Katara Cosplay

It occurred to me that I never posted my Katara costume (or Pokemon Trainer) I made for Dragon*Con 2012.

Dragon*Con was fun. While it feels like great number of people took our photos, I found a mere perhaps four or five on the vast internet, which is a shame. I at least got my husband to work my DSLR for a photo of me. I will have to get a proper shoot or something another time for more views of the costume.



Fire Nation Katara from Avatar: The Last Airbender

An adventure in applique, also.


I will probably invest in wigs for later endeavors, especially as my own hair is as unpredictable as the wind when it wants to be.

I am planning two more Katara costumes for the future, after my next big project.

Back to costumes

The husband and I are heading to Dragon*Con together this year. It'll be his first convention and he wants to cosplay. It's still months away, but I have started on his costume already.

I'm working with and doing a lot of things I haven't before. I have to make some actual props and things. A lot of detail work. I'm having a lot of fun with this.

1) The shoulder guard is made from craft foam sheets. I used metal rivets and button snaps.
2) The foot guards are also made with craft foam sheets and metal rivets. There's also some elastic to stretch under the boot to hold it in place better.
3) The prayer beads are polymer clay. How I love the stuff.
4) I've never done applique before, but I am now for the white stripes along the navy blue on the robe.
5) The jug prop is a cardboard skeleton and expanding foam carved to the right shape. I then covered it with spackle (The stuff you fill in holes in the wall with). That's as far as it is right now until I sand and finish it.
6) Our kitten tries to help. Tries.

And of course, this is all going to eventually become:

Auron from Final Fantasy X

I have not yet started on the sword or any of the clothes aside from the robe. The sword's going to be a lot of fun. :D

Costumery - Steampunk Goggles

I will attempt to explain in absolutely terrible detail how I made my lol-goggles.


Tutorials I've found on the interwebz:
http://mtani.deviantart.com/art/Steampunk-Goggles-Tutorial-105778289
http://fenris-the-red-wolf.deviantart.com/art/Steampunk-Goggles-A-Tutorial-91226763
http://raegar.deviantart.com/art/Steampunk-Goggles-168441815
These all looked great, but...

Yeah, okay. So while I wanted leather and metal, the whole nine yards (or at least four and a half yards would have been nice), I didn't have many things on-hand to futz with. I did however have a pile of polymer clay, some spray paint from my NERF gun repaint, and some old aprons and felt. ...And a toilet tissue roll. The heck did I do with this crap?

Pile of junk.

I cut two pieces from the cardboard roll the be the base of my eyepieces. Maybe an inch wide. I reinforced these with masking tape so they wouldn't be so flimsy, before rolling a sheet of polymer clay around the outside and trimming it to fit. (I ran the clay through my pasta machine so it'd be uniform.)
The fronts of the eyepieces still had to be made. I rolled out more clay and used something (in this case, an old salt shaker cap) to cut out circles from the middles, where I would later put in clear plastic for lenses.
Around the opposite edge, I poked holes through before baking where I'd later stitch.

Or something like that.

I don't care how the inside looked. Baked this per package instructions. Let cool, then applied a few coats of spray paint. I spent the time it was drying to dig around the house for some kind of fabric to use in lieu of leather.

This one was a huge ugly "No."

My wonderful mother however pulled up a pile of aprons she doesn't use for work anymore. Essentially black canvas (And an adorable red one I'm keeping) just waiting for me to decimate it.   I cut a rough "Whale" shape (As I saw it described in one of the aforementioned tutorials - I think that sounded adorable.) and trimmed it down how I wanted for comfort. I DIDN'T THINK THIS WAS ENOUGH THOUGH! It needed more color. I managed to dig up my old collection of craft felt. I cut a matching piece from it and put them together. I wrapped these two pieces around the now-dry eyepieces, and using the previously poked holes, I stitched (repeatedly) through the fabric and eyepieces to secure them together.

Like this.

Repeat for the second eyepiece.

I managed to find some clear plastic from some product's packaging. I cut circles from it to use for lenses and trimmed the edged down until they sat inside of the eyepiece snugly (from the inside. This is why I previously stamped out circles, leaving a place inside for the lens to rest).

As for the rest of the goggles' assembly, I used a scrap to join the eyepieces in the middle as a noserest or something. I cheated by using the adjustable strap from the apron as the strap for the goggles.



These look freaking goofy if I actually wear them on my face, but my main intent in making them was to wear on my hat.

HURR HURR HURR DURP DURP

Haunter hat completed!

I have finished the Haunter hat I mentioned in my previous post! It looks much better than it did initially and I'm much happier with the result, as is the friend I made it for. I went on and added a pink mouth instead of trying to make the band around the hat into a mouth, which greatly improved how it looked. It also made the eyes look less stupid with something else hand-quilted/sewn on with them.

Once again, BLEHHHH!

I must say (again) that the aspect I'm probably most unhappy about is the spikes not being big enough. That is something I'll have to improve if I make another one of these.

Pokemon Overload. Maybe.

There is never a Pokemon overload.


I finished my Kanto gym badge set. All eight badges: Boulder, Cascade, Thunder, Rainbow, Marsh, Soul, Volcano, Earth. They weren't necessarily hard. Rainbow was time consuming in that I had to mix all of the colors. Cutting Thunder's shape right sort of sucked too.

I'm thrilled with how these turned out, sans the whole hex vs octagon issue.

Next up was... My best buddy asked that in addition to the Bellossom plushie I made for him that he would like a Gastly to hang in his car. Hell, why not?

Say hi, Gastly!

I did not make the Pikachu - he was purchased. ^_^

I'm extremely pleased with how they have turned out and currently have four of them sitting here with me. I sort of like it without the hanging loop, but as they are ghost pokemon, I figure they need to be suspended somehow. The bodies are fleece, faces are felt, and poofs are tulle. Machine and hand sewn. Some hot glue for facial attachment.

