As I'm waiting for the fabrics (blankets) to arrive from AliExpress, and I'm hoping to finish this costume for Daruma Don, on the 14th December, I have about two weeks to make it, so I'm making as much as I can with what I have right now. Yesterday, I went to Baixa, to buy the remaining materials: the black tull, the brown acrylic paint, the strap and buckles to support the tail, and yarn to embroider Mimikyu's face. Meanwhile, I started the tail, and I'll be making one post per costume item.
THE TAIL
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| tracing and cutting the two tail pieces |
I still had quite a bit of leftover EVA foam, a mat for appliances, with texture on one side, I got at AKI, when it still was AKI, (it merged with, and changed the name to Leroy Merlin since) and started the tail. I also have a piece of insulating foam (at the other flat), which would be fine, but I decided to incarnate Kamui, and use the EVA foam, cut it with a sharp craft knife, and use the Dremmel (mine is another brand) for shaping and finishing it.
To enlarge the tail shape, I first determined its size, by eyeballing it from the skirt's length. I didn't want to bother tracing it in vector shape, and then print it, so I just copied it from the screen to a small piece of paper, cut it out, and traced it to grid paper. I then counted the number of squares, and divided the planned real length by the number of squares, made a similar grid in 1/1 scale, and traced it to the larger pattern paper.
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| cut tail pieces with a groove for the structural wire |
I cut that pattern, and traced it onto the flat side of the foam twice, one of them mirrored. I sharpened my craft knife, and cut through it, at a 90º angle. I also determined which side would be the front and back of the tail. On the (textured) inside of the back piece of foam, I cut a groove for the supporting wire, with the knife blade at 45º. I cut a long length of thicker wire, about 2 m, folded it in half, and shaped it into a hook in the middle, to attach to the strap. With a thinner wire, I attached both wire ends to each other, leaving around 3 cm free on top, which I folded into a Y shape. Then I cut the texture bits, around 1,5 cm around the edge, so they would glue flat to each other.
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| gluing both pieces together, sandwiching the wire in the middle |
I first spread some contact glue to the groove and wire, and glued the wire in place. Then I spread contact glue to the textured side of both pieces, reinforcing it with glue around the edges and the wire, and glued them together.
After the glue dried, I cut the excess foam with the craft blade, and started shaping it with the Dremmel. Let me say, it takes practice to do precise work with a Dremmel on foam, without screwing it up. Fortunately, I chose to use this technique first on a piece that is supposed to look like drift wood, imperfect. Then I heat sealed the foam all around, and added Aquaplast filler in all the gaps.
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| shaped tail |
The next day, after the Aquaplast had thoroughly dried, I sanded it with a popsicle stick with sandpaper, to get rid of any excess. A couple of days later, I diluted some wood glue in water, and painted four coats of the mixture, sanding in between, until I was happy with the consistency and strength. To accelerate the process, I used the heat gun on it, but it created bubbles in the glue, so back to its box, and I let it dry naturally. It's still warm anyway, even though it's December, and it didn't take very long to dry.
Finally, the paint. I did another five coats of Winsor & Newton Galeria Acrylic, in Raw Umber. It is a little bit too dark, but the right tone of brown, and, like the guy in the shop explained, the square symbol in the back means if the paint is transparent. Empty, for transparent; half full, on the diagonal, semi-transparent; and full, for opaque. This Raw Umber is semi-transparent, which means, I need to add more coats, especially to cover the white Aquaplast over the charcoal foam. I did three coats, that didn't completely cover the Aquaplast, and looked for faults (in daylight). Then I sanded the faulty bits, mostly glue drops, due to my impatience, sanded the most obvious, and, with my finger, dabbed a bit of paint over them. Then I added two more coats, with a wide paintbrush and the final coat with a softer paintbrush. To brighten it up a bit, I added one last coat, a mix of the burnt umber, alizarin crimson and pale umber. Lastly, I added a coat of a satin varnish, to seal the acrylic paint.
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| the finished tail |
The final step was to line the wires with the leftover black fleece. I cut a long strip, turned the edges in, and slip stitched it together on top of the wires, starting from the bottom. When I reached the top, where the wires fold over to attach to the belt, I opened the strip, folded it over the wires and slip stitched them to the wires, and it was done. On the bottom part, near the tail, I cut three thin scallops, and glued them to the tail, like fingers holding the tail, with UHU universal glue.
The belt is made of a wide black strap, I got at Domingos & Nogueira, with a snap closure and an adjusting slider buckle. The tail hook has a hair elastic attached to it, to close it. The belt slides in between.
I started on Sunday, December 1st, with the patterning and cutting the foam, and finished on Monday, December 9th, except the lining the wire with the skirt's fabric, which I did in January. I'm happy I managed to make it slowly enough, but in time for it to be completely dry, before I need to wear it.
+ it was my first time "properly" working with foam, in a larger prop, like the pros do it. The Dremmel work needs a lot of practice for precision work, so I'm happy this "twig" didn't need it. The choice for EVA foam was clever, because it's sturdier than the insulating foam, and I'm likely to bump into things a lot with it.
- I was a bit too impatient (the time crunch didn't help either), so some mistakes could have been avoided, but it looks very cute and I'm very happy with the result.
THE CUNNING PLAN
Make everything I can before the fabrics arrive, so I can focus on sewing and embroidering next week.
