Tenel Ka Chume Ta'Djo

 (I drew this one ^_^) Character Name: Tenel Ka Chume Ta'djo

Source: Star Wars Young Jedi Knights

Total Cost: somewhere around 70 USD

Time Consumed: 90+ hours

Why I made it: Tenel Ka is a good strong young woman and a real inspiration to me. She managed to do so much and overcome so many obstacles with only one arm! I decided to finally do the costume because I saw that I had several yards of snake print vinyl and the idea came to me one day to glue scales onto that vinyl. And so I did.

The other thing about this costume is that I made the final parts of it with no use of my left hand. Much like Tenel Ka I had to learn to do things one-handed. Thankfully though unlike the character I was able to heal from my injury and both my hands work well now. (I broke my thumb in a freak cosplay accident).

How I made it: first I draped out the main pattern for the vest which I then sewed together in the vinyl. Then I cut out the second shoulder layer and sewed that on. Next came the time consuming part. I cut out hundreds of individual scales and hot glued them onto the vest then painted them with paint that had been mixed to give it a metallic look. The next step was making the shorts. I did them in a similar manner but for these the scales had to also be sewn on because they kept peeling due to the bodysuit.

The bodysuit had three incarnations, one that was a complete failure, one that was hand dyed and was ok looking and one that I love and kept that was made of a lycra blend that had the appropriate texturing already.

The boots were purchased and the gloves were made of the same fabric as the bodysuit. The hair is mostly mine but with hand dyed extensions braided into it.

Likes: I love this whole costume. The scales look so amazing on it and I love my boots too.

Dislikes: I don't like how the scales won't stay on the shorts. I need to fix that somehow.

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