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!

After years of using about 3 different sketch books for all my costumes and fashion related ideas, I finally decided to invest in a beautiful moleskine sketch book solely dedicated to all my new ideas.

Time to get started!