No, I'm not dead, just lazy.

I just realized that it's been more than a month since my last post. Wowza! I'm sure you, my loyal readers (all three of you) have been wondering about the crazy shenanigans that have been going on.

Well, wonder no longer!

Dragon-con is now less than a month away,

Aug 30–Sept 2, 2013

....only 23 days

and I've been feverishly working on costuming. And, let me tell you, the steampunk stuff has been a headache.

First off, you remember when I talked about turning funfoam into leather? You remember? You may not remember. Well, that idea didn't work too well. You see, once it sat and was allowed to dry and cure for several days, when I bent the foam, it cracked. Oh, it could've passed for costuming leather, all right, but not with those cracks.

Back to the drawing board.


Secondly, I was making the backpack out of foamcore with ceiling fan blades for the wings. Attaching the wings to the foamcore was a challenge, especially since I want them to be retractable. So, I opted to scrap the foamcore idea and use some left over pieces of laminate flooring that I had lying around in mi madre's shop.

I hotglued some scrap pieces of foamcore to the backs for stability, and the laminate worked pretty well.

I hit up the building supply salvage place here in town and came away with a crap-ton of useful bits and pieces. Some of the more important were these unused ceiling fan blades. The ones I had were just a wee bit too short for my liking, so I got some new ones for next to nothing.

The attaching to the laminate was much easier, as I had since thought long and hard about the problem and arrived at a brilliant solution. I drilled holes in the wings where I wanted the connection to be and hot glued a small piece of PVC pipe into the hole. Then, using my anchor bolts that I scavenged off of my model train table from years ago, I easily attached them. Eureka!

I have already decided on the decorations for the backpack, so I just had to turn the laminate into a box. I had four pieces that were approximately the same size. BOOM! I used two for the front and two for the back. I had some other pieces that were approximately the exact size I needed for the top and bottom. BOOM! With a little sawing and adjustment (so the wings would lay completely vertical) I attached it all together with some angle hardware.

Well, there comes the third problem. The pieces on the top and bottom were just too blasted wide. If I used them as is, it would've made the backpack HUGE. So, in true Sam fashion, I decided to hack and slash. I got out the trusty saw (which is really a piece of junk and is the bane of my existence). After much cussing, fussing, fighting, whittling, and sanding, I got them down to the size I needed. I was happy. The backpack would now be the perfect size.

Then this happened.

So...I'm at a loss. I have just a few more scrap pieces of laminate, but none of them are the right size (too small), and piecing them together would make it awkward given the current dimensions. With little time left and even less money, the winged backpack may have to wait until next year.