Hello. I don't know if anyone else will find this useful, but I thought I would share how I created my blue tail for Mermaid Haru.
I really wanted something with 3D scales but have no space/money for silicon. After some research and a good deal of test swatches I settled on making the main body of my tail out of neoprene and puffy paint (the fluke is spandex and I have a band of power-mesh around the top due to the design of the tail).
I have taken this tail out and about on dry land in my wheelchair, have had it in tubs, and have taken it swimming in chorine pools. It has held up very will with minmal damage.
I ordered my neoprene from "Seattle Fabrics". The all other supplies came from Jo-Anns. My mono fin is the "fin-Fun" by Finis.
{because I want everyone to have the credit they deserve I got the idea to use puffy paint from this mermaid here: http://blog.erinstblaine.com/2013/07...g-mermaid.html
the techniques I developed and the construction are my own.
The original character belongs to "Free!". The gender bent design belongs to me}
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step 1: creating the tail
then I created 3 scale templates. one small, one medium, one large. I worked form the bottom to the top starting with the small. The best way to keep all my scales lined up was to start each row in the middle, and work outward along each side. If I started from the sides the rows got crooked. I used a thick line of my light blue puffy paint for this, to start to give the scales dimension.
I worked on and off on the front for about a month, and then powered through the back in around a week.
This honestly took the most time. On average 4 rows of scales would take me an hour. but I did this mainly over winter break, so I could (and did) work on it all day every day.
I ended up using a lot more paint than I had anticipated, and probably spent over 90 dollars on paint by the end, and that is with coupons. I would estimate I used 9 bottles of the light blue (partly due to the outline), 3 bottles dark, 4 bottles medium, and 6 bottles glow. I did not use the whole thing of teal acrylic paint though
the process of one row of scales
progress over the whole tail
so I bought two bottles of plain white glow-in-the-dark puffy paint and two clear sparkly puffy paint. I applied the glow first with a paintbrush just around the middle edge of each scale and then after that had dried i put the sparkles over the whole edge.
I also took this time to fill in any gaps that had been missed on the scales.
and I did a little more to the fluke, dotting the ends with puffy paint, starting with the lighter a the edges and moving slightly darker awards the middle, then covering it all in sparkles.
closeups on the scales, with lights on and off
some finished pictures (both from before the reinforcemnt with craft toam on tail tips)