Steampunk Tiki at Gaslight Gathering 2018

Here are a couple of pictures of the full outfit as worn at the con with my husband and a good friend. It was so much fun to attend this con again with a couple of friends, this con is so friendly and always a lot of fun. 

 

I love my friend's tentacle hat! 

 

The con provided this great back drop for pictures.

 In this photo you can see where my eyes sit in the mask.

Steampunk Tiki Part 4: A large knife

In the Diablo game, the fetishes run at you with giant knives.  The effect in the game is actually kind of terrifying and exactly the inspiration for the Steampunk Tiki, therefore I needed a giant knife.  I wanted the knife to look handmade and made in a jungle type area, so specifically not modern steel.  I decided that the knife blade should look like flint knapped obsidian.  While I have flint knapped previously, I am not great at it and it does create really shape knives.  Since this is for cosplay, I wanted the knife to look flint knapped but be dull so as to not harm people around me.  I decided on resin casting for the blade.  To create the mold, I first made paper clay blades halves.  I then poured 2 part silicon rubber mold material over the top. 

Paper clay blade halves

 Pouring over the top was a bad idea, while this is what the instructions recommended, the paper clay is too light and floated within the silicon rubber.  I should have pressed the knife halves into the top of the molding material so they didn't float.  Due to this mistake, the molds were very deep, and far deeper than the blade needed to be.

 

Knife mold

Once the mold was complete, I made a big batch of resin and cast the two halves.  Once they were set, I then used a small batch of resin to stick the two halves together.  You can see how the edges dont quite match on the two molds in the image below.  You can also see how dull the surface turned out due to the roughness of the paper clay.

raw knife cast

 To clean up the surface, I first used a Dremel and a belt sander to grind the edges even and clean up any odd cuts or bumps.  Then to give the blade a shiny finish, I added a fresh coat of clear resin to the entire blade.  To do so without having to lay the blade down, I hung the blade to allow both sides to be covered at once. I did not have anything fancy to hand the blade with, so I used a cheap clamp, some string and stick from my yard.  The stick was then stuck on the shelves in my front sun-room.  It actually took several layers of resin, with 24hr dry time in between to the finish I wanted.

Shiny finished blade

Hanging blade with resin and LED

I also added an LED into the blade at the top.  To set in the LED, I drilled into the blade where it would meet the handle.  The hole was drilled slightly larger than the blade and then I used resin to bond the LED to the blade (the wires are sticking out of the top of the blade in the hanging picture). Unfortunately, I accidentally used blue pigment instead of dye so the blade is not clear enough for the LED to have much effect.

The remainder of the parts were a gear from a bike, a couple of pipe fittings and a big copper pipe.

Knife parts

The copper pipe had two square cuts made a dremel to allow the blade to sit into the pipe and allow me to add cross lacing with leather to make the blade look tied in with leather.  The pipe fittings were chosen to allow the electronics (switch, battery and wires) for the LED to be kept in the pipe but still allow easy access.  The larger fitting was epoxied onto the end of the pipe and the smaller fitting can be screwed into the larger fitting allowing access to the stuff inside the pipe.  To use the gear as a pommel, we needed to cut it.  The dremel was actually able to cut the bike gear, although there were lots of sparks and great need for eye and skin protection.  The broken gear was then glued and wired into the smaller pipe fitting.

knife pommel

Finally, the I covered the pipe with some scrap leather to make holding the knife more pleasant and added the decorative lacing that 'holds' the blade in place. In actuality the blade is epoxied in place.

 

Leather handle cover and lacing

Other than using pigment instead of dye, which caused the LED to be less functional than I would like, I am pleased with the knife overall and certainly learned a lot!

Completed knife

Steampunk Tiki Part 3: Skull on a Stick Staff

As part of the evil fetish tiki, I envisioned the skull of an aviator from the airship crash stuck on a staff.  This was a very easy prop to make and utilized many cheaply bought parts.  First I bought a cheap plastic skull, realistic looking plastic eyeballs, cheap googles and a very cheap aviator's hat.  We also purchased some UV LEDs, a switch and a battery pack.

