Valentine's Look

I was thinking of doing a Valentine's make-up look, but wanted it to be something else than just using pink eyeshadow and looking sweet. When I came across this picture of Ophelia Overdose, I knew I had found my look! If you are interested in a step-by-step tutorial, I wrote one for the Queen of Darkness blog. Just click here to take a look!

I decided my flower headdress with horns was the perfect Valentine's look accessory, because it's red ;P

I don't usually wear red, I think it clashes with my hair, but this shade seemed to work nicely!

How are you celebrating Valentine's? I'm going to participate in the internatial kyykkä contents with my mates from work and my other half, it's gonna be fun!

Headdress for the Demoness

I showed you my Red Demoness character some time ago, and despite being ill, I've been working on giving her something to wear on her head to complete the look. You wrote such wonderful comments and there were many excellent ideas, so here's what I did based on them.

First there's the tiara. It started out as a discount necklace from Glitter, but I attached it on a metal headband with some wire. (Guess who forgot to wear the horns for this look ;D)

I forgot the horns but I'd like them to be included in the final look.

Another head thingie I made is this flower headdress with horns attached. I went to Ikea for the flowers, they have a quite nice selection of red flowers, even though I would have loved to get more roses in different sizes. The base is made of Worbla and foam, it's nice and rigid and I could fit lots of flowers on it. The headdress is secured with a string that ties around my head. Not the best solution, but it stays on. It's quite light and easy to wear.

I like both of the headpieces, but I guess I could do a shoot with both! I'm not wearing the contacts in these pics, but I think they work well with the dress, wig and both headpieces. I also got discounted earrings with red stones to match the necklace, but they don't show much under all the hair!

Scale Mail Corset

Finally my scale mail corset is done! It's not as fancy as the one that was my inspiration, but I really like it :) In the end it took 800+ scales and over 1600 rings to finish. I chose stainless steel scales and rings, meaning that it took some muscle to get the rings open and closed. I did a last touch with aluminium rings, which were much lighter and softer. If I ever do any scale mail projects, I'll go for the large scales and aluminium to lessen the amount of work.

I ordered my rings and scales from Queen Ring that's situated in the Netherlands. All packages (I ordered more supplies many times, because I underestimated the amounts needed!) arrived fast and well packed.

My best tips for working with scale mail

1. Go for the large scales. Unless your project absolutely requires it or you are doing a very small piece, always choose the larger size of scales. You will progress faster and require less material. I used stainless steel small scales and stainless steel 1,2 x 5,2 mm rings and it took a little over 800 scales and 1600 rings. The materials cost about 50 euros plus shipping.

2. Aluminium is nice. Steel is classic, but aluminium is much lighter and softer. Softer rings mean less calluses on your hands, and the lighter weight not only makes your scale mail garment more comfortable to wear, but also is cheaper to ship if you order materials.

3. Decent pliers help a lot! I used two small needle nose pliers that I usually use for putting together jewellery. Mine are not specific jewellery pliers, just regular ones. Pliers with thick handles are easier for your hands, don't go for thin, elegant handles. You want the ones that look heavy duty!

4. If you sew your scale mail piece to fabric, tie each stitch to place so you can remove one easily if there's pulling. I did my sewing in one continuous thread and had to remove it all when one stitch was wonky and pulling the scales. It was quite tricky to sew the scale mail to a corset because the garment has a shape the scales should follow. Also, attach your stitches to the scales, not the rings! Rings have the opening which can be big enough to allow the thread to slip out, or the opening can chafe at the thread.

5. Have plenty of time. My corset's 800+ scales took somewhere around 15 hours to put together. If you take too long breaks (weeks I'd say), you have to learn the technique again. It takes some time until your eyes adjust to the pattern so you can see how many scales each spot requires.

6. Make four-scale units. I first made four scale and three ring strings, then added one more ring to close the string into a circle. My process was to make a pile of these units, then attach them to my scale mail piece, then again make units. I felt it to be faster than attaching single scales, because with single scales you sometimes have to lift the whole armor piece or try to get your pliers into weird angles to close the rings. With units you can do some of the work separately, moving only the little pieces that your can turn in any position.

7. Use the large scales for the love of god! ;D I regretted choosing small scales so, so many times. I also noticed the Bibian Blue corset seems to use large scales, unlike I originally thought.

The base corset I used was a second hand piece. I took out the busk and put in plastic boning to keep the front stiff to take on the weight of the scales. Thanks to the heavy scales the corset really molds to my body. The corset itself is plastic boned and very comfy to wear, but doesn't have very dramatic curves either. I think it works well with the scales. I might add some trim to the top edge to hide the scales' holes on the first row, but they don't look too bad to me.

