Schedules

Ok, so with the pressure on and two weeks to go, I actually made a schedule to follow and if I follow it, I'll be done with all the necessities pretty early. After that, I can work out any details and fix up stuff that didn't quite turn out the way we wanted it. So far so good, except I'll need more time to stick stars onto the body of the dress. To cut the stars, I stick strips down on a plastic cutting board and use a razor knife, which yields about 24 stars per "batch." It's taking me over an hour to cover about a square foot of area, and I don't think three more days is going to cut it. Still, it includes Saturday, so I won't rule out success just yet. If I can't finish it, I'll just stop at where I got to, make it look good, and move on. Then I'll come back to it if I have time.


Basically, here's where I've scheduled myself to finish things:


4/27 - Finish colors on jacket (which I did)


4/29 - Finish the vest and any other details on the shirt


4/30 - Finish stars on dress, finish Alex's shoes, finish jacket stars


5/1 - Finish belt


5/2 - Finish details on pants, like belt loops


5/4 - Finish jewelry


5/5 - Finish dress train


At that point, we're done (I think). That gives us about a week to adjust and tweak until we're happy with everything. For example, I did finish the colors on the jacket yesterday, but I feel like ther's too much white. After we're done with everything else, I'd like to go back and add some more purple. But for now, it's done.

What I've been up to all week

This post is mostly going to be a barrage of pictures and a quick description of what's been going on all week. Alex and I got together three times because of spring break, so we got a whole bunch done.

The pants are completely wearable, including all the fastening (for which we used Velcro)and I just need to add belt loops and come up with a decoration design.

I'm almost done with the decorations on the jacket, and I also need to add a button (I decided to attach the button with duct tape and the shape required to do that looked remarkably like a Star Wars TIE fighter).

The shirt needs the most work, but that's just attaching Velcro and finishing the silver vest.

I'm mostly focusing on accessories now, because my dress is pretty much done except for a whole lot of stars which aren't completely necessary. I'm trying to hit all of the Honorable Mentions categories: Best Purse, Best Corsage, Best Shoes, Best Tie, Best Jewelry, and Best Prop. Although those are only for the entries not in the Top Ten, I hope that being great in all of the accessories they expect us to have will give us an edge.

The tie is done except for Velcro to fasten it (since last I heard), but I didn’t snap a picture of the design.

For the prop, most people do a cane of some sort, and we'll probably do that too if we can find a cane to use. For now, I made a fan. You can see in the pictures how I made the staves myself out of wooden skewers and popsicle sticks by making a tube of black duct tape arount the popsicle stick that I filled with hot glue to stick the skewer into. It took me about 4 hours and I finished off another black roll. I've lost count of those again, and I'm just going to have to sit down one day with Alex and do a mental count of how many rolls each project took us. I wonder if experimenting and mess-ups count as well...

I haven't figured out what to do about jewelry yet, but I made myself a pair of duct tape faux lashes and yes, I plan to wear them.

Oh! And I also finished my dress collar. I'll put all the pictures down below, including one of my purse. Note: The pictures of the dress collar and the front of the fan are in black and white. I'm not giving all of it away yet...

Completed shoes!

The shoes are done! I've talked about them before, so here's the picture. They're mostly black with some purple plus silver accents and stars.

Corsage

Well, I finished the corsage! Thank goodness for spring break...



I've never had a corsage before, so I have no idea how they're actually attached although it probably wouldn't work with duct tape. I drew inspiration from my watch and made a strip of aqua duct tape attached to a clasp made out of thin wire. After making sure it fit properly, I attached it to the rose and duct tape ribbons by sticking the wire left over from the bottom of the rose through both the ribbons and the bracelet, folding it over to secure it, then taping it down.



The last picture is of the boutonniere and corsage together. That's at least 10 hours of work right there...

Boutonniere

I've gotten way ahead of myself here. I designed a corsage and boutonniere just based on the idea of a "white rose," and I meant to show Alex, but I got restless and made the boutonniere in two sittings. I like it, so hopefully he does :P

I still need to make my corsage, but it won't be so hard now that I know how to make the rose. Cutting the petals out and sticking on the silver lining is the toughest part, and I used 20 petals for this one. Actually, cutting the serrated edge on the leaves was time consuming as well...

It took me a couple tries to get the right size for the petals, but going from short in the center to tall on the outside worked. There's a wire up the center of each one so I can bend them into a realistic shape. There's a wire up each of the leaves as well. To make the "baby breath" stars, I folded duct tape over about half an inch of wire and cut a star around the wire.

If present trend continues, I'll be finished before the week's up, which is good because I'll be out of town starting Thursday to do some last minute college visiting...

Oo, shiny...

We bought more duct tape today and I remembered that we're actually supposed to be keeping track of how many rolls and hours go into this thing. So I'm going to be going back through the whole blog and see/remember how many rolls we've used so far.

We've finished taping the shirt together and got halfway done taping the vest. It's really shiny...

Earlier this week, I made and decorated my purse. I'll probably add more to it, but it's fine for now... I also finished adding colors to the dress and have started to add stars to it. It took about two rolls of purple and half a roll of aqua. There is some white, but not enough to mention...

My goal for this week is to design and get started on the boutonniere and corsage.

(13 black, 7 chrome, 7 purple, 1/2 aqua)

Pretty far along

Well, a bunch of stuff has happened since my last post. The jacket is pretty much finished, at least, I can't remember anything else that needs to be done with it, besides getting the lapels to stay down. The pants are put together, we just need to adjust them. My dress is all put together and fitted, I've worked out the zipper situation with more duct tape, and I'm halfway done adding colors.

Me and Alex met yesterday and started working on his shirt. The pattern was pretty easy and we got far in 4 hours. We cut out the DTC and taped most of it together, we just need to finish taping up a sleeve and the side, then we'll add a zipped down the front. After we finish that, we'll tape a silver faux vest on top of it.

I'll try to work up some sketches to post for you guys :)

(13 black, 6 chrome, 5 purple)