A New Dragon Tail Made In Anodized Titanium And Blackened Stainless Steel. It Uses Teal, Purple And Violet

A new dragon tail made in anodized titanium and blackened stainless steel. It uses teal, purple and violet titanium, in a pattern that gives an image of larger scales overlapping down its length. It’s got a full line of metal spikes along the spine, and a lobster clasp at the tip to attach things onto.

The anodized titanium is a rare treat to work with. It’s expensive and I need to custom-order it from the manufacturer and I’m always low-key worried they’ll tell me to go away one of these times, but damn if it isn’t just stunningly beautiful when it’s good. I really love the variation and texture on every scale, and I like putting together patterns to mix the colors in with each other and try to enhance that effect. In this batch the teal scales shifted on the edge of sea green and blue with hints of purple, the purple was a more muted maroon-ish tone with a blue base, and the violet was a great vibrant tone with occasional shifts towards rose-gold. The colors aren’t quite iridescent, but they definitely look like they were pulled out of the swirling colors of a soap bubble and pumped up to full saturation.

The blackened stainless steel is fun too. I guess I just really enjoy coloring processes that don’t rely on dyes like anodized aluminum does.

This tail is a medium length, measuring in at 31 inches from the tip to the top of the belt line, and it weighs 3 pounds 11 ounces.

Been seeing a bunch of Mortal Kombat stuff recently, and it reminded me of this design I'd made a few years ago. I'd made one copy of it at the time, and a friend snagged it for a LARP character (last photo), and then I forgot about it. So I went back and digitized the paper template I'd made for that, cleaned up a couple weird spots in the pattern, and laser-cut a new version out of the same super-clean leather I used for the dragon costume.

And of course I posted it up for sale over on my Etsy store!

Flame filigree mask! Finally some decent photos of it!

This design gets a gradient/fade from yellow around the eyes to red at the tips. There's always some variation in that process, this particular one came out more on the red side.

Here it is on my Etsy store.

I made some stand-alone dragon horns in the style I used on my dragon head project. They're made of birch plywood, laser-cut and glued up solid. The challenge here was working out a clean attachment to the headband, and I think I did pretty well. The leather strap just threads directly through the wood about 1/4″ up from the bottom surface. Makes for a good solid joint.

The last photo shows the previous version, where the attachment to the headband was via some cord threaded around in the hollow base. The connection ended up kinda floppy and unsatisfying. Like, long ears are cool to wiggle/jiggle when you move your head, but horns are supposed to be firmly attached to your skull.

I’m happy with how these turned out, and I’d love to make more. These were on the small side, I’m thinking of trying something big like rams horns for the next iteration. If you’d like a specific sort of shape, let me know!

And if you’d like this set, you can get them here!

Leather fortune cookies! A full batch of a dozen, fresh out of the oven! Stuffed with mildly perplexing pieces of paper!

I cut these when I’ve got a scrap of leather left from another project that’s too small to fit anything else on, and I’ll tend to dye them when I’ve got extra dye that I got out but didn’t need all of.

I’ve had them up on my Etsy store as singles for a while, finally put up a listing for a dozen.

I wanted to do some “How well does this stuff last” posts. Pride Month is convenient for that, because I remember that I made this necklace for myself before last year’s Pride parade. And I’ve been wearing it basically 24/7 for the whole year since. I ate, worked and slept with it on. I took it off for showers and for some occasional costuming events, but that’s basically it.

You can see spots where the point of one scale rubs against the scale below it, and has slowly worn through the anodized layer, exposing the base aluminum. I find it cool that this mostly happens on in the areas of the necklace that curve over the shoulders, and much less on the area that drapes flat in front. 

The edges of a bunch of scales are showing some wear, making it look like they’ve got just a bit of a border of silver aluminum. And a couple scales nearest the closure have some pock-marking, which I assume is from sweat. The plating on the lobster clasp is worn through fairly strongly though.

None of the scales are bent or dented, none of the connections are in danger of wearing through any time soon. And all in all, I think it still looks good!

Not bad for a $50 sticker price and a year of continuous wear!