Bombshell Wonder Woman: Part 2

January 17, 2018

Bombshell Wonder Woman: Part 2

Artwork by Ant Lucia. Photo by Barry Kelly Photography

The devil is in the details, and when you get down to it, there are actually quite a lot of those in this costume.

One of the places where I knew I wanted to get them as close to right as I could, was the bracers. These I made out of foam. I watched a bunch of Evil Ted videos, then made a pattern, and cut out my bracers from 1/2 inch foam tiles.

I knew this was pretty thick, but I wanted it to be so I could cut into them without cutting all the way through. I cut into the foam using a sharp scalpel in the design of the bracers that you can see in the close ups. I just freehanded it, so its not 100% accurate, but its close enough that I'm happy.

I love how this feels like magic every time.

Then I added a small border with contact cement to the edges out of craft foam and bent them all in shape. My favourite contact cement worked like a charm to keep it all in place.

Then I sprayed them with black Plastidip, and began the paint job.

Left to right: Black plastidip, silver dry brush, silver picked out details

My husband kindly took the time to educate me in the manners of dry brushing. I didn't bother painting black due to the plastidip, so I just used a silver paint and dry brushed the whole thing twice, doing my best to not go into the crevices of the design. I had to do it a couple of times, but I'm really happy with how they came out. I added a few details in a brighter silver, which really made it zing.

The next up was the belt buckle. I freehanded a design for the eagle making judicious use of a ruler. Then I cut the bottom layer with the whole design out of 5mm Durafoam.

Then I cut the details of the outer edge, eagle's head, and inner wing details out of craft foam and glued it all together.

This all got covered in Worbla and I spent ages ensuring that I was happy with the all the details. The paint job was just Pebeo's Gilding Wax in gold dry brushed over the whole thing. I did take some acrylic paints to lightly darken the deeper parts.

I had an old elastic belt that I never use that I cannibalised for its elastic which I ran through the back of the buckle and just attached to itself. And then I added a small pleather loop on one side for my lasso.

The last major part of the costume that I had to do was the boots. I decided to do boot covers for the first time, because I'm a masochist. I used a pair of red heels I owned and did my best to do something...

Yeah, I mostly winged this. This is where they were at first.

I did realise that one layer of pleather just wasn't enough, so I added a second which meant that they actually stood up on their own pretty well. And then I added the details to get this:

While the bottom of the foot wasn't as clean as I would like, I was at the point where they were wearable and I was having definite issues getting my feet on and off. I now get why there are zippers around the ankle in most boots that look like this. I wasn't willing to do that, so I just left them as is.

The wig was a Dany in Natural Black from Arda-Wigs. I already owned it for something else, and so I just bought a matching fringe and cut that into a shape that I could live with.

As luck would have it, I wandered into a charity shop the day before the con and found these fantastic, and perfect, earrings for €3.

I wish I'd found time to make a bracelet out of the other part, but the earrings completed it all and it made me feel happy to have some genuine vintage pieces in it (they're clipons from the 70s).

That shopping trip had been to go find something that could be used as a gold lasso as my pretty leather rope hadn't shown up on time. It was really a placement holder, but actually I like how it looked. Not too big, but with enough heft to look intentional.