Elven armour 2.0 - Our hopes and expectations

First of all, new pics and details. And ... A video!



I'll go through my plans for the elven armour, or just some detailed information on each photo. All photos and the video are taken by Tuomas Blom, a hilarious lad back from the days we were young and had no worries. Or atleast we had different kind of worries.

If you evaluate the costume as a whole, I think it's not quite in balance. One day, I'm going to make the legarmours, or "cuisses" and "greaves". Maybe even sabatons. All of them would be very light and flexible. They'd only face forward, so that I wouldn't lose mobility too much. When they are done, I can apply to Mr Tincan 2011-contest.

So, to those who haven't commented this in FB, which one You prefer?

Well, on this one there's not much to tell. It's a closeup on my spaulder, nothing special. Move along, citizen.

The braceres are very early work, made for archery. There is the mallorn-leaf of Lorien embossed and painted, as well as my name in Angerthas-runes.

I made the scabbard for my Albion Liechtenauer- sword. It's made of the same old veggie-tanned 2,4mm cowhide. It also holds some exotic leather: python. No, I did not get it from black market. There's a little story behind it. I guess it was 2008 when someone had tried to smuggle alive pythons to Finland. Fortunately, the finnish customs caught the bastards. The pythons were dead and somehow my favorite leather supplier Kemin Nahkatarvike got to buy the dead snakes from the officials. I happened to call them once as I was trying to get something interesting for my mother's christmas present. So I ended buying very expensive python leather for myself and much cheaper Nile perch skins for mum's crafts.  But yea, the scabbard - it's got no wood inside. I just wrapped the moist leather and stretched it around my protected sword. What would Freud say? Never mind. Then I sew up the whole thing and glued the decors, made the embossing and paint it. Finally I attached the suspension straps, to which I got the idea from a true master.

In the middle of the helm, the seam of the front- and backpieces, shall be remade. Maybe I'll sew it with copperwire and reinforce with proper rivets. The funny looking green frankenstein-rivet shall give room.

See the highlighted areas? They are problematic. The highest panel shold be over the one under it. I really gotta figure out a way to keep it from sliding.

The second issue is the lowest parts. I really don't like the idea of bellybutton peeking from my armour. That would be stupid and gross. Maybe I'll fix it with couple of rivets and by attaching the hipguards to the breastplate for good. Now it's a problem to dress up, then it would be a logistic problem.

Someone once said, if there's a woman in the house, the house is never done. If I don't get this finished one day, I guess I'm gonna have to start wearing a skirt. Hmmm... considering this summers heat, a kilt wouldn't be a bad idea actually ;-)