| After having come out as trans and started pursuing what feminine styles I want to see myself in, I started wearing a collar. A cute, bright pink harijuku-style heart collar (see pic on right). Love it, but unfortunately it was made from... vinyl maybe? Whatever your run-of-the-mill belt is made from. One way or the other, it held up admirably over the summer, being worn day, most nights, indoors, outdoors, no matter the weather. The many hours of sweat and sun however have begun to break down the material, and it needed replacement. In the wait for a laser-cut titanium heart to attach full-leather pink straps to, I decided to make a chainmaille collar or two, so as to have several different styles available. |
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| Felicia - The first collar I made for myself, I decided to go with a dragonscale weave, and opted for niobium rings instead of my usual titanium, for the colour and thermodynamic aspects to the material. This one is made from 18 gauge, 1/4"ID dark rose niobium, and 18 gauge, 5/32"ID violet niobium. Also a handful of 1/8"ID violet niobium, 5/32"ID and 3/16"ID stainless steel rings to attach the clasp and heart. The heart itself I originally planned to have laser-cut from stainless steel or titanium (of the hollow style like the pink one), but due to wait times for getting that laser cut, decided to make my own pendants for the chainmaille collars. After some pondering and trying a few things, I stumbled across using the shell of a young coconut I had just eaten as a whittling medium. The chainmailling can be watched on my YouTube channel here, and the whittling of the heart over here. |
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| Trinity - The second collar came about more because I had a lot of extra dark rose niobium rings from the first collar. The question then came up of which weave to go with. I wanted one that was generally flat, and worked with the 1/4"ID size ring. After some poking around at the sample pile, I decided on the flat full persian weave (the making of which is also available in that YouTube playlist). At first it was fully made from niobium, but I ended up not quite having enough, so I wove it half-niobium, half-titanium as a result. Prior to it having a pendant, I had the option of which side I wanted facing outwards (titanium or dark rose), but settled that more permenantly when I whittled a Metroid pendant (much of the final shaping finished off-camera), and decided on having the more pink side facing outwards. Made with 18 gauge, 1/4"ID dark rose niobium and titanium, and another handful of 5/32" and 3/16"ID titanium, and 3/16"ID stainless steel to attach the clasp and Metroid. I wanted to put just a few stainless steel in there, just so that I had 3 different metals making up the collar :) . |
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| After much patience and corrospondance, I was finally able to get my fourth collar (which is really my first collar version 2, since it's a replacement for that). As the original collar was wearing out from use, I requested from my chainmaille supply place, The Ring Lord, a titanium heart to make a new collar. There was delays to get a thicker piece of titanium cut, so they offered to rivet two thinner sheets of titanium together into a heart, whih turned out gorgeous :D <3. The leather straps I had made by KK Custom Leather who makes amazing belts. They were able to make a hot pink collar identically sized to the original one, but out of strong natural leather. They also used diamond-shaped pins around the heart, which is a nice touch. So much awesome, I love wearing this collar <3 |
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| For further collars, please see Spirital Wear, which this clothing slot eventually evolved into. |
