Hocus Pocus - Booooooook!

Hocus Pocus is still technically on hold right now, pending the time to do it justice, so this is kind of a major throwback. But I had already started the spellbook before the rest of the project was delayed, and I decided to finish it to have a prop to carry at WonderCon when we did Jay and Ice.

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As soon as I decided to be Winifred, I knew I needed her spellbook. It's been on my dream prop list for a long time, and this was the perfect excuse.

By chance, we already had a book box laying around, which is how I've always wanted to make it (built-in storage is always a win).

As a bonus, it's even Disney.

It's only slightly smaller than one I was considering buying, so it works really well. I'm thinking this'll be a prop to carry around at events. Being undersized is less of a hassle, and being a first attempt I don't mind if it gets a little beat up. Then I'll go back and buy a larger box as a nicer duplicate for display and photoshoots.

I did some minor mods to the box itself (cut down and flattened the spine, which was originally very curved), then marked the placement for all the seam lines and attached pieces on the covers.

 
I found some old shoelaces that worked well enough for the raised seams, gluing those down and leaving a slight gap between them that the eventual paper coating can be tucked into.

But the hot glue soaked into the shoelaces more than I expected and I wasn't able to stitch through it anymore. So I pulled the shoelaces off, did a bunch of tests, and replaced it with strips of 2mm craft foam (cut at an angle to soften the edge and help blend it with the cover) glued down with Tacky Glue. No photos of that, but whatever. I was making steady progress at that point so I just kept rolling with it.

I also sculpted the snakes for the front and back covers, the three parts of the clasp, and the fingers for the spine, all from Premo Sculpey.

I initially planned to buy and modify toy snakes and fake fingers and sculpt as little as possible, but once I started playing with the stuff it was a lot easier and more fun than I expected, so I went ahead and did it all. The second set of snakes turned out a little rougher than the first, so those went on the back and the nicer first set went on the front. All the snake and clasp pieces were painted solid black, making sure to fill in all the lines and holes, then drybrushed with pewter, then drybrushed even lighter—just catching the edges and highest raised surfaces—with a brighter silver.

The fingers were glued to the spine with E6000, and I made the seams around the fingers and the ridges for the gathers at the snake's mouths with puffy paint. After all the base pieces were attached, I applied paper towels to the entire front/back with watered down Mod Podge, pushing it around a little to get some wrinkles and extra texture. I did a solid base coat of dark grey to mask the colors on the paper, then a solid coat of medium brown, then several different drybrushed layers of lighter browns and yellows.

I got the eye from MisterEyes on Etsy. This was the hardest piece to find, but this is better than I hoped.

After the eye was glued down (E6000 again), I made lids with more paper towels and Mod Podge and painted that to match the rest. In hindsight I should have just applied the eye first and then done all the paper towel and paint, but I had the time to set aside for doing the cover and didn't want to wait for the eye to arrive. I initially left off the eyelashes, but I have a lot of fake lashes and recently found one that's missing its pair, so I might cut that up for the eyelashes someday.

The stitching was the slowest and most time-consuming part, and the part I'd been actively avoiding, so that's what held up finishing. Dental floss ended up being a good match for the sinewy looking stitching on the book.

So I just went through doing random messy stitches. I kind of referenced the screen-used book, but mostly it was just getting the same overall look without replicating the exact placement. Once all the stitches were, I weathered them all a little with light brown paint.

The clasp pieces were glued to a metal hinge, and there's a set of magnets in the book cover and the underside of the front clasp (under the rhinestone), so the clasp actually functions.

Aside from stitches, the last big thing was just gluing all the snake and clasp pieces on, and that was that.

It was pretty handy and a good amount of fun carrying it around at WonderCon, though weirdly a lot of people mistook it for the Evil Dead Necronomicon or the book from The Neverending Story.

I haven't had another chance to bust it out, so for now it has a place of honor on the shelf in front of my Hocus Pocus wall.

I'm currently in the process of researching and prepping version 2.0, which will be more screen accurate in size and detail.

Stay tuned!

