Busy. Busy. Busy.

´Wow! I have been soo busy this past week. When I started this project during my vacation I thought to myself, "of course I'll have time to finish it" (even when school starts again)... wrong! :P

I haven't given up on the project though. I plan on starting up again this week. I hope I have more time this week than I did last week. If not, then I'm NEVER going to this project done. Wish me luck!

I am exhausted... but I have cut out the pieces needed for the:

• gauntlet
• glove pieces
• bicep 
• pauldron
• thigh 
• knees

I still am missing the shoe pieces (I didn't want to cut those out, because I'm not sure which boots I'm going to be using), the chest pieces (both front and back) and the buckle pieces (plus a few random detail pieces).

I have permanent marker all over my hands and even up my arm a little bit. 

I have also found that our hot knife cutting machine (?) doesn't work well and the blade keeps falling off and burning our work table. Luckily, it's just a table top from an old coffee table we threw out. (That way I don't have marks all over our newer "used" coffee table. :P ). 

Since it doesn't work well (the heat cutting machine thingy), I ended up just using an exacto knife and it ended up working WAY nicer anyway. I started by tracing the template in permanent markers (thus the black marks all over my hand) and then used the exacto knife to cut it out. I tried always cuting it in one nice cut so I wouldn't have too many edges on the sides. (By edges I mean little markings from difference incisions). After cutting one piece out i would flip it over and cut out the same piece. It was so much easier doing it this way (becasue the big edge gave a better guideline to follow) and prettier. :P

I need to print out the templates for the chest and back pieces on Monday. They are definitely going to be too big for my little printer here at home. I'm really excited to start sanding them down and heating/bending them! If y'all have any tips you are more than welcome to comment. :)

That's all I have time for tonight. :D 

Have a great day tomorrow. 

P.S. We still have our piano. Hopefully my husband's friend will come down tomorrow to pick it up.

Day 4: (Gauntlet - Practice)

Ok. So I shared my blog on facebook today and I got feedback that it was a little unclear of what I was working on. So here is an official picture of the armor I am going to make (hopefully without cuts, scraps or bruises). :P

Let me just say it is a MILLION times harder than it looks... I did a dry run today to get an idea of how it was to work with foam, a heatgun, etc. It is RIDICULOUSLY hard. I probably don't have the right tools.... oops. Oh well. I'll make it work! :)

Here's a pic of my dry run....

Yeah... it stinks.... Haha!
It was a good test run. I REALLY hope it's better next time.

I didn't put the straps/velcro on the arm on this run because I haven't bought extras but they will be there next time (if it turns out better than this one that is).

Well there it is. The start of the start. (It needs to start somewhere).
We'll see if some youTube videos can save this project. :P

P.S. I have absolutely no experience working with foam or these tools so this is my first time! Luckily, I'm a fast learner. :) Wish me luck!

Day 3

I finished getting all the measurements for both Simon and me and I'm also done resizing all the pieces. It ended up filling up a 1 square meter paper (not including the front and back pieces. I am doing that at the end due to the complexity of it).

I chose to manually print out 2 pieces that could fit on the paper so I wouldn't need another square meter. (My husbands took up 2 square meters - not including the front and back piece)

Tip: Next time I'm going to manually print out (when I say manually I mean on our printer) the smaller pieces so it's cheaper to get the rest of it printed out. It ended up being more expensive that we thought.

For all 3 square meters it cost 250dkk/42$ (21$ with cost of living). I know right?!? WAY TOO EXPENSIVE but now we have the patterns on some nice paper (free upgrade at  the printing place) that will  hold through several more builds hopefully. :P

 While I was down there waiting for them to print out I got to explain what I was doing. I felt like a total NERD and I loved it! :P

I got to show them a few pics and tell them how I'm going to do it (just a quick overview, although I'm sure I could have talked all night about details and such!)

I was soo excited when I finally got them in my hands that I almost walked out without paying! Haha. I was just soo excited to get started I wasn't thinking straight. o.O


 While I was out making copies of our suits Simon (my hubby) was out shopping for tools. We unpacked them all and put them in our hobby box (is that a cool enough name or should we go with Tool-in-ator instead...).

We've got almost everything we need now... (except the front and back pieces, breast former (still trying to figure out to do that), the bag pieces and the electrical wiring) ... which is actually a lot... -.-

Well we have enough to get started... that's what counts.

Here is a better picture of our Tool-in-ator. In the background you can see our piano that will hopefully be gone by the weekend. Then we can head to some thrift stores for a raisable (is that a word?) work table. Yup, going cheap. We spent enough money on those templates.

