an image from the side, showing the craft foam pattern taped together.  The two straps currently sticking up, we patterned to overlap and fit the large closure.














Here are the individual pattern pieces.  The pocket shaped piece is the back piece and if you look closely you can see the indent from where I pushed the cup into the foam.  The long strap goes all the way over the cup horizontally to keep the cup from slipping out the sides when the holster is closed.  The straps with the curved ends are the top and bottom straps.  The top strap has a cut out to accommodate the handle of the cup. 



The only piece not shown here are the straps that allow the cup holder to be attached to a belt. We actually did not make pattern pieces for this, just measure the length of strap needed.  You could either put straps flat on the back of the back piece which will cause the holster to ride high up on the belt.  Or you can have the holster sit below the belt, by loops from the top of holster that the belt will run through.  My husband opted for the second option.  So we measured where he wanted the holster to sit in comparison to his belt and made 2 leather straps just short of 2x that measurement.  I will explain in a second why they were shorter than 2x.

We then traced the pattern pieces onto the leather and cut them out.  We wanted stiffness so we used veggie tanned tooling leather we had laying around.  Once the leather was cut, we edged all the pieces to make a nicer finish and then stained the leather a brown.  To the left is the stained, edged leather pieces ready to assemble.  The pieces could be assembled by stitching or by riveting.  The closure was designed to be riveted on and we decided to rivet the whole holster together.

Once everything was dry, we riveted the pieces together and riveted the closure onto the straps.  The picture of the left shows the main pieces all riveted together.  It also shows the overlapping straps with the closure in place.

  The riveting is why the pieces forming the loops were slightly less than 2x the length.  The rivets we had on hand were only thick enough to do 2 thicknesses of leather. If the loop pieces were cut 2x the length we would have needed to rivet through 3 thicknesses, the back piece and the loop pieces twice.  Instead, we riveted the loop piece to itself to make the loop and left a small overhang at the end.  The overhang was then riveted to the back piece.  We could always have gone back out and bought longer rivets, but we decided to just use what we already had on hand. 

Here is the final teacup holster.  This was actually a really quick project and we are pretty happy with the results.  I think the total project was maybe 2 hours of actual work with drying time for the leather after the edging and after the staining.  The two hours even includes the pattern making time.  I am excited for my husband to wear this the next time he needs to put on quick steampunk attire, or the next time the local group hosts a tea duel! 

 

Steampunk nametags

The major distraction to working on the Black and White Victorian dress has been making steampunk name tags.  In a week, our local steampunk crew is helping out at a local convention called Bubonicon.  We are hosting a panel on steampunk focusing on the influence of non-English culture.  A meet and greet with Cherie Priest, a guest of honor, which I am so excited about.  A kids craft workshop to make goggles and a 2 hour block in the Consuite.  I felt we should have name tags that identify our members as part of the Albuquerque Steampunk Society (ABQSS), so myself a friend are making badges.  We are all using character names rather than our real names for the badges.

The badges are leather.  We first stamped ABQSS and the character names into the leather.  We also used a few steampunk leather stamps for decoration.  Most of the stamps worked pretty well with the leather just moist.  However, the propeller stamp was more detailed that the gear stamps and we found we need to wrap the leather in a wet cloth sealed in a plastic bag for 30 minutes to get a good impression.  To make life easy, we just wrapped all the badges for 30 minutes since we did not completely plan out what we wanted stamped on each badge ahead of time.  Here are the badges just stamped.

We let leather dry overnight.  We then stained the leather with a brown stain to make the details show up a bit more.  We let the stained leather dry overnight.  Once the leather stain was dry, we buffed the badges with a soft cloth. 

Once the badges were dry it was finally decoration time!   We added grommets to the top of each badge for handing cords and to the bottom of each badge for hanging resin filled bezels I made and individual touches.  We also added gears, crystals and other bits to make each badge unique.  Here are a few of them so far!