Guys I am so sorry! I completely forgot that these hadn’t gone up and I am certifiably the worst.
This is what was supposed to post (I honestly thought it was queued) after the last post had gone up:
Here we are! The final Firebringer post ever! We are reasonably pleased how these turned out and looking back, I (Amy) am astounded that we got it all done. Please note that in the last picture, I am wearing a ring that we made in our first crafting session. Because Jemilla/Zazzalil might be the best ship ever.
“The feeling is indescribable, we are here and it’s undeniable.”
DISCLAIMER: We were both Kickstarter backers and have seen the show several times so if you want to totally avoid spoilers, please don’t read this (or any of our costume progress posts). As a courtesy, we will be putting the bulk of the post under a “read more”.
I honestly cannot tell you how I felt waking up on the morning of Halloween and knowing how much we had to get done that morning. It was completely horrific and I seriously cannot believe we got them finished. The photos will be in a separate photo post after this one goes public.
With Jemilla’s costume mostly finished the girls were hopeful that they would be able to complete the remaining parts of Zazzalil’s costume and relax before the Halloween evening. They were wrong. Upon looking closer at what they had to do, the girls shuddered and tried to think of any other way that they could procrastinate. But there was no other way. This was it.
Shakily, Amy started to cut the points in the top of Zazzalil’s dress, careful not to go too low. This was a process that could easily have ruined the entire costume and she had to take about twelve nervous pee breaks. As Amy finished this, Danielle cut the jagged bottom of Jemilla’s skirt and fixed up Zazzalil’s ankle cuffs. As they hot glued the felt and fur combination to the bottom of Zazzalil’s dress and fixed the interfacing to the top points, they felt cautiously hopeful. Could this be it? Had they really finished? This had been a long process and they had made many mistakes, some of which I have not dared to mention. Ultimately, the girls were proud of what they had achieved, although it certainly wasn’t perfect.
It was with immense relief (and a little discomfort) that they put their costumes on, having only just finished at 5pm. Danielle had to literally tape Amy into her costume, and it was quite an adventure getting it off afterwards. Some of that tape stuck to her for several days. It’s strong shit.
So that’s it! As I said, the photos will be up shortly, but thanks so much for sticking with us and giving us a platform to share this adventure with you. It was taxing and we still have a couple of costumes in the works (That have legitimately been in the works for 18 months) and we are not going to be rushing them. Unfortunately, Danielle will be going on exchange in August so we will not be spending Halloween together this year. We hope that she has oodles of fun though, and I’m sure you can expect more craziness from us, if not as regularly as we had initially hoped.
“This is the dawn, the dawn of our time. We are womankind...”
DISCLAIMER: We were both Kickstarter backers and have seen the show several times so if you want to totally avoid spoilers, please don’t read this (or any of our costume progress posts). As a courtesy, we will be putting the bulk of the post under a “read more”.
Everything in this post occurred the Thursday before Halloween (the 27th) in a blur of panic.
Brimming with anxiety, Amy and Danielle set this day aside for Zazzalil’s dress and a few odd parts of Jemilla’s costume that needed fixing up. Amy lost count of how many times she had to unpick and resew Danielle’s costume and relief that they felt when the dress fit was indescribable. Unfortunately that was only stage 1. The dress still needed to have feathers coming out of the shoulders which required many more adjustments. They spent the day burning themselves accidentally with hot glue guns, trying desperately to get the feathers to match up with the shoulder length. Finally they succeeded. Then they had to get the damn things to stand up. This was much more difficult than they had first anticipated, however they persisted and fought and cried (only a little) until they won. Here is Danielle’s relief at having the feathers attached and her fur and interfacing lightly pinned to the bottom.
LOOK HOW STRAIGHT THEY ARE!!!
Also, I realise this post is short, but honestly, that’s what happened all day. It literally took all freaking day, guys. Please appreciate it.
DISCLAIMER: We were both Kickstarter backers and have seen the show several times so if you want to totally avoid spoilers, please don’t read this (or any of our costume progress posts). As a courtesy, we will be putting the bulk of the post under a “read more”.
This was when we felt like shit was finally starting to come together. We were kind of in that “Oh man, I really wanna high-five you about this but I feel like that’s going to jinx it so can we just look knowingly at each other and slap our feet together?” Don’t judge us. It’s a foot-five. It’s a thing that is real.
One thing that hasn’t been mentioned in previous posts are the shells on Jemilla’s costume. These things are the spawn of Satan. As the girls looked closer at the costume, they realised the shells must have been sewn on. They were dedicated, so they proceeded. It started off looking like this:
The girls felt brave, and continued dow this road. Some time into the process (after the armbands and at the end of the bottom of Jemilla’s top), Amy started to lose her mind.
Danielle was eager to help, but with her work from university piling up, there was little she could do but offer moral support. When Amy tried the top on and found that the shells hung too low, she let out a primal scream and started clawing at the sewn on shells. Amidst many streams of curse words, the decision was made that the shells would be hot glued on instead of sewn as time was quickly running out. Desperate to finish something, Amy hot glued shells onto the top and the skirt, and unpicked the small shells from the armbands, replacing them with larger ones. This was tedious and caused Amy to let out several shrieks that sounded something like what you might imagine a Velociraptor sounding like.
Eventually this was finished. Meaning there were a few remaining touches for the whole costume left. This was the exact point where Amy and Danielle started to get cautiously excited. I say cautiously because they were very much aware that the remaining tasks left were ones they had delayed for a reason.
