Shore Leave starts Friday. Maggie, Mel and I are traveling up for the first night and LeeAnn is joining us on Saturday. We’re staying off site, a few minutes from the Hunt Valley Marriot where the con will be taking place. As per usual I was in charge of securing lodging for this trip and I managed to get an awesome deal. We will be staying in the very nice Crowne Plaza – the same place Costume Con was held earlier this year. When I found out I jumped for joy all day long.

The main construction of both dresses is finished. All that is left to do on mine is the paint job and adding a hook in the back. I believe Maggie is finished painting hers. She stopped over yesterday to pick up her dress.

We ended up opting for a dress that came apart – so, basically, a tunic and a skirt. This should make putting everything on with the wings much easier. Looking at my dress, though, I think I could actually sew the tunic and skirt together and not really have a problem getting it on and off. I might do that for future wearings. Here’s my dress, being modeled on my dress form. At the moment the pleats and drapes are actually hanging pretty well (on the skirt, at least). We’ll see if the paint that I’ll be using will change it drastically.

We were never able to find gray toe socks. It’s impossible to really even find any toe socks at this time of the year, let alone a specific color. For now the plan is to pick up some gray tights and just wear those with the sandals.

Maggie has volunteered to come over and help with the paint job tonight. If I can just get the thing covered with the base coat, I should be fine for all the details. I mainly just need a good base to build off of. Last night was spent putting a bit of a dark base on the skirt (With me getting sticky paint all over the floor – need to move it outdoors today) and starting the paint job on the wings. I’m really hoping that I’ll have enough paint to finish the job. I’m thinking of adding the fabric medium to the paint that I put on the wings, just to make it stretch further.

I also started taking a few little nicks out of the feathers on the wings, to make them look a little more like real feathers. You know how bird feathers tend to have a notch or two in them, where the feather has worn naturally? That’s what I’m trying to emulate.

I’ve also got to figure out how we’re making the audio for the masquerade. I have a feeling most of today is going to be spent searching for audio clips online and seeing if I can alter them enough for our use. We’ll see how that turns out.