A load of my shoulders...

So, I decided to make an own entry for the pauldrons (or shoulder armors) since it turned out to be a rather large project. I wanted to kill myself over this costume more than once, and the shoulder armorus were the main reason... I finished the basic shape and decorations just before I leaped over the edge of crazy, and now I only have to glue the books and daggers on and I'm done bitches.

for refernce, here are the pauldrons I'm making

I have made shoulder armours before, but those were way smaller and ended up looking really bad, so I decided to go in a slightly different direction this time. Not to mention the ones I did before were meant to look like iron armors, the ones I made for this costume didnt look like that in my opinnion.

So last time I made a mold out of paper mache, and then I coated them with plaster. The result was really lumpy and uneaven, not to mention how heavy they were! They kept falling of my shoulders during the convention, and even at the photoshoot where I had tons of duct tape holding them in place, they kept falling of. So I wasn't too keen on repeating this.

le Cloud shoulder armors in all their lumpy glory

My first idea was to make them completely out of isolation foam. Which did not work. My ability to comprehend shapes is really bad and I ended up making two versions that weren't high enough. I soon decided I would never get a good result this way, so I gave up and tried something else.

The only thing that came out of these was a messy balcony.

My second idea was to make the mold out of paper mache and then coat the molds with leather.
I have no pictures of the process of lying down the paper, becuase my hands were in no condition to touch a camera during the process. But here is the result, and yes, needles to say, I ditched these pretty fast.

successful pauldrons are successful.

HOWEVER The plaster I used was PINK. I had to take a pic, that was the only cool aspect of the second try...

The third and final process is hard to explain but I'll give it a try, illustrated with some pics:
So, first, I made the basic shape out of isolation foam, and some cardboard. When the shape was ready I covered it with duct tape to make them stronger and to keep their shape. When they were strong enough, I took them of and coated them with leather. At this point I also covered the foam with leather and black paper, to prevent the ugly yellowish foam from peeking out from under the armors and made some extra panels to hide the parts that were still showing (as seen in the big pic in the middle). Finally I hotglued the whole shebang onto the base and TADAAA!!:

1,2,3,4,5 aaand we have ourselves the basic shape!

I then proceeded to making the decorations, I made them out of craft foam, and glued them on. ( I just have to mention I hate gluing! Thats the part I dislike most in costumery. You have to hold the parts in place forever and they still end up peeling of! Hotglue is another story, that part I really like. Which reminds me: this was the first costume in which I used a hotglue gun! My boyfriend bought it for me as his contribution to this costume!)

But as these things usually go, I failed again. The decorations ended up looking like a third grade crafts project and I went completely cockoo. When I finally calmed down I made patterns for new ones with thicker edges. Crisis averted.
I then had to paint the new ones, but after a tremendous amount of extra work and more fucking gluing, the decorations were on and living up to my standards!

the decorations are actually a nice shade of gold, but they look yeallow in this picture becuase my camera hates me. Also, why is there always work out equipment in my pictures? This gives a false picture of my life, I hate sports!

I also glued on those red decoration parts I had made ages ago... The red parts are leather and the golden trimmings are made out of foam. I made the scales that go on the red parts out of clay while I watched a NFL pre-season game (The Saints vs. the Cardinals) but I don't like the way they turned out so I might re-do them or just paint the scales directly on the leather part, depending on how much time I have left when I'm done with everything...

As for the books on the armour, I decided to use actual books. I bought two erm.. "romance novels" and stapeled the pages together. I then sprayed them golden, and made some small trimmings for them out of foam. I am going to gotglue them to the pauldrons later today  when they have dryed when I get of work.

I have no pics of the books yet but as a bonus: Look at my resin jewlery! This was my first time making any! A huge thank you to this lovely gal who answered all my questions and directed me to a tutorial by these two lovelies. I couldn't have done it without her, check out her amazing jewlery! I can't wait to rampage through her stand at Tracon! Visit her gallery if you didn't already do it you lazy bums. click it!! NOW!!

One of them (the biggest one) reacted in some way to the mold... Look at that surface, it has some sort of a funny texture going on... had to make a new one which is currently drying...

I used some plastic easter eggs as molds for the jewlery, I coudn't get them out so I had to smash them all -_-

And then finally, I found a perfect spellbook for the costume! But oh my god, how do I even describe the book...? It's called "a womans home doctor" and it's a medical guide for housewives from the 70's. It's so disturbing. At the end, after all the actually pretty usefull but oh so old fashioned tips about health and mental healt it offers some tips on how to do your perfect make up. I shit you not. It's a medical book for women... with make up tips. Face palm.

possibly the most offensive book I've ever read...

Needless to say, I painted over the text, and it now looks perfect! Just have to attach the chain!

Feeeeew, that sure was a long post! Hope it was at least remotely interesting... I'll be back soon with an update on the armour (which is finished) and the dress and skirt (which are 99% done).

Tataa!