Updates!
We have a new layout here on the site! We’re still trying to work out a couple of bugs but figured it was okay enough to post for now. 
We are also going to be putting up some new themes on the forum soon, so head on over to keep an eye out for those, join up and jump into the conversations and activities!
There’s also a coupon code for Spare Parts – our Etsy shop – right now (which includes jewelry, and fandom related pins & handpainted pegs!) – if you use the code YOMOMMA15, you’ll get 15% off! Hope to see you on the forum or on one of the social networks listed to the right! 
Props: Tenel Ka Djo’s Lightsaber
(This is an entry I moved over from my old blog and it was originally posted in January of 2011.)
Tenel Ka Djo has been one of my favorite characters for well over a decade and I’ve always adored her lightsaber (the one after her accident!) – she made the hilt out of a rancor tooth because she is pretty badass. There’s also the fact that she’s half-Dathomiri and it’s part of her heritage and all that jazz, but it’s mostly because she’s a badass. XD
When I was first going to do a Tenel Ka costume at Celebration III (the NJO/Strike Team version and the first Queen Mother version I made), I knew I would need to figure out a way to make something that resembled a tooth. I had absolutely no idea how to do this though. There hadn’t been any pictures of her saber released and I wasn’t good with anything prop-related (not that I am now, lol). Enter my sister and a trip to Home Depot. We fiddled around in various sections and ended up getting some bits and pieces, a length of pipe and some spraypaint that made whatever you’re spraying look like stone. It was a tannish-beige color and I thought it could pass for a tooth well. My sister helped me throw it all together and I was pretty proud of what came of it. It didn’t have a point at the end (it had a decorative little swirly trinket that was actually a drawer handle XD) – but the texture and leather-wrapping and stuff gave it toothy/Dathormiri-ish sort of feel, which I was happy with.
Fast-forward to a couple years later, when I had the urge to make another version of this saber! I ended up with another thin piece of pipe and gray stone spraypaint this time, along with black leather wrappings. I had a plastic replica of a T-Rex tooth that was cut and whittled down to fit into the pipe and I loved this version as well. It was after I finished this version that Tenel Ka got her own book cover (Legacy of the Force: Tempest)! And look, her saber! Besides that image of it, another one popped up in The Essential Guide to the Force. I was so giddy that there was more art of her as well as her saber. That was when I stumbled across Nocturne Armory! They had made a version of her saber that looked exactly like the one in the The Essential Guide to the Force and I fell in love with it and emailed them about ordering one. This one actually had a blade and lit up too! They had toned down the blue and added a bit of yellow to give it a more turquoise shade and I was so nervous every time I was in costume with it cause I was afraid I would mess it up (I am so clumsy, it’s not even funny). It is definitely a prized possession of mine since I am a huge nerd. ;D
To the left are the three versions I have had in the past, two made (top – 2005, middle – 2006 and one ordered in 2008). 
In the summer of 2010, the stupid bug bit me again about making another one (I don’t know what it is with me). And I was told about ultrasabers.com! Nate was looking for a saber he could use for his Jacen and/or Caedus costumes and my brain started working at a way to make a Tenel Ka lightsaber myself by modifying one of the ones from the site (even though the closest they had to her blade color was bright blue). The idea hadn’t really formed, it was just sort of hanging in the back of my mind – but when I saw a few weeks later that they had two new blade colors, one of which being Sunrider’s Destiny (which was a lighter, slightly more greenish shade), I knew I had to go for it. I had a vague idea of what I was going to try so I bought all the supplies I would need and then ordered the Rifter hilt from Ultra Sabers.
When it arrived, I played around with it like a dork (you know, the norm: making lightsaber noises, hitting furniture, the whole nine yards) and then detached the blade and started to attempt to figure out how to get the idea that was in my head out. I used paperclay to cover the hilt and start shaping a sort of tooth texture. I knew that I wanted to keep it as thin as possible – I knew it wouldn’t be as thick as the picture from the The Essential Guide to the Force – because I am short and have small hands, hehe. I wanted my hand to be able to fit around it comfortably, but besides comfort I didn’t want it to look SUPER GIANT when I was holding it. XD I knew it would be longer than the images as well, since I had to cover the whole hilt and then add on the tip of the tooth at the end. I was fine with that though, as long as it wasn’t awkward to hold.