All in all scale mail is a very fascinating material and it just takes some time to make. It's not very complicated (even when it sure does look complicated when you take a look at tutorial videos!) and not too expensive. All you need are decent pliers x2 and lots of time!

And then some pictures! These were taken with my new Ikea roller blind background. There's two blinds, one functional and the other is just the fabric, glued to the end of the functional one. They work super well for a neutral, easy background.

Sleeve - Lip Service

Corset - DIY (the base corset is by Old Raven but customized)

Skirt - H&M

Tights - Queen of Darkness (sponsored)

Boots - New Rock (second hand)

Leather cuff - Loaned from my other half ;P

Sneaky Sneak Peek!

My other half agreed to take some pictures for me today and we got to try out the new background! It's two Ikea Tupplur roller blinds glued together and now there's actually room to take full body shots. We also tried new positions for the lights to get some more shapes and shadows going on. Because I don't have the time to go through the pictures today, here's a little peek of what's to come!

Magnus is helping ;D

Video Look

Here's a super simple look I did on Thursday. I was doing an interview about the game I'm working on, and the reporter wanted to do it in video. I usually wear only a little bit make-up to work, especially at this stage of a project when things are quite hectic, but I wanted to look nice for the video so I put on a decent face.

My thought was that dark lips and neutral eyes would work well on screen and not take away from my freshly dyed locks. The lips are Mac Nightmoth pencil and Cyber lipstick, and eyes are done with Coastal Scents Revealed palette. I'm happy my bangs are finally long enough to be swept aside, they've been a tiny bit too short for what seems like ages! ;D

Jewellery Design for Rogue

I'm down with a nasty cold, but I wanted to share these pictures of my newest jewellery design project done with Rogue. Tiina was interested in adding laser cut jewellery to her collection and we were very pleased with how the print designs worked. So we did some brainstorming of what themes would work well as let the ideas brew for some time.

I came across a beautiful picture of a Brahmin moth on Tumblr and it stuck to my head. The patterns were gorgeous and the real moth has a formidable wingspan of 16 cm. What a beast! (The jewellery-moth only got a 11 cm wingspan, but it's still quite big.) So, after thinking about the moth for a few days, I scribbled a lovely little sketch on a post it note. Many of my projects start out as post-it notes, as I keep a pile of notes on my table both at home and at work, so I can record any ideas I get.

The original sketch, look at my mad drawing skills ;D

My idea to combine the triangle and the moth was mainly because this way by simply turning the triangle to stand on its point or a side, the design could work for both a necklace and earrings. With the point up the earrings could have a easy spot to hang a lock or a wire, and with a point down the necklace would work well on most necklines. This way the jewellery set would match but still have slight variation, just what I wanted!

As illustrated in this lovely Photoshop sketch.

So I set to work on drawing a version on Photoshop. The final design needed to be done as vectors so the laser cutting company's machines could understand it, but drawing in vectors gives you less control, so I did the first version free hand in Photoshop with a drawing tablet. After discussing it with Tiina and deciding on sizes, I re-did the picture in vector form and off it went to the laser cutting company for trial versions.

When they finally arrived a month or so later, Tiina attached the hooks to the earrings and a chain to the necklace so we could see what they would look like finished. The necklace will be enlarged a little bit, but the earrings are perfect! I'm very happy with these (even when I still haven't been able to touch them, I only have photos ;P) and looking forward to getting my own set and some to sell too!

Laser cut patterns with engraving for patterns. Photo by Tiina.

This one shows the size better. Photo by Tiina.

Currently I'm designing labels for these babies so they get nice packaging too :) I'm so proud of how they came out. I'm so lucky to be surrounded with creative, skilled people who don't hesitate to do crazy projects with me! I don't have an exact date for when these will be available (the packaging needs to be completed and the laser cutting and finishing takes some time), but I'll be sure to tell when it happens :)

Elegant Photos

I popped to Ikea to get an extra curtain for my home studio setup, but now I seem to have made myself such a tight schedule for writing my thesis that I have no time to play with the camera! Boo :(

Maybe the weekend will bring relief, but to get you through, here'sa few more pictures from the photoshoot workshop. I'm very happy with these!

Markku was excellent with the light setup and directed me in posing very well. It's such a pleasure to work with skilled people! You can see more of his work here: Valokuvauspalvelu Markku Rintala

Photographer: Valokuvauspalvelu Markku Rintala

Photographer: Valokuvauspalvelu Markku Rintala