Before you begin:

• This recipe has many steps because Amidala wears such elaborate clothing. The first 8 steps are four her outfit, while the last 6 are for her headgear, face, and hair detail. Doing the head is more of an art of trial and error than a science to
  follow directions on, thus my steps may a bit vague at times.

Step 1

Start by boil-n-poping Valourm's arms, legs, and head off as well as getting rid of his outer robe.

Step 2

Around his chest take your knife and carve out what will be come the "cream colored wrap" that goes around the Queens torso and chest. Basically you are simply shaving a depression from about Valorums armpits down to his belt. Also carve out the V-neck detail around the neck area.

Step 3

Cut an upside down "V" shape in the lower part of Valorum's inner robe.

Step 5

Now add the arms and legs of Leia. On this step I recommend you shorten the legs a bit to bring the height of your future Queen down (cut roughly a ¼ inch out around the knee, otherwise her legs stick out to far past the hem of the dress line)

Step 6

Wrap polymer clay around the forearms and then use a knife or some tool to make lots of wrinklles. Glue hands into a folded position

Step 7

Work the polymer clay around the sholders and down to make those big elongated half circles that hang down each side of the Queen (See reference picture.). My suggestion is to roll a piece of clay into a worm that bulges significantly in the middle, attach it to the side you are working on, and go from there. When
done cure the polymer clay.

Step 8

Paint the deepest under-layer of the dress burgundy, next layer light gray, and the outer layer the darker gray. Paint the torso wrap cream. Paint the V-neck area light gray and burgundy. Paint the forearm wraps
light gray. Then using a toothpick and the same cream colored paint start adding decorative specks down the big shoulder sleeves (this is time consuming, but it adds the full effect.)

Step 9

Cut the Queen Amidala Coruscant head off just below the chin, since you don't need the neck part.

Step 10

Begin cutting away at the hair design. What you want
to do is keep as much plastic as you can for the big black fan hairdo that Pre-Senate Ami sports. Therefore cut off the big red hanging parts short-ways, but then cut the hair long-ways as though you were slicing
bread. The goal is to keep the same basic silhouette of the Coruscant hair (minus the hanging parts), but you want it to be about 1/8 of an inch thin (as opposed to the ½ inch that it was to begin with).

Step 11

Using a good detailed picture of Pre-Senate Amidala's head, add the detail with polymer clay. Start with the domes on each side of her head. Then fill in the indentation just above Coruscant's forehead. Roll small worm-like strands to wrap around the head (starting at the middle of her forehead, around the base of the domes, and connecting at the back of the head). For the new "fan" hairdo just add Premo and style (but be aware of the height of the hair, work hard to keep it proportionate). Sculpt a hair-band.

Step 12

For the dangling strings, separate cross-stitch threads out into separate strands (it's typically woven as three strands). Tie knots in them, paint them with the cream color, and let them dry. Once dry, cut them to the appropriate length and super glued them around the Queen's head. Add those gold hanging strands form the Coruscant Queen as additional effect: Thin them out a bit and paint them the same color as the rest.

Step 13

Paint hair black, lace cream, domes gold, and then attach head to body.

Step 14

For added effect, you can give Pre-Senate Amidala a long pony-tail in the back which you can get from Princess Leia Ceremony.

Tip provided by:  naboo327@juno.com Matt Boswell.