Pixie King!

I have a Pixie King costume I made for Hallowe'en a few years back. I'm pretty happy with it and at the time I wore a latex mouth and put on pointy ears to give myself pixie features. I really wanted wings for the costume too but at the time I didn't really have a plan or the time to make them so I just went with a tail and painting stripes on my outfit. 

So recently I decided to finish off the pixie costume and because I wanted to play around with leather I thought I'd make a mask to go with it too - as an experiment. As you saw in my last blog post, I ended up doing a fox mask at the same time and in the end that was the first one I officially finished. 

I finished my pixie mask a few days later and it is definitely not the shining success that the fox was as I think I cut the entire thing a bit crookedly. But it it was still a really good first attempt and one that has prepared me for more ambitious leather masks including things like horns, ears or spikes. 

The initial sketch indented into the leather and ready for cutting. 

All cut out! Looking at it now I can see how I didn't get both sides even. 

Moulded around a plaster casting of my face, starting to dry. 

The fox and pixie, all dry and ready for the dye! 

All the videos I watched said to dye the leather masks
as the dye helps with hardening. I went with a tan dye and
didn't cover it evenly because I knew I'd be painting over it. 

Left the dye to set for a day and then painted it blue! 

Done!

In good time I'll have a shot of the entire costume with wings included.
My first attempt at wings has proven problematic because they were simply too big.