Newest Armor - Face Hugger Pauldrons

I finally got to work on the armor that was commissioned last summer (Sorry my friend!) and went to town on it. He had requested a facehugger wrapped around itself. If you don't know what a Face Hugger is - here is a good pic from the internet. He wanted them to be a little bigger than his shoulders, and to connect in the back. He also wanted the impossible, a good dark purple on the edges.

I tried this before - and after 5 coats we were still pink, so ended up coating it with one single coat of blue, and ended up completely blue. This time, I tried blending the dyes. 4/5 purple 1/5 blue. As you can see in the drying shot it didn't work. I was still ending up with a color that was just wrong for what we wanted. 

I pouted.

I whined.

I went to the leather store to look for leather paint in the right shade of purple. They didn't have it. They suggested I look at acrylic paints...so I went home and did some googlefu. Apparently, as long as you seal it, regular old craft acrylic paint is pretty much the same as the expensive leather paints sold by my leather store. We bought purple. We bought sealant. We liked it!

He has been wearing them a few months now - taking them off the coat when needed - and I haven't noticed any scratches in the paint, or any issues (other than loosing chicago screws - seriously they are the Houdini of the craft world).

It was really nice to get to project with leather again - there hasn't been much (paid) call for my work, which always makes me sad. We are discussing if we will be making a separate articulated leather facehugger to go up the other arm, I think the stuffed animal would work better than leather - but the debate rages on :)

Any thoughts? Comments? Don't you love the smile :D It makes me happy!