Trinity Blood - Astharoshe Asran

I started on Asta back in March. Wait...no, I have to go back a bit more. At the beginning of the year, my friend decided that she was going to join me in my Trinity Blood insanity. She had always wanted to cosplay Astharoshe Asran, Duchess of Kiev. She gave it a go, but was having no luck with it. Then, her birthday rolled around, and I decided that I would make this costume for her for her birthday, done in time for A-kon 20.

The dress itself is blue taffeta. It was a bit of luck that I already had it in my fabric stash and it matched the colour of Asta's dress perfectly! :D All the white designs are silk essence which is an inexpensive faux silk they carry at Joann's. All the trim is stitched on by hand because I didn't want machine stitching to destroy the braid.

I made all the armour out of fun foam. It was my first time tackling a really big armour project, but I'm really pleased with how it all turned out. There's a base layer of 3mm foam, and all the scrollwork was 2mm foam. I cut out the base piece first, then traced the piece onto the 2mm foam and from there I could just draw the designs straight onto the foam. Once the scrollwork was cut out and glued onto the base foam, I sealed it with a school glue/water mixture and spray painted it all with metallic silver spray paint. The recessed bits were darkened with black acrylic paint that I brushed on and immediately wiped off with a paper towel. I gave some pieces a really light spray of the metallic silver paint again afterward if I felt they were too dark. Then I just added the jewels and it was done! The largest piece only took about two days, so it's a really quick way to make armour.

And now, pictures!