I Had Two Dragon Tail Commissions In A Row That Involved Non-standard Spade Tips. Normally I Do Them

I had two dragon tail commissions in a row that involved non-standard spade tips. Normally I do them horizontal/flat, in whale-fluke orientation. For this tail though the client wanted a vertical shark-fin orientation. I turned out to rather like it! 

The other sort of funky thing about this tail is thankfully impossible to see. The purple scales scattered throughout are anodized titanium, which is a harder metal than the aluminum. I usually try to avoid mixing metals of different hardnesses, because the softer one will tend to get scratched up relatively faster. So to mitigate this problem, I cut a little scale out of suede to weave in beneath each titanium scale, as padding to prevent it from touching the aluminum scales below it. Maaaybe overkill, maaaybe more time consumptive than it was worth, but hey, it won’t scratch itself now.

Primarily made of anodized aluminum, red on top with an orange underbelly. Speckled through the red are some purple anodized titanium scales. It measures 29 inches from tip to belt line without the spade tip, 34 inches with it on. It weighs in at 2 pounds 14 ounces.

Pics of the other tail I’m finishing will be up tomorrow.

This dragon tail is made with a camo pattern! Or at least, a reasonable approximation of one. 

Primarily green, with blotches of brown, and scattered flecks of black and yellow. All scales are anodized aluminum, linked together with stainless steel rings. The commissioner’s character has a removable blade at the tip if their tail, which they may fabricate themselves later, so I included some lobster clasps for them to be able to easily attach it in.

This tail measures in at 33 inches long, and weighs 3 pounds 1 ounce.

I made this pauldron for a friend’s fire demon LARP costume. She needed a ridiculous armor getup in order to declare war on the players. It was a fun project to do, really worked the Anime Overkill aesthetic.

I hand-cut this one out of 7-8 ounce vegetable-tanned leather, and gave it a faded color job blending red to orange to yellow. Enjoy the progress shots!

I decided to make something festive this year. I found somewhere to get a whole bunch of sleigh bells, and I made a reindeer harness! For reindeer! Definitely!

These were photos I took while making it. It took 2 evenings, with a day to dry out in the middle. (I soaked the straps to form them around the rings and buckles so they’d sit really nicely.) I used some pretty thick and stiff 8-ounce vegetable-tanned leather, so the straps have a nice heft to them, even before adding a couple pounds of bells on.

The one thing that I’m a bit unhappy with was the pop rivets to attach the bells to the leather. They worked great, and they seem like they’ll be strong and long-lasting, but on a bunch of them they left a bit of a scratchy point pointing in towards your skin. That might end up being uncomfortable when wearing it, though I wasn’t really able to test that since I was finishing this up late at night and I didn’t want to bother my housemates with more noise than was strictly necessary.

In just a moment I’ll post up a couple shots of me wearing it. I got this done the night before flying out of town for Christmas, so no nice photos yet, just phone-camera selfies, but oh well.

Link to photos of it being worn.

Quick update, commissions opening soon.

I’ve been super busy for the last... while... so haven’t been able to devote as much time as I’d like to crafting. My normal-job work has been super busy with us scrambling to finish a set of construction drawings for this (actually really neat I think) roof addition. We just yesterday sent out (what I believe to be) the final set of drawings. Then in the evenings I’ve been working really hard to finish writing a LARP that we’re running tomorrow.

Next week I’m going to be attempting to power through a costume for the @magicmeatmarch challenge. I’m not yet sure what direction I’m going to take for it, so if you’ve got ideas for a costume I should make let me know! The first year I made a stack of armor pieces, and the second I did a sort of rogue get-up where I made a leather jacket. I’m kind of thinking about doing like an evil spell-caster or necromancer thing, with a bunch of black strap work in pentagram shapes and stuff. Something to take the bondage-harness aesthetic but reconfigure it into something more fantastical.

After that project is done, my queue of big projects will be pretty much taken care of! So I’ll be opening up for tail commissions! I’ve had a bunch of people contact me over the last few months asking about them. (I’ve occasionally been too busy to even respond to those requests, so my apologies to those folks.) People who’ve submitted tail requests in previous rounds will get first dibs, but I’ll be posting the official opening announcement next week.

Werewolf mask! Not a new design, but one that I hadn’t made for a while. 

It works with glasses, as you can see.

Available here!