Hocus Pocus - Back From the Dead (AKA Version 2.0)

I've been obsessed with Hocus Pocus since it first came out (25 years ago!) and I've always wanted to do the costumes. We did somewhat slapdash versions of Mary and Sarah Sanderson for Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party at Disneyland a few years ago, and they served their purpose and actually went over pretty well considering the rushed effort, but I was underwhelmed with my attempt. I've been wanting to revisit/revamp/redo the project and do it properly ever since, but the timing was never quite right.
Until now.

We decided that it was time, and we're tentatively aiming to bring the witches back for Labyrinth Masquerade 2019 (can you imagine a better place?). Because we're committing to do things properly and with as much attention to detail as possible, but still on a budget as always, we're not locking ourselves into that deadline. We're just planning to work on them as steadily (and calmly!) as possible - if they're done by then, fantastic; if not, that's okay too and we'll finish whenever we finish.

Even though it doesn't really matter, it's a little hard doing these costumes with only two people. But there are ways around it. In thinking about them we've tried to do combinations that make a bit more sense. Mary and Sarah work a little better maybe than Winifred and one of the others, and we've also considered the option of making a "Hast thou seen this witch?" sign for whichever sister we're missing. Winifred and Billy, or Sarah and Billy, work great as a pair too.

During our first attempt, my friend was Mary and I defaulted to Sarah because another friend was going to be our Winifred. That fell through, but by then it was too late to change my own costume. I wasn't comfortable wearing Sarah for a lot of reasons, so rather than just make her again, I decided to go for Winifred like I wanted to in the first place.  I'll be upgrading my friend's Mary as a backup, and just on principle at this point, but pending SFX makeup our plan A is to make her a Billy Butcherson. We were all set on just going as a duo again, but we had the great fortune to meet an Instagram costuming friend at Labyrinth this year. We broached our costume idea with her and asked if she wanted to be our Sarah, and we were so pleased that she said yes! So as it stands, we'll have all three sisters or Winifred-Billy-Sarah which also works great (we're already planning some girlfriend-boyfriend-other woman meme photos).

That's a big ol' text wall, so have some photos of the meager progress I've made so far.

Technically the first thing I started on was Winnie's spellbook. Here's a little tease:

It's almost done, so I'll save all that for its own post.

In the meantime I also made Winifred's necklace, kind of on a whim. I'd done some searching to see if there was anything already available, and I couldn't find much readymade. I have a ton of random jewelry and craft supplies, so I got out some wire and beads and tools and sat down one day to see if I could make the thing myself. Turns out I could. No progress photos, because I kept improvising stuff until suddenly I had a finished necklace.

This was 100% a zero-cost stash-busting project. The wires for the circular pendant thing were a thin gauge from my ongoing King George III and a thicker gauge salvaged from an old notebook. The stone in the center of it was lifted from a pair of earrings I haven't worn in ages. The black beads are from an old jewelry-making bundle I bought probably 15 years ago, and they're strung with yet another King George wire. The little spirals were the same wire shaped around a paintbrush. The jump rings are also leftovers from King George. The small bit of chain in the back and the lobster clasps are extras from the Pirates of the Caribbean medallions I made a while ago (and never posted?). My friend sculpted the little scarab bead, and I painted it with some greens and yellows. The spirals were painted with a mix of red and brown (I might go over it with a glossy paint), and all the other wire was painted with gold. I love the result, and for being completely free and less than a day's work I love it even more.

I really like doing prop and jewelry work like this, especially as a break from the yards and yards of fabric I'm usually dealing with. I figure getting some small, cheap, easy costume pieces like this out of the way is also a smart way to go about things on a project like this.

I can't say when I'll be making more definitive progress. I've been steadily ordering swatches, but I'm saving that up until everything's in hand and decided on, so it might be a while. I was hoping to have the spellbook done by Halloween just for kicks, but progress on the last few steps has been slow. So no deadline, but I'll post on that soon. Otherwise right now it's a lot of research and construction planning.

Stay tuned!

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade - Grail Diary Part I

I've had the materials for this for months, but never got around to starting it because it's new crafting territory and I'm chicken.  With a few other prop projects on hold and not in the mood to sew, last weekend was a good time to finally get to it.

The plan is to do one “batch” of more or less the correct pages, and then instead of repeating those pages, create my own in the same style using other medieval history and Grail lore to fill up the rest of the book.

