This is my mermaid! I spent the whole month of October working on this bad boy, and I may or may not have been working on it 20 minutes before we went out to celebrate... Time management is my arch nemesis. But I am still so happy with how it turned out!! Hope you like it!
Anywho, while messing around on stumbleupon in September I found a link to make chainmail out of pop tabs on intructables found here --->
http://www.instructables.com/id/Genuine-chainmaille-from-pop-tabs/ I thought it resembled fish scales and mermaid came to me! I don't drink soda and knew it would be impossible, not to mention unhealthy, to drink that much beer before Halloween so I enlisted the help of my dad. Lucky for me he and his buddies have been saving the tabs from their beer for about 3 years now, no reason why, they have just been doing it. Woot woot!
So he gifted me roughly 3000 tabs to work with. I didn't use all of them, my rough estimate is about 2000. So my tail is the tabs, cut with side angle cutters, bent and snapped together following those instructions. Here is a pic about 3/4 of the way done.
I hand sewed a band of green organza around the bottom edge of my tail tube and hand sewed a tail fin shape to the back of that. Unfortunately I don't have any pics clear enough to see my fin.
I also twisted some organza and weaved it through the top edge to help hold it up and keep it from digging into my hips. I had to leave the chainmail tube slightly open so I could get it up over my hips and butt. So once I pulled it on (with the back in the front so I could see what I was doing) my loving and ever so patient BF helped me snap it together. Then I shimmied it around so the tail was in the back.
For my top i cut a piece of felt into a rough bikini top shape and hot glued a ton of little sea shells to it, using a sand dollar I found at Huntington Beach as the center piece. Then I needed something to keep it on so I took a piece of recycled fishing net (that yes, unfortunately still smelled kinda fishy
) and draped it on my dress form to make a sort of tank top shape. I hand sewed the edges of the felt to the net so you couldn't see it. Once I put that on I had my BF tie the net in the back for me.
It took about 25 minutes to get the whole thing on and I'm not gonna lie, it was a little uncomfortable sitting down. Not to mention that I couldn't use the bathroom all night! Once it was on, it was on! It was a lengthy project that left me with blisters, small cuts from the tabs digging in when I had to sit in the car and a very full bladder all night but I'm still happy I did it. I am already thinking about what to make next year!
And here is a pic/shout out to my awesome BF (dressed as the most interesting man in the world) for helping me get into this thing. Oh and carrying me up stairs since I couldn't move my legs enough! Haha
PS sorry the pics are kinda blurry. And so huge. I kept getting an error through craftster so I had to use photobucket
I am not good at photobucket...
PSS I have bikini bottoms on, not undies
