Construction: Toralei's Belt - TOTAL HOURS: (combined with others)

Web vs. Doll Differences noted:

-Cartoon version: Red eyelets, yellow belt. Buckle is silver with the MH logo in silver outline and pink bow.
-Doll version (upcoming release): Gold belt, gold eyelets. Buckle with MH logo entirely in silver.

I decided to do my belt based on the doll version. I knew it was going to be hard enough to find a belt with giant eyelets let alone have to figure out how to paint them red like in the cartoon version. I found a second belt with a silver buckle I could use with the other belt. I took them apart and then cut grooves into the eyelet belt so I could attach the buckle. Once I had confirmation they worked together, I proceeded to try to paint gold on the belt I was using. It did not work. It basically was so opaque on the leather belt that it just added a shimmer and nothing else. Problem solving time! I've never spray-painted anything for a costume or garment so this was new for me. I luckily had white acrylic spray-paint from a school project earlier in the year so I took that outside and sprayed the belt white it was on some newspaper. After letting it dry for a few hours I brought it inside the apartment (it was in the front entrance so I wouldn't get sick from the fumes). The white was flexible and didn't crack when I bent the belt! Success. I proceeded to paint the gold over the spraypainted areas and it took amazingly! I only did one layer of paint and it was done.

The next thing I did was make the MH skull and "studs" for the belt buckle. For that I used Sculpey which I used alot as a child but in the past (at least) 10 years I've only used it once! I wasn't sure how I needed to cook it so I looked that up online: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080705180952AAa4BjS . I hand sculpted them and then cooked them in the oven. After they cooled down I made sure there were no cracks and was happy to find they have stayed just how I wanted them. I then searched online to find out how to glue the Sculpey to metal and came up with this forum post: http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=264101.0 . Based on what I read, I decided to use Gorilla Glue to adhere the two together. I used small amounts and clamped the pieces together overnight. I knew it expanded 3-4 times its original size while drying and in the morning found that unfortunately it had creeped out of the sides a bit but not enough to cause me big concern.