Thanks for your guidance It's very appreciated.
Especially as I'm new to the making armour and costuming front. :thumbsup
What would your opinion be on starting over on the chest piece and use similar templates used here...
Here are the three aspects I focus on when making a replica:
Shape - Choose a material that can as closely as possible take the shape of the object you are replicating, which requires experimenting on what you can do with various materials. Heating, bending, layering with other material to get thickness etc.
Once you figure out what you're going to use don't jump into making it until you FIRST work on getting the template/pattern right. Use paper or muslin (cheap fabric), take photos and compare it to the reference material you have and make any changes before cutting into the more expensive material.
When making something I've never made before I easily spend 2x as long, if not more, making the pattern/template as the finished product. It's that important.
Texture - Choose a material that can as closely as possible take the texture of the object you are replicating. Again, experiment with what you can do to the material. Heating, pounding, spraying with textures, gluing stuff to it, glossing etc. Figure out if you need to make the texture before you shape it or after.
Color - The material you choose doesn't have to be the right color, there are all sorts of paints, polishes, stains, dyes out there, you just have to figure out which your material likes best and which has the closest base color AND weathering colors to the object you're replicating.
SO, all that said, redo the pattern, absolutely. It's worth it now for a piece you'll enjoy much more later. There have been times I've scrimped on shape for time sake and I always regret it later. Even right now, I wasn't careful enough with my son's Legolas belt buckle and didn't do enough comparison photos before I baked it. It's a tad too big so now I want to remake it. I don't know that I'll have time, but it will always bug me if I don't.
As for wigs - I think it does matter. A bad wig can really take away from a good costume. Sometimes I'd rather someone go without a wig than to have my eye drawn up to it.
It should not be parted in the center for any of the male elves, but I if it looked more natural on you, going brunette in this costume is completely acceptable, as there were obviously brunettes there. (Others might disagree but I think brunette Helm's Deep elves are perfectly fine too...)
As for styling, if you are going to wear a helmet, it doesn't matter what you do on the top much. But if you are going to go without a helmet sometimes, pulling it back into a braid down the back should be easy enough.
However, the two braids on the side as some elves wear are going to be tricky with any cheap wig. My preference would be to not do the braids on the side if it showed the netting of the wig at all.
In other words, natural over accurate is my preference. In fact, I'd probably rather see a short haired elf than a rally fake looking wig - but again, that's just me.
