Nauglamír

I’ve finished a number of things for my Finrod costume, but Nauglamír is the most important one. The Silmarillion says of Nauglamír, Finrod’s fabled Dwarf-necklace:

And in that time was made for him the Nauglamír, the Necklace of the Dwarves, most renowned of their works in the Elder Days. It was a carcanet of gold, and set therein were gems uncounted from Valinor; but it had  a power within it so that it rested lightly on its wearer as a strand of flax, and whatsoever neck it clasped it always sat with grace and loveliness.

I can’t match that, of course, but I did my best with what I could get.

The pants and shoes I’ll wait to photograph until I have the whole costume together. (They’re plain blue, and not much to look at.)

I also purchased a cheap werewolf head mask to use as my trophy. (When Finrod went to help Luthien rescue Beren, he was captured and set upon by werewolves. He killed them with his bare hands and teeth, then died of his injuries.) Besides adding some blood streamers to the bottom, I installed a zipper so that if I end up going anywhere on Halloween, this can double as my purse.

Also, Tournament 3 of Nerd Wars has officially begun. One of the challenges requires us to link a project to a haiku, preferably one that we have written. So I have been trying to come up with some Lord of the Rings haiku.

A butterfly clip
Graces your ebony hair
Not very manly

Taters, nice taters
Boil ‘em, mash ‘em, stick ‘em in
a stew, potatoes

Fennas Nogothrim
Lasto beth Lammen! Ando…
Oh, it was mellon?

Spears shall be shaken!
Arise! And the sun rises!
Ride now for ruin!

A day may yet come
When the courage of Men fails
It is not this day

Olórin, Tarkun,
Mithrandir, mainly Gandalf,
Too many names, dude.

The Dwarf breathes loudly
I could shoot him in the dark
Blindfold that sucker

No man can kill you
But it’s time for you to die
For I am no man

I will take the Ring
Though I do not know the way
And I am so small

One does not simply
Even with a thousand men
Walk into Mordor

Now that it’s October, I need to go up in the attic to look for Admiral Spookington the Ghostie Pinata. I’m sure he’s still around somewhere.

Half-Finished Elvish Stuff

I finally realized that I’m going to have to admit defeat on making my own beads for Nauglamir. The last two batches of resin I poured did not cure all the way to hard. They’re squishy and stretchy. The problem may be the humidity we’ve been having, or I may have measured too much hardener. Anyway, if it’s the first, there’s nothing I can do about it. I did some math (ouch, my head) and even if the rest of them came out perfectly, I’m not sure I’d have enough by Halloween, considering it takes me three days to make two beads. While I still think I’m capable of making all my own gems for Nauglamir, I simply do not have the time or storage space to buy more molds.

With sadness in my heart and Metallica in my car’s CD player, I went to the craft store to scrounge some beads to make do with. (Should have played Blind Guardian, in retrospect.) I ended up with malachite, coral, moonstone, and reconstituted lapis lazuli—hardly the treasures of Nargothrond, but still semi-precious. (But inexpensive.) I’m still using the resin pendant that I made.

The first side isn’t finished yet, but I think it’s looking nice so far.

The decorating of the outer robe is going well. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to sew the cord in straight enough lines on the back, but they look good despite a little wigglyness. It’s going pretty quickly, too. I’m not bothering to photograph one yet since it currently looks less nice than the picture of the cord pinned on.

No Sir, I’m No Extra

Dude. Dood. Dewd. It is so much easier to create a costume from the appearance of something that already exists rather than trying to come up with what a character, who’s never really physically described, is supposed to look like. Jus’ sayin’.

Manly posture: I doesn’t has it.

You can see the colour correctly in this one, but the flash makes it too shiny.

You can see the correct amount of shine in this one, but the colour's washed out.

However, all goes well. I may have to tack down the collar as my attempts to get it to lay nicely aren’t working properly, but other than that, I’m quite happy. The removal of the waist shaping worked.

Okay, I know what you’re thinking. OMG SHINY!!! Yes, I did indeed want the costume to be shiny. Elf-lords should be shiny. I promise, the material’s not as reflective as it appears to be in the top picture; that’s the camera flash at work. However, it did occur to me (and my sister agrees) that I don’t want to be mistaken for an alien from the original Star Trek series.

So, to cut down on the glare a bit, I will be making an outer robe to go over this one, a la Council of Elrond. (Well, I’m still deciding whether or not I’ll give it sleeves.) And that will be a dark green.

Also—le sigh, woe is me—I’ve decided that I should probably buckle and make pants. If an Elf isn’t wearing trousers under his robes, he may just be wearing a dress. (I’m making an assumption here; I’ve never peeked under an Elf-lord’s robes, unless you count the extras on the Fellowship of the Ring DVD that showed the layering of Elrond’s costumes, and he did indeed have trouserings.) Probably those will be dark blue and will be the same fabric as the shoes.

I have not been as successful with resin this week. When I did a larger batch of blue, I got a translucent effect with the opaque dye just fine. However, I usually mix up such a small batch of resin (one teaspoon at a time) that I just can’t get a small enough amount of red dye to come out of the squeezy bottle. I shall need to switch to the translucent dye, I think.

We shine, but we don't sparkle.

Also, the “pearls” for what I’m going to attempt for my sister’s Luthien circlet need a lot more pearlescent powder. (Also, I don’t think I got all the bubbles out when I poured it…oops.)

We aren't shiny enough.

Still need to get the fabric for my own pirate costume. However, both my favourite crafting stores sent out really good coupons this week. Yea, savings! Wheeeeeee!

A Week For Firsts

This was definitely a week for firsts and adding new crafting skills to my repertoire. I got a very basic mold and tried making some resin gems. At this point they were hard enough to pop out of the mold and make a nice hard pinging sound when I hit them together. However, they are still curing and would probably indent if I poked them with a fingernail, so I’m going to wait until late Saturday or Sunday to start attaching wire bits.

They turned out fabulous—even colour, no bubbles, and they popped out of the mold after only a minor struggle.

Speaking of wire bits, my other experiment was wirework. I’ll need a circlet to be Finrod, and wire seems like the best way to do it. I braided and twisted some, pounded it flat, shaped it, and made Eleanor the Wig Head model it. (It doesn’t quite fit her correctly.) I don’t know if I’ll end up using this one or not.

Again, pretty good for a first try, I think! It’s a little ugly in the back, but the back is covered by hair anyway. I was thinking of Galadriel’s circlet as I was working on this one; Finrod is her older brother.

Concerning the necklace I’ll need to make, it’s a good thing that I haven’t been wanting to make gold chandelier earrings lately, or anything like that. I was planning to use some gold filigree bits and chandelier bits from the hobby stores. I’ve been to Hobby Lobby and Michael’s, and both of them have noooooothing! Plenty of nice things in silver (which is what I usually use), but nothing but the most very basic findings in gold. I don’t really want to order bits, but I tried looking around online and could also find nothing. This means that I’m going to have to develop those wireworking skills even further.

These are some experimental bits for Nauglamir, the necklace. I think I will probably be going with something three-stranded because, considering the weight of the resin, those seem sturdier.