London Expo plans
Not updated this in a while (mainly due to work - too much to do, too little time to do it all), and with London Expo being a mere five days away, here's what I've been up to recently, cosplay-wise.
For starters, my Christ Sword is DONE! One side of the blade still needs a coat of paint to even it out a bit, but it's otherwise finished and I'm happy with it. Here's how it looks:
Some posing:
The only other part of Sephiria that needed work was the epaulettes. Their original incarnation required way too much reliance on fabric glue, which isn't very good when it comes to holding cord in place. So I have removed all the cord and painstakingly stitched it back on by hand. Both epaulettes are now finished and currently in this kind of state:
The cords have been tied up like that in the hopes that the cords will stiffen at that angle and it'll force them to hang down from the shoulders of the coat rather than sticking out in all directions. If it doesn't work, I may try rolling the cords inwards. I'm still not 100% sure how I'll be attaching the epaulettes to the coat, but I guess I'll find out soon. After that, the only thing left to do is to secure the lapels of the coat so they don't blow around any time there's a bit of a breeze. Ruined some fantastic photo opportunities at Minamicon, that did. I've also gotten hold of some proper face paint to paint the symbol on my forehead with, so it should look much better this time out.
The other recent news is that I went digging through my old costume stuff - what I have of it, anyway - and have found my old Ririn and Acolyte costumes, as well as the Kairi costume I started working on about a year and a half ago. It's funny looking at my old costumes and seeing all the stuff I did that I'd never let myself get away with doing now. For one thing, if I ever want to wear the Aco costume again, I'll have to remake the skirt - for some unfathomable reason, I never hemmed it along the waist band. It was covered by a belt, so no-one saw, but that's still pretty disgraceful. Somewhat less horrifying is the discovery that I never lined my Ririn dress. Shock!
Anyway. The Ririn dress is in dire need of some fixes. For reference, here's how it looked the one and only time I ever wore it, at Minamicon 12:
Ugh, horrible photo. I do have a slightly shopped version, on my Cosplay Island page, but the only shopping involved was to remove the dark circles under my eyes, so it doesn't look a lot better. What you see there is a dress in desperate need of proper tailoring (it makes me look fat/pregnant as it is), I need a much better makeup scheme (which I know how to do now, fortunately), and I need to come up with some poses. The dress as it looks now is like this:
It needs an iron, of course, but it also needs some replacement buttons (not sure where the missing one has gone, and they're supposed to be red anyway), one of the cuffs needs to be rehemmed, and it needs to be properly tailored so it looks more flattering. I may try and get hold of a short, stiff petticoat, too, just to give the skirt some badly-needed volume. I've already bought a wig to go with the rest of the costume, and the only thing left that I need to get is some red shoes/boots with a little bit of a heel. The flatties I had on in that photo actually hurt my heels :(
Anyway, these are all fairly small jobs and they shouldn't take too long to sort out, so having them done by Friday should be easy. Then there can be some nice photos at Expo. Yay! I just hope the weather holds out...
Lastly, here's a photo of part of that Kairi dress:
It's just the front panel of the dress. I do have the rest, too, but I discovered today that there was no good way of photographing both pieces as I actually attached the zips the wrong way round here, so I'll have to do some unpicking. It's also in need of an iron, as you can see. I don't know when this'll be ready for - one of the things putting me off doing Kairi is that the dress is quite skintight, and I have a bit of a belly - but it'll probably have to be soon, before I'm officially too old to get away with teenage characters!
So anyway. That's my update. No doubt I'll have lots of photos from Expo to put up too.
For starters, my Christ Sword is DONE! One side of the blade still needs a coat of paint to even it out a bit, but it's otherwise finished and I'm happy with it. Here's how it looks:
Some posing:
The only other part of Sephiria that needed work was the epaulettes. Their original incarnation required way too much reliance on fabric glue, which isn't very good when it comes to holding cord in place. So I have removed all the cord and painstakingly stitched it back on by hand. Both epaulettes are now finished and currently in this kind of state:
The cords have been tied up like that in the hopes that the cords will stiffen at that angle and it'll force them to hang down from the shoulders of the coat rather than sticking out in all directions. If it doesn't work, I may try rolling the cords inwards. I'm still not 100% sure how I'll be attaching the epaulettes to the coat, but I guess I'll find out soon. After that, the only thing left to do is to secure the lapels of the coat so they don't blow around any time there's a bit of a breeze. Ruined some fantastic photo opportunities at Minamicon, that did. I've also gotten hold of some proper face paint to paint the symbol on my forehead with, so it should look much better this time out.
The other recent news is that I went digging through my old costume stuff - what I have of it, anyway - and have found my old Ririn and Acolyte costumes, as well as the Kairi costume I started working on about a year and a half ago. It's funny looking at my old costumes and seeing all the stuff I did that I'd never let myself get away with doing now. For one thing, if I ever want to wear the Aco costume again, I'll have to remake the skirt - for some unfathomable reason, I never hemmed it along the waist band. It was covered by a belt, so no-one saw, but that's still pretty disgraceful. Somewhat less horrifying is the discovery that I never lined my Ririn dress. Shock!
Anyway. The Ririn dress is in dire need of some fixes. For reference, here's how it looked the one and only time I ever wore it, at Minamicon 12:
Ugh, horrible photo. I do have a slightly shopped version, on my Cosplay Island page, but the only shopping involved was to remove the dark circles under my eyes, so it doesn't look a lot better. What you see there is a dress in desperate need of proper tailoring (it makes me look fat/pregnant as it is), I need a much better makeup scheme (which I know how to do now, fortunately), and I need to come up with some poses. The dress as it looks now is like this:
It needs an iron, of course, but it also needs some replacement buttons (not sure where the missing one has gone, and they're supposed to be red anyway), one of the cuffs needs to be rehemmed, and it needs to be properly tailored so it looks more flattering. I may try and get hold of a short, stiff petticoat, too, just to give the skirt some badly-needed volume. I've already bought a wig to go with the rest of the costume, and the only thing left that I need to get is some red shoes/boots with a little bit of a heel. The flatties I had on in that photo actually hurt my heels :(
Anyway, these are all fairly small jobs and they shouldn't take too long to sort out, so having them done by Friday should be easy. Then there can be some nice photos at Expo. Yay! I just hope the weather holds out...
Lastly, here's a photo of part of that Kairi dress:
It's just the front panel of the dress. I do have the rest, too, but I discovered today that there was no good way of photographing both pieces as I actually attached the zips the wrong way round here, so I'll have to do some unpicking. It's also in need of an iron, as you can see. I don't know when this'll be ready for - one of the things putting me off doing Kairi is that the dress is quite skintight, and I have a bit of a belly - but it'll probably have to be soon, before I'm officially too old to get away with teenage characters!
So anyway. That's my update. No doubt I'll have lots of photos from Expo to put up too.