Even though I’ve been cosplaying since 2002, I find I don’t blog about it much at all. The main reason is sheer lack of time. Back in the day when I started I was a university student, so I had plenty of time to sew, craft and cosplay. Now with work, blogging and YouTube, time is harder to come by.

But as a cosplayer, I have a crazy list of amazingly complex and intricate costumes I am determined to create before I become too old to play dress up (though some may say that time has already past!). In an effort to manage my time better, and make my cosplay space and schedule more efficient, I’ve decided to try incorporating more of it into the blog! Keeps the pressure on me

Like my Simplicity series, the first step is to get organised! My cosplay area is incredibly disorganised, and had just grown from what used to be a few shelves in a cupboard, to literally 5-6 tubs of fabric, 12 different shelves and who else knows what. It’s too much and makes it hard to focus and commit to a project.

First step was to get my pattern collection under control. I have an insane number of patterns that I have used over the last 10 years (like makeup, my collection continues to grow)

One of the problems I had is that my patterns were stored on a permanent shelf in a different room to my sewing floor, and since I use them so often I’d pull out what I need and often leave them lying all over the place. It’s easy to create a big mess this way.

I decided to purchase this three tier drawer set with wheels to be the permanent home for my patterns, which means they can follow me where ever I go to sew and are constantly neatly packed.

The top drawer contains all my extreme costume patterns, middle are large gowns and the bottom is everything else. Yes, it’s depressing that I easily filled all three drawers, even though I justify it by saying I’ve been collecting patterns for over 10 years now…. cause it helps me sleep better at night

My next step is to rapidly downsize all the cotton drill I’ve purchased over the years. Great solid colours, terrible terrible fabric to use for costumes. I’ll let you know how that goes!

A couple of weekends ago I did something I almost never do. I entered a cosplay competition. Say what? Yeah~!

I’ve been cosplaying for almost 10 years now (2012 will be my 10th year) and the first competition I ever entered was earlier this year as a big Disney Princess musical group. Yep, I suffer from terrible stage fright so I avoided the stage like the plague. However I’ve judged my fair sure of competitions and attended many as support for my friends.

However one day I get contacted by my dear friend Asham about entering with her, I couldn’t see a down side given I already had the costume so I entered. And bam! We won best group :O

I have to admit I was pretty stoked It’s a great feeling, and the prize money was just icing on an already sweet cake :9

Asham is an amazing cosplayer who is no stranger to the stage, she’d actually been one of the finalist in the WCS held in Japan annually. You should definitely check her out, one of Australia’s finest cosplayers and I’m honoured to have shared the stage with her

I can’t tell you how motivated I am to work on some future costumes I have in the making. I am tempted to try and film the creation process, similar to how I film my Book of Fables makeup tutorials! Though it will be on hell of a video hehe.

Be sure to keep an eye out on the channel, I’ll be uploading a video of Asham and myself role playing (kinda) our characters

Please note that unless the photo is watermarked by me, I do not have ownership / copyright of them and they belong to their respective owners whom I’ve labelled on the photos. If you are one of the owners and wish to have it removed, please let me know! Or if you would like me to plug your website / portfolio, also please let me know

For Supanova this year my original intentions was to actually cosplay Stitch from Lilo & Stitch, with Sefie as my Lilo. However a few weeks before the con the lovely Jess & Tess contacted me asking if I could be Snow White for their disGlee group. Given that I already have a Snow White costume, this wasn’t a difficult decision to make, especially since work as usual was picking up and demanding some stressful long hours of me

Turns out it was the perfect decision because we had such a blast on the day, and I met some of the most amazing people ever!

Whilst rehearsing our skit in the exhibitor car park we were approached by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost for photographs. Sadly I have to admit I didn’t know who they were at the time, but the rest of the girls seemed to because they were screaming the minute they saw them! I will upload images as soon as I have them <3

After that, the Herald Sun asked if we would consider chasing Captain Jack Sparrow for a photo, which was a no brainer We ended up appearing both on the Herald Sun's printed newspaper and online website!

