I'm really pleased with how this turned out, especially on a time crunch of one week and double especially for not having made costume horns before! There are some things I wish I could have spent more time on (mostly sanding the horns smoother and a nicer sculpt on the snakes) but nothing that deeply bugs me. I definitely benefited from a long history of doing crafty things and by having access to materials because I already had them or had access to the scrap pile at work. More details on the materials and construction are under the cut!
Horns: Carved styrofoam and painters tape covered with a couple super thin layers of epoxy putty (magic sculpt. Air dry clay would work too and is what I used on my first pair of horns that ended up too big. I just had epoxy so I used it for these) which was smoothed over the underlying shape with wet fingers, then sanded and further refined once dry. Painted with acrylic mixed into ultra-glossy medium in a few layers. Sealed with glossy modge podge. I got them mostly symmetrical by making a single stencil shape with thin cardboard and just flipping it over to trace the two horns.
I was aiming for some dimension to the paint but wasn't able to get there. It probably needed more layers or an actual clear resin coat layer between paint layers to accomplish that. I also would have loved some gold and/or dark clear "blood" drips down from the tips but didn't have time.
The horns were affixed to a wide headband by sticking wire into the bottoms of them before the epoxy cured. The wire was mostly to hold them in place while the e6000 glue cured. Once the glue was dry more epoxy putty was used to mold the horns to the headband. The base of the horns is wrapped with braided embroidery threads that got glued down then dry brushed with liquid leaf gold paint. The braids helped make a place to fix in a couple wire hoops that were used as anchor points to attach the leaf crown/snakes, which can both be removed.
Chains for the entire headdress were from the two cheapest gold chains I found at Michaels, one a thick chain and one a fine chain. Two thick chain links were used for the hoops at the crown tips (once again shout out to e6000 glue) that the fine chain was threaded through. I had black pearl beads from an old project that were glued on.
Headband: basic broad black plastic headband. Drilled a couple holes at the bottom to feed some somewhat aesthetic shoestring I had through. This honestly worked super well for holding it all comfortably in place and was pretty easy to take off and put back on as needed! It was painted at the end with Stewart Semple's Black 2.0 (I've had two bottles for over five years now, I know it's been updated by damn the stuff goes FAR) and sealed with matte finish modge podge. I found the matte look helped it stand out less.
Leaf Crown: silk maple leaves cut into a more grape-leaf like shape alternating with ivy leaves, plus some basic fake grapes. All were bought from the clearance sections at Michaels. The leaves were painted first with black 2.0, then dry brushed with some pthalo green, and detailed with liquid leaf and sealed with a mix of glossy and matte modge podge for that semi satin look.
I braided two sections of gold wire (cheapest one I could find at Michaels lmao). One end of the braid was threaded through a cardboard circle (painted black and fixed in place with e6000). These made anchor points for the first leaves, the chains and grapes (attached to the big chains), and a lobster claw clasp that's used to attach the crown to the headband. I wanted to have a couple attachment point options on the horn headband and to be able to attach the crown to other clips or headbands if I wanted.
The last 3 inches of the two wire braids were twisted together and then spiralled into a disk that the linking chain and two eyes could be glued to.
The eyes were a bit overkill style lmao. There were scrap pieces of PVC foam board in the trash at work. I traced the eye shapes using the same flipped stencil method as the horns, cut them out and sanded to refine/smooth. They were painted with more black 2.0, regular cheap white acrylic, and liquid leaf. Tbh a flattened sheet of air dry clay would also have worked fine.
The leaves were attached to 2 inch sections of wire that could be threaded through the braid, then held in place with a combo of dark brown florists tape and modge podge.
The snakes are honestly gonna get a redo at some point. They're air dry clay painted first with liquid leaf, then darker and lighter shades of folk-art brand metallic gold paints were used to make an "antiqued" look and dot "scales" along the body. They were held on originally using wire, but in the redo I want to be able to use clasps like what's on the leaf crown.
Mask is just an old black cloth mask I had that I painted teeth on. The teeth are ROUGHLY based on large cat teeth with the fangs made bigger for drama (and I accidentally added a small tooth between the fang sets) painted on using white paint mixed with modge podge. I figured out the general placement by wearing the mask and using a mirror and chalk to roughly sketch out the top and bottom "jaw" of where the teeth would go.
And the best and final finishing touch: the folk-art brand "superglow" glow in the dark paint that I saw on the clearance shelf at Michaels and blacked out from excitement over. I ended up REALLY liking the trippy, "sketchy" look that the paint strokes gave it
gummygunk
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