arkadycosplay:

The bane of my existence for the last 3 weeks aka The Mantle of the Tempest 

I literally just finished it and I haven’t even tried it on yet. There’s ~6000 hand painted, hand sewn leaves on it and I think it’s just under 7′ long. 

The hardest part was getting it to make the look of the Mantle I had in my head. When I first listened to the episode, I got a really specific image in my mind and I knew going into this build that I wouldn’t be happy unless I could match that mental image. I really wanted it to feel organic and have depth, like it’s this still living, still growing thing that was plucked straight off the forest floor and wrapped around Keyleth’s shoulders. So finding a style of leaves, a color scheme, and a weight that I liked took a while. I’m really happy with the result though – it really does look like how the Mantle looks in my mind. 

Construction-wise, it was easy, but tedious. It’s honestly just hand sewn together with a basic stitch and then hand painted with acrylics, so it wasn’t complicated at all. What makes that hard is just doing that for hours on end over several days.