Toward the end of 2016, I started this project to make a more realistic prop tail for dry events, and beginning of 2017, I finished the tail and wore it to a few gigs at a local tiki bar. I never got around to posting it because my health has been on-and-off over the last couple years, but I would like to share some photos and details about my experience with creating my Achilles Tangfish tail.

So I decided to try using craft foam/eva foam to make this tail because I knew I wouldn't be taking it into the water, and I don't recommend ever trying to make a swimmable tail like this. It ended up being a ridiculously scientific process that ran a pretty penny, but I grew from what I learned and there is no amount of money in the world that can be worth more than what I got to experience.

The first try:


The hardest part about this was that I had made an entirely different tail from EVA foam right before this one, but I had no clue what I was doing. Thankfully I was able to learn from my mistakes on the first one and quickly put this second tail together. After the first show I did, I took the pectoral fins off because they were uneven, and I repainted the tail.

The repaint:


I took some liberties with the Achilles Tang design because it didn't look right on my tail after I had screwed up the foam corners of the fluke and had to repair them on the initial go-around. (I also changed my overall costume outfit but that's another story about my body being an unhealthy rebel) The nice thing about the base coat of plasti dip is that it acts as a base for acrylic paint, and I bought good cans of it at Michaels for the main body of the tail, and went back over with a different acrylic paint that I bought in a tube that was much more vibrant and neon for the orange. I also do cosplay outside of my mermaiding, and I've used the plasti dip-acrylic paint technique for a lot of my props. That being said, I would have used a different sealant for my tail, possibly the same sealant I used to lock in the paint job on the seashell in my headband in this photo because it made my seashell absolutely waterproof and gave it a nice glossy coat, I believe it was a store-brand gloss intended for use on outdoor plastics, such as lawn chairs. The plasti dip gloss coating I used started to peel about a week after I repainted this tail, thankfully not while I was at the second gig.

Knowing what I know now, I will more than likely retry this method again in the future to make a land-only version of the current fabric tail I'm working on, and in the meanwhile, I'll be swimming in my Finfolk fabric tail.

In conclusion, next time I want to try something experimental, I need to run more tests ... for science.