Featured Maker: Maggy Marsh
1. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
My name is Maggy Marsh. I am a leather mask fabricator, chainmaille maker, photographer and painter. Jack of all trades really, and always striving to learn more new skills. My leather mask work and painting can be found at www.redstickstudio.com, and my photography can be found at www.thefrozenmomentstudio.com .
2. What are you presenting at the Baton Rouge Mini Maker Faire?
I will be bringing an assortment of my leather masks, including some work in progress items to show how they come to life from a flat piece of leather.
3. Why is making important to you?
I love creating things. It’s something I’ve always enjoyed. It’s a really great feeling to look at a finished mask and be able to say that I made it from start to finish. I’ve had the chance to experience a lot of different things, and find that leather fabrication combines a lot of skills that I already had, allowing me to achieve some really beautiful finished products.
4. What was the first thing you remember making?
I know I used to disassemble a lot of stuff when I was little, trying to figure out how it worked, much to my parents’ amusement. Most of the time it worked again after the fact..
The first big thing that comes to mind though is a really cool looking chainmail top that I made about 5,000 rings to finish it. I used a spool of electric fence wire, handspooling all of my rings with a drill, then proceeded to assemble it into something I liked. No pattern or anything, and I just checked how it looked/fit by trying it on.
5. What have you made that you are most proud of?
A set of armour plates for work actually. I work at Composite Effects (CFX) right here in Baton Rouge (www.compositeeffects.com), and am involved with the Fabrication Department when I’m not shipping out silicone masks, stage blood or body parts. I was approached by the owner, Ken Decker to design a set of armour plates based off a couple of production photos for a Game of Thrones White Walker costume that we were going to be making to showcase our new line of licensed silicone masks and gloves. I had patterns mocked up within the day, and had approval to start cutting them out of the metal we decided on. Jumping forward to the finished product, the costume debuted at San Diego Comic Con in 2014, has been on Live with Kelly and Michael!, been requested for display by HBO, as well as being utilized for other events that the company attends. It’s a really cool feeling to see something like that get so much attention. George R R Martin even posed with the costume last year!
6. Given an unlimited budget, what would you make?
That’s a hard one. I’ve got so many ideas and it narrowing it down is quite the challenge. I’d want to work towards getting 100 different mask designs+ and get a storefront situated to be able to showcase all of them.
Come meet this awesome maker at the #BRMakerFaire on September 26!