Staff beginnings

Last night, after finding a bamboo pole for the shaft of it, the staff began!  A friend was over last night and likes crafty stuff, so he was able to help with the base of it, and I think he'll help out with the carving/painting too!  (The person who make my feet last year just hours before my flight because I was running out time).

Here's the base of the top of the staff:

The circular hole in the middle will be where the gem goes, and the plan is that it will light up! We found a child's toy that had a clear sphere on top that had spinning lights inside, but just decided it was too intense, even though we tried painting over it with red nailpolish to subdue it with the red. It is fairly mesmerizing though.. I'll have to get a pic of that up too...

And for the fun part, we covered it in expanding foam to carve (same technique as last year).  The other side will be covered when this side is done.



I think this year's staff will be better than last. Last year after carving expanding foam, I did layers of paper mache and then gesso to make it paintable. This made it solid enough, but it wasn't a very smooth finish. This year I'll add a layer of paper clay, or experiment with a paper mache mixture I picked up and just make it a super thick goop and a layer of just than, and then sanded down. We'll see how that goes!


Oh, and also, I don't really know how to create the affect of the chest cups as I see on the picture... so I'm taking creative liberty and just making a design on them. The design will be the dark brown fabric that I used for my skirt.




Less than two weeks to go.......... /panics

Also, my wonderflex won't arrive until the end of next week probably... If that doesn't come in soon I'm going to have to rethink how to do my shoulder, bracers, boot bracers, and helmet -_-