I started with a hardcover unlined sketchbook, about 4x6”, 220 pages, so a pretty close match for size (or close enough for my purposes).

I sanded the cover, then peeled off the endpapers and removed the pages from the inside.

From there I followed this Instructable for the new leather cover, jumping ahead to step 7. I was surprised how fun and easy it was, and I wish I hadn't put it off for so long.




Once the cover was on and everything was reassembled, I took a little leather polish to the cover to bring some of the color back. (The weird stripes are from the light coming through blinds, not part of the leather.)

Now just waiting on endpaper which hopefully will be here in a week or so. 

Crimson Peak - NMP Nightgown & Robe Construction

More throwbacks.

I didn't take many photos of construction, partly because I covered the mock-ups so extensively but mostly because I was trying to work steadily and just rarely stopped to document stuff. This is pretty much it for the nightgown.

And of course, there's plenty to tweak on an inevitable Version 2.0. I ended up doing gathering instead of pleating around the neckline. Pleating would have been more accurate and a bit nicer looking, but I didn't want to take the time to do that. The gathering also affected the sleeve head more than I thought it would, so the armpits ended up a little tight and in theory should be opened up some. With the thinner fabric, the sleeves didn't have quite the fullness and drape I intended and that the mock-up had, so I'd change that. I also melted a hole in part of one sleeve, like a moron, so I kind of have to go back and tweak the sleeves someday anyway. I started on the ribbon ties at the front but after the first row I decided I wanted to do it differently, and it still needs lace, but that's a last minute handsewing bit.

As far as the robe goes, that was pretty much a quick no-photo job too, though I did take a few of stuff that didn't really go through the mock-up phase.

On the back panel, I cut out the sides and top with the pattern piece but left it the full 60" of the fabric, and all of that became the pleats. Despite the panel being so wide, the edges were still just strictly vertical, eliminating the pattern's flared hem.  So I used the flared edge of the back pattern piece to make an additional triangular gusset of sorts which was stitched in as a side panel, restoring the flare.  I draped the pleats on the dressform, kind of by eye and with a little measuring.  I ironed them well from the neckline to about the waist, and then lightly pressed less pronounced pleats for a few inches below that so the pleats flowed somewhat more naturally into the unpleated lower section.  I also did some quick and dirty handstitching along each pleat (mostly inside, but a little outside) to hold the pleats down at the upper back where they needed to be the most defined and stay immobile.

I bound the sleeves and robe front with the same fabric to create a trim and finish off the edges. It's a lot of placing and folding and flipping over, basically like this, if anyone is interested and can decipher my terrible reference photos:

And with everything sewn, it was pretty much here.

 
I didn't get any photos of the dyeing process because it was messy and kind of nightmarish, but I did think to take this photo the night before the convention.  It ended up being the process and colors/materials I planned on, but it also ended up being a mistake, so someday I'll wash it out and redo with something like Dye-Na-Flow or fabric paint (sacrificing a little on color accuracy for the sake of ease).

I didn't get any of the vest in-progress either because that was a quick rush job a few days before we were wearing them, but I'll hopefully be documenting the second vest and white ghost vest.

I did some light styling on the wig the day before, just some soft fingerwaves around the face, but they ended up kind of ineffective and disappeared.

And a few months ago I made a cleaver to carry around.  I started with a funky Halloween prop I got at KMart, and as usual I didn't document much of the mod process.  But I basically used a Dremel to alter the cleaver's shape and smooth the surface (and added a hole in the handle to attach a ribbon for easy carrying), then resealed it with Plasti-Dip. In a strange turn of events, it was really fortuitous that red Plasti was all I had, because it's a gruesomely good color and texture match for the red ghosts. It was kind of disappointing to paint over it. Then I used alternating layers of sandable primer and Bondo to fill in the weird chips and grooves, sprayed it black as a base, did washes of acrylic for the final colors, and sealed it with a matte fixative. For being matte it still turned out kind of shiny, so I might go back and stipple on some more light paint to dull it down some.

I ended up skipping it for the convention, just to avoid the added hassle of going through weapons check, but I'll be using it whenever we do a proper photoshoot.

Next time: Finished!