The paperclay worked so much better than I had hoped. It was lightweight and dried on its own (I wouldn’t have been able to put it in the oven to dry since it was around the saber). After the initial part of the hilt was covered, I had a grand old time trying to figure out how to make the tip of the tooth and then be able to remove it to replace the batteries when they ran out of juice. I finally settled on making the tip out of paperclay and fashioning the other end to fit into the opening where the batteries were. I covered the end in felt so it had a snug fit and then made some touch-ups with leftover paperclay to the main part of the hilt. I also added some details here and there – scratches, marks, wearing, etc.
The saber before the painting phase.
The three blue crystals I added above the switch are for decoration (and fall in with the whole half-Hapan thing as well, since there was talk of gems of Gallinore when she made her saber – even though those were the focusing crystals, lol ;D) and were chosen for their colors. I thought they matched the blade well and I sort of fell in love with them when I found them. In one of the images of her saber, there is a dark orange gem near the blade, but I ended up going with blue because none of the orange ones I looked at caught my eye. Plus, if I had an orange gem then I would have orange/blue (in the blade) and those were my high school colors. Somehow in projects I always subconsciously avoid putting those together because it just reminds me of high school, haha~ XD I just ended up going with all blue. I added the crystals while the paperclay was still moldable and then waited for the whole thing to dry.
After that came the part I was REALLY worried about. I’ve never been good at painting things!
I had three shades of acrylic paint I was planning on using to paint the hilt: Unbleached Titanium, Raw Umber & Raw Sienna. The one I ended up using the most was the Unbleached Titanium shade. I gessoed the whole thing first (main part of the hilt and the removable end) and I used a small brush to paint the whole thing with the titanium shade. Then with sponges and other brushes, started adding little details in the scratches and ridges and so on. I didn’t really have a plan on what parts to paint specifically, I just kept adding some here and there until I thought I needed to change colors and so on. When I had finished painting it late one night, I set it down and went to bed not really thinking about it. That seemed like the best thing to do though because the next day when I looked at it with a fresh eye, I really liked how it looked. For a project I had been so worried about (who am I kidding, I worry about every project), I was really proud of the way it turned out.
Click the photo to go to the dA page!
There are definitely a couple things I would like to fix – keeping the tooth tip more secure and snug in the main hilt would be at the top of the list! But I am very proud of it nonetheless.
Costumes: Dance Central 2 – Kerith & Jaryn (The Glitterati – Street Style)
Last Fall, Dance Central 2 was released for the Xbox 360/Kinect. Right off the bat, Nate and I were disappointed that one of our favorites (Oblio) wasn’t a returning character from the first game. After playing for a bit, we realized that there was a crew of two characters that were starting to fill the void we felt for Oblio. Those two were Kerith & Jaryn – The Glitterati. They had just the right amount of snark and a set of fun songs to make us pay more attention to them and then finally to make us realize that they were our favorites in DC2. THOSE QUIPS. THAT INHERENT CREEPINESS. We couldn’t *not* love them.
The costume ideas started brewing when we unlocked their Street Style outfits and we decided to try our hand at them for Katsucon 2012. We were going to start working on them earlier than we ended up starting, but due to getting everything together for the table at MAGFest and then a family emergency right after MAGFest, we didn’t have a chance and we ended up starting these costumes roughly three weeks before Katsucon. This was not good since Nate had that vest to create and I had to put a jacket together from scratch. XD There are a good number of things we’re planning to remake or fix up on these costumes, but for the amount of time we had to make them, we are proud of them and had a lot of fun wearing them!
Makeup tests!
