Construction Details:

Fabrics used: metallic spandex (sometimes heavily interfaced!), white vinyl, clear blue vinyl (aka jello), purple nylon to cover the light channels. Misc accessories made using craftfoam, heat n' bond and a cheap tumblr from walmart... classy.

Now for the the big question... the lights!! Our fearless leader Kie came up with how to make the lights chase using "lillypad" controllers from sparkfun.com that she programmed herself; pretty freakin rad! She provided the controllers for the group, but each girl had to hand sew each LED to the costume using conductive thread (also from sparkfun.com). We had to number out each LED and sew it to a different conductive thread line depending on where it was in the chase sequence; so there were 5 main conductive thread lines running under each of our light channels, one for each line in the chase + a common positive, all of which connected back to the controller. The SUPER DUPER FUN part about this is that the conductive thread frays like a beast and even the smallest little fiber touching the wrong place could short out a whole line... this is where the nightmare-fueled hell came into play.

On top of sewing on all the lights, each of the LEDs was covered with a cabochon to create the "bulb" look. Each cabochon was drilled by hand (well, by drillpress... both Angel Hearts team NorCal AND SoCal bought drillpresses for this project). We sprayed them with glitter to 1) make them sparkly and idoltastic and 2) to help diffuse the LED light. They were then glued on top of each LED using E6000.

Bottom line: an absurd amount of tedious, stressful, mind exploding work. Like, I knew it would be bad, but I still didn't KNOW HOW BAD IT WOULD BE. I have never done anything even CLOSE to this insane. I practically lost my mind over this project. But in the end? Worth it. ♥

Personal Thoughts:

STARRY. This is easily the most challenging costume I have ever made. 6 months brainstorming, 3 months of major progress, 2 weeks of nightmare-fueled hell, and a final all-nighter of insanity made these costumes happen. The Angel Hearts girls worked our butts off together, and we couldn't have done it with out each and every one of us. It was a true exercise in teamwork and patience, and the end result was worth every moment of suffering. We can now say "If we could pull off Starry, we can do ANYTHING."

Here's a quick little video of my lights in action: http://youtu.be/44btirdsjV0

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