Golden Snitch Prop

It's the Golden Snitch!

This is a really quick project but requires a few tools. Here's how to make your own Snitch like this one.

Tools:

• hot glue gun & one hot glue stick
• electric drill (e.g. a Dremel with a drill bit)
• scissors
• fine-tipped paint brush
• blunt/wide-tipped paint brush

Materials:

• a wooden ball
• two yellow feathers
• gold acrylic paint
• light yellow acrylic paint

All of the above (excluding the drill, perhaps) should be available from your local craft store.

Directions:

1.  Using a drill bit the same size as your feather stems, drill two holes in the wooden ball, angling the hole in the direction you want the feather to come out.
2. Stick the feathers into the holes to make sure they fit. Use scissors to trim the feathers to your desired length. Then take the feathers back out of the holes.
3. One hole at a time, squeeze hot glue into the hole and then shove the tip of the feather in. Before the glue cools, twist the feather so it's facing the right direction. Then repeat for the other hole and feather and let the glue cool.
4. Using a blunt-tipped brush, paint the ball gold. To minimize brushstrokes and keep the nice wood grain visible, paint on a very light layer, let it dry, then add one or two more layers of paint until the wood color is covered.
5. Using a fine-tipped paint brush and light yellow paint, detail on a design to give your Snitch an aerodynamic, athletic, or magical appearance. I just made up a design, but if you want you could find reference photos from the Harry Potter movies and try to create a movie-accurate Snitch. You'll note the "real" Snitch is not a completely smooth ball. To add texture, you could use gold puffy paint to "draw" the design on.
6. Finish with a light coat of gold over the light yellow. I also edged the yellow with a darker gold to give it the illusion of depth.

Enchanted Cloak and Cape

I love making cloaks and capes! I made two in one night using the same aqua velvet crush fabric.

ENCHANTED CLOAK ~

First up is a cute off-the-shoulder short hooded cloak. I wanted to make the cloak kid-friendly so I used Velcro for the closure and hid the stitches under a pair of pretty gold buttons.

The cape is short or half-length on an adult. But it would be a nice long cloak for a kid. The back of the cloak is squared (pointed corners).

I added a charm at the point of the hood. It's a nice detail and the added weight keeps the point hanging down properly.

View the Enchanted Cloak on AvalynArtistry.com

ENCHANTED CAPE ~ 

Next I made a simple cape that fastens in front with a little snap. Again, it's a short style for an adult, but it would be nice and long on a little princess.

This cape is rounded at the bottom instead of being square-edged like the cloak. I left the neck opening huge so it drapes down the back. This also gives the option to pull it up and tie it in front instead of using the snap.

Or, I suppose you could wear a pair of wings on your back and have them poke out of the back opening from your shoulder blades.

Note: Both the cloak and cape are pictured with my Shimmering Mage Blouse.

Cosplay Progress - Final Fantasy XIII-2 Serah Farron, Bag 0.4

As you can see Serah Farron comes with this handy dandy bag that hangs off her waist.  Does that mean it's a duffle bag?  And I played the game through, she doesn't use the thing once! so what the heck is it for?

I didn't wnat to work with the bag panel by panel, so I made the front/bottom/top/back all out of one strip.  I put a band across it with some grey silk like fabric on to of white canvas.

Folding it into the odd shape I cut out more white canvas to match

Whoops I guess my grey panels didn't align properly.  Oh well.

Now for the waist band.  I'm using this shiny vinyl material which will also be used for the skirt.

Sewing two strips together for strength.

Drawing the cirlces and cutting them out after the sides have been sew together.  This will make it an accurate match.

Using the Piping concept.  To give texture to the edge of the waist band, I'm filling and sewing in a pipe (some extra satin cord I had laying around).

For the button I cut out a circle from the left over vinyl, and glued on a pink bead I made from air dry clay.   There's a lot of gold trim around the bag that I will create using long strips of the vinyl. 

I do admit that the gold vinyl for the bag trim doesn't look as refined as if i used real piping, or just put more TLC into it.  But I'm taking a lot of time to finish this Serah outfit, so any short cuts will make an over all difference.