Halloween (Days 633 - 636)

Halloween felt very rushed, but I still had a lot of fun. I pretty much just did makeup and then played laser tag. Makeup took a lot longer than I thought it would, and laser tag only lasted fifteen minutes. Then I went home and watched TV.

Pictures coming soon!

Halloween Preparation (Days 629 - 632)

So I've practiced my Halloween makeup twice, and I still don't entirely know what I'm going to do for sure, but here's what I did so far.

First time playing with Zombie makeup in a long time. This was sort of a half-practice for my boyfriend's Randall (Ugly Americans) cosplay also, as I have no idea how to properly mimic a missing nose. I have some ideas, but in this practice, I didn't use any scar putty because I don't have a lot of it and I wanted to save it.

I was also trying to make it look like my lower right eyelid was torn off, which probably would have worked better with scar putty also, but again, I wanted to save it. I'm still unsure about the mouth, but it turned out alright here.

Round Two! Here I'm using scar putty for around my mouth, which I'm still kind of unsure of. It look good, but it cracks and falls off fairly quickly, and I'm supposed to be playing laser tag in this. The downside of not having the mouth is that I don't have much else. The upside is that it's easier and no one will really care.

I didn't do the nose because I didn't like how it turned out the first time, and I didn't do the torn eyelid because it wasn't great the first time and, yet again, to save scar putty.

This is the second part of the makeup I played around with the second time, meant to mimic a broken shoulder with bone sticking out. I kind of started making it without a clear idea in my head of what the end goal was, so the redness isn't all the realistic. I really love the bone shard though, my boyfriend helped me with the realism of it. I just don't know how this is going to work with a laser tag vest, so maybe I'll have bone sticking out of the back of my hand or something instead.

I also did a little bit of makeup practice on my boyfriend, because he's also going to be a zombie, but it didn't turn out great. His skin tone is a lot darker than mine, and I haven't done makeup on anyone other than myself, except once, and we used her makeup kit, not mine. On Halloween, we'll have more time to mess with his makeup, and it was a pretty good trial run.

GZR Cosplayer of the Week (Days 623-628)

Some time last week, I was interviewed for Game-Zone Recreation's Cosplayer of the Week, and it was uploaded this Wednesday.



I've noticed that the more I see myself on video, the less I hate watching myself on video. I don't know if it's because I'm learning how to conduct myself on camera better or I'm just getting used to it, but either way, I'm definitely not complaining.

GZR's Cosplayer of the Weeks is more or less what it sounds like. Each week, a cosplayer will be interviewed, either in person or just a written interview, and featured on the GZR website. We're still working on the conditions for being featured and the formatting of everything. To stay updated, like the Game-Zone Recreation FaceBook page or the Kin-Yoobi Con FaceBook page. Hopefully, most updates will be coming from the GZR page, but I'm unsure right now.

Last week's Cosplayer of the Week was Marygail Pilares, aka Owen Miyabi, and you can read her text interview here.

Also, starting some time next month, I will begin posting video blogs on the GZR website about cosplay. They're going to be more about cosplay in general, not my personal cosplay, and I feel like this interview sort of ties into it all and was a nice way to begin introducing me.

If you would like to be featured as Cosplayer of the Week, or if you have any topic ideas for my upcoming vlogs, please leave me a comment!

Sharing Knowledge

I came across this thread/poll on Cosplay.com about sharing patterns and tutorials. I was going to just post an answer there, but I noticed that some people's answers got really long. Also, my answer is pretty much the same as a lot of answers there and doesn't contribute much to the thread. So I thought it'd make a decent filler post here.

Do you publicly display your work/give tips/trade secrets?
Obviously, based on the very existence of this blog, yes. I really enjoy sharing my work and my knowledge, however, there are limits and conditions.

I can't imagine ever freely sharing a pattern that I drafted myself from scratch. I would recommend books and tutorials about how to draft said pattern, I would even make a tutorial about how to make the pattern, but I would never share just the pattern. Basically, I feel like people should do their own work. If I had to make it, I'm not giving it away for free. I would consider selling patterns, but I don't think that they'd even fit very many people.

