[Battle] Tauriel Cosplay - Mock-up and Chainmail

It seriously felt so good to write that title. Why? Really just 'cause I finally know what my costume is for The Battle of the Five Armies. Hehe. Anyways... let's get to the updates! :D

Firstly, I made a mock-up of the skirt yesterday:

It's nothing fancy, but I did spend a fairly good while on it. ;) Most of that time was spent playing around with drape and length and such.

It's made out of some old flannel-type fabric I had lying around. (Which had a surprisingly nice drape..? I don't even know. xD)  As you can see in le pics, it's split down the front and the back. I was trying to figure out whether to do 4 splits or just 2, and this has made me decide on just the two, so it'll almost be like a riding dress. This also makes it easier to decapitate orcs and goblins and such. ;)  And the train... is it practical? Not completely. Does it look cool? Uhm, yesssss. :D So, I'm gonna compromise and do a short-ish train; probably about 6-8 inches.

I'm also working on figuring out the shape of the skirt panels... like I said in my previous post, I'm considering buying a pattern to help with that and the rest of the construction of the dress.

So - that's that. Now the part I'm really excited to show ya'll... the beginnings of some pretty epic chainmail armor (if I say so myself;), made from soda pop tabs!

(the heart-shape was not intentional... ;D)

In case you missed my last post, what I'm making is shoulder armor (whose technical name is "spaulders").

This piece is only about half finished, 'cause I didn't have enough tabs... however, I'm heading home this Tuesday (yayy!) where I've got a whole bunch more tabs (all saved up in a little jar hehe). So you'll be seeing the finished product soon (hopefully - hah)! ;)

About the process of making the chainmail... it was surprisingly simple! It took a couple minutes to learn how and to get into the rhythm of it (bend, cut, connect), but after that it was quite easy -- though it is a bit time consuming. This piece took about an hour and a half total. In the future, now that I know how to do it, it should be a bit faster. :)

Oh and, yeah, my fingers were hurting after all that. xD

In case you wanted to try your hand at makin' some chainmail, this tutorial by kirilee on deviantart is quite helpful. :D

Well, I suppose that's about it for my Battle Tauriel costume updates!  Next up on my to-do list: Finish the chainmail armor and start fabric shopping!