The googles were a basic silver color, so we spray painted them red to give them a bit of color.  To make it look like they had been in a crash, we hit one eye piece with a quick burst of black spray paint to simulate damage.
 

Cheap googles painted red

We drilled two holes through the skull that would fit a long wooden staff we had lying around.  The holes were drilled so the staff would go directly up through the center.

Cheap plastic skull with holes drilled for the staff

We then cut out holes in the eye sockets to allow the addition of lights later and glued some plastic eyeballs into the eye sockets.  These eyeballs are half globes, not full globes.  Since the aviator's cap needed a hole in it as well, I bought a really cheap costume one online.  It is very synthetic and would probably be terrible to wear, but for the skull it was perfect.

 

 

Skull with added eyeballs and cheap aviator's cap

To add a bit of a creepy factor to the skull, we cut a hatch in the back to allow the addition of electronics within the skull.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hatch for electronics

 

We then added UV LED lights behind the eyeballs. The lights, switch and battery pack fit neatly in the skull and the UV LEDs shine right through the eyeballs.

With lit up eyes

Skull on a stick!

Steampunk Tiki Part 2: The Mask

After creating a simple dress and vest, the most important part was the giant Tiki mask.  Since I wanted it to be very big, but not too heavy, I settled on foam for the base.  I have never made a prop with foam before, so this was certainly a learning experience.

The easiest part was creating a paper pattern.  I simply drew out what I wanted.

Tiki Mask pattern

Once the pattern was done, I cut out a backing piece and each decorative piece out of EVA foam floor mats (the grey colored foam) and thinner teeth out of craft foam. To allow myself to see, I cut out the inside of the whites of the eyes from the base mat.   The pieces were then bonded together with Barge's cement. Note: this stuff stinks and must be done in a well ventilated place!

Mask pieces glued together

Once the glue had set, I contoured the overlay pieces with a Dremel tool.  This step made a complete mess of the shop, and required safety googles and filter mask.  To create the wood grain, I followed an awesome Youtube tutorial from Craft Alchemist.  I drew wood grain on the foam with a sharpie (Note to self, dont use red if any of the painting is white.....)

Mask with contouring and wood grain drawn

After drawing on the wood grain, you make a ton of tiny slices in the foam matching the wood grain lines.  It looked like nothing was happening with the slices, in fact they were basically invisible.  I then heated the foam with a hot air gun and the slashes opened up creating a grain texture.

detail of grain texture

To seal the foam and allow the foam to be painted, the mask was coated with 3 coats plastidip spray.

coated with Plastidip

The mask was then painted with basic acrylic paints. It took 4-6 coats for each color, and the red sharpie bled into the white a little bit. 

Painted mask with human for scale

Next, I added glued 4 nails to the inside top of the mask and stabilized the nails with a second layer of EVA mat foam.  The bones are cheap leg and arm bones from a Halloween skeleton from the craft store are then glued onto the nails.  I then wrapped cheap twine around the bones at 4 different heights, using glue to keep the twine stable on the slippery plastic bones.  This formed a framework to support the fake ferns.  I then wove the fake ferns through the twine and glued the stems to the top of the mask.

bone and fern attachment back

bone and fern attachment front

To keep the mask on my head, I used leather straps glued to the mask back.  Since the mask is so flat, I had to add a piece of foam to move the mask out from my face.  The strapping goes around my forehead, not at eye level.

Straps to wear the mask

Here is what the mask looks like worn and with the staff and knife, which I will cover in the next two posts.  There were so many steps to the mask that required drying overnight that while the mask was started first, the other two props went much faster!

