This is the second blog about the armor. here I will be distressing all my pieces.
The first three images are an all around vies of the top pieces of my armor togeather. the belt has three plastic side pieces with my symbol on them. I simply glued foamies to a piece of polystyrene, cut my design, and tacked them to a heavy fabric. Then I added the eyelets in the front to tie the belt shut and keep things in place.
The arm plates were kids sheilds I found at goodwill for 99 cents for the both of them, then I added some rabbit furs I had laying around from other projects. Underneath is a strap to keep the pieces snug to my arms and to give me more coverage without losing range or stabbing people with airplane shoulder pads.
The plastic side plates were spray painted silver first to simulate metal then green as a cover up because my games area is very forested. The flowery symbol is supposed to symbolize my in game clan, so I used duct tape to make a sticky stencil then spray over that stencil. Once it's peeled off it reveals the metal below and my symbol.
Here'zs where the distressing begins. In a dystopian era fabrics get harder to find. My shiny fake leather was well too new looking. I ended up taking a serated knife and just scraping at the fabric here. It gives it that banged up, scuffed and scratched look. Really the only advice I have here is have fun. Scrap in patches, cuts, scratch marks both deep and shallow. Don't feel back if you cut too deep it just means someone got a good shot in at one point.
More distressing of the shoulder pads. Since she actually scavenged thees in character too I let the orginal color shine through. For giggles I made sure that red was right and green was left cuz my grandpa alwasy used to say red right return when returning from fishing. It means keep the red markers on your right, or you might hit another boat on the way in.
Since these are down low I figured lots of things scratched these but not necessarily cut them so I just sort of dru the knif across in rather than scraping with the knife.
Here was where the real mess began which is why I'm in the garage now. After I'd done a good bit of scraping and scuffing I added powders and paints to signify dirt. I had various colored powders that I took a small brush and just dusted onto the top and sides. Giving it that dirty, messing feel.
Here's a view from the front.
The other side where you can finally see my ammo pouch. (I can't believe I didn't get a good pic before this.) That pouch holds my ammo glove as well as my pouches because our game requires either nerf darts in the day time or packets of bird seed at night. This holds all of it. It has little nerf dart clips added to the side, but they face down when the bottom of the bag folds in. I might need to adde card board to the bag to hold it open.
Here's the back. The picture is fuzzy though, but I ended up going a bit crazy here. I was using everything that looked like dirt of mud or grass stains that i had. I had green spray paints, bottles of green acrylic, powders, dusts, everything and I just sort of threw it at the outfit. At some point I started smudging the paint to get that rubbed in look as well. A lot of the time i was using paint brushes to get the spots and flecks, but a lot of crafting is not fearing getting dirty. Seriously, keep a pair of crafting clothes at hand that you don't mind getting dirty.
At this stage I sprayed the whole thing down with clear acrylic because it locks all that work into place. Once it dries over the night I'll go out and do more. For something like this it's a lot of how you feel about it. I do want to add some blood smears, and deeper gashes to it, but that might be for another post. I need to see how this one wears first, and fix any little issues that come up. Thus, I am off to kill zombies!
Feel free to ask questions, leave comments, etc. I"m always up for a chat!
The project at hand for this week is turning a vest into some sort of post apocalyptic Armor. You see I do a little event called Dystopia Rising. It's a live action role play game that uses boffer fighting with the role playing. It's a full immersion game. You are in character all weekend long. You can be attacked by zombies at any hour. I've been trying to make armor for my character for a while now, but my previous items keep failing.
I previously made a bamboo chest piece, but I re-purposed them into leg covers.
What I'm trying to build now is a chest piece. The blue vest in the image is where I plan to attach leather strips in some fashion to the vest. I'm also hoping to attach some old panels made from polystyrene to the bottom of the vest to make leg plates. The green back piece I decided to save for a future costume. My goal is to make something that covers a lot of area without having to put a ton of pieces on.
In this pic I've begun my "patterning". I used the foamies because I decided to glue the leather to them in order to give myself more padding and a more padded look to the leather.
I used the foam patterns I made to cut my leather. I also left about an inch extra for overlap because i wanted the leather to cover up the foamies in the back as well. Wouldn't do for that bright orange to be spotted in all its glowy brightness by a zombie now would it?
Showing the cut out leather. Remember to make sure the side you want to glue the leather to is facing down otherwise you'll lose leather cuz your piece will be flipped.
This is am image of one of my pieces glues most of the way. the black leather is the overlap I mentioned. Also, to note, when gluing around curves make slits into the leather. A solid piece would bend well, but if you cut into the leather up to the foam it will lay flatter.
Here I ran into some problems. I had intended to sew this together with random colors of thread, but my poor little machine couldn't do it so I had to figure out a new plan. the thing with crafting and the key rule is this: Always be prepared to improvise. Perfection is for crazy people to try to attain. Crafters know better. The goal isn't perfection, it's getting the project to look as close to your intended target as possible. My fall back idea was grommets. This was not an easy task. Took me a whole day to grommet set all 4 pieces. Then I used some leather cording I had to "sew" them all together.
This is the back sewn together.
This is with one of the front pieces attached.
At this point it's almost together. I had one strap to do. Generally you can use anything to lace piece together. I use whats on hand, cording, ribbon, etc. Since this is supposed to be from a dystopian era, where items are hard to find or are scavenged, it makes a bit of sense to maybe utilize any scraps you have.
Here I'm setting the grommets into the jacket. These will sit under the grommets in the leather vest and hopefully lock the two items together.
This is the front so far with the vest tied into place. The black spots are markers for more grommets if I feel they are needed.
Here is the back so far. I'm really liking this so far. I do feel I need to add so black to the front. I"ll probably make up two strips from the bottom, but I wanna make sure the pockets stay open for access. I'd like to keep my flashlight and cards in those if possible.
I also intend to attach the orange belt to hold ammo. Chances are this blog will be part one and next week will be part two, which will be the adding of the smaller items like the ammo belt and the distressing of my project.
Feel free to ask questions, leave comments, etc. I"m always up for a chat!
I'm starting this blog in the hopes that i can keep up with my crafts. Like many, but not all, crafters I have a habit of starting a project only to have the next project grab my interest before i finish the first. I'm hoping to curtail this habit this year. Call it my New Year's Resolution. :)
Beyond that this is just a fun little blog to showcase my crafts. If I do tutorials cool, if not boo. Either way hopefully I'll have something to show for this by the end of the year. My second goal is to post once a week, hopefully on fridays.
Wish me luck!
For starters I'll post my current short project, cabachon pendants.
These are fairly easy. You don't need the tools I use. Something that fits nicely inside your backing would work just fine for cutting too, or use the glass cabachon. Either way works.
It's a fairly simple process. use a cutter to cut out a part of the paper you like, fit it into the silver back to make sure its snug. Then pull it out and glue it down. I use whatever glue is available. In this case modge podge cuz it dries clear and is rather secure. After that rub some glue on the glass piece and fit into the silver back.
What you get is pieces like these.
The variety is endless. I'll be experimenting later on with just using resin or modge podge inside, to put in different things like beads or little bits of glitter or even words and phrases. The options are as endless as your imagination.
Feel free to ask questions, leave comments, etc. I"m always up for a chat!