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade - Holy Grail Replica Version 1.5

In typical fashion, I decided I wasn't content with the Grail replica I made this spring.  The more this sat around and the more I looked at it, the more I didn't like it.  It wasn't terrible, but not what I wanted and I never came around to it. So I scraped the paint and started over from the gold step.

I broke down and got the Gold Leaf Rub 'n Buff. It still doesn't compare to real gold leaf, but it's definitely a step up from the old color.

For the paint, I mixed the color better - started with the same red again, but only did one drop of black and added a lot of brown - and only did one streaked coat. The bits of gold showing through made the worn spots more natural this time, and matched the reference photos better. I also did fewer worn spots, same reason.

Aaaaand done (almost). I just have to figure out the dusty weathering. I'll probably try some Plains Dust. For now, I'm so much happier with how it turned out, and locking down a good technique makes me more hopeful for the eventual Version 2.0.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade - Holy Grail Replica Verson 1

This is actually a few days of work spread out over a month, and it's been done for a while, but I just got the notion to post it here so it's all condensed.  

A friend and I got to talking about history and archaeology a few months ago, and naturally an Indiana Jones joke came up. I'd been antsy to work on something fresh and get a break from the school grind, so I decided to sort of plot out an Indy project just for kicks. Eventually research alone wasn't enough, so the easy answer of course was to do a smaller/cheaper/faster accessory or prop piece. I bought a ceramic goblet at a thrift store a few years ago because it was too cool to pass up, but it had been mostly gathering dust ever since. I realized it's a pretty close (or close enough) match to the Grail. Seemed simple enough to paint it up.

This is the base I started with. The shape isn't perfect, but it's decently close and I already had it so it made things cheap and easy.

I did a sandable spray primer to cover the glaze and prep for Bondo, which I used for the little bubble pits in the original glaze. I liked the texture of the Bondo so I ended up spreading a rough single layer over the whole cup to make it more like an unfinished plaster/ceramic again. I didn't take a photo of the all-over Bondo on its own, but you can still kind of see it under the first coat of paint on the right.

Base paint was Ceramcoat Old Gold, and the second color was Ceramcoat Metallic Gold. The "Old Gold" is really more of a weird rotten pea soup or mustard color, but it worked well as a base to cover up the Bondo and make the second paint go on easier.

After paint I did a coat of Rub 'n Buff in Antique Gold. In retrospect I should have used Gold Leaf or Grecian Gold instead, but my local craft store was out of both of those (naturally) so I went with what I could get. (I really should have used actual gold leaf, but I didn't want to spend that kind of money on a cup that doesn't have quite the right shape. ~*STANDARDS*~) For anyone who hasn't used it, I highly recommend wearing gloves when you apply it. The package says you can just use your fingers, and some people say bare fingers work better, but I didn't notice any problems with gloves and it made the whole thing a lot less messy.

I dithered for a while over whether to continue with the coppery gold color, or wait until the craft store had another gold in stock and switch to that.  But I ultimately stuck with the Antique Gold. I was too impatient to wait for the store to get other colors in stock, and this is just a first draft, so I figured what the heck, might as well keep going. 

I mixed matte red and black acrylic and painted that roughly over the whole outside in a solid coat. It turned out what seemed like too red, so I went back with another darker coat that later ended up being too dark. Live and learn. Then I rubbed and scratched off sections of the paint to let the gold come through. I started with just a little, then progressively worked more off. The paint and scuffing had dulled the gold some, so I also touched up the visible spots to brighten them again.

I don't have photos of the process beyond that, but I mixed some white and black acrylic for a very particular light grey, watered that down, and did a wash over the cup. It ended up a bit too heavy so I sanded it. It also ended up too glossy, which is a whole other thing and my own fault for assuming the matte black paint would tone down the glossy white.  But again I didn't want to bother getting new supplies and I felt okay with taking a chance on it. After being sanded it looked a little better, so I sprayed it with a few heavy coats of matte sealant.
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It's technically done now, and while it's not really ideal and definitely not close to screen accurate, I'm satisfied with it as an experiment. With some ashy Plains Dust and a grain of salt, it'll be pretty decent for a cosplay prop or casual display piece.