I.. Uh.. WHAT?!

I just got the "Your trip is around the corner!" notification from my friendly neighborhood airline.

Shit just got real @@

It's about a month away from the con and I'm quietly panicking inside. I don't know if this is a good change or a bad change from the "I can get everything done!" mentality. I've been freaking out privately to Akira (and I'm pretty sure she's pretty tired of listening to me go "I HAVE THIS LEFT TO DO.")

(P.S. THIS WOMAN IS A SERIOUS BEAST.)

Her suggestion was to list everything that I have left, as it is helping her time manage between her insane workload for grad school. I really don't have any excuses as to why I'm not further along, aside from working a full time job and my various physical activities to get me into con shape.

Every year I tend to start out ambitious and things change. This year was no different. Instead of Connor from ACIII and Alita, the boy and I are going as Zuko and Katara from Avatar: the last airbender. Two costumes each, though. And I also got a commission from my dance teacher who will be performing at Massive this year at the same time as AX.

Wooooo boy. So here's my seriously scary to do list.. With an approximate time required

For myself:

Katara (Fire Nation Disguise)

- Top (30 to 45 min):
 - Sew top seam
 - Add rib cage band and "ties"
 - Sew snaps  (Finished 6/6. I ended up having to remake this damn thing and it ended up being two hours)

- Skirts:
 - Finish adding on the swirly decoration (10 minutes)
 - Hand beads the swirl (... 2 hours total?)
 - Waist band/assemble everything (20 minutes)

- Pants:
 - Add Snap (less than 5 minutes)
 - Hem (see above)

- Accessories:
 - Make necklace (1 hour)
 - make gauntlets (20 minutes)
 - Make bicep rings (20 minutes)
 - Make ankle decorations (20 minutes)
 - Buy flip flops and modify (1 hour)

- Style wig (a day?)

Katara (Water tribe/invasion battle outfit)

- Robe:
 - Finish hemming (5 minutes)
 - Add white lapels (30 to 45 minutes)
 - Add bottom white border and swirl design (30 to 45 minutes)

- Pants:
 - pattern, sew and hem (1.5 to 2 hours)

- Gloves:
 - pattern and sew (2 to 3 hours)

- Boot covers:
 - pattern and sew (2 to 3 hours)

- bending water pouches
 - pattern and sew (2 to 3 hours)

- hardware (gauntlets and greaves):
 - pattern, make and paint (4 to 5 hours)

Articuno Gijinka:

- Overskirt (an hour total, depending on if they cooperate):
 - Sew petals together and iron
 - Add snap to waist band

- Top:
 - Pattern (20 minutes)
 - cut and sew (1 hour)

- Tabards:
 - Pattern (30 minutes)
 - cut and sew (2 to 3 hours)

- Waistband:
 - pattern (10 minutes)
 - cut (20 minutes)
 - sew (2 hours)

- wig and hair accessories:
 - buy/figure out if I can get away with using my own hair
 - make hair doo-dad with three long trailing pieces for the forehead feathers (2 hours?)

Rainbow Dash
 - Finish coloring wig (4 hours if I'm diligent)
 - Make and assemble wings (maybe a day including drying time)
 - make tails for all four people (idk)


Bloo

- Closet version;
 - Find a blue shit and stencil "sly bloo" face on the front and "BLOO" across the butt of the shirt
 - Find a blue wig
 - make crazy blue accessories/blue arm warmers.

For the boy:

Zuko (team avatar variant)
- Overrobe:
 - hem and finish decoration on the bottom (and iron) (20 minutes)

- Pants:
 - hem and add elastic (5 minutes)

- Belt and shirt:
 - add snaps (10 minutes, but I need to fit to boy)

- Boot covers:
 - Pattern and sew (an hour)

Zuko (blue spirit variant)

- Shirt, belt, hood and pants:
 - Pattern and sew (total of ten hours)

- Hardware (gauntlets and greaves?):
 - Pattern and make (total of two hours active)

- Mask
 - sculpt, mold and slush cast (1 hour to sculpt, 1 hour to cast, idk how long down time)
 - Paint mask
 - Add ties. (5 minutes?)

