My Sewing/Cosplay Projects

[Maedhros_Nelyafinwë]

Was the belt buckle something you bought from someone else who made it themself?

I got the belt buckle from Ensembles of the Past.

 

[Maedhros_Nelyafinwë]

I've been doing a ton of work on Star Princess lately in preparation for a costume ball I'm going to on Februrary 17th. (Side note: I did not make the costume for this ball specifically. I pretty much never make costumes for specific events. I'll wear my costumes to the grocery store if I have to. I just realized this costume ball is the perfect opportunity to debut Star Princess, and a reasonable deadline so I can actually be motivated to finish it.)

As a reminder, Star Princess is the name of the dress Christine wears in the Masquerade song in Phantom of the Opera. You can see the dress in action in this clip:

Here's what my bodice currently looks like!

View this content on Instagram

View this content on Instagram

There are 4 pictures in this carousel, so click on the arrows to see them all. I've been doing, on average, 2 hours of beading every night for this entire month, and it's finally getting close to being done!

Here's a reference picture of one of the Star Princess costumes used on Phantom Broadway:

As you can see, there's still a lot of work left to do. But I'm so happy with how close my version looks to the real thing!

I also finished the tiara recently. I bought this starry tiara base from Amazon, and I made the crescent moon out of foam clay, painted it silver and decorated it with rhinestones. I attached it with jewelry wire, in addition to a few other wires with round silver beads, star beads and star rhinestones.

Below is one of the tiaras used on Broadway:

And I'm also making progress on the mask!

My mask doesn't specifically look like any of the masks used in any of the Phantom productions, because I honestly don't love any of them, lol. So I made my own design and tried to follow the design by Maria Björnson, the original costume designer of Phantom of the Opera.

By the way, even though this dress looks very fantastical, it's actually very historically accurate to costumes, or "fancy dress," from the 1860s-70s! I could write a whole blog post about that, but I'll spare it for another time.

I'm about to embark on hopefully about 6 to 8 hours of beading here, so I can get the bodice that much closer to being finished.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

 

[Server Room Gremlin]

 

[Maedhros_Nelyafinwë]

View attachment 29414

It is indeed!

🎵Just bead it!🎵

 

[Ellessor]

So beautiful and intricate! 🤩 I'm highly impressed by your dedication.

I'm curious, how do you decide on your projects? Especially since you don't make them for specific events.

 

[Maedhros_Nelyafinwë]

So beautiful and intricate! 🤩 I'm highly impressed by your dedication.

Thank you so much!

I'm curious, how do you decide on your projects? Especially since you don't make them for specific events.

I just honestly pick whatever my heart is most drawn to at the moment. If it rattles around in my head long enough that I'm willing to spend all the time and money on it, I just go for it. I have a long-term goal to create Christine's entire wardrobe and this is my second outfit of hers that I've replicated in detail. And the reason why I decided to do Star Princess specifically, back in early 2022, was because the boots from American Duchess went up for sale. The boots are a super important part of the costume and I obviously can't make them myself, and American Duchess is known to sell shoes to Broadway costume departments. So I took them going up for sale as a sign to make the costume.

 

[Ellessor]

I obviously can't make them myself

Does that happen often, where you find/look for a piece to complete the look for what you are making?

I'm so glad you are sharing your hobby with us! Have you ever worked in theatre?

 

[Maedhros_Nelyafinwë]

Does that happen often, where you find/look for a piece to complete the look for what you are making?

I think what happens more often is that I know a costume needs some critical piece I can't make myself, and once I find it, I get it and then make the costume. For example, some years ago, I saw buckles for Anakin Skywalker's glove go up for sale on Amazon, so I bought them and then made the rest of the costume. Otherwise, I just improvise and do my best to replicate all the pieces if I can't find them somewhere. The Star Princess crown is a good example of me taking a pre-made base (the tiara from Amazon) and then customizing it to meet my needs for the cosplay.

I'm so glad you are sharing your hobby with us! Have you ever worked in theatre?

It's my pleasure, I'm glad you're enjoying it! I've volunteered on the costume team in the Christmas show at my church, but those costumes are way less elaborate than the things I make. I'm a tax accountant full time, and sewing is my hobby (or one of my many hobbies), and I want to keep it that way because I can't make a good living from costuming, and I hate haggling with people for money. It's hard to get people to pay me what I'm worth for costume work. For example, if I were to sell Star Princess, I've probably spent close to 150 hours on it so far, so if I'm being paid $20 per hour for my time (which I think is low relative to my skill and experience), that's $3,000 just for my time so far, and the costume isn't even done yet. The $3,000 doesn't include the materials cost either. So I prefer to just make whatever I want, on my own terms, and have a stable job that pays a living wage.

