Hair-Raising Awesomeness

There are a lot of projects that float around in my head that I never get around to doing. I have a bag with a lazy susan, two different sizes of buckets and a tube of glue sitting in my kitchen... Yeah. With a lull in work, I decided to tackle one.

I've had a stack of felt in various colors sitting on the top of my fabric pile for a while now. It's been there so long, I have forgotten what possessed me to buy some of those colors. Anyway, A-kon is coming up soon and I want to cosplay. However, since I don't really have the figure for standard anime girls or time to put something elaborate together, I thought I might rehash my failed Halloween costume from last year; Fiona and Cake. I've got the skirt, socks, shoes, a blue shirt, and a Finn hat that could easily change into a Fiona hat. No Cake, due to this disaster, and no backpack. So, I thought a pin/hair clip might just solve the Cake problem, since she can stretch and shrink just like Jake can. I might have to think about a sword too... but that's a project for another day.

So, I assembled the felt pieces I had, some soft and some of the more rigid type, my glue gun, some hair clips, white glue, a few fabric markers, a permanent marker and some scissors. After an hour of cutting tiny felt shapes, I had created replicas of some of my favorite things. I had already decided to make Cake, so I did Jake as well, also my favorite chibi totoro, and Rainbow Dash's cutie mark. In this image, I had layered the colored felt pieces, adhered them with a bit of standard white glue, and laid them outside so I could spray them with ModgePodge sealant. I hope that will help them stay together, stiff and keep the marker from fading or rubbing off. You cant really tell, but all of them were made from the soft felt and backed by a piece of the stiff felt. The Cake clip, in some places, is four layers of felt deep. For the Rainbow Dash clip, I used the fabric markers to simply draw her mark onto the stiff white felt, and backed it with stiff black felt.

After three coats of sealant and a few hours of drying, I got out my trusty glue gun and proceeded to glue clips to the backsides. This took a little more thought so that I could have the clips facing the right way. I made Jake and Cake a set so if I was feeling extremely nerdy I could wear one on each side of my head. The Rainbow Dash cutie mark is so large that I had to angle the clip so I wouldn't poke myself in the ear with the rainbow point if I wore it. And totoro, being so simple, was my test subject for everything before I did it to the rest.

Here are the finished products!

I can't help but think I could sell a ton of these... And for the record, Cake is my total favorite right now. Now I have to decide which one to wear to the con! Maybe I'll wear the Rainbow Dash clip and attract all the Bronies!