And yet despite all this, my favourite and most cherish memory of the day is just meeting so many lovely new cosplayers, both local and interstate. Cosplay is such a unique hobby, and it’s even harder finding friends who are as committed as I am to it, so I want to give thanks to Tess and Jess (who btw will be representing Australia in the World Cosplay Summit this year!!) for bringing us all together~

You can watch our skit here if you are interested~

To the disGlee girls, thanks so much for the lovely day! I hope we can do many more cosplays together and am looking forward to our official photo shoot <3

A couple of weekends ago, Seruku, Darbara, Toby and I ventured out to check out the 2nd annual Japanese Summer Festival held at Docklands~ I was most looking forward to eating all the yummy Japanese food which I had so sorely missed since my last trip to Japan :9

Unfortunately I’m still missing it because the food here was nothing like the street food in Japan Oh well, it was still nostalgic to be able to speak some Japanese when ordering, just like we did constantly back in Japan!

Being a cosplayer I decided to make my own kimono to wear, and being a nerd meant I had to somehow make it… well nerdy! So I got the idea to draw a bunch of StarCraft 2 symbols over it, which I thought was very amusing since only SC2 gamers would know what the symbols meant. To everyone else I was just weird~

Unfortunately in true cosplay style, I started sewing on the Wednesday night before the festival and since I work during the day I only had evenings to sew it so by Saturday I didn’t manage to include the major of details and decorations I had originally planned Oh well, maybe if I find more time I might add more details and do a real shoot with it one day!

Overall the festival was insanely crowded and far too small

I did manage to run into Stacey, Annie and a bunch of other cosplayers which was fun The gang and I ended the night with dinner at Mecca Bar :9 Delicious~

2011 has been a surprisingly amazing year for me in terms of print media, and to be honest, ask me this a year ago and I would have never ever dreamed that anyone would ever want me to appear in any print media. I’m nobody! The experience has really been a dream come true, and with all the recently media publications, I couldn’t feel more blessed and honoured.

After my appearance in The Age, I was contacted by RMIT to do some promotional shots for their Japanese Exhibition to appear on their website and on Melbourne Metro’s MX newspaper (which finishes up on the 17th of March, entry is free so be sure to check it out if you have the time!!).

Check out the title placement, my friends had a good laugh over that!

They specifically requested for my Hikaru costume, and of course I couldn’t say no! It makes me insanely happy to know that the hours of intense labour and pain that went into creating my Hikaru costume is in a way really paying off! (Even though just the creation of the costume and shooting with my friends alone is payment enough and always has been~ This extra stuff is just cake.)

The MX newspaper is distributed within the Melbourne CBD only, which is where my day job (for the most part) is, and whilst I’ve never sought for approval from my co-workers, it was amazing to learn that the great majority of them are so supportive of my crazy costuming life~ (there are always bad eggs in every basket). I feel so blessed for the incredibly opportunities I’ve been given, I am truly a very lucky person <3 Thank you so much to RMIT and MX for the opportunity!

Last week I posted about being featured in The Summer Age where I did my best to represent the hobby of cosplay I had been asked earlier to come in for a quick photo shoot!

Thankfully work kindly gave me the morning off and Surfaced was lovely to come and support me and take a bunch of behind the scene photos~ Apologises for the poor quality, we were using my old crappy but highly portable point and shoot

You can see how dark and tight the studio was this time! Which shows you that just cause a photo looks glamourous and amazing, doesn’t mean that’s what it really looks like “behind the scenes” And omg, I know I look like a midget in these photos! I swear I’m not~ I know like…. 3 other people who are shorter than me, seriously!

_{I saw these guys outside bathing / playing…. if you know me, you know I love to watch birds}

Couple of weekends ago a group of my friends and I set out to do the shoot I had dreamed of doing for many years now, Magic Knight Rayearth manga version! Growing up on anime, Rayearth was one of the first series I become addicted to and I’ve always loved Shidou Hikaru the most (check out the shrine I made for her 11 years ago, and check out my web / graphics skills way back in 2000)

Our photographer was the ever talented Neil Creek, with help from his equally talented wife Naomi Creek and Surfaced I cosplay Hikaru (red), Sefie was Fuu (green) and Annie was Umi (blue).

Here are some of my favourite photos from the shoot.

I am putting together a video montage / documentary of the behind the scenes shoot and hope to upload it for all of you very soon I had the most amazing time on this shoot, it was filled with laughs and bugs, and the company was second to none

Thank you to everyone who was involved, you really came through for me and made me incredibly happy, thank you so much <3

_{I’m totally printing this photo in memory of my gorgeous friends and I doing what we love best}

It happened again and I couldn’t believe how lucky and fortunate I was! This time I felt so much more prepared as I had a costume I truly felt proud of to show off (I was Xiao Qiao from Dynasty Warriors 6) I was recently interviewed and did a photo shoot for a small article on cosplay for The Summer Age (a Melbourne newspaper). After the interview I did for The Age last time, I didn’t think an opportunity like this would come around again so I was absolutely thrilled when it did.