Also, if something is really hard for me to figure out how to make, I won't post a tutorial. I'll admit, this is more selfishness than anything, but there are a few other reasons I won't do this. If it takes me a long time to figure out how to do something, chances are, the method that I come up with in the end isn't very good. I don't want to post long, tedious instructions on how to make something that might not even turn out that well because the directions are too complicated. In addition, if it's something that's really hard for me to figure out how to make, it was probably hard to make in general, and doesn't look as spectacular as I'd like it to. Chances are, it's something that I'm going to remake with an easier method anyway. Finally, if I'm having a lot of difficulty making something, I'm definitely not taking enough progress pictures to be helpful in a tutorial.

I'd never post patterns for something that I'm trying to make money off of, my fleece hats for example. If I tell people how to make them, why would they buy them from me? That's just bad business.

Aside from all of that, I have no problem telling people how I made something. I love sharing knowledge that will help people create things that they want, and more than half of the time, I got the information from somewhere else anyway. I love creating tutorials (when I remember to take pictures) and sharing easy methods of making something that looks like it's complicated.

On a similar note, I don't take commissions only because people aren't willing to pay for what they're worth (or even less than they're worth). Otherwise, I'd take them all the time to make money!

Change of Plans (Days 616 - 621)

The nice thing about Halloween is that no one really cares if you cancel your costume plans or make last minute changes or whatever. So, after careful consideration, I'm not going to be Ironette for Halloween. My main issue is that I have to order the fabric, which is kind of expensive ($14 per year), and it may take up to 10 days to ship, which would definitely not leave me enough time to make the costume as nice as I would like it.

So instead, I'm going to be a generic zombie. It's been a while since I've gotten to play around with casualty makeup, so this should be fun. I have an outfit in mind, but there's not much to say about it, since it's just a generic zombie. I'll post pictures when I have them.

Sorting Stuff (Days 631 - 615)

Once again, it's been far too long since I've updated.

I went through and sorted a bunch of patterns that my mom got from a friend. I'm still not 100% finished going through them, but at least they're sorted out. I'm selling them, if you are interested in purchasing a pattern, check out my lists of them:
Simplicity Patterns
Butterick Patterns
McCall's Patterns
Other Patterns
Pattern Pieces

"Pattern Pieces" are exactly what they sound like, pieces of patterns. There's usually only one or two pieces, but I'm thinking they can be combined with other patterns of similar size and style. I don't really have any prices in mind, so just ask.

I also sorted through a bunch of buttons (also gotten from Mom's friend). I'm looking to get rid of a bunch of these as well, but I have no photos. I'm also not selling the belt buckles. They are glorious, and they are mine. I also kept all of the military/navy-style buttons for myself.

Other than all of that, I've been kind of sort of not really working on my Ironette (Iron Man 2) cosplay. I bought a pair of boots to cover, but then I decided that my old Franziska von Karma boots would be better. Also, my Franziska boots are horribly torn up. So the boots that I bought are my new Franziska boots, even though I fear they might be less accurate, the heel is taller, and the toes are more square. My old Franziska boots will be my new Ironette boots.

I'm hoping to be Ironette for Halloween, and I know that the costume won't be 100% finished by then. I want to have the clothing, gloves, and boot covers finished, and have some kind of circular at-least-reflective-if-not-light-up, piece on the front. I know that I won't have the hand and feet lights finished. I'll have the entire thing finished my Fanime 2012, including chest, hand, and feet lights. It will be my first time working with LED lights, so I'm both excited and nervous.

Other than buying boots, I aso ordered fabric swatches from DistinctiveFabric.com. If you get an account (which is free), you get 5 free fabric swatches (to be ordered at any time), so my two fabric swatches were free. I ordered both red and gold stretch satin. It sounds like the most horrible thing ever, especially for cosplay, but it is what the outfits in the movie were made out of, so I can't argue it. I actually bought red dance/swimwear fabric already, but it just doesn't look right. I'll either use it as practice or make myself a swimsuit.

Yoko's Rifle (Part 1)

My work on Yoko's rifle is definitely not finished at this point, but here's what's happened so far. I will not be making a tutorial about this, mostly because I can't really remember or even begin to explain exactly what I did. Click on photos to enlarge them.

I began with a few cardboard tubes left over from rolls of fabric, gift wrap, and other miscellaneous things (no toilet paper rolls though, haha!). One roll that I had was 4'11" long and was thinner than the rest. I had another roll that was the same diameter, but only 1'7" long. I cut 6" off of the shorter tube and hot-glued it to the longer one, making it 5'5". Looking back, I should have made it 5'3", but I really had no idea what I was doing (still don't!) and just sort of guessed how tall I wanted it to be. (I'm 5'4", by the way, and about 5'6" in my Yoko boots.) I originally wanted my rifle to be about an inch shorter than me, but oh well.

