Armour plating

Shoddy lapse of time since my last post, largely owing to college being super-busy.  But, I can now post one of my finished college pieces: ta-da-da! 

The brief (as I've mentioned before) was a 'structure to be worn on the body' in the theme of articulation (think trucks, not pronunciation).  My inspiration was varied, but included langoustine shells, armadillos, Roman soldiers and lizards, left to stew in my subconscious for a couple of weeks.  I liked the idea of rigid, pivoted sections of armour over the shoulders and this idea grew into wanting something which fitted closely over the neck and collarbones, hence the jointed 'scales'. This was really making me think of lizards, hence going for a reptilian feel in the stitching.

It's made from latex, backed with felt and then stitched in metallic thread into 'scales'; the linking hoops are just jewellery links and the gold balls are beads, attached with jewellery wire.  Both the design and the construction took waaaay longer than I'd thought (the stitching was the easy part, the jewellery links were a nightmare), but now that it's finished and I've tried it on, it was worth it.  Almost.