Fables in Fashion

Yay! The finished products I think like every other cosplayer, I can see the flaws and I just hope you guys can’t! I haven’t had an official shoot with either costume, so for now they won’t be appearing in their own gallery on Extreme Motion. I need to wait for warmer weather because I was literally freezing in all these photos hehe.

Shidou Hikaru

I can’t wait for warmer weather for this photo! I have a ton of ideas! But more importantly, I can’t wait till my Fuu and Umi are with me to do our official shoot!

Xiao Qiao

The fans! Oh, the relentless “fan” puns I got that day <3 There is a ton of detail missing from this costume, I really hope I finish it off before I get to my shoot~ These fans are not wind friendly (they hit me in the face several times), but they are very light and sturdy! Let's face it, awesome fans -made- this costume =D

Hope you enjoyed my costumes for Manifest 2010! Will annouce it here when I get my galleries for them on Extreme Motion up! Now it’s pretty much back to work for me, and hopefully once I have some time to recover (and catch up at work), I’ll be back on the sewing machine to bring you some new costumes Seriously, why can’t making costumes BE my job!?

Like every year, I completed 2 costumes for Manifest. The first (and most time consuming) was Shidou Hikaru thanks for her sword, gems etc. And the second was Xiao Qiao. Unfortunately I only have 1 in progress photo of Xiao Qiao

Shidou Hikaru

I wasn’t keen on paying $50+ for a petticoat, so I decided to make my own based on one Sefie lent me. It was a bit of a pain, but at least it turned out perfect AND was much cheaper!

Red skirt and tunic were some of my favourite parts. Probably not as much as the cape… it was a pain to make, but came out perfect!

Hikaru’s wig was not hard to do, just annoyingly time consuming :/ I had to order a second long wig and cut out a bunch of wefts from it. Sew three together till I had 8 “bunches”, then I would glue them one by one to the short wig layer by layer.

Then I braided it and that would be Hikaru’s seamless ponytail! It looked great, but it’s not something I’d be keen to try again Took me 3-4 hrs all up. I had to use this method because none of the stand alone wefts were long enough and using a clip in ponytail wouldn’t provide that natural seamless look.

The most annoying part is that length of the long wig wasn’t 100% even, so the braid is starting to come undone a little, will probably re-braid and apply some hair spray before I do my official shoot.

Xiao Qiao

Unfortunately like I said above, I have only one in-progress shot of Xiao Qiao The hardest part was creating a pattern for the skirt, seriously. The skirt is like an uneven wrap, so it did take a bit of trial and error, so glad it worked out somehow in the end. And dyeing this was no walk in the park either, took about 1-2 days total of continous soaking, dipping, drying, soaking, dipping, drying etc Still, the result was awesome! Very happy with how the dye creeped

I really should have embroidered this part to be more authentic, but I was running short of time and turned to my paints to save me :/ I hate when that happens!

I apologise before hand, I will be spamming this blog with about 3 posts recapping the making of my costumes for Manifest this year Let the photo spam begin!

Swords

This year (like most years) I was one of the judges for the cosplay competition. I thought it would be a neat idea for all 3 judges to cosplay from the same series, so I suggested we do the Magical Girls from Magical Knight Rayearth! Fuu, Umi and Hikaru. I was Hikaru, and decided to make everyone’s gems and swords…. cause I’m nuts like that XD

All swords started out this way (except Umi’s, just because Umi’s sword was SOOO easy in comparison, hardly any progress shots for Umi)

After much sanding and slicing the blades were shaped to look like this! Much love and thanks to Toby for helping me with this, we rotated and took turns with the sander @_@ Took us over 2 weekends to finish this, by the end of it I was literally coughing up saw dust XD

So this is how the end of my sword was done, the reason for the groove on one side of each blade was so we could embed a strong thick piece of wood down the center, it would act as the inner core strength for each sword. When you weilding a 2 metre sword around, you want to make sure it is very strong!

Glueing everything together =D

I carved the hilt of Fuu’s sword out of flower foam! This stuff gets EVERYWHERE, Sefie warned me before hand so I made sure to do everything outside.

Painted the blades with chrome, love the finish for them Here I have to thank my dad, having had years of woodworking experience (he built a lot of the furniture we have at home), he taught me a lot about how to obtain smooth finishes etc

I made the hilt for my sword out of wonderflex, I -love- wonderflex. Later this year I’ll be doing another order for armour related cosplay =D

Swords are done, minus the paint and gems! I didn’t get a finished photo of all of them together But the judges and I are planning a group photoshoot very soon, so you’ll get to see them completed in all their glory soon!

Resin
This was the first time I tried my hand at casting crystal resin, and it certainly paid off! I think when you see the finish produce you’ll agree that crystal resin was the way to go rather than just painting the gems on.

There isn’t much too it. I made the models first out of clay, then I created mould from them (the yellow stuff), THEN I just poured in the correct amount of resin and I was good to go! Obviously there is a little more to it than just that (a lot of sanding involved and glossing) I made everyone’s gems, and whilst it took forever (and FYI wet resin tastes bitter… eww), I’m glad I managed to get through it because the pay off was awesome!

Fans

I bought the white fans from a store in America a while ago, and went paint / foam crazy on them! I only seem to have one in-progress shot. Using my makeup mixing plate to mix the paint @_@ My hands were covered in paint by the end of it lol

And that’s it for props! Next will be in-progress costume shots!

Not sure if anyone remembers, but a month or so back I made a post about my friends and I entering an EB Games competition. Well we didn’t win, but at least it forced me to make a new costume which was a great excuse for a photo shoot (And you know I love them). Shot these in a car park near work, I love shooting indoors because you are not dependent on the weather at all, which is a great thing when you live in Melbourne.

Visit Extreme Motion if you want to see the rest of the photos as well as some construction notes. I took a bunch of in-progress shots, but I have no idea where they went O_o I’ll make a separate post with them if they ever turn up!

First, my apologies for being MIA the last couple of weeks, I’ve been busy toying around with various concepts and ideas, and have some exciting projects in the making! I’m still trying to get used to the idea of documentating everything I do, as in the past I’m use to just doing it!

Around the middle of Febuary, a small group of cosplay friends and I embarked on recreating the Final Fantasy 8 opening scene for an EB Games competition, with a twist. My character was Rinoa Heartily, and you can view (and vote?) for our entry here. We’re the first video list (talk about luck!). I will make a post on the construction of the costume once I get some high res photos of it It was indeed an interesting journey, involving a lot of fabric dying!

The other thing I’ve been working on is a mini studio in my room. I’ve always been passionate about both makeup and fashion, and had originally intended to open two seperate blogs, this for fashion and another for makeup. But after a good week of going back and forth with names and whether it would be wise to spread myself over two blogs (and potentially have my content run too thin?), I decided to just merge the two ideas together and bring my love for makeup / beauty on this blog! So be prepared for many more posts on product reviews, “face of the day”, tutorials and much more! I’m very excited

And here’s a little something from my last trip to Hong Kong, a short maxi dress! The fabric is a tad sheer, which makes me wonder whether I would actually wear it out, still~ It fits perfectly, is very summery and all for around $10AU! Market finds are the best

At the moment it seems like the only sewing I seem to manage is for cosplay, something I’d really love to expand to include all types of fashion. In the meantime, I finally was able to obtain photos of an evening gown I created for a character known as Princess Mercury.

The dress is lovely, the wig not so flattering. For more photos, click here.