Tiki props

Gaslight Gathering 2016 con report

Gail Carriger and myself as Alexia Maccon

Last weekend I was lucky enough to attend the Gaslight Gathering, a steampunk convention in San Diego.  I have been to a number of steampunk conventions and this is definitely one of my all time favorites.  The people were wonderfully friendly, the location was beautiful and eclectic, the panelists were entertaining and there were so many make and take workshops that the event was never dull! 

We decided to go because Gail Carriger was the guest of honor! She has long been a favorite author of mine and I was super excited to meet her and to hear her speak about her books and ideas. In honor of her, I made a gown based on the cover of the manga from the Souless Series (I will post more on the making of this dress in future posts). I wore the dress on the first day and got to take my picture with Gail! She is an absolute delight and one of my favorite con guests ever.  Gail took pictures with fans, talked with all of us, was charming at her book signings, attended much of the convention, spoke with anyone who wished to speak with her and was elegant on top of all of this!  She even posted pictures she took with those of us who dressed as characters from her book on her blog.  Gail is amazing as an author and an utter delight as a person!

SPLASH

SPLASH

SPLASH

Besides the perk of Gail Carriger's presence, the con itself was absolutely amazing.  There were ~30 make and take workshops, some of which were free and all of which seemed amazing.  My husband and I took 3 workshops: Build Your Own 7ft. Wide Retractable Wings!, Copper Charms workshop (with copper clay) and Learn To Solder: Lightup Bug Workshop.  I will grab pictures of these things as we unpack and post pictures of these as well.  The workshops were delightful and I wished we had found time to take more of them. There were also many con panels that were great fun.  Some favorites were Gothic Literature and Its Influence on Steampunk and the Short Steampunk Film Festival.  There was live entertainment, including SPLASH II! Water Ballet Encore, an all male steampunk water ballet by the Steam Punk League for Aquatic Shenanigans (S.P.L.A.S.H.).  There was also a Tea with theatrics in which we flew around San Diego in a dirigible and got lost in time with the crew of the Lupita and a lovely ball with both live music and a DJ.  A whole room full of steampunks did the Time Warp! And of course a wonderful vendor room full of fun things to buy. There was also teapot racing and 2 fashion shows.  If you wanted something more relaxing, the con showed movies in the evening.

SPLASH

My husband and I purchased the VIP tickets and I can say they were well worth it!  There was a nice selection of cool things in the gift bag including art by Brian Kesinger, a lovely t-shirt and light up icecubes for later prop making.  The VIP lounge was well stocked with good snacks and stuff to drink and staffed by very nice people.  It was also a very cool room for those of us whose costumes were hot!   VIPs also got early access to workshop sign ups, which was a very nice perk. 

SPLASH

In addition to all this wonderfulness there were many many people in amazing costume.  I took some pictures, but in searching on the web I found so many amazing costumes I missed!  This whole event was a delight and I really hope we are able to attend again!








Here are some more photos from the con.  First some photos of what my husband wore.  He kept things simple on Friday and Sunday with a vest, hat and cane.  On Saturday he wore the Poison Doctor outfit with his new poison finder prop.

 I wore the Alexia Maccon dress on Friday.

The Alexia dress is great fun to wear, but it is a bit limiting!  I tried to take a picture sitting in the replica time machine and the skirts barely fit!  The time machine was amazing however, the lights work, the dish spins and it is all controlled by the dashboard.

And 2 outfits on Saturday, although I only got photos of one.  I wore the Anime inspired outfit in the morning due to needing my fingers free for the Copper Clay workshop and the Dia de Muertos outfit in the afternoon.  On Sunday I wore my vampire gown.

 Here are some photos of some of the other lovely and amazing costumes and props we saw at the con, but as I mentioned before there was so much amazing things to do and people that this is just a small amount of the cool things we saw there!  A note to the subjects of these photos, if you see yourself and would like the photo removed, just let me know and I will remove it! Also, if you would like a link to your own blog here let me know and I will add it!