Special commission:
- Pattern harness and hardware (maybe 30 minutes)
- make above (maybe an hour for the harness and who knows for the hardware)
- prime hardware (maybe two hours?)
- make sure that everything fits.

My goal is to at least get all of the stuff that requires the machine done before the middle of the month, which will leave me a little more than two weeks to work on the hardware, wigs and what not. Push comes to shove, I can leave the painting of the Blue Spirit mask to the night before the con. I'm more worried about not being able to finish everything and panic at the last minute like last year (though, last year I managed to whip out two sets of simple armor within a week) or the year before (that was a shit show).

.... I'm going to go stare at the wall and whimper some more (or pattern like a mad woman and try and get the patterns I need traced out at least).

WIP: Rainbow Dash

Firstly, Akira is the one to take credit for the idea of the ombre dyeing the wigs, seeing as she tried it first with her Moltres wig before I even got the sharpies for RD. She's amazing and fantastic and I don't think I say it enough, nor does she give herself enough credit for her creativity. Without her inspiration, RD would look a lot duller.

This was after about three episodes of Bones and two episodes of my little pony, with a lot of fiddling and adjusting the other ponytails to pull the fibers out of the way. I still need to go back through the section that's going to be yellow with rubbing alcohol and a q-tip to get rid of the orange pigment that rubbed on there.

Wig was purchased from Epic Cosplay at Otakon. I believe this is their 18"-incher in snow white.

Orange (which is incredibly red on snow white fibers) at the roots, followed by 1" - 2" of peach, another 2-3" inches of leg warmer orange and the rest with tangerine (dear sharpie, thank you for making the 80's glam series right before I decided to mostly hand color my wig. Three of the colors are coming into use). The colors had a decent amount of blending and overlap to get the gradiated effect.

I used mini hair clips to keep the fibers I wasn't working on out of the way. In order to get even coloring, I worked on each layered individually and picked out 0.5 cm sections with a large blunted pin. Fine tipped sharpies turn on the side = a decent substitute for chisel tipped sharpies.

Tip: if you're going to watch something while working, make sure it's long episodes... and something that you've already seen. I had to switch back to Bones after two episodes of MLP: FiM because I wanted to watch the damn series >>

The wig has about 1/4 of the green done as well. By a 1/4, I mean half of the green streak that is on the same side as the orange streak. Waiting on watermelon red and sun yellow wig dye for the red and yellow (and I have banana clip yellow for low lighting on the yellow). The rest will be hand colored.

Let AX 2013 planning commence!!

So right now we're super motivated and getting our ideas together for next year's con already! We'll see how long this keeps up for me >>

This is our costume list for now. We're doing an MLP group and a Pokemon group as well. I'm also going to be making a Battle Angel Alita/Ganmu costume. As in Gally in the Last Order series with the crazy damascus blade butterfly knife.

So onwards to reference photos!

(I may or may not be slightly buzzed from inhaling alcohol fumes while cooking, and Nave had me try one of his favorite beers. Beer + Me = CAPSLOCK)

FMA progress, an Inara vest and a Malcolm coat!

So ever since I got this new phone, I've been taking a lot of my progress shots on instagram and posting them on twitter.

Warning: IMAGE HEAVY!

Here's what's been happening:

Inara earrings/tutorial post

Completed earrings!

Disclaimer: I do not own any sort of rights to the character, Inara, who was developed by the wonderfully amazing Joss Whedon. Also, I am a small potatoes blogger who does not and will not be asked to do product endorsements or site advertisements in the near future. I am a hobby jeweler and costumer. All opinions and mistakes are mine. 

So those earrings only took me a night! I am so proud of myself for actually pulling off (mostly.. sorta.. kinda?) screen accurate with artistic liberties taken earrings for the training house costume. For those of you who have seen the movie and squinted at the screen shots, you know that there really isn't ever a clear shot of her earrings.

Or at least, I can't tell what the earring bases are. The most I could see was a fluer-de-lys design near the top.

Here is the materials break down and techniques for those who actually do find the blog and are interested in how I made these.

update

Lots of progress today, even after waking up to go to work early :)

I finalized the pattern, cut and sewed the last of the overrobe piece out. I'll post the picture of the insane number of pins I used to keep everything together. I had to sew in psuedo guidelines so I can keep my beading straight, mostly so I know where the real edge of the seam is; so the guide is less than an 1/8" in from the seam, and then the line for the beading is about another half an inch in.

