Remember the talking door knockers from Labyrinth? Brittney Benjamin figured out how to turn them into a wearable costume for Pandoracon. The theme was Labyrinth, and she wanted to make something that didn’t require tons of sewing. For the knockers costume, she only had to make the knockers and the sign and she pulled everything else from her closet. She crafted the knockers from Sculpey III clay:
I started by covering an old bra of mine in masking tape – because the bra was already padded, I just had to prop the cups up a little bit to make sure they held their form. I was originally going to place the clay forms directly over tinfoil (as seen on the left), but that wasn’t as stable as I wanted.
So, instead, I rolled a thin piece of clay and covered the entire bra form. Then, I made the basic face shapes in tinfoil, covered them in clay, and pressed them into the base (face on the right). I used extra clay to fill in and smooth out the basic shapes, and to add extra details.
Once I had both faces done, I baked the entire structure, bra and all, in my oven according to the directions that came with the clay. When they cooled, I popped them off the bra form and had my chest plates! I then coated them in a spray plastic to give them a smoother finish and to provide more stability (dry clay can be fragile, so the plastic coating helped to prevent them from shattering when I bumped into anything).
I painted them using a mix of coppers and bronzes, and then tried to add a fake green patina – it sort of worked, but I was running out of time to do it right, so it was a little hard to see. I made the rings out of these curlicue Christmas decorations from Hobby Lobby – I just bent them into shape and hot glued them in place.
Read more about Brittney’s costume projects at her blog.
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