sexy armour...workpiece

click on these images to enlarge.

The workpiece was discoloured by melting lead into it. I figured it would not matter since it would all be sanded out later anyways. Bad idea...the other one had no such funky colours, and the wire brush played hell with the steel "look" I was trying to achieve. Well, live and learn.

The first step was to lay out the triangles, and then create a line with the blunt chisel. Below are the two cups, side by side, with some of the background "quilting" starting.

And here is what it looks like after about an hour of cursing the slippery steel and banging hammers off my thumbnail. Personally I like this look all by itself....but of course ideally it is supposed to be coloured black. I briefly toyed with the idea of cutting it all out and simply using a black sheepskin behind it, but as I saw how swiftly this was going, I figured, "heck, I can always cut it out later if it looks awful."

The eighteen gauge steel responded really well...the finished product has a really nice three dimentional effect.

Above is the completed bra cups for a nice sexy armour. The repousee took no more than four hours, the melting of lead, masking and painting took another 2 hours. Its not making the blessed things that was difficult, but rather, making them both the same, but mirror images. So, at first blush, these took me around 12 hours to make.

I think that the bra cups I made using this painting as an inspiration ended up looking pretty good. Its not "exactly" like the illustration. I wish I could say that was because I didn't want to slavishly copy a painting, but the reality is that I imperfectly remembered which triangles were "quilted" when I went to lay out the workpiece. Ah well. Next time.

Now to work on the tassels, chains, straps, bracelet and pendant. These are just as important as the cute little cups, and possibly even harder to make.

illustration courtesy of Clyde Caldwell and is used by permission. Please don't copy it. Copyright 2009. this is only a thumbnail, the full picture is here. http://clydecaldwell.com/large_images/leopard_serpent.html

Sam's armour.

This was the armour I made for Sam R. a month or so back. I put pictures of it up on this blog awhile ago. Now she got it, and she looks great in it! She is a jouster, and is looking forward to cracking lances in the coming season down in California and Texas.
above, Sam, modeling her new placqart and faulds.

From the front, she doesn't look too bad. The armour doesn't look too bad either.

And as you can see, the back needs a little bit of "tweaking". The back placqart needs to be pushed up against her body. We did that over the phone by having her tie the placart pieces over top the armour instead of underneath.

She is pretty good with leather, so we left it like this....I am hoping to be able to post better pictures once she gets dressed up and on her horse.