3D printing

I'm THE Cleric?!

I can't believe I haven't updated anything here about making Jester. She was a project I started before Covid and very slowly (Covid pretty much coincided with my chronic fatigue period) continued during it. I mostly finished earlier but then did a couple of small touch ups for the Desucon craftmanship competition this year.

She was a lovely materials and techniques costume. The underskirt and shirt are loosely woven off white cotton that I embroidered with pearl cotton thread. The sleeve embroidery is double sided since I didn't want to line them to make them any heavier than necessary. I made a stamp and used a pink pastel to press on the pattern to see where to embroider.
I decided to go with a separate shirt and skirt because I wanted to be able to make sure the hem stays on place in relation to the blue top skirt, so the skirt layers are a single piece.

The blue top layer is linen, and the waistband is actually a pretty interesting, I didn't want the opening on the underskirt to be visible from between the blue flaps, which is a logical place for them to attach, so half of one of them is more of a wrap piece that attaches over the opening all the way to the side.

Some of the embroidery showing through on the sleeves indicating where to stitch

The underskirt is made from old cotton fabric from recycling, and I've always waited for an opportunity to make my own bobbin lace for a costume. The trouble is it has a very specific look and I honestly have yet to find a design that would clearly have bobbin lace in it.. So I though hey, I'll just make some and slap it on the underskirt. The petticoat isn't visible on the reference, so it doesn't really change the design in any way, and having a handmade lace petticoat fits Jester's character perfectly in my mind. Since it wasn't anything "accurate" I also didn't want use too much time on it so I opted for a narrow simple but pretty lace edging.

The corset is made with an 1800th century pattern and covered with leather from an old leather jacket. I didn't want any top stitching on the little strips on the front, so I wet formed them over plastic shapers, inserted a felt support and stitched them on.

The little cape is probably one of my favorite parts just because it's so soft and the velvet is so nice and drapey. It was super difficult to try and find any green fabrics that would be more on the blue side that just dark forest green here, in the end I bought all three from my trip to Japan, the velvet, the lining and the pants fabric. I'm extremely happy with all of them because they were a perfect match for the reference.

And yes the velvet was a pain to sew but dam it's pretty.

She has a wide belt going over her shoulder, but in the official mini that I used as a ref for the backside, it just kind of disappears under the hood, so I made a snug opening on the shoulder seam so I can slip the belt through the cape. This way it also doesn't press the cape and the backside can sit freely.

Have a look at how soft it is °∀°

The belts and pouches are made of old couch leather, and I was happy to find out it wasn't treated in a way that it couldn't be wet formed. The pouches and belts are supported with felt lining, and the pouch flaps are wet formed since again I didn't want any visible top stitching on them. All of them are functional.

The "braided" belt is made by bending individual strips over each other to get the right look. For the red and purple I used what I happened to have in storage. The little bits and pieces were all mostly 3D printed.

The wig was a medium length straight wig that I trimmed and steam shaped with a foam sausage to get her mushroom bob shape. I'm not 100% happy with the color, since I feel like it should be just slightly more teal, but it was impossible to find one that was exactly like I wanted. So I added some green fiber in hopes to affect the color but I don't know if it made much difference in the end.

The horns I patterned and made from EVA foam and the "metal" parts were molded on top with apoxie. They attach on to the wig with magnets. The horns are also not actually painted, just sprayed over with black rubber spray. I first used blue (bought with a discount) to smooth them out and finished with the black layers.

Seems that I didn't take any photos of making the ears, but they are shaped with dremel from EVA foam, covered with the blue rubber spray and airbrushed lighter to better match the gloves and tail fabrics. They too attach with magnets on to the wig behind the ears. One of the chains that seem to dangle from the horn and attach to an earlobe, just simple attaches to the magnet on the ear so there's no need to worry if it snags somewhere, it'll just come off the magnet neatly.

The long earring pieces I cut from aluminium.

The brooch and her amulet were both modeled and then cold cast from resin.

For the rest of the bits and pieces I don't have lots of pics for, but the tail was just a padded plastic tube with a wire and an EVA foam head that I airbrushed a bit, her sickle is EVA foam, with a 3D printed handle, and since I absolutely didn't want to use any more paint anywhere than I really had to I used gloves with nails that I painted with resin to get a nice translucent look. I think the nails are also one of my favorite things about this costume, I wanted to do a french manicure look that would hopefully make them also look more natural with the unnatural skin color and bring a small extra detail to make it more believable.

The boots I also have no photo of, but they were pretty simple, from a velveteen type of fabric that was the perfect color and some leather straps sewn in place to hold the shapes.

Lastly I want to say a couple of words about the face paint because uh boi. This was my first proper colored make up (I've sort of done one before that gave me some confidence about using paints) and after some research I opted for cream oil based paint. I make a white base and then use a light blue on top to get even lighter blue to match the fabrics. Most of the actual contouring and make up is done with blue eyeshadows and red blushes. I didn't want a flat color where it looks like I've just painted my face blue, and I'm actually fairly happy with the result. I never made a proper test before the con and the competition, and on a Friday while talking with a friend they kind of looked at me suspiciously and asked "...but you do have a plan, right"?

Yeah I sort of did and I'm pretty stoked it worked as well as it did for a first try.

I still have a huge problem with any paint and the skin on my neck, basically, it seems almost impossible to make the paint stick and get an even coverage. This is something I've actually wanted to make a post or a video about the longest time, and I might if I stop feeling silly about the idea, but basically my skin is non-make up friendly and it's taken a lot of learning and material research to figure out what actually works, and I feel like this is just an extension of that whole issue.

I still don't have proper shoot photos of her but here are some of the official Desucon competition photos:

studiophotos in this post

Photographer: Mira Ojamo
Director: Kiipy

After so long I honestly had very little memory of how to be on stage and based on the photos was apparently a nightmare for the photographers (and I should know lol).

Here are couple of stage photos none the less: