Earlier this week, I was wracking my brain, trying to find a good idea for a blog post. Should I write about yarn? Nah, too boring. Should I show off the blanket I just finished? Eh, also boring. It wasn’t until yesterday evening, when I was working on patching up a piece of a costume I’d ordered, when the idea flopped into my lap, almost literally.
I’d ordered a Star Trek: The Next Generation costume off Amazon (my costume crafting skills aren’t quite up to making Starfleet uniforms yet, sadly), and while the costume itself fit, and the rank pips were beautiful, the comm badge was… less than stellar. Granted, the picture above is after I’d started sanding it, but there were large chunks of paint that had flaked off and stuck to the costume package, which left a lot of big black spots where you can see the plastic. Being the crafty nerd that I am, I didn’t let the sorry state of the comm badge get me down. Instead, I grabbed some of my mini painting tools and set to work!
After sanding the loose paint off the badge, I took it outside and sprayed it with primer – the good stuff I use for my minis is possibly packed in a box somewhere, but I did manage to find some other primer in the garage, so I worked with what I could find.
Post-primer, it already looked lots better than it had when I’d gotten it, haha. I let it dry overnight, and then before my workshop this morning, I broke out the paints!
The paints I have are old, and a little lumpy, but they worked for what I needed them for. (I need to get a new set of paints one of these days…) I worked with some Chainmail Silver and Glorious Gold paints from my mini painting stash, and managed to get the badge all painted before I got to work! I primed it after I got home, and the results were pretty good.
It’s not super glossy like the replica Starfleet communication badges you can get from places like ThinkGeek, but considering the whole costume cost $35, my paint job got the job done. Ross has a comm badge lurking around somewhere, and if he can’t find it, I may splurge and get one of the fancy Voyager ones, even though it doesn’t match the TNG era uniform, since the main reason I got the costume is so I could dress up as my favorite captain…
Okay, so it’s a dress uniform, but close enough, right?
Granted, it’ll be Janeway in a TNG era uniform, but in order to get a proper Voyager uniform made for me, I’ve gotta spend $80 to order it from FanPlusFriend, the place I used to get my frilly Japanese gothic lolita clothes from, and I wanted something quick for Halloween. However, if I do end up going to Starbase Indy, I might splurge and get the more show accurate costume… Once I get some pictures of me in my costume (I’ve got to get my hair cut and freshly dyed first!), I’ll happily share them here! 😀