Introducing Annie the Ant :D Details on her construction and more photos under the cut! I've been picking away at Annie for awhile now. She started originally when I bought some Antron Fleece for a dinosaur. When the material arrived it proved to be far more sparkly than I thought (another reminder to always get a swatch before buying anything in mass quantity!) Although the material was too shiny for my dinosaur, I thought it would be rather nice for an insect, so I decided to make an ant! I'm always experimenting with making costumes that are easy to pack and comfortable to wear. Her tail is super light and easy to pack, for it is actually a fabric covered novelty football!
The spigot for the tail is located inside the costume, so I simply need to insert an air pump to the spigot to inflate the tail. Then when I am done costuming, I can deflate the tail flat for easy storage and packing.
Her eyes are a large plastic easter egg cut in half. Right after Easter is a great time of year to buy these for super cheap.
Her head is foam on a balaclava. Antenna are 14 gauge wire covered with a tube of fabric. Vision is through the front of the head.
Antron fleece was added the same as I would have done with fur. A Duct tape pattern was drafted, then the fabric pieces were hand sewn to the head. I used a special stitch known as a henson stitch (created by Jim Henson, and used on his many muppet characters), it's similar to a ladder stitch, but hides the stitches a little better.
The head and body were then airbrushed for finished detail.

Grey Deer

I have quite a few deer commissions coming up, so it was time to sculpt a deer head base. In order to make sure the sculpt looks good, I decided to test it out on an experimental head instead of on a commission ^_^
The Antlers were made from a butchered novelty antler coat rack. I bought a coat rack hook that was meant to look like to antlers. I chopped the rack apart and removed some tines, then added clay to smooth out the curves. I made a mold the modded antlers and cast them in resin. As the resin cured, I set a screw into the antler base.
A Tee-nut was installed in the head so the antler could be screwed into the base. If you brush the fur over, you can barely even see the hole!
I decided to make the deer into a partial. I made everything except the cloppers. Dream Vision creations made the hoof "fingers" which I then installed.

Lion King Musical Lioness - Headdress

Lioness is so nearly done! I can see the finish line! The head was painted (sorry, no progress pics.... I never think to take them when I'm painting T_T)
I started with a base coloring: the head was airbrushed in dark brown, then a light goldenrod coat was added over top, then a mid-brown coat on top of that. Once I had my base, I airbrushed highlights in yellow and shadows in dark black-brown. I used a small brush to paint the detailed divits in the head, then drybrushed a little around the eyes and nose. Black was added last in key points: eyes, lips and nose area.
The flowing silk down the back of the head was laid flat and ironed, then painted with a 1" flat brush.
The silk was then carefully folded and sewn. Snaps were added to the silk and the inside of the corset so the silk would hold when the headdress was folded up into the corset.
I hand stitched a thread through the other end of the silk to gather it. This gathered silk was then glued to the inside of the lioness head.
The unitard was painted with a flat 1" brush similar to the silk. I used a flesh tone spandex for the unitard.
Here's a quick test photo to see how everything fits together! I just need to add hand loops for the headdress silk! So nearly done! Yay!

More Furry Dance Classes!

The collar was only the appetizer for the main course! The corset! I worked on the corset through the month of December and a little in to January. I am afraid I did not calculate the time worked on it, so I can't say how many hours exactly I worked on it. BUT! I worked on the corset pretty much every day: 30 minutes during my lunch break during the week, and an average of 6-8 hours on the weekends... plus many more powerhouse hours over my Christmas holiday. Each row of beads took about 30 minutes to apply... so you can do the math ^_^;
Progress..... I covered an existing corset I had with the same silk as the collar, then added a flap of fabric and some snaps to hide the front closures. The musical corsets appear to only have a back closure. Since I don't have a professional dresser to put me in my costume each time, I chose this method to make it easier to get on and off as required. I started with the front middle row, then added beads to each side for balance.

As you can see, towards the end, I was nearly out of beads... so you can see the lower spine area has a real mish-mash of beads. I figured it was safe since the back is almost entirely covered with the silk drape.
Some fun facts:

There are OVER 4600 beads to the collar and corset combined!

I watched 3 seasons of Community, 1 season of Life, 1 season of Numb3rs, 1 episode of Bones during the making of this corset

My cats are still finding stray beads that escaped a the corset and rolled away

Aggghhhhh! My fingers! I spent all weekend sewing beads onto my collar for my Lioness costume. There's a good 16 hours of work there. Most of the beads were approximately 4mm-6mm long... so you can see why it would take some time to bead the whole thing! All of the beads are stone or wood (no plastic!). The collar itself was drafted from a duct tape pattern. I used Buckram as a base for stiffness, and covered it with a layer of silk so the buckram wouldn't show through. Once I had my collar I began beading from the middle, and worked outwards so I could match the pattern on each side.
After 7 hours of beading....
After 10 hours of beading....
Completed! At around 16 hours T_T
The collar was a nice prep for the corset, which I also have to bead. It is significantly LARGER... however I will be using somewhat larger beads as well.

Lion King Musical Lioness - head sculpting part 2

More sculpting for my lioness headpiece. Clay smoothed down and scalloping and texture added:
Mold was made with rubber latex. It's a lot slower process than silicone, you paint thin layers of rubber latex onto the piece over several days. When the latex mold was thick enough, I made a hard case in plastercloth to hold the shape:
Resin was poured into the mold and rolled around to make a hollow headpiece. In order to strengthen the ears, I added some rigid expanding foam:
Finish headpiece removed from the mold:
In order to clean up some of the mis-cast errors, I used bondo to fill pocks, then sanded down the fills to a smooth finish:
The head was added to a headdress. The headdress was made with twisted 16 gauge wire, and covered with twine to look more natural. I installed some strips of sheetfoam to the inside of the headbase for comfort: Next up.... painting!