Also, the Bellossom are all felt. Machine and hand sewn. Hot glue for the face and flowers. Skirt petals all hand sewn on.



I, some time ago, made a Gengar figurine for a friend of mine with promise that I'll one day sell it to him when I was ready to relinquish him. Darn attachment I have formed with him. Gengar gave me much grief when the gloss I used to coat him turned into a swirly orange weirdness, causing me to repaint him and purchase a different glaze. I love how the backside turned out. He stands easily and even holds a berry of some flavor.

Gengar made from polymer clay

This friend wants a Gastly as well, but .... What good is Gastly and Gengar if you don't have a Haunter?


Commence concept sketch.

bleh?

I nixed the tail and found out I'm terrible with anything that has a corner and needs to be turned out. .... That is to say, all of the spikes. They did not turn out nearly as spiky or large as I wanted. Also, I should have gone with the top mouth design instead of the bottom.

I mean, in short. This thing eats my head.

BLEHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I've since added the eyes, which are felt and hand quilted on but I don't even like that. It's going to be up to him if he wants the hat or not. If not, I'll probably rip it apart and change it up some. I'm not sure. The band around the bottom is too wide. Fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff.

Pumkins, kitties and badges! Oh my!

Because "Lions, tigers, and bears" spoofs haven't been overdone. No, not at all.


Well, I put some more Halloweeny earrings up on my etsy (Link on the right panel!)
I really like my little pumpkins, but this time I've paired them with some relatively simplified looking black cats. I also listed a pair of earrings with just the cats on them.

Meeeowww.

I've always been a Pokemon fan, ever since the beginning. I've been heavily into it the past few months (my Platinum pokedex is almost complete! 10 Pokemon to go.), with a costume (a later post) and making plushies and figurines. I've just recently started watching the anime series from the beginning.

So, I bring you today's little project I started. The first three Kanto badges. I do realize that they're suppose to be octagonal, not hexagonal. I'm not really worried about it right now. I'm happy with how they turned out overall. I'll finish the Kanto set before I even look at which region I want to do next. I don't feel some of them will translate to polymer clay very well. Especially Sinnoh and Isshu's badges.

Boulder, Cascade, Thunder

Costumery - White Mage

Yes, I'm doing several posts in one day for the mere purpose of making this look something like an actual blog.

I'd always wanted to cosplay. Not just dress up for Halloween, but for conventions or other such gatherings. I finally made my first costume-that-wasn't-for-Halloween last year. (As a side note, I also firmly do not believe in purchasing costumes. I have always - since a young, young age - had costumes that were made. By my mother. For me. And loved it!) It was for a sort of local event called Nerd Invasion, which in and of itself wasn't that great (however, that's another story). The costume in question was a redesign or customization or whatever you fancy calling what I did to it ... of a classic White Mage from Final Fantasy. Possibly a rendition of ye old 8-bit White Mage, maybe a little FF3 in with it. Possibly I just liked the excuse of using my own creative input and freedom to design this costume as I wanted it to be. Either way, I originally wanted to do a Red Mage, but it wasn't feasible at the time. Regardless! I sketched it up.

In reality, there's only so much you can redesign on a white mage.

I wanted a shorter dress with lacy poof under it (a petticoat or something) and a big waist sash/tie that had a big bow in the back. That's the gist of it.

Honestly, I never got into sewing before this point. I can't work a pattern to save my life, probably for the same reason I can't play Magic: The Gathering. Too many little technical things I'm worried about. I enlisted the help of my mother for this, showed her the sketch, and she made it go.
Well we messed up the first attempt at the entire robe, because some idiot is - well - an idiot. (That'd be me!) Just as well, because the material we used for the second go was lighter in weight - albeit a little transparent. A muslin of some flavor. I did, however, find an excellent red-orange-pink(I'm not sure its exact color, even after all this time) denim to use for the red-pink bits of this costume. Its texture was great. Not only that, but it makes the best sash for this costume. It's thick and rigid just enough to not fold over and I'm happy with how wide I cut it. Best of all, it creates the best bow in back when I can tie it just so. Again, because of how thick it is, it doesn't just fall down with gravity.
The scrapped first attempt was used to make the inside bit of the skirt for not only another layer, but to add the lace onto. Hooray, not see-through. I would love to line the bodice, sleeves, and hood with satin someday when I go back to remake this costume.
I wanted a full-circle skirt but my mom doesn't grasp that concept. Still. But that's alright. Unfortunately, though, she finished adding the pink bits to the skirt before I had come home one day and say that I wanted to skirt shorter than it was, so I'm stuck with it the way it is.
I would love to line the bodice, sleeves, and hood with satin someday when I go back to remake this costume. I still want the full-circle skirt and make it shorter. I'd love to work a proper petticoat into it perhaps.

Forgive me - I still have yet to get proper pictures of any of my costumes.
But check out the bow from even just the side view! It's great!

As far as accessories go, I picked up a drawstring canvas bag from Hobby Lobby and painted on two beloved Final Fantasy characters. Also, what mage travels without potions?

I endeavor to make an appropriate hammer for the next occasion I find myself wearing this to. Also, equally appropriate shoes or boots. I wore some tan suede-ish ballet flats which were good, and comfortable, but I originally envisioned white oxford-like boots for this. I gotta be honest.


All in all, a good experience, I have to say. I enjoy wearing this costume a lot. I may even wear it for Halloween this year, but it definitely isn't retired yet. My experience with this costume brought me to finally going to Dragcon*Con this year. My first real con experience, even with a complimentary case of confunk (or con-fluenza). And already making plans for next year's Dragon*Con, this time with my fiancé and BFFJill. More on this later, though.