Back When I Was Frantically Prepping To Vend At Arisia In January, I Put Some Time In To Make Glasses-compatible

Back when I was frantically prepping to vend at Arisia in January, I put some time in to make glasses-compatible versions of more of my mask designs. They all sold, so I'll have to make new copies in order to get usable photos of them that I can put up on Etsy, but in the meantime here's the selfies I grabbed.

Got a friend to help me make a duct tape dummy of my torso! Gonna make a breastplate type item for a @magicmeatmarch costume, then I'll probably try to pull a corset pattern off of it.

I haven’t really decided what aesthetic I’m gonna go for though. Current thought is wide at the shoulders, maybe with attached pauldrons, then some big scales/plates overlapping down the center and tapering down to the crotch, with straps/buckles at the sides. I might try for a boob/pec-window sort of thing, but I haven’t had many ideas about how to integrate that idea with other pieces I’ve done so far.

Thanks for the garbage website.

I was trying to upload a little video but every time it bugged out with “Oh no! Something went wrong! Could you upload your video again?” until it gave me this.

So here watch it on my twitter instead: https://twitter.com/armored_dragon/status/1080514988257787905

Some variants on my black cat mask. The bloody tears one I painted before Halloween, at the same time as I did that bird mask from earlier. The silvery red one has been sitting in my box of stock for a while, it was mostly a test of this pearlescent dye additive I got.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/158428025/black-cat-mask

Here’s a comparison series with a couple jackal masks. A while back I was experimenting with an alternate method of doing black leather. On the right you see the normal black dye I use. The left mask, though, I used a chemical process to color. You rust a bunch of steel wool into vinegar (making a solution I believe is called vinegaroon), then when you brush it onto the leather it reacts with the tanins in the leather to produce a black or very dark brown color. It’s apparently the same chemical reaction that was used to make super long-lasting ink Back In The Day. If you really hit the leather hard with it, it does go quite dark black, or if you’re a bit light with the application it stays a dark brown as seen here.

I ended up not continuing to use it much for a couple reasons. It seemed to change the texture/stiffness of the leather a bit, making it less pliable and more dry, so it seems to want to get oiled or waxed more than I normally do. I also had a couple issues when it touched other masks, where some of the chemical leeched out into the neighboring pieces and got a blotch of black on them. So it’d need to be sealed harder all around the piece, where I usually like to leave the back side of the leather un-sealed for moisture/drying reasons. (The vinegar solution tended to soak all the way through the leather, so only coloring the front surface wasn’t exactly tenable.) But honestly, mostly the issue was just that it was yet another process and option to have materials for and to fuss over, when it didn’t seem that it was going to be substantially different from my normal process, at least from the point of view of the customer and finished product.

The vinegar-iron colored jackal sold at Arisia, so it’s no longer sitting around in a box! Hooray, somebody is enjoying it!

My contribution to @magicmeatmarch this year! It’s a set of armor fit for a light and swift fighter. It protects the important parts while avoiding restrictions on mobility.

I’d been wanting to make a larger breatplate-type item for a while, this felt like a good excuse. I went with the overlapping plates motif that I’ve used in a number of other projects. It’s secured in place with Too Many Buckles along the sides. When it’s all tightened up it has a bit of a corset nature, straightening up your posture. Made it a bit tricky to do the over-the-top twisting-to-show-off-tits-and-butt poses. But I persevered.

The codpiece, bracers and cuisses were older designs, but it’s always good to fit them into matching outfits.