Finally I've been able to work up enough motivation to write you a real blog post. I even have photos, how organized is that? I still haven't bought batteries for my real camera, though. In the cycle of procrastination and avoidance, I often leave off performing innocuous tasks like that. It makes no sense. It's just what I do.
So, as for Puck, I've made a lot of headway in the last month or so. The wig is mostly done and I've at least started on the dress and cloak. I don't know yet whether I want to wear the shirt under the dress or not, but that's not a decision I have to make now.
The first thing about the wig is that it needed to be heavily styled to achieve the style I wanted, which was a partial updo combination involving a French braid that would pull the hair back from the hairline and take full advantage of the lace front which I paid so dearly for.
Here's most of the stuff that has (or will) go into the wig:
Four packs of braid extensions, a ready-made braid extension, horns I made out of paper clay, and various doodads that I got on sale at craft stores. It's all going into the wig. Not pictured are the millinery roses that I also want to include.
The horns are heavy pieces, which necessitates adding some sort of superstructure to the wig. This prevents the wig, which is elastic, from sagging under the excess weight. Sewn to the inside of the wig is the above pictured piece of millinery buckram, which will act as an interfacing when I attach the horns to the wig.
In the end I latch-hoked two packs of braid extensions into the wig. I braided them all into about sixty tiny braids throughout the wig. That took so much time I don't even want to think about it. The other two packets became two large braids which will be sewn separately into the wig to hide the stuff I'm using to hold the wig together, and to add detail. The ends are stubbed using shoe goo.
I gave the horns a sort of metallic finish using simple acrylic paint left over from my Luminara cosplay. I was very surprised and pleased with how they turned out. They look like metal. It wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but now that's it's done I wouldn't have it any other way. They look beautiful. I removed those stupid black wires, though, because I realized they wouldn't really serve any purpose. It was ill-advised to add them in the first place. I don't know what I was thinking.
French braiding the wig was an arduous task made even harder by the sheer length of this wig, which reaches well past my butt when I am wearing it. I ended up French braiding it twice because I did not like how the first one looked. The second time I sectioned out the hair better and bought a better set of combs to use in the process. Comb teeth kept getting stuck in the multitude of tiny braids I put in the wig, which was extremely frustrating and necessitated the use of that blue comb in the photo.
Finally the complete braid. I had to be very careful not to expose netting at the sides of the wig where the lace front ended.
Sewing the horns into the wig would have been a lot easier if I had thought earlier about how they could be attached with less effort. But I did not. Because that would have required a level of thought I have not yet mastered. As it was I just sewed them on by looping thick buttonhole thread around them and through the wig netting, telling myself all the while that I could come up with some idea for covering up the mess I was making. And I will. I just haven't though of it yet.
This braid across the top of the wig and looping around the horns provided some cover for the thread mess I made while sewing on the horns. I always knew I wanted a braid there, but what surprised me was how much adding in just this one braid made the wig start to look like a finished piece!
The finished wig, roses and all! I went to a Samhain bonfire/firedance last Saturday night and it was convenient to have this nice horny wig to wear to that. Since the rest of the Puck cosplay isn't finished, I paired this wig with my Rosethorn cosplay and some random makeup design that I came up with on the spur of the moment using my Ben Nye Lumiere colours. Everyone really liked my costume though! I even met a wonderful fantasy novelist who said I looked just like he imagined one of his characters. It was wonderful to talk to him and everyone else there.
That is all I have for the moment. When I have made more progress on the dress, I will start thinking about making a blog post about that too. These days it's just really hard to make myself write. It feels strained.
For Spring I am considering a few new cosplays. Probably I'll be making an announcement about those on Facebook soon, although I don't know how long I can prevent myself from doing it because a couple of them are really exciting. Now if only I could finish up with Puck and this bloody Victorian dress I am working on...
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