Lutterloh Pattern System

This looks pretty intriguing: Lutterloh Pattern System
When I have some extra money to throw around I may invest in this.

Products to keep in mind for later projects...

Scratch-A-Print
Lazertran Transfer Paper
Grafix Rub-onz Transfer Paper

Craft Room / Wigcraft

So yeah, I have no idea why I thought I could move around the contents of more than half my house in just one weekend and work on my armor. I've got the rooms mostly in order now and will be posting pics of my awesome new craft room soon. It's a little cluttered up with my "for sale" stuff and framed art that I have yet to find a home for but it's still quite roomy.

I finally got my hands on "The World of Wigcraft" this past Friday. I'm almost done reading through it and I really like what I see. It makes me want to take on a costume with a crazy difficult wig...almost.

I saw Sucker Punch a couple weekends ago and was pleasantly surprised. In fact, I'm very tempted to make a Baby Doll costume now. I really need to finish a couple other projects first though so that'll have to be put aside for the time being.

Pictures to come.

Still Alive

Slightly side tracked but still here.

I've been fiddling around with updating my website with a program called SiteSpinner. Everything about it seems perfect except for the lack of built-in photo galleries. I can't get photos in a scrolling box at all so I'm having to work around it by making the pictures tiny. They open in a new window like the current version of my site. Taking that into consideration, the Graphics section is probably out unless I make numbered pages. I don't think I really need that section anyhow. I mostly had it for my own reference. Here's a sneak peek of the new version:

I figure I'll keep the backgrounds of my blog and my site matched. I've got a little while left on my trial version of SiteSpinner, but I think when it's up I'll go ahead and get the program. Not sure when I'll go live with it but I'm going to get as many pages changed over as possible first.

My leg armor came to a screeching halt for a while. The Chavant clay didn't really work for me so I had to ask around for recommendations on a different clay. The good folks over at the RPF suggested Klean Klay so I got some samples of it and decided I liked it. I ordered 12 more 1lb bricks in extra firm which I hope will show up before this weekend. Here's the mess I made with the Chavant which had to be scraped off later.

I've taken some high res shots of her armor and other details so I'm going to print that out to have in front of me while I sculpt this time around. I considered even making them life sized and using them as patterns. Whatever works.

This weekend I'll be switching rooms around to have a larger area for my crafting supplies so I'm rather excited about that. I'll still try to make time for sculpting my armor once the furniture is all in place.

Just read that Katie's wig books are arriving at her house tomorrow! The long wait is finally over ^___^ I feel like I should be planning for a midnight release party XD

Leg on a Stick

I got around to fiberglassing my leg cast this weekend. I decided to seal the seam first so it wouldn't go out of alignment. I mixed about 4oz. of resin my first go and it started setting up on me halfway through. Next batch I only did 2oz. and I was able to use it all before it started curing.

After my seam set up I fiberglassed the T pipe setup to the inside of my casting. I put a rag in the bottom for the pipe to rest on so it'd dry more or less in the center of the ankle opening.

I went ahead and covered the side facing up while I was at it.

Once the mounting fiberglass cured I screwed the pipe back into the flange and finished fiberglassing all the places I'd missed. 

I ended up with some wicked sharp edges on my casting so I used my Dremel to smooth most of them down. Now it's ready for me to start sculpting onto it.

I did a little test with a candle warmer and the Plasteline clay. It did melt it down but it took a considerable amount of time. Heating it in the microwave and using the candle warmer to keep it liquid would probably be the better way to go. I have the NSP soft, but the tutorial recommended medium or hard so I may end up having to buy more clay. I'll wait and see how it handles first.

And finally we come to my little side project. I've been trying to come up with a way to fix my Himeno shoes and I finally decided on gluing white PVC over them. They're a bit bumpy on the surface so I was going to do a layer underneath the PVC to smooth them out a little. I used Shoe Goo and although it sticks wonderfully and seems like it'd hold forever it won't go on smooth for anything. As I spread it around it rolled and pilled making additional bumps all over that show through the material. My next experiment will be with Super 77 spray glue. That'll at least give me a smooth application, I'm just worried about its holding strength.

That's all so far. Next comes the sculpting. 

Fiberglass Tutorial

Pretty good fiberglass tutorial---> Here

Weekend Goings-On



Leg Cast

Here's a shot of the leg cast now that it's off my personage. I took the stuffing out but left the bands on. I'll have to fiberglass over the seam this weekend, weather permitting.

Stand

Here's the stand I made to mount my casting on. I got a couple flanges and a 48" pipe from the sprinkler section that had threading on both ends. I cut the pipe down the middle to make two, mounted the flange to my board and screwed the pipe down into it. The T pipe had to be shaved down a little to fit in the end and is still only dry fitted as I obviously need to be able to take it off to fit my casting onto the pipe. Now all I have to do is fiberglass the casting onto the stand, lay a layer of 'glass on my casting and then I can start sculpting. I may need to glue a couple paint stirrers across the underside of the ends of the board to make it a little more stable. It seems solid now but that may change when the weight of the clay starts to add up.

Plaster Cheesecloth Test

We did a little test with cheesecloth and plaster of paris. I had both on hand so I thought that'd be better than buying more plaster bandages. It didn't turn out exactly as planned but I think it might be doable. Maybe mix a little less plaster next time and thin it out a tad more. The test casting did come out pretty darn hard considering how thin it is. I'll be busy for a while sculpting the left leg armor so I won't need more castings right away. Might do a couple more test runs in that time.


I got my fiberglass supplies this weekend. Hopefully this coming weekend will be nice enough that I can try them out. I may look at getting some cloth and mat in bulk once I get the hang of using them.