Princess Jewlery
Foamies, foamies and more foamies; that is how I made the majority of the props for this costume. I knew when I started that I would end up using a few little tricks to pull off making everything I needed. There was also some Model Magic clay involved, fabric paint, buttons and some sew in snaps. I decided to create all of the props first before I did any sewing to make sure everything would fit together.
The crown started out very simple, I took a plastic head band and spray painted it gold. This was used as the base for the crown and since it had teeth in it the band stayed in place quite well. The main pieces were crafted out of sculpey oven bake clay, I made sure to add a ridge to each of them so they wouldn't look flat. After a few test sculpts with the clay I found a shape that I though worked well. All of the pieces were spray painted gold and then I hot glued them onto the head band.
The feathers were actually a lot of fun to make and one of my favorite pieces to this costume. Once again I used model magic clay and after making a stencil to get the right shape they were very easy to make. I cut each piece out with an exacto knife and I smoothed down the sides. To add the swirl in the center I just pressed a line into it with the tip of a flat head screw driver. In order to make them look shiny I opted to paint them with white metallic acrylic paint. To keep both feathers on top of each other I pressed a wire into the clay before it dried and inserted the other end into the second feather and secured it with a dab of hot glue. Then I used hot glue again to attach the feather sets to the headband.
The belt was made with a combination of foamies and good ol' model magic, my two favorite things in the world. I shaped the belt buckle giving a ridge to the bottom piece and being sure to smooth out the center button. The squares for the belt were all cut out to be the same size and I edged them in fabric paint so they wouldn't look flat. Then I glued a button in the center to make the belt appear to have rivets. Once the fabric paint dried I gave it a coat of Elmer's glue to smooth out the foam before I painted it with the gold spray paint. Then I put the belt buckle in the center and attached each square to a strip of belting and sewed in some snaps to the last pieces to hold it together.
I decided to free hand the design on the chest plate and went without a stencil, to my surprise it actually came out really well. I place the cut out design onto another piece of foam to give it a layered look and then covered the back in felt in order to make it stiff. Once again i coated this in the gold spray paint and attached sew in snaps in order to hold it to the bodice and shall. The necklace was fairly simple, make balls out of model magic string them together and you are done.