We then turned on a funny TV show and sat and clipped out all the pieces. My hand was about dead by the time we ended. Can you say CRAMP!?

We survived. Oh and last night we tested out our heated blade vs. our regular blade. They were about the same but the heated blade was easier to work with since the handle was smaller (it was easier to see what we were doing). I guess only time will tell if it was worth buying a heated blade.


 I've decided to start on the gauntlet (which looks easy enough) Now it's time to get cutting! Pics to come!

Trying to shop at closed stores...

So I took the trip out to THansen and they were of course.... closed. -.-
I'll have to go tomorrow at 9am. I'm still trying to decide how many I will need.

Narayas says "As for the amount of tiles, estimates for my suit came to a total of 16 tiles, including 2 or 3 Oops-I-messed-up-tiles. This all depends on your body build of course, but 16 tiles will be plenty to complete a suit."

I'm going to probably to get around 20 (so I have LOTS of "oops-I-messed-up-tiles). :P That'll run me about 500dkk which is roughly 86 dollars (but then throwing in the cost of living) it equals out to about 43 dollars. I'm sure that's WAY more than in the states but hey, gotta do what you gotta do. :P

I'm also starting to buy up all the tools I will need. Today we got a dremel tool and tomorrow it's a glue gun and some hobby knives (hopefully one that heats up since I've heard that works really well). We don't have many tools and the ones that we do have are cheap but that's what you get when you are broke and in school. :P (Correction: except for our heat gun, says my husband. Sweet, since I'm going to be using that one a lot.)

About the codexes... no I'm still not done. I'm procrastinating because I don't like measuring stuff because I always feel like I have to check them at least 3 times to make sure I did it right and then I'm still worried. I just need to buckle down and do it. After I've put them all on 1 square meter PDF's I'm going to go down to HvidGrafisk (a print company like Kinko's) and have it all printed off there. I will save a lot of ink and paper and I won't have to worry about fitting it all in A4 paper sizes... (that's not going to happen).

(When I am done resizing I am going to rearrange everything so the pieces all fit nice and snug.) :P






So I'm off to go get those stinkin' measurements. Wish me luck!

P.S. As soon as we give away our piano, we're going to get a worktable! I'm so excited to not have to do all this on my bed or on the coffee table!

Gulvfliser (the magic search word)

I have been looking *ALL* day trying to find some EVA foam squares (apparantely not popular in Denmark unless you want them in fluorescent colors for you kids) and then my husband comes home and says... Look at THansen... I look and there they were!! Cheaper than shipping it from the UK or buying for an obscure bulk foam firm!! Woot woot! I'm on my way out to check em out to see if they are the right ones. If yes than I can already start tonight on cutting out the gauntlet! Crossing my fingers!

Supplies and Difficulties

I've been researching a LOT about the N7 costume and I am REALLY looking forward to starting.

I already have an idea of what I'm going to use and already have an outline of how to do it (Thanks to Narayas - N7:Armour Templates/Patterns & Prop Codex - http://www.therpf.com/f24/n7-armour-templates-patterns-prop-codex-142610/).

I also used tips and guides from Evil-FX (http://bioweapons.wordpress.com/).

I have run into some difficulties though, first with using Photoshop cs6. I have NO idea how to use that program. Haha. I know. Total newb. I've almost got it figured out though luckily.

The other problem I am having is finding EVA-foam. I live in Denmark and I guess they are boycotting EVA-foam or something because you just cannot find it here. I have one possible firm that might have it for sale but they haven't returned my email as of yet. I really don't want to have to ship it in from England because the shipping is just going to be killer.

http://troodon80.deviantart.com/art/Mass-Effect-3-
Female-Shepard-N7-Armour-Reference-292802162


So if I don't hear back from them soon, I'll have to just suck it up and pay the extra shipping.



So the rest of  my day will be spent on resizing the individual armour pieces. Wish me luck! :)

The Beginning

So I'm starting this new blog so I can post some of my creations (both the successes and complete failures). I have a lot of different projects in mind and since I have a lot of vacation coming up, I'd like to get started on them. The 3 projects I'm starting with first are:

• Mass Effect Female Shephard N7 costume 
• Sand Art lightbox
• Photography with a Sony a390

                                                            http://www.filthwizardry.com/2010/06/
diy-sand-art-lightbox.html

So I hope I can get started asap and
I'll be posting pics along the way! :)