From the top down, the curls have 20 feet of hair on each side. I took two 20 foot strips of tape, paid them down together so they essentially created one long piece of plastic, then laid down industrial wire and another piece of tape to seal the wire inside. I left a bit of wire at the end, to which I attached the hair clip (both clips are completely detachable from the wig via a ponytail clip). I then harvested the wefts from the ponytail clips that I harvested the clips from as well as separate wefts, and using a glue I laid down section by section all 40 feet of hair, then curled the piece and used a thin black wire to keep them together, because the weight is too much to support itself without uncurling. The base wig is a Katinka, from Arda, in black (I will probably replace it with a natural black later).
As for the outfit, the tie is hand stenciled and painted and took a considerable amount of time. Everything is patterned by myself and made out of a black suiting material, there are three different kinds of lace trim, including the trim on the jacket, which is sandwiched in between a facing that goes all the way around the jacket and up around the collar and the actual jacket piece. The ribbon on the jacket sleeves is held in with grommets which I hand punched in. The front lace of the shirt, which you can't actually see in most pictures anyway, is detachable from the shirt, as are the sleeve pieces. This is for two reasons: first, that's a nice work shirt and I wanted to be able to reuse it, and second, in the official art, the front lace detailing of Celestia's shirt seems to cross over onto her skirt. In order to do that, I put velcro on the front of the skirt and shirt, and then on the back of the separate lace piece, allowing it to cross over because it's not actually attached to either. The under sleeves actually only go up to my wrist and are secured with elastic.
The skirt is over 6 yards of fabric gathered into three layers with lace detailing attached at the bottom, and taking notes from lolita fashion, is high waisted and comes up to my underbust. There's a large petticoat underneath, and then the stockings are a stretch fabric I actually found at a garage sale, serged with elastic at the top to keep their place (but I still had to pull them up a LOT).
Overall, with as much work as I put into this costume, I have to say that it was actually a little disappointing to wear. I was able to create something I was proud of, but there are just some costumes you don't look to great in, and there always will be. But i'm proud of this costume, and the shoots I was able to be in with it! This was my biggest project to date.
This costume was amazing to do, even though it was much less fun to wear. I'm incredibly proud of it, and it was a real learning experience for me.
