It has been a very long time since I posted last and I hope to correct that issue moving forward.
As most of you know, those who know me, I am the creator of an RPCG called Dark Legacy. The one thing that I wanted to really push about Dark Legacy is the Role Playing aspect of this card game. It is truly one of the aspects of the game that sets it apart. Now with that said, NO you don't have to Role Play to play the game, but it does add to it.
I play a character by the name of Kierra Fallon and she came across an ancient book that has been influencing her towards evil. I was tiered of just telling people that she had a book and I didn't have one. I did have a hollow book that I bought from Michael's that was a place holder for what I created here. You can see that book in the image below with all my supplies.
All of the things that are in the image above except for the bed sheet, which was bought at Target, was bought from Micheal's. I have to say I love going there. It is a very dangerous place for me because I always find things that I want to buy and try and make something with. Anyway lets move on to the steps of creation Kierra's book of EVIL.
The first thing that I did was cut up the bed sheet because it was way to big for what I needed. Once it was cut to the size that I needed, I wrapped the hollow book and glued the edges with fabric glue. I never used fabric glue before buy my wife said that it was what I should be using and man, was she right. I tried using crazy glue and it just didn't work. So, if you are using fabric and you want to glue it to anything, use fabric glue.
This process was probably the easiest, which let me tell you I really didn't think it would be. Now what to do with the book. I first thought that I would cut a hole in the cover of the book and have the skull protrude through the cover. Then I realized that I would have had to cut the hole in the cover before I wrapped it. So instead I thought I would glue it on the top of the cover.
I cut it in half and yes the skull was/is made out of Styrofoam. Let me tell you that if you are not ready to have Styrofoam bits all over everything then I would recommend that you don't cut anything in half that is Styrofoam. It was like it was magnetic. It stuck to everything. It drove me crazy. On to attaching the skull to the book.
Tool of choice: Gorilla Glue. You have to be careful wit this stuff it is very strong. I had glue on my fingers for days, but it attached the skull to the cloth and the cover of the book just fine.
I may have gotten a bit to happy with the glue. As you can see it dripped from behind the skull and down the book. I was freaking out at this point. I had ruined the book...and then I got over it. I figured I will be able to cover it up some how.
Now I seem to have forgotten to take pictures of the why I am doing the next step but I will just tell you why I wanted to drill through the eyes of the skull. LIGHTS!!! I wanted the eyes to glow so I needed to have some hole to make sure that could happen.
I was truly having fun at this point and yet I had no idea if it was going to turn out ok. I now had this really weird looking skull on the front of my book and it really didn't strike me as evil or even scary. I needed to do something about that. At Micheal's I bough this tablecloth lace/mesh. I assumed that it would make it look like the skull was trying to come out of the book. After I put it on, it just didn't look right. I decided to distress the mesh and make it look like it had been around for a while. Give it and old timely feeling. I liked the way it looked. What do you think?
Time to make it look more like a book with some edge trimmings.
At this point I needed to have some things that hang from the book. For no real reason except that it is always creepy then the scary bad guy is shuffling around and you hear the clanking of all the extras that are hanging from their body or the stuff that they are carrying.
Now we are talking. Black beads and skulls, yep that is what I'm talking about. Once again all these things were bought from Micheal's. I now wanted to make the "pages" of the book look like pages from a very old book. This wasn't exactly easy because will there weren't any actual pages so I had to cut them in. I also thought "hey it's paper." I could burn some of it to make it have more texture to it.
Well there is a lot of wax on these fake books. Nothing burned down but it took a very long time to singe that book.
Now it's time to add some useless extras.
At this point I had been working on this book for far too long, but it still didn't feel finished. I still wanted it to feel more old and well...evil. It was time to reach for the cobwebs. My wife wasn't to happy that I got this stuff but man does it add the effect that I was after.
In the end this was a fun experience. A lot of learning happened. A lot of clean up and a lot of prying my fingers apart from glue. The end result was worth it. I am very glad that I made this prop for my character in Dark Legacy. Check out what it looked like all put together.
For those of you who are thinking about making something for your characters in Dark Legacy or just cosplay in general I recommend you go for. It adds so much to your character, I am glad that I did.
Well I guess that is all for the creation of Kierra's book. If and when I make something else I will be sure to let you all know. Thanks for stopping by and OH, WAIT!!!
You all haven't seen the book with the lights on. Wait till you see this.
I am no where close to being a professional prop maker but this was a lot of fun and the payoff was great. The book was well received at the Dark Legacy tournament. Once again if you are thinking about doing something like this, do it. You will be happy that you did.
Thanks for checking out this post and I hope to see you in the next one.
Kaiser.