“What are you doing? Get your butt up here! If we’re gonna do this, we’re gonna do it together!”
DISCLAIMER: We were both Kickstarter backers and have seen the show several times so if you want to totally avoid spoilers, please don’t read this (or any of our costume progress posts). As a courtesy, we will be putting the bulk of the post under a “read more”.
This was the time period where we realised there was very little time left until Halloween and we just had to do it. It was scary. I’m still having nightmares.
The day that Amy and Danielle decided that they would just have to bite the bullet and get shit done was exhausting and stress-inducing. One evening before, they had started work on Jemilla’s necklace:
As it turned out, this would be a prototype that they later would hack apart and stick onto the least comfortable part of a costume Amy had ever worn.
On this evening they talked about the costumes and how they were progressing. Panic stricken with how little they actually had done, the girls agreed they needed to set a whole day aside just to focus on cutting fabrics, painting the rest of the feathers, hot gluing things together, and nervous peeing. This is what that day looked like.
With the dress pinned, the girls felt confident in their abilities but still wary of what may happen.
“What if I did something more than what my people bargained for?”
DISCLAIMER: We were both Kickstarter backers and have seen the show several times so if you want to totally avoid spoilers, please don’t read this (or any of our costume progress posts). As a courtesy, we will be putting the bulk of the post under a “read more”.
This is where shit got tough. We were painting silicone beads (an incredibly bad idea, please heed our warnings and never, ever try to do this), stiff feathers, fluffy feathers, and the occasional bone shaped piece of polymer clay like our lives depended on it. And it felt a little bit like they did...
The girls spent so much time on painting these objects and it still didn’t get finished until one day when they decided they had to bite the bullet. But that’s a story for another time. As the girls painted, they realised how difficult it was to make paint stick to silicone beads. To a normal human of average intelligence, it might have been obvious that the silicone is not designed to be painted, but seeing as the girls were not in their right minds, it took them several weeks and various levels of frustration to come to this conclusion. Nevertheless, they persisted. Below are pictures of some of the methods they used and some of the difficulties they came across.
Danielle found ways to dry her feathers on a conveniently placed shelving unit.
The utter horror of painting the beads and realising how different they looked from the clay when they dried...
FINALLY IT MATCHES!!
Jemilla’s finished earrings. One of the very first things that was done in this project and was super easy so it gave us a false sense of security.
DISCLAIMER: We were both Kickstarter backers and have seen the show several times so if you want to totally avoid spoilers, please don’t read this (or any of our costume progress posts). As a courtesy, we will be putting the bulk of the post under a “read more”.
Honestly, I (Amy) really avoided all my responsibilities for a good chunk of time when it came to the actual sewing of these costumes. I have very little faith in my abilities, especially now that my tremors are almost constant. The idea of actually cutting into the super expensive fabric and make the real costumes terrified me. Here’s how that went...
As the fabric for the costumes lay folded in their Spotlight bag, Amy did literally everything she good to try and avoid her responsibility of actually cutting into the real (and very expensive) fabric. For example, did you know that paint does not stay on silicone teething beads? No? WELL GUESS WHAT?! “What a perfect way to waste hours and hours of my life,” Amy thought. “What else could I possibly be doing other than repainting these beads because they looked a lot better online that they do right now?” Let’s be honest, Amy and Danielle are professional procrastinators (don’t try this at home, kids). Other than trying to answer the age old question of how to make paint to stay on silicone teething beads (the answer is mod podge, toothpicks, and an excessive amount of patience), the girls also battled with feathers. Trying to paint soft fluffy feathers was excruciatingly difficult and was a tedious process. Naturally, Amy handed this project over to Danielle once they realised that there was a mere six weeks left until Halloween and they hadn’t even cut the fabric. Finding time to be together for costume fittings was even more difficult. When Amy had sewn the mock up for Danielle’s Zazzalil costume, Danielle tried it on. Both girls thought the same thing at that moment: Fuck. We screwed up.
For some still unknown reason, the pattern that had been so carefully crafted to Danielle’s measurements, made her look like she was wearing a very big, very ugly, brown sack. The pattern had to be altered and with only a few days available for Danielle to come over and be fitted again, Amy was ready to tear her hair out. To avoid a personal meltdown, Amy worked on her Jemilla costume. The pattern was shockingly easy compared to Zazzalil’s, but the costume came with it’s own set of problems later on. During this time, Danielle painted and blow dried feathers: Purple for Zazzalil, blue and brown for Jemilla. She also made Zazzalil’s anklets while Amy procrastinated making the rest of Zazzalil’s costume.
Pictures of the painted items and a little more detail on the process will be in the next post!
I know, I know. Promises, promises. We suck at delivering promised posts to you guys and keeping this all updated. I apologise.
The only explanation I can offer you is that Dee has been busy and my health has been very poor. I suffer from several chronic illnesses and my body has not been responding to treatments and medications as well as we had hoped. This has left me with minimal energy and I have had a significant decline in my cognitive function. Having said that, I still have my good days and my bad days. Right this second, I'm okay. Now, I'm not planning on using this page to talk about me (I have a blog for that!) but I wanted to give those of you who notice us some explanation as to why I didn't deliver on those posts.
So I'm not going to give you a date or set a deadline of when these will be posted. But a promise I can keep, is that you will get them sometime. They are all on my to do list and I have many scrappy little notes hanging around, waiting to be turned into actual posts. In the meantime, watch Firebringer on YouTube, get your merch here (I've still got my eye on that duck), and let us know your thoughts!
