Ribcage

I designed a magnetic ribcage accessory inspired by one of my favorite books, Harrow the Ninth. I used a 15 AWG wire base, and built up the form with foam clay. I used very small rare earth metal magnets, embedding them inside the foam clay and sewing them to the inside of my (store bought) dress.

My inspiration, and the sketches I did on Procreate.

Building up the foam clay!

Lining up the magnets was tricky, but I found a method of putting on the dress and ribcage, aligning the magnet, taping it down, taping another magnet on the other side to hold it more securely, removing the tape on one side, and carefully sewing around that primary magnet.

I sanded the foam clay, did a smoothing layer diluted with water, sanded, primed with Flexbond, and painted it with a gray spray paint to ensure I had achieved a smooth finish. You can see the before and after of this smoothing above.

I did two test swatches for the paint: one with a darker base, and one with no additional base painting. I didn't find a noticeable difference to opted to airbrush my Alclad metallic paint directly over the gray paint and primer to complete the project! If I had been going for a long lasting finish, I would have used a top coat, but because I was designing this to be worn for a singular event I decided to keep it simple.