We’ll go over the details by twin. ;D
KERITH:
The pants and shoes were easy enough. Nate already had a pair of black dress shoes and the pants he picked up from a thrift store where, he also purchased a black button-up shirt. Since Kerith’s collar on his shirt is not like your everyday dress shirt, we took the sleeves we cut off of the shirt and used the fabric from them to make the bigger part of the collar (which stands up with interfacing). The two smaller parts of the collar are the pointy pieces of the original collar we had to cut off to make the top of the shirt more open/lower cut. We added a piece of the purple fabric I used for the lining in Jaryn’s jacket to the inside of the front of his shirt where Kerith has a hint of purple. It doesn’t stay flat correctly while Nate’s wearing it and that’s something we have to fix since it was one of the last things we added and we were in kind of a rush (no more starting costumes three weeks in advance!)…
The vest was the big part of this outfit. He knew he wanted to make it out of something that wouldn’t fray when we cut all the holes in it – also something where we wouldn’t have to hem every hole we cut so again, it wouldn’t fray. We discussed vinyl first, which is kind of what the vest looks like in the game, but cutting circles in that would’ve been very time-consuming and they probably wouldn’t have come out as round. He finally settled on craft foam! He knew he would easily be able to cut the circles in the foam with an x-acto knife. I helped him make a muslin mockup of a vest pattern and I sewed most of the pieces together in the fabric so we could use that as one big pattern for the craft foam. We kept the shoulders of the mockup apart and cut out the whole vest in craft foam, then Nate used a cookie cutter to make all the circle patterns before going over them all with an x-acto knife to cut the pieces out.
After finishing the circles, he sprayed the vest (interior and exterior) with a couple layers of purple spraypaint, then a layer of 
pinkish-purple, then finally a layer of glossy sealer. I sewed the vest collar for him, which was interfacing sandwiched between two layers of a silver fabric. The pieces were cut from a paper pattern of Kerith’s collar shapes that Nate freehanded. Since we didn’t have a lot of time, we didn’t really measure the pieces so he had drawn all three (five technically, lol) of Kerith’s collar 
pieces, but only the top two (on either side) ended up fitting on the vest – we were okay with leaving the third off because it looked fine without it, but it’s definitely something we want to fix when we have more time to fix up these costumes! The patterns on the vest collar were done with the sewing machine. We added the bias tape to those pieces and the vest and connected the collar to the vest the day we left for Katsucon. 
Again, we really want to have more time to fix these costumes up and we wish we hadn’t had to put this one off until we did!
Nate’s Kerith wig was cut as we were putting on the costumes Saturday at Katsucon (again with the rushing). Luckily, we had practiced the makeup once beforehand so we kind of had the hang of it. His watch was $12 at Wal-Mart! Kerith would be ashamed. XD
JARYN:
As far as my wig, I cut mine the night before the con so I was a little ahead of him – just a little, haha. At first I didn’t really like it, especially how I rushed to style it at Katsucon (*shakes fist at hairspray*). But I realized if I don’t try to keep it in one place and fluff the bangs out a little, it looks much, much better and I have grown to like it a lot. I tried to get the little short hairs correct that she has between her temples and the point of her bangs, which is what drove me nuts and what I didn’t like once I was finished cutting it. I was going crazy the night before the con, I tell you. XD But looking at the later pictures we took, I really like it and will use this wig for all future Jaryn costuming — yayyyyy don’t have to redo that part! But onto the other parts I do want to fix!
The shorts and shoes were both purchased pieces (THANKS EBAY!) while the shirt and jacket I made myself. I had no prior experience sewing vinyl OR making a whole jacket, so there was that with three weeks before the convention. But we’ll get to the jacket in a bit – first, the shirt!
I had a pattern for a turtleneck that I used to make the shirt and I didn’t attach sleeves to it. I knew I would be in that jacket all day anyways and I knew the vinyl would get pretty hot so I just left them off and hemmed the armholes. The fabric I used was spandex/polyester and was a little lighter in color than I wanted it to be. The polyester dye I purchased to make it darker wouldn’t work (and I realized this after I bought it) because the heat of the water I would have to use for the dye to work would make the little plastic sequin things melt off. So I left the fabric the color it came as and it grew on me later. Once I sewed the shirt pieces all together I did all the cutouts. It wasn’t until I looked at the whole shirt when I was trying it on that I thought the cutouts I made were too big. This is something I want to fix when I remake the shirt. I was thinking about doing something to the inside edges of the cutouts as well (hemming, adding trim, something) – but luckily the fabric didn’t fray and I just ended up leaving them the way they were – even if they were too big!
