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

Steampunk Tiki Part 1: plans and dress

This year, Gaslight Steampunk Expo had a theme of Tikipunk.  I really loved this idea, however, instead of thinking tropical shirts, I was reminded of the evil fetishes in Diablo who used to run at you with creepy masks and big knives.

Basically I thought what would happen if a Airship crashed and found the natives aggressive rather than friendly.  To portray this, I decided my Tiki fetish would use bones and bits from the crash to create a scary Tiki.  The bones would be used to create the top of the mask, the skull, googles and aviators googles would be used in a staff and a gear and pipes would form part of the mask. 

First I needed a simple dress.  I used some basic cotton gauze the make a sheath dress.  The edges are blanket stitched for decoration.  I used some scrap monk's cloth to create the fringed edging and knotted it to make a netting simple pattern.  In keeping with the found bits for decoration, I used some small gears and paula shell for fringe decoration.

Dress front

Sleeve detail

Bottom Fringe

Once I put the dress on, it felt too plain.  I decided to make a quick lace up vest out of some scrap leather.  This leather has a embossed scale pattern and a coppery color.  There was not enough to use a single piece for the front panels, so I stitched pieces together decoratively. 

vest back

vest front

The dress and vest took less than a week and were by far the easiest part of this costume.  The hardest part was the vest, the embossing and the copper coating made the leather really hard to punch through, yet it was still thin enough that setting the grommets was a pain.   

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.