Plague Doctor Mask Assembled! Its Creepy And Steampunk! It Covers Your Whole Head, With Laces Up The

Plague doctor mask assembled! It’s creepy and steampunk! It covers your whole head, with laces up the back. It’s even got a flap of soft leather beneath the laces to protect your hair.

It took many hours of sewing, but I’m quite happy with it. For being my first time making something of quite this magnitude, it was highly successful. Of course, there are a few nearly-invisible tweaks I’d like to make for a second version, but that’s how it goes! I consider that a sign of doing things right! (Many of the adjustments revolve around making it fit better with glasses. It does just barely accommodate mine, but could be better.) I don’t see many people doing full-head hood types of masks, and when they do it’s almost always done with a soft, flexible leather. Stiff vegetable-tanned leather makes it much more challenging.

I decided not to stain it before assembling it. I really like the natural tan color of the leather for this mask. It fits. Now I need to get some photos of it being worn with a costume. Then it’ll go up for sale.

This dragon tail is almost complete, it’s just waiting on some spikes to be installed down the spine. This is actually the first big project I’ve gotten to use the “frost” anodized aluminum scales on. I chose them over standard aluminum to try to better match the commissioner’s character reference. They’ve got a more brightly diffuse cloudy sort of surface, rather than the distorted-reflection of the normal aluminum.

After a long period of being busy with other things, I’m once again working on pushing through my commission queue. Started this tail over the weekend, hoping to get the next one done in the next week also. 

WHAT MAKES YOU FEEL BETTER WHEN YOU ARE IN A BAD MOOD?

I take comfort in simple, repetitive manual tasks that produce tangible results. This is highly related to my making chainmail.

Do you make any tails out of titanium?

The tail that I’ve got as my banner image was made with anodized titanium scales, and they’re super amazing. Those scales were special-ordered for that commission, but I’m working on getting more of them to play with.

I haven’t made anything larger than a necklace with heat-colored titanium. Making a tail with that would be exciting but nerve-wracking. Like, the material is really expensive compared to what I normally use, for one. Then, once I put a week’s worth of evenings into constructing it, I’d have to take it out and figure out how to heat the whole thing up until it’s glowing orange. Maybe a blowtorch would work? Maybe a bonfire? I don’t know! And while doing that I’d have to try to keep it evenly heated, and not get it too hot or else all the cool flashes of colors get blown out to a light purple-blue. But oh man, if it worked, it would be awesome!

Or I guess I could heat up the scales ahead of time, but that sounds boring.

I’ve been pretty quiet online recently, and here’s why! I was selling at a convention a week ago, and I spent the couple weeks leading up to it designing and producing a bunch of things.

The convention was called Nauticon. It’s a 21+, 3-day long convention held in Provincetown MA, at the tip of Cape Cod. It draws people from anime/comic/sci-fi/etc. sort of conventions. This year’s theme was the Aegean sea, so togas and Greek garb abounded, and I designed a pile of armor suitable for gladiators. It was less well-attended this year than last year, and I didn’t sell as many things, but it was fun to be there, and I was happy to have something to kick me into action for designing armor.

Now that things have quieted down a bit, expect to see more of these items get posted individually to show them off.

Finally got around to making a holster for a Nerf gun. I did this one in preparation for a LARP where I was expecting to do a lot of shooting and wanted to look classy and steampunk. I threw it together from my scrap pile in an evening. Which means it’s *gasp!* not laser-cut. And I didn’t even finish the leather, shame on me.

But then of course once the game actually started my gun got immediately upgraded to a compact triple-shot that was too small for the holster and kept wanting to fall out. Ah well. It looked good, even though I didn’t get any photos of my costume.