Overdue entry

Sorry that I can’t keep up blogging as I’d like to. But after I got Lal finished for Hanami last weekend  ) and fortunately Rin’s sword Kurikara too, I had at once to start work on Jun Tao from Shaman King. Since the cosplay’s set for next weekend and I’m still busy painting a whole dragon on a certain Chinese dress not to say that still a frightening piece of wig-styling is lurking in the near future… Well… I guess you can imagine the rest.

But still, I want to post at least Kurikara and maybe another blog about the rest of Lal’s accessories will follow soon.

So what to say? To get a chance to finish Kurikara at all I used a simple bokken again as a base, sawed the tsuba, drilled a hole into the handle and rasped it into shape. This alone took me nearly a whole Sunday. Afterwards I spray-painted the saya in the characteristical metallic blue and the hilt in black.

To get the silver decorations at the bottom of the saya and the top of the hilt I spray-painted these parts again, this time silver. To create the pattern at the bottom, I simply masked it with adhesive foil (cut into shape) while painting.

The tough part came afterwards when I cut nearly all the rest of the silver decorations out of  foam craft sheets, glued them to saya and sword and tried to paint them. Before painting I sealed them with a thin layer of glue.

Since I was possibly too hasty, cause I had still in mind to finish the sword in time for Animuc, the first layers became corrugated when I added the colour. So if you are going to copy this: Use very –thin- layers of glue and rather paint the foam craft sheets several times. The parts become hard afterwards and some ppl couldn’t guess the material afterwards. I also tried to mend the parts where it was clearly cut by filling the depressions with colour and I was at least partly successful.

That was the state when I canceled the sword for Animuc and postponed it, to finish it for Hanami 2 weeks later. And I guess it was the only reasonable choice now since I had no idea how to craft the tsuba.

After Animuc I continued with adding the signs onto the saya with silver acrylic. Wasn’t really funny to draw them with a brush and maybe not the best idea.

In the end again pressed by the outrunning time I just shaped the still missing tsuba out of fimo light directly on the sword itself.  Unfortunately it didn’t become perfectly neat, but at least it was Ok and going to be finished. After drying I rasped it and spray painted tsuba and blade at once.

So just the binding was missing. This time I decided on satin ribbon for a change since Kurikara’s a very special noble demon sword afterall and well it matched the colour of the saya better… There are binding techniques described on deviantart by chiyoki if you are interested. He’s a real genius crafter of wooden swords. I’d really liked to try to make one of mine completely out a of a board of wood as well, but I’m realistic enough by now to know that I really lack the tools.

Sorry for the spam ^^’’. So after gluing the blue ribbon onto the handle I still had to attach the green green ribbon (plus the silver pearl made out of fimo light as well) to the hilt and to the saya. The knot took me quite some time but didn’t survive the car ride to Hanami unfortunately -.-‘’.

Guess that’s all about Kurikara I can recall. The next blog as already said might focus on the rest of Lal’s accessories and the one after on Jun’s dress which’s still bugging me extensively. Fortunately after Dokomi I finally will have more time till the next con in late July.

Edit: The dress got more or less finished for Dokomi but I had no time to add the pics to this entry until now.