What color is your dragon?

Initially, I planned on going as a green and gold dragon - the classic coloring. I'm fond of green and silver, or maybe purple and copper, but there wasn't a shade of vinyl in green. I had planned on making my gloves and tail out of green vinyl, with some gold on the tail. But then, one Friday, Mom and I stopped at the Joann on the way home to decide on fabric and maybe buy enough to get started.

For me, it was pretty cut-and-dry. Get some green vinyl and some brown linen for clothing. Go home.

Ignorance is bliss. Take it from me, because I know nothing about fabrics or sewing. Mom pointed me to some nice gauze, which was actually light and quite cheap. We almost had that picked out, then something else showed up, and we decided to go with that. Then it was on to skin fabric. Mom didn't want to do the vinyl, because it didn't stretch. She had a point, but there were a few things i liked about the vinyl - it didn't look like fabric, it was in a good color, and it was cheap. Mom suggested I look around, and I found some nice swimsuit fabric that had a bunch of shiny dots on it. It didn't look too bad, but Mom pointed out that it had no durability. Also, the green was ridiculously shiny, and the only non-blinding color, navy blue, was abyssally dark. So we ditched that. We had almost decided to just get the vinyl when Mom noticed the crocodile skin fabric in brown immediately next to the vinyl. That stuff was pretty, but a) it was stiff and b) it was brown. Painting it would get rid of all the lovely color gradations in it. Even more, it was $30 per yard. Daaaaaaaaaang. Hour-long story short, we went with the brown and ended up getting another 65% off the 50% sale price because there was a rubber cement stain on one of the pieces. We also got a burlap remnant, in case the rabbit cowl proved too warm.

How about the clothes? We didn't use any of our original plan because we found some nice stuff at the Salvation army - a knit shirt that would become a tunic, a pair of patched-together hippie pants, and a green belt. The nice thing about the pants is that they have enough room in them for padding on my legs to give the, a digitigrade look. We also have a long-sleeved shirt from before that I have underneath the tunic.

On the claw front, I have finished sanding and have produced painted hand claws and a pair of matching black horns. I started sealing them yesterday; once I get home, they'll need some more sanding and another coat. The finish on one horn is damaged because somebody tripped over it; last night the finish hadn't dried enough to move them. I slapped a little more paint on it before I left this morning, and we'll see how it looks when I get home. Mom has also started modifying some work gloves to accommodate claws. We're kind of waiting on the finish to get that done. We'll see how long it takes to get the desired finish after we get them mounted after that.

We also have a pair of canvas shoes to make into dragon feet later. We're trying to figure out an appropriate design, but I'm certain we won't be able to use the paperclay claws there. Stuffed vinyl is probably the best bet.
We've also decided to use an umbrella for my wing fingers, because that already gives the proper number of fingers and a nice premade finger setup. THey even have a little bit of organic curve to them. We'll see how that works, since we have yet to actually start messing around with the wings yet.