The jacket, much like Nate’s Kerith vest, was my big hurdle. Like I said, I had never sewn with straight up vinyl and had never made a jacket, so the whole thing was daunting to me! I cut all the pieces for the jacket out (as well as the purple jacket lining) and pinned some of them together (getting help pinning some others parts of it from bethiichan – who has made many amazing jackets :3) and then pretty much just went for it. I didn’t use any interfacing where the pattern told me to since all the pieces were
vinyl. I kind of had to fudge the sleeves since the pattern had them ruffled/gathered at the top. I stared at it for awhile and ending up just shoving the sleeves farther into the armholes before sewing them (I cut the pattern out bigger than I needed it) – it actually worked out, very much to my surprise and was definitely a relief! The lining is only sewn into the jacket at parts since the jacket was way too long before I hemmed it. I ended up cutting both the jacket and lining shorter while they were on my dress form, hemmed the bottoms of both separately and them sewing them together a few places in the middle.
The crappy thing with the vinyl was that I couldn’t sew on it. I knew I didn’t have time to do all the tricks and magic stuff to help sew with vinyl and get it through the feeders on the machine (tissue paper, etc., etc.) so a lot of the stuff I wanted to do to the jacket like add more of the white trim just never happened. I hot glued most of the white trim on (except for the edges on the front) and the thinner white details are fabric paint, which actually worked really well. I also made the belt for the jacket, but didn’t have time to actually attach it. Since I couldn’t sew through it because of the vinyl surface and hot glue didn’t work very well for vinyl to vinyl, I ended up having to go without it for most of the time we wore the costumes. I also wanted to take the jacket in some so it wasn’t as baggy on me. But for being my first jacket and my first adventure of sewing with vinyl, I was very proud of myself. Woo!
Although, I do want to remake the jacket and as much as Jaryn’s jacket looks leather or vinyl in the game, I might try to find something that’s not vinyl, but is still shiny and kind of has the appearance of it. That way I’ll be able to do all the detailing work that I want to do on it easier than messing with vinyl. And I’ll be able to add the belt! XD
Overall, we were very proud of these – especially with the timeframe we had. We love the Glitterati way too much and we were so happy to show that at Katsucon. Our favorite moment was the girl that asked us if she could get a photo of the Glitterati doing the clapping pose to show her friend because her friend would “totally pee her pants” – we laughed so hard at that.
Currently, we’re working on the Glitterati’s crew outfits and since we love them so much, we also might be making an original design Glitterati costume as well (you know how we love to do that all the time with characters, hehe)! So look for those soon as well as another Dance Central costume set which should be done very soon! ;D
There are more photos of the costumes in our gallery!
New forum!
We have opened a brand new forum! Check it out here! It is full of all things geeky – discussions on video games, movies, comics, books, tv shows, costuming, conventions — all kinds of fun stuff. We’re working on some new themes for it as well as discussing some contests and challenges that could go on there as well. Also, there’s a community game night being planned that will be discussed there as well. Check it out and join up! We would love to have you there.
Don’t forget this Friday is the deadline for the Peg Posse Giveaway/Drawing! For all the info on how to enter (it’s really easy), check out this post!
Peg Posse Giveaway/Drawing!
One of the things I’ve been working on for the shop and the table at conventions we sell at and such is the Peg Posse! These are little handpainted wooden pegs of characters or people that can be turned into necklaces, cell phone charms, keychains or they can just sit on a shelf! To see all the pegs I have made, you can check out this album on our Facebook page!
Currently, we’re holding a Peg Posse drawing/giveaway! We said we would do one of these when when reached 50 likes on Facebook and now that we have, the drawing is on. The winner of the drawing will get to pick a peg size, tell me what character/person they want it painted as, pick if it will go on a keychain or anything and then get it shipped to them for free! If you’d like to be entered in the drawing for a free peg of your choice, head on over to our Facebook page and like or comment on the Peg Posse Drawing status before March 16th. You have to be a fan of the page to be eligible.
Good luck!
