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.