Since 2014, I have attended Hobbitcon - a con in Germany that started up in 2013 and are centered around the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings films. The first year I didn't really cosplay, but last year I made both Éowyn's green gown and Pippin. This year I made dark Galadriel, and in this post I will show you how I made her and hopefully give you some helpful tips if you want to make her yourself.
THE DRESS
The dress itself is fairly simple. It is really just a bunch of layers teared up. I went out and bought (on sale, yay!) a bunch of different fabrics in different shades of grey (no pun intended), that I thought would look good together. I wasn't really going for any specific fabrics. They just needed to be light and flowy and preferably shiny. The only thing that was pretty important, was to find some sort of lace for the top layer.
I have seven layers in total that are all sewn together, and as you can see from the picture below not all of them are the same length. I also decided to go from dark to light with the fabric colours - the innermost fabrics being the darkest.
When I had made all the layers I put them together and then started cutting and tearing each layer from the bottom up. That took quite a while, and when I was done I realised that it looked very man-made and symmetrical, as you can see in the picture above. That's when I brought out my scissors and knives and started hacking away at the dress.
It was a fabric massacre when I was done, but it looks way better. Instead of looking like I just cut it with some scissors, it looks weathered, worn and torn in a more natural way.
If you can ignore my handsome cat Gordon, who loves to play with my costumes, you can see the ripped and teared edges really well in this picture. I did get some "holes" in my dress when I chopped away at it like I did, so I kept most of the pieces that I cut off, and glued them back on with a gluegun in the places that was needed. That way I didn't actually lose any fabric from the dress. I just rearranged it!
If you look closely, you can also see the glitter on the lace layer of the dress in this picture. I wanted it to sparkle, so I painted it with glitter fabric paint. It gives a nice effect when bright lights hit the dress.
This is the finished dress. It kind of looks like a sack of potatos because it's so frayed, but with the chest armour on, it looks completely different.
THE CHEST ARMOUR
I admit it. I screwed up on the armour when I first made it. I made it out of worbla, which for big projects like a chest armour really needs to be stabilized by foam or cardboard or something similar. If not, it will get a lot of air bubbles, it will tear and it won't be a pretty sight, as you can see on the left side in the photo below.
Luckily I was able to save it by adding some foam afterwards and very carefully smoothing out the worbla bit by bit. I did need to patch it up some places though, as you can see. So yeah... Don't do what I did. Don't be impatient. It could potentially cost you a lot of expensive worbla!
If you look closely at dark Galadriel's armour, you will notice that her chest armour has scales. At first I thought I would have to cut out a very large amount of tiny worbla circles for this, which kind of made me want to chew my arm off in frustration. But luckily the internet saved me! I found a tutorial where someone had used stickers to make this scale effect, and it was perfect! It's quick and easy and gives a subtle effect. I used around 700 stickers in all and it actually didn't take me that long. It was really just fun. The downpart to the stickers is that they don't stick too well to the worbla, so you need to give them a good coat of wood glue after to seal everything.
After priming with wood glue and initial painting. The detailing on top of the scales are strips of worbla.
I used a mix of black and green to weather the entire armour with. The strips of worbla were then painted gold and details added. Finally I added some shading a few places.
THE BROCHE
The broche was by far the most complicated part of the costume. There are a lot of details, and obviously it needs to be symmetrical. I studied the broche as well I possibly could (the most difficult part was figuring out which parts went over and under where). When I was pretty sure I had it, I made a stencil. Stencils are good when you want to make stuff like this because you have a continous guide you can lay your work on top of. If it needs to be symmetrical, like in this case, you can draw up one half and then copy it to the other side.
It's made from black worbla painted with silver and weathered slightly with black paint. The gem in the middle is also worbla, painted with nailpolish to give it a more shiny look (I'm not completely happy with it though; I wish it was even more smooth and gemlike).
It was built on a flat surface. When it was done I shaped it after the armour using a low setting on my heat gun. Finally I glued it onto the armour using superglue.
THE LIGHTING
When I started making Galadriel, I knew I wanted to incorporate lights to make it look otherworldly, since the costume is very CGI in the films. (Honestly, if I could, I would carry flood lights and a big ass electrical fan around with me at all times with this costume.) My only problem was that I had never used lights in a costume before. I had given a go at making a circuit at some point earlier, but basically I had no idea what I was doing. So I had to hit the books! I decided to buy Kamui's book of cosplay lights, which was very helpful, easy to understand and taught me everything I needed to know. I can highly recommend it if you want to learn how to incorporate lights in your costume!
So I built the circuit, drilled some holes in the armour behind the broche, and boom! Instant light magic!
The inside doesn't look very pretty, but in this case I couldn't be botherd to make it look pretty either. My parents also helpfully pointed out that it looked like a bomb, which made me nervous as shit about taking it with me on the plane to Germany. Thankfully, I was not arrested by the police!
You can also see the fastenings on the armour in this photo. There are three D-rings on each side (ignore the D-rings on top, I ended up not using them), and I used a simple silver ribbon to tie it like a corset in the back underneath most of the layers of the dress.
THE FINISHED RESULT
From the cosplay competition at Hobbitcon 4. Photo by Christian Hacki.
From the cosplay competition at Hobbitcon 4. Photo by Dornhoefer Photography.
Photo by Katrix Media Site.
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