I decided to use polymer clay for the cage. It will look a little like metal, but is pretty easy to work with.

I kneaded the clay (I used Sculpey), then put it in an extruder with a small round shape. Since it is REALLY hard to push the plunger on the extruder by hand, I used a caulking gun to help.

I covered the base with aluminum foil since I didn't know if the Sculpey would stick to the paper mache when it bakes.
Then, I extruded long snakes of the clay, then arranged it on the foil-covered base and used a gold powder on the raw clay.
I baked the cage on the base in a 275 degree oven for 15 minutes.
After the cage was out of the oven and cooled (it is REALLY pliable while warm), I took off the cage and covered the base with a red micro-fiber. I used a hot glue gun to attach it and approached it like an upholstery project.

For the post-like structures, I ran the Sculpey through a pasta machine and baked it, so I had flat sheets to cut into strips. I glued the strips to the fabric to make boxes, then glued the boxes to the sides of the middle section. I had to cut the bottom of the posts at an angle to make them fit on without gaps.

Now for the crescent shaped wings. After several test muslins, I got a working pattern and cut out four pieces of fabric. I sewed the right sides together, clipped, notched and then stuffed each one. I sewed the ends closed.


The hardest part of this was figuring out how to attach the hair to wrap around the crescents. It was a lot of trial and error. In the end, I cut the hair from a wig into sections and glued it into fabric strips using obscene amount of hot glue. After it was cooled, I shoved the strips into a slit in the crescent. One of the tricks is to make the hair strips the right length so that you don't have to shove too much hair into the crescent.
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Blister on Finger... hot glue is hot. |

Lesson of the week: Hot glue it hot. You can see one of the blisters on my index finger in the photo above. I am sad to report I had to learn that lesson on three different fingers.
After both ends were in the slots, I used another obscene amount of hot glue to close the slit.I also used spray adhesive to tack down any stray hairs.


Last, I hot glued the top of the crescents to the posts and sewed the bottom parts to the fabric on bottom of the base for support. I think it would rip off of the posts if it had to rely on that for the only support.
Here is the finished headdress. If I had it to do again, I would put more hair on it, but I didn't have another wig, so it doesn't have as much as I would like.
Sabe Costume Part 1 Dress
Sabe Costume Part 2 Vest
Sabe Costume Part 3 Headdress
Sabe Costume Part 4 Headdress
Sabe Costume Part 5 All Together Now
Hello, i'm trying to make Sabé's costume... I'm happy to discover your blog, waouh, your headdress is simply fantastic !!!! I won't do it like you, it's too difficult for me ! But your tutorial will help me. I just say bravo !!!!!
ReplyDeleteThanks! I'd love to see yours. I really had no idea how to start this. I am sure there are more efficient ways to make it, but I just ended up doing a combination of different things until it looked like something. Totally winged it.
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