 

[Deimos]

... I'm a tax accountant full time, and sewing is my hobby (or one of my many hobbies), and I want to keep it that way because I can't make a good living from costuming, and I hate haggling with people for money. It's hard to get people to pay me what I'm worth for costume work. For example, if I were to sell Star Princess, I've probably spent close to 150 hours on it so far, so if I'm being paid $20 per hour for my time (which I think is low relative to my skill and experience), that's $3,000 just for my time so far, and the costume isn't even done yet. The $3,000 doesn't include the materials cost either. So I prefer to just make whatever I want, on my own terms, and have a stable job that pays a living wage.

Truer words were never spoken (or written).
People have no clue about the time, effort and expense that goes into a custom piece of [whatever].
I do Steampunk builds (using both wood and metal... metals are typically brass, copper and aluminum).
Just the price of the metal can easily exceed $500.
And then not a few people get bent out of shape when I won't price the item at $199.99.

You do incredible work.
Not just your creations per se, but your skill and attention to detail leave me speechless (and that is saying something, or not saying something 😄).
Just flawless art. 😮😮😮

 

[Firiel23]

You are incredible! My fingers hurt just looking at all that hand work! I can't wait to see the finished product

 

[Maedhros_Nelyafinwë]

Truer words were never spoken (or written).
People have no clue about the time, effort and expense that goes into a custom piece of [whatever].
I do Steampunk builds (using both wood and metal... metals are typically brass, copper and aluminum).
Just the price of the metal can easily exceed $500.
And then not a few people get bent out of shape when I won't price the item at $199.99.

Oh, that's so cool! What sort of steampunk things do you make? And yeah, sadly in this world full of cheaply mass produced goods, people really don't understand how expensive it is when a thing is handmade with quality materials.

You do incredible work.
Not just your creations per se, but your skill and attention to detail leave me speechless (and that is saying something, or not saying something 😄).
Just flawless art. 😮😮😮

Thank you so much, I appreciate that!

You are incredible! My fingers hurt just looking at all that hand work! I can't wait to see the finished product

Thank you! Lol, my beading needle is very sharp, sharper than normal needles, and I have painfully stabbed myself many, many times. 🙃

By the way, here's a reel I posted on Instagram showing how slow the beading process really is.

View this content on Instagram

View this content on Instagram

 

[Deimos]

Oh, that's so cool! What sort of steampunk things do you make? And yeah, sadly in this world full of cheaply mass produced goods, people really don't understand how expensive it is when a thing is handmade with quality materials.

I posted my two "showstoppers" here Steampunk and ME
They are also on Reddit...somewhere... (reddit has many SP threads) and on a SP forum. Even on a woodworking website , again somewhere.

 

[Maedhros_Nelyafinwë]

I just posted a video comparing my Star Princess bodice to the one they use on Broadway!

View this content on Instagram

View this content on Instagram

I really hope to finish the beading today. I think I should be able to, there's just a few hours of pearl beading left. But I'm almost a week behind schedule, as I had hoped to finish the beading on January 31st. There's still the bodice to assemble and lots of other decorations left.

Edit: I'm not sure why TTF is squashing the video and forcing you to go to Instagram to watch it. Is it doing that for you guys too?

 

[Server Room Gremlin]

Edit: I'm not sure why TTF is squashing the video and forcing you to go to Instagram to watch it. Is it doing that for you guys too?

Yes. Maybe it's an Instagram thing?
Though I can't recall viewing Instagram videos embedded on other sites, so I'm not sure if it happens everywhere or not.

 

[Maedhros_Nelyafinwë]

I'm pretty sure most of the time if you embed a reel here on TTF, it plays normally. I'm not sure if there's some Instagram setting on my end that I'm just not aware of.

Here's a test (just a silly little Star Wars cat meme):

View this content on Instagram

View this content on Instagram

Edit: Yeah, see, you can play this one from TTF and not have to visit Instagram. And it's not squashed. So I'm not sure why it does that when I try to share a reel from my own account.

 

[Server Room Gremlin]

Here's a test (just a silly little Star Wars cat meme):

That worked fine.

 

[Server Room Gremlin]

So I'm not sure why it does that when I try to share a reel from my own account.

Maybe it has to do with privacy settings of some kind.

 

[Deimos]

You are incredible! My fingers hurt just looking at all that hand work! I can't wait to see the finished product

That is too, too funny 😄😄😄

 

[Maedhros_Nelyafinwë]

Hey all, I have a question for you! I've decided to make it a bigger priority to write on my blog regularly, since I've discovered it still gets a lot of visitors even without me doing anything to promote it.

So my question for you all is, are there any topics in particular you'd like to see me write about? Documentation of how I make my costumes? Basic explanations of what the different time periods looked like? Rating movie costumes for historical accuracy? Roasting AI generated "art" of people in "historical" dress? Anything else not on this list?

I already have ideas of my own, of course, but I'm trying to understand what people in general want to read about, so please let me know your thoughts!

 

[Starbrow]

I like knowing more about the different time periods and seeing the tremendous amount of work you put in to your projects.