Freelancer Armour

 A while ago, when I was still at college, I indulged a little in LARP. There's a branch of Fools and Heroes that runs a short walk away from where I live, so once a month I'd dress up like an elf, run around in the woods and hit people with things. It was pretty fun, but I stopped when I went into my final year. What's that got to do with 'now'? Well, a couple of weeks ago, I was helping someone out with some leatherwork for their degree, and we all got to talking about LARP. The girl made her leather thing, the guy insisted on trying on all of my armour and got rather excited. They made me want to LARP again.

That armour there, to the right, is my Freelancer Gorget. Out of all of the armour things I've made, it's my favourite. After far too long of trying to come up with a new LARP kit, I decided to make something like that, but something that would fit me.

So, the Freelancer Cuirass was set in motion. The pattern for it was draped on the stand, like how I learned at college for fabric costumes. I designed it to fit me, with the right kind of curves in the right places. With a bit of luck, it's going to be lovely to wear.

It has a bit of battle damage, like on the gorget. A scratch or two here, a couple of dents there... I think it just looks better than having perfect and pristine leather armour. It does the whole 'I have seen battle' thing a bit better, in my opinion. There's nothing wrong with shiny armour, of course, it's just personal preference.

The front and the back will be fastened with buckles at the sides, and the shoulders will be riveted together. Then there's just a couple of details, like adding O-rings for attaching a cloak.

Armour is my favourite thing to make. I just gotta get people to get me to commission things.

Any takers?

Obligatory "Whoops, I have a blog!" Post

So, a few little game-changing things have happened. My sister moved back home and back into my workshop her bedroom, so all work halted for a bit. Before then, however, I managed to get myself half a stall at Whitby Goth Weekend, sharing it with The Little Blue Gem. It went particularly well and we both rebooked for the April event, each with our own stall this time. My stock was mostly Steampunk, but I'm hoping to get a bit of Post-Apocalyptic stuff in there too. It's gonna be a long slog, making enough stuff for three days worth of a full stall, but I got a bit of an idea of what people liked from last time. Those belt pouches on the photo went down brilliantly, so more of them is going to be my first trick. 

What have I been doing since then, though? It has been a long time since November, after all. Not a lot, unfortunately. Christmas time is such a motivation-drain. Since then, though, I've started a few little things...

I got some more tooling tools, hurray! That means, of course, proper tooling is now a thing I can do. One of the first things that got the treatment was a Steampunk shoulder piece. Was it fun? Yes. Was it also frustrating? Yes.

Tooling-fun progressed fairly quickly to this gorget which ended up giving me a rather sizeable blister on my thumb. Remind me not to let that happen again, alright? It wasn't too bad, however, since the finished gorget (and pauldrons) is rather spectacular.







It's not all been armour, though. I've been working on some wristbands which ended up being a little Deco.



So, more stuff when I get some nice, non-WIP photos. 

Explorer Armour

To start off, an announcement.

I finally have an etsy shop!

The current stock is a little lacking, but I'll be adding to it when I collect up my patterns and manage to take some decent photos.


So, I have delved back into the world of LARP. I've been wanting to make some 'proper armour' for a while now and, under orders of a friend who has a car, I went to the leather shop armed with a jar full of money. I left the shop with over £200 of nice, thick leather, so here we are. Armour time!


First off was a gorget. I've made simple pauldrons like this before and, thusly, used the same patterns. There are a couple of differences with these, though, in that they attach with buckles rather than being tied on, and the edges are curved up a little. The gorget itself was complete guesswork. I did look at some patterns beforehand, but then thought 'no,' and did it my way anyway.

As well as a mass of leather, I got some new tools, so now I can do edges properly, as well as things to engrave and... tool, really

The arm guard here is completely detatchable, so it can be put on the opposite pauldron, which can also be on either the left or the right. I'm going modular with all of this.

I have some vambraces to match the design on the bigger pauldron, and might make some greaves, too. A breastplate? Perhaps not, but we shall see!