Horns - Day One!

My work time was restricted for a while ... had to break for a surgery and recovery time, then started classes at the university. Let me tell you, THAT is a wake up call. Hello Quarter System, good by Breathing Time. Anyway. I've decided I've invested too much in this project to give up, so my goal to finish by Halloween still stands -- I'm just at a scramble and will be marathoning between homework (English Majors have lots of reading to do) and costuming. I've enlisted help for next week, so hopefully I get the hooves completed, the horns covered, and perhaps some pants ...

I spent eleven hours doing homework today and was given a sign to stop. Kind of. My internet connect was on the fritz and put my research project for school at a dead halt. I took that as a sign. Clearly, I was supposed to go rewatch parts of Glee season one and make the horns I've been trying to figure out how to construct since I started this thing! So I did.

I took some huge shipping foam boards from work a while back, thinking I might be able to make use of them for this particular aspect of the costume. So far, that's the only real up side to working in retail I've found. I handle freight and they don't care if I want to take their garbage home at the end of the day.

First, I made myself a stencil on cardboard. I actually made this weeks ago, thinking maybe I could use it as a base somehow before tossing that idea entirely and resigning myself to trying to find another way. Using that stencil, I traced out. the flat general shape I wanted for my horns. I've always been a fan of the swept-back horn look they have. Not the straight upright ones or the giant curved ones. Those are too goat-ish. These are more feminine, to me. 

I used a serrated knife (shh; don't tell Mom!) to cut out the horn. When I was done with that, I had a flat base!

The next step was to curve out the space where the horn will be against my head, otherwise they bow out at an odd angle over my ears. 

I plan on using a headband to attach them, so my curving is place specifically for that. Then it was time to start shaving down those right angle edges down! I did this to all four corners. Who's ever heard of a horn with corners like that? Pfft.

Now, shaving the edges down makes the horns veeeery thin. Also still rather flat. So using shavings and extra pieces of foam, I cut out pieces to start building on the flat sides of my original base, like this:

It takes a while, because all of those corners must also be smoothed into a curve, then more pieces have to be added to fill the gaps and make the overall curvature smooth and natural and scaled properly ... blah blah blah. But with a little TLC, I ended up with a horn I was very proud of.

It ended up quite nicely rounded on both sides, I think; overall, one the inside by my head, and on the outside.

I felt the scale was nice too.

Making the second horn using the same process yielded a construct that wasn't quite the same ... but close enough I think that once they are covered over, it won't be a problem. The differences are minor and I think they look pretty good yet. 

That band was just a test run to see how they looked without my hands getting in the way.

I think it's progress in the right direction! Can't wait to finish 'em. Especially after dreading them for so long!