My article was finally published last Saturday and I wanted to share some scans with my readers, especially those who don’t live in Melbourne and were keen to read the article. Be warned, they misspelt my name Which seems to happen a lot! Always Celine, not Celina~

Click the image above for a much larger version that should be readable

I even got them to mention Fables in the article Which I’m extremely happy about since I’ve found it is pretty hard to get any sort of blog publicity in print (even if it’s only a tiny mention hehe). I will be posting about the behind the scenes shoot for this article next week

Get your cosplay on! This week is mainly directed at cosplayers who tell me that there is no need to wear makeup when you cosplay a character that doesn’t appear to be wearing makeup. Wrong, so very very wrong. You always need makeup when you cosplay!

Don’t tell me you are magically born with perfect even skin, softly flushed cheeks, big bright eyes, long lashes and glossy lips All of which are standards for any animated character, so consider this look highly versatile beyond the limitation that are Mint Buramanshu. This look can be used for any character that doesn’t appear to be wearing any makeup.

Ingredients
MAC Prep and Prime
Bobbi Brown Skin Foundation SPF 15 PA+ – Sand
Bobbi Brown Creamy Concealer – Beige
MAC Mineralise Skinfinish Natural – Light
NARS Powder Blush – Orgasm
Canmake Highlighter – 01

NARS Smudge Proof Eyeshadow Base
NP Set New Neutrals Palette
MAC Fluidline – Blacktrack
L’Oreal Extra-Volume Collagene – Black
Chanel Sculpte Sourcils – Noir

NYX Lip Pencil – Natural
Maybelline Color Sensational – Pink Please
L’Oreal Glam Shine Volumizer Gloss Repulpant – Forever Sweet

Instructions
Face
Prime, Foundation, Powder and Conceal! All standards that should be followed for 95% of looks Using a medium brown powder, contour your nose so it appears smaller.

Cheeks
Use a natural pink blush on the apples of your cheeks, and a highlight your cheek bones, nose, forehead and jawline with a highlighter.

Eyes
Prime your lids, then taking 3 neutral colours (very light brown, medium brown and dark brown). Apply the light brown to your brow bone, inner corner of your eye and all over your lid. Use the medium brown to your crease, then line your upper lash line with the dark brown. Don’t be afraid to make the line thick, this is the colour that will “open” your eyes.

With a black eyeliner, line your upper lash line enough so the dark brown is still visible. If you want you can line your lower lash line with a white liner, but don’t use black or it will make your eyes look smaller and give you a harsher look (and it will be even more obvious that you are wearing makeup)

Curl lashes and apply two coats of mascara. Apply false lashes (choose these wisely, you can’t just randomly pick up any false lashes, I’ll try and do a post on this one day!). Bottom lashes are optional, but only if you can keep them subtle. We aren’t going for a gyaru look here, we want to look as natural as possible for photography.

Shape your eyebrows with a brow pencil.

Lips

Line and fill in lips with a lip pencil, cover with lip stick then apply a generous layer of gloss.

Tips:

• Be careful not to apply anything too heavily, whilst this is a cosplay look, the idea is to enhance our features NOT “draw” them on.
• You know you’re on the right track if in real life, your makeup looks a tad heavy, but appears very subtle in photographs.

I’ve got a bunch more posts to make regarding natural makeup for cosplayers, so let me know if you have any questions in particular you’d like answered and stay tuned

So remember that Studio Shoot I talked about for Lookbook #24? Here are a couple more photos from that day taken by the very talented Sam Ee! This girl has got serious skillz, and she’s a blast to work with too

She’s also a ninja and a stylist lol, she captured a couple of candid shots of me and the guys without me even noticing. And stylist because the pearls were completely her idea, Annie brought them along to wear and Sam managed to conjure up this idea

Finished my shoot, and crashing Siera’s! Isn’t her wig awesome!? And that checked background is also made by Siera, dedicated cosplayers FTW ;D

Just last weekend I played makeup artist for Sam at her Hime Gyaru shoot, so hopefully once photos are out I’ll show you the result! And now with better weather, who knows what other ideas we’ll come up with~ Wonderful spring / summer weather gets me so inspired!