Construction Details:

Corset: The corset is made from scratch with no pattern. Vest: Hand-sewn from rather expensive (but gorgeous) black lace. The front opening is wired, with black satin lapels and hand-beaded. Leggings & sleeves: Made from scratch in high-quality black spandex. The sleeves have wire at the hand openings to keep the right shape, with hand-painted buttons and beaded edges. Ruby: I searched for months in vain to find a large jewel that I could use for the ruby, to no avail. I ended up making a mold by hand and casting it in resin and polishing like a madwoman to get it nice and shiny. Jewellery: The fox-head belt buckle was carved in wax and then cast in bronze. The bracelets were shaped out of sheet wax and I then melted holes randomly to give that lacy effect. After casting, I had to saw off and grind down the sprues and then do a lot of polishing (courtesy of my trusty Dremel). The necklace, earrings and other jewellery is all hand-beaded. Wig: A punky/Tina wig from Witchwigs, unfortunately not the greatest quality as it was tangled horribly by the end of the night. Using the 10th Anniversary Sandman poster as reference, I braided beads and stuff into the wig and left it long. Cloak: The shoulderpads are two layers of felt with wire mesh sandwiched in between, shaped and then hardened with white glue. I coloured them with metallic acrylics and they button onto the corset. The cloak is 3 layers--silver-spangled black velvet on the outside and silver/violet metallic crinkle in the middle. For the inner layer I used a technique featured in Threads magazine, in which you sandwich beads, ribbons, etc. between two layers of tulle, securing the items by sewing randomly around them. It worked nicely, but I ended up sewing it entirely by hand as I found that my machine puckered the tulle horribly. -.-;;

Personal Thoughts:

When I heard Worldcon was coming to Toronto, I knew I had to do something unbelievably fancy just to fit in. I'd seen pics of previous Worldcon masquerades, and the bar is pretty damn high. Then the two-doll set of Dream Hunters and Ramadan Morpheus was released, and I knew I HAD to make them. ^_^ What followed was almost 2 years of planning and work. -.-;; And I don't even want to THINK about how much money I've spent on these costumes....x_x;; I used the dolls as my main reference, especially with Ramadan, but with Dream Hunters each illustration of Amano's is a bit different so I felt free to pick and choose elements and use artistic license.

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