I didn't really have a plan for scaling here, I just guestimated how big things should be and went at it. It seemed to work out, thankfully! I think some parts are a little wide (I actually think the entire thing is a little bigger than it should be), but it's at least proportional to itself.

A majority of the pieces are cardboard, but for curved areas and some places where something attaches to the barrel (the main tube), I used craft foam.

I had, and am still having, difficulty with attaching the scope. In the anime, the scope is attached by four thin metal pieces, which doesn't really translate well into cardboard. They bend and have broken a couple of times, so the scope leans to the side sometimes. I'm not entirely sure what to do about it, but it does stay upright for photos.

The back end of the scope (where someone aiming to shoot would look) is a solid piece of cardboard painted green with the cross-hairs drawn on with pen. Of course I wanted to make it so that you could actually look through the scope, but I didn't have the right materials. Also, with the design of the scope, you wouldn't be able to aim properly anyway without some inner workings, which I am not up to the task of making.

The front of the scope is also a solid piece, the green is a piece of a 3X5 index card painted green. The shadows in the photo make the edges look rougher than they are, though they are pretty rough on their own. I'm not sure how to fix that or what I could have done differently. Cardboard is rough and difficult to cut.


The end of the barrel is indented and sealed off with orange craft foam. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to add craft foam to stick out one inch from the end of the barrel so that it can be seen from the side in order to comply with most conventions' prop firearm rules. Of course I'm disappointed that it distracts from the realism of the rifle, but I do recognize and appreciate that it's for my own safety. I would rather have a little orange piece on the end of my rifle than have the convention not require or check this and end up getting shot. Also, it's a small price (if you want to even call it that) to pay for being able to show off my hard work without issue.

Now for the fun part, the rifle comes apart for storage and transportation! I went through a few methods to make this work, and I am extremely happy with how it turned out. I knew from the beginning that I wanted it to come apart at a certain spot, underneath one of the ridges so that the seam wouldn't be seen. Originally, I thought that I could hold the two pieces together with magnetic snaps that I had originally bought for Yoko's belt. (I only needed one for the belt, and they came in a package of three.) However, the end of the barrel was too heavy. I tried two magnetic snaps, a regular snap, Velcro, and various combinations of these things, but nothing seemed to work.

I'm still not sure how I came up with this, but I somehow found the perfect solution. I cut open one of my larger cardboard tubes and started rolling it in on itself, making it sort of spiral inward and get smaller. Once it was small enough, I put it halfway inside of the main part of the rifle and put the rest of the barrel on the other end of it. Basically, the smaller tube goes inside of the barrel where the barrel comes apart. Hopefully the picture explains.

I chose to paint the ends of the inner tube orange/pink along with the open ends of the rifle barrel just in case I end up taking it apart at a convention for some reason. California law states that the ends of prop firearms must be painted in a bright color. If I take apart the rifle, the back end looks like a complete gun on its own, and I didn't want to cause a problem, so I painted the end and inside pink in a way that can't be seen when it's fully assembled, but can be seen when it's taken apart. I painted the ends of everything else pink just for good measure.

In one photo, you can see some ink marks on the tube that goes inside, it's a star that I drew in blue permanent marker to differentiate that piece from scraps that I had lying around. I actually did this to almost all of the pieces that went into the rifle, and I highly recommend it. Before I figured out this trick, it was difficult to tell my some of rifle pieces apart from the scraps and finding things took much longer than it should have. Since the paint is black, it covers it right up.

I painted the rifle in two pieces. First I tried spraypaint, but it didn't give enough coverage. After a couple of layers of spraypaint, I ran out (it was an old can that I found in the shed), so I switched to hand-painting with acrylic. It gave a lot better coverage, but it isn't as shiny, so I'm hoping to get some kind of spray to give it some shine.



So as it stands, I still need to add the pink stripes on the barrel, the yellow stripes on the end, the orange tip, the strap to carry it, another coat of paint (in some places), and a coat of gloss. However, I feel like a majority of the work is finished, and certainly the most difficult parts of the work are all finished. Hopefully next time I want to take it somewhere, I won't have to rush to finish it.