Akasha cosplay skirt (part 1 - drilling shells)

Drilling the pieces for Akasha's skirt

So I bought myself a drill press thanks to this piece of the costume.  Akasha's skirt (the part below the belt) appears to be made of square bits of shell (possibly abalone) with 2 tarnished gold loops connecting the pieces vertically and 1 horizontally.  Ayla was kind enough to supply the shell bits as well as most of the jewelry for the rest of her cosplay costume.  Thankfully her belly-dancing allowed her to recognize the jewelry pieces in the original.  That being said, I'm using smaller shell pieces than the original costume so I'm going 1 metal link in each direction and more of them (mine are not even 1"x1", the original Akasha costume appears to be 2-3" squared).  To make the correct width and length it's going to take around 10 piece wide by 20 pieces long.  That means 200 pieces, almost 800 holes, and 400 metal rings 0.o.  I trying to use the handheld drill for this, but whatever the pieces are made of is tougher than it looks.  I ended up breaking 3 drill bits in the first hour and only got 15 pieces drilled.  After buying a drill press add-on for my rotary tool I was able to finished the rest of the pieces in around 3 hours.  BTW, if you ever want to drill something like this WEAR A MASK.  I'm not 100% certain the pieces are actual shell, but in general the dust from seashells in toxic (in the sense that it is like glass dust and can shred your lungs).  You can see in the picture how much dust is made.  It's too bad I can't start on the next part for a while, I think the skirt is off to a good start.  First I need the 800 rings to come in, which could be a week or 2, and the wire for the headpiece is also in that order.  I may work on creating the seashell looking pieces for the crown (the big pieces that stick out) while I wait, or go back to making some dice jewlery.

~Glitterforge Phoenix