Merboy

So small friend of ours is having a Pirates and Mermaids Party and Noddles decides he wants to be a boy mermaid where as Treestump didn't really get a choice as we have lots of Pirate stuff which fits him in the dressing up box.

Now as it happens I've been working on some stuff for Mandala again which means that I've been working along side Wookie and so when I agreed I'd make a merboy outfit I roped him in to add some bits for me. The outfit had to be suitable for climbing about on jungle gym style play equipment so no hobble skirt style tails or anything!

First I found some vaguely scale-like looking fabric, in this case quilting cotton and some skin coloured fabric and made some basic trousers and a top that velcroed down the back, then I added fins to the back and sleeves with the lower arms, bottom edge of the top and all of the trousers in green, the rest in skin colour.

This is how it looked just as plain fabric. The fins have some wadding in them and are lightly quilted to give the effect of lines running down the fins. He is diving into the sea :)

Then I handed them over to Wookie who added a lot more detail for me by airbrushing them. Mostly he added extra tones and merged the two fabrics better. He also built up a pair of cheap school style pumps into webbed feet, covered them in fabric and airbrushed those for me as well.

Here is how they look after airbrushing with a back view to see the fin properly.

I am definitely going to look at doing more airbrushing on costumes where appropriate I think and look into what if any heatset inks will work in airbrushes as while acrylics will work I'm not sure they would stand up to repeated washing. For costume that often doesn't matter but sometimes it does and certainly for day to day clothing it does.