Currently beading the first line of the bottom accent (two lines of beading for both the top and the bottom accents). I need to figure out how this is going to stay attached to the rest of the robe, pattern the embroidery for that and .. keep beading. I'm using size 1 bugle beads in gold that I got in bulk from the NY trip. Just putting it out there right now, it took me the better part of an episode of Numb3rs to get maybe a foot of beading done.

Also, the tabards have lining pinned on and the actual size I want traced on to the lining with fabric markers. I still need to do two more embroidery pieces, interface and iron on the designs before I start beading THAT mess. I have figured out the sizing I need for the "knotted cord" decorations that are going to hang from the belt. I may start patterning that out tomorrow once I get back from my friend's house.

Then it's just the wig and the insane head dress. That's my late June/early July project.

Of the sailor senshi costumes.. it's resin casting, finishing the skirts and getting started on the boot covers. I'm mostly waiting for the sleeves from Akira before I really work on anything else for them. And then wigs. That's going to go with the resin casting time period. I'm mostly trying to get a lot of Tomoyo done before the middle of this month so I can work on Nave's Syaoran costume without panicking and worrying about my own. His is going to be way easier in terms of decorations.

Tomoyo's inner kimono in steps.

So I despise using patterns. It's mostly the pinning and cutting part. I ended up making up my own pattern for the inner kimono.. hence the odd placement of the darts to make it lie flat against my body. So here's the progress in pictoral format once I got the pieces cut out:

The two front pieces and the back pieces with the sides and shoulders sewn, and darting.

Flipped inside out

Sleeves pinned on

... beginnings of the collar. I know, it looks funny

And what it looks like now, after strategic darting of the collar. I need to hem, add snaps and sew up the sleeves still, but that took about five hours of work :)

Tomoyo Deconstruction

So I finally started poking at the behemoth of a head dress.



I'm not kidding when I use the word behemoth. I'm about 5'1" (if I'm lucky), which means that this head dress is between 2 feet to 3 feet wide. I'll have a better estimate of how wide it is once I figure out what everything looks like based on proportions and how it looks on me (edit: it's going to be just under two feet wide). In order to save sculpy and sanity, I'm using manila folders to measure and gauge how big things should be by sketching, cutting, taping, staring at a mirror critically, adjust or keep and move on.

So far, I have three attempts on the middle piece (two on the spikes alone) and working on attempt number two of the "bow."

Otakon 2011: Kaye displays her masochism.

I've been accused of being extremely detail oriented. Very detail oriented.

It's an issue, sometimes. This means that I end up being more than slightly masochistic when it comes to picking and choosing costumes. The past few days has just been me staring at the costumes that I'm going to be tackling and plotting a plan of attack. Akira and I are going to be attacking the sailor senshi costume together and divided the work up (she's doing the collars, shoulder piping, glove piping, her boots and the bases of the tiaras, I'm doing the skirts, the skirt piping, the bows and the jewelry/gems. I'm attacking the wigs for myself and Kitaku and possibly helping Akira with hers).

This leaves one elaborate costume for myself, one elaborate costume for Nave, one frilly costume for Kitaku and two easy costumes that are pretty much just copies (plus wigs). Possibly another less elaborate one that I can wear once the crazy one is done with the judging and the photos. I have less than a year.

My costumes.

One of the main ones is the chapter image for chapter 10 of Tsubasa. It's the crazy head dress, with the crazy embroidery. I'm also the kind of person who would add on personal touches.

This means that there will be hand embroidery (I need a better embroidery stand), there will be beading on the edging of the symbol on the tabards and the edging of the overrobe, and there will be a crazy petticoat and train.

The headdress is going to be at least 2 feet across (it may be a tad bit more, depending on how the dangles have to be spaced). Part of the reason why Nave's "elaborate" costume is the white Syaoran costume on the cover of book 4 is so that way he can herd me around people so I don't poke their eyes out or their throat.

So far, all I've done is plot out the craziness that's the head dress, gathered the materials for the sculpts and looked rather mournfully at the purple fabric I have for my overrobe. I don't think I have enough.

Shopping trip ahoy.