Mystery Project Revealed: Sexy LOTR Elf Goddess!

So what happens when you combine me being inspired by someone else's character/costume, coming across a fabric while organizing that you think "hey this is so LOTR elven fabric", just completing a project with no other pressing project at hand, a few days off of work, and the silly desire to pretend to be a contestant on project runway??

This!

(please excuse the poor photography and the vapid lifeless expressions on my face as I try to work the self-photo/timer function/ pose in frame aspects of my camera)

So what brought this all on? Well. First I saw this picture of my good friend Jane the Phoole with a friend/phooligan I have yet to meet:

(Photo by Lady Ann Beck)

I highly suspect that this gentleman broke into my old high school LOTR induced wet-dreams to get his look. You're laughing, but I'm serious. Well seeing that brought back memories of day-dreaming of being an elven princess and looking like this:

And then it hit me! All these years later I finally have the ability to make myself an elf after all! I've spent all these years on the futsy period stuff and forgot about that fantasy all together. Then as I was organizing my fabrics I found some remnants of a silky green velvet that struck me as totally elf-goddess worthy. Then in Sacramento I found these fabrics: 

I had just finished the Gresham Suit and didn't really have a project that needed attending to urgently. I had 3 days off upcoming and didn't want to spend weeks on a project that was really just a fantastical whim. Then I thought "Hey, Self! What if we did a project-runway style challenge and gave yourself a super tight deadline and worked all the way through the day throwing this together?" I liked it. I always wanted to get a sense of what that kind of project runway day would be like and here was a great opportunity to challenge myself. 

And so I began! Now, the best part of this was that I had no constraints, no judges, no periodness, and no style restrictions at all! I didn't even care if it followed the LOTR movie style much. It was just a starting point and I let myself do whatever I wanted! I think I needed that kind of creative free-for-all after working on such specific projects for so long. 

Initially my design was much more contemporary to the LOTR style:

Then I let this fashion ad inspire me:

Which brought to mind the looks of Elven armor such as this:

And then the design became this: 

(also played with hair-styles since my hair is currently too short for flowing elven locks)

Then the rest just swept into a whole day from 10am-12am of working non-stop. I didn't get it all done in that "project runway" day. But it was a good shot at it. I finished it between the next morning and the following evening and I still technically have to hem the red organza shoulder flares. 

That's pretty much the story, so here are some more (bad) photos!

Now if only I could find my old Elvish-English dictionary...