I Wanted To Do Some How Well Does This Stuff Last Posts. Pride Month Is Convenient For That, Because

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!

Super-fast mask design! I had an idea this morning for a mask(-like item) for a character I was playing in a LARP today. The character was a librarian tree-person, in a magical library that was dying. So I made a forest of bare trees as a crown.

In 3 hours, from sketch through CAD-ing it up to lasering it out and dyeing it.

And I think the design was pretty good! I’ll clean it up a tiny bit and post it up for sale in a bit. Need to check if it’s feasible or worth it to try wet-forming the branches to give them some dimensionality.

Just a couple scale bracelets someone bought recently. One in rainbow anodized aluminum, the other in flame-colored titanium.

Just some quick photos of this mesh/screen mask from before I shipped it out last week. This concept was originally just a quick prototype idea, but since people seem to like it I'm thinking I should probably do some variants like different patterns or a full-face version.

I made some adjustments to my raven skull mask so that it works with eye glasses!

When I’ve got little bits of free time to kill I’m trying to slowly work through my mask designs and tweak the ones I am able in this way. I got a couple more that I made for Arisia in January, that I need to remember to cut more copies of.

And of course, it’s up for sale on my Etsy store!

Sometimes you just gotta make something simple as a material test.

Threw together this collar because I’ve been dissatisfied with my strap work. Needed to do a bit of practice and figuring out on making the edges a bit nicer.

Normally I’m happy to just leave the laser-cut edges on things I make. I try to put the hard work into the design, and keep the labor to a minimum. After all, there are plenty of other leather crafters who’re better than I’ll ever be at doing things like highly polished collars and straps. But as I’ve been doing more designs that require buckled connections, it’d be good to get more confident in the hand-made strap department.