Presea - Accessories - Tales of Symphonia

Welcome to Presea Part 4: Accessories! Feel free to venture back and check out the Gloves & Boots, Dress, and Wig. Many thanks to the ever fabulous Elemental for the amazing photos! We braved the cold and pulled it off!

This costume had a lot of smaller pieces involved. This post covers the belt, pouch, dagger, and Exsphere (necklace).

For this project I actually bought a piece of real leather to work with. I used the suede-like side as the outside (as opposed to the shiny side), because I thought it was more true to the character.

The first piece I cut was the long strip for the belt. Later I went back and reinforced this strip by sewing a second layer to it. I used scissors and carefully cut out the holes. The buckle was found in an store on Queen street after much searching.

Then I patterned the pouch.

The pouch consists of one curvy strip of leather that folds over on itself to be the front, bottom, back and flap of the pouch.

Then there are the 2 panels that form the two orange curved sides of the bag.


These were stitched together, then all the edges were finished.

These were then marked and very carefully hand stitched to the leather. At this time I was unsure if my sewing machine could handle leather, so I hand stitched all the leather on this costume. Turns out it can, with the right needle, which I found 1 year later when I returned to finish the project. Unfortunately I finished all the leather work before then...

I made a matching bias tape and stitched that on as well. The last step was to cut 2 slits in the back so the belt could be fed through the pouch.

I had intended for this bag to be functional, but unfortunately it was too floppy to hold it's shape with anything inside...

Next up is the dagger! The dagger is also attached to the belt, but the character never uses it, it seems purely part of the design.

I made the dagger out of wood, cutting it out with a jigsaw.

I had my friend Ian dremel out the blade edges because at the time the sanding bit on my dremel was not working. When I received it back I hand sanded it even smoother.

I created a sheath and loop to attach to the belt. The loop was on an angle so the dagger would be angled like it is on the character.

I started the paint treatment with grey primer, then silver and finally a light blue acrylic for the face of the blade.

The last detail was the Exsphere. I started by drawing out the piece full scale, then making a wire frame for it. I bought a large red bead for the gem in the center. I sculpted the piece with apoxie sculpt, which is great for this kind of thing as it dries super solid. Later I went back and broke the two side arms and bent them further back to better contour the neck. I filled in any divots with more apoxie sculpt and sanded it smooth.
 

I masked off the gem with painter's tape and then sprayed the piece a matte black. Then I painted over that with a gold acrylic paint. Lastly I created a short chain so it could be worn. The actual character has this gold piece built around the gem, which is fused into her skin, I didn't think that was necessary for me! Hahaha I just had to be careful not to look down suddenly, otherwise I would be jabbed in the neck.