Hello my friends!
You've
probably by now seen that I reviewed my Cheshire
Cat cosplay costume from a game called 100
Sleeping Princes & The Kingdom of Dreams, also
known as Yume
Oukoku to Nemureru 100 nin no Ouji-sama in
Japanese. Yeah,
long name is long. Thing
is that I didn't get any shoes with the costume and so I decided to
make some myself... or well, modify from existing shoes.
The
hard part was to find suitable shoes that I could use as a base. I
had to plow through all second-hand stores in both Tornio and Kemi on
several occasions (under a half year period) before I had a lucky
strike at a second-hand store in Kemi called Viikkotori. I found a
pair of suede boots in a lilac-tinted brown color and, although they
were a size smaller than what I'd normally wear, they were still
wearable (much to my surprise) and not as uncomfortable as I would have expected! I have
quite small feet to begin with, for being a guy at least (EU size
40), but luckily that works to my advantage in this kind of cosplays
when I have to look for women's shoes because men's shoes just don't
have the kind of heel that the costume requires, lol.
Here's the shoes before any modifications. |
Cheshire Cat reference. |
Painting time ~ |
The paint I'm using is a water-based universal paint with a metallic effect, for your information. It's hobby paint in a small plastic bottle, by a German brand called Efco.
After I was done with all the painting I needed to make those little cute silver cat head decorations that he has on his shoes. Good thing I had some leftover polymer clay lying around since the days I made Ibuki's little amulet thingy – now I finally got some use for it!
One little problem though that showed up was that I have no own oven and the only one there is in this building is the one in the common kitchen. The problem is that said oven hasn't been working properly (or at all) for a long time now and I certainly don't trust it after a few previous bad experiences. So yeah, I asked my good friend Sacchan if I could come over during a weekend and borrow their oven – green lights!
Polymer clay cat decorations in the making. |
I used that little tool to punch the eye holes. Efficient! This is taken after I had baked the clay, btw. |
When I got home I went ahead and painted them with silver spray paint and hung them to dry in the shower. It didn't occur to me then but I noticed afterwards that even long after the paint should have been completely dry the cat heads felt... sticky. Not sticky in a non-dry way but sticky in a more greasy way. At first I was confused but then I did some research (should have done it before, oops) and came to the conclusion that one should avoid painting/sealing polymer clays with petroleum-based paints. Pretty much all spray paints I've ever used are alkyd-based and not water-based so, yeah. :| I read something that it might over time damage/dissolve/soften/whatnot the clay (depending on brand) but oh well, it's done already and it's not like it would be much work to replace these cat charms afterwards, if needed. I'll see how long they hold and remake them if necessary.
Spray painted and hung to dry. |
Now the only thing left was to attach the kitty charms to the shoes. Hot glue might have been an option but I much rather wanted to sew them on, especially since the eye holes allowed for it. I dug out my old leftover fishing line and used it as sewing thread – it's amazing because it's super strong and transparent, which means that the "thread" is close to invisible!
Finished Cheshire Cat cosplay boots! |
That's all for this post! ^_^
Shiro Samurai out.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Consider dropping me a comment if you enjoyed this post. (´∀`○)
Maybe you got inspired, learned something new or you have some other things you want to tell me? Don't hesitate if you have something to say – I'd love to hear from you!