Creepy Dress Form (Days 580 - 586)

So progress on my Koffing cosplay has officially begun. I bought a shirt for it at the thrift store. It's the perfect color, one sleeve is shorter than the other (I am indifferent to this), it has a hood, and it had this ugly little seashell thing with seahorses painted on it sewn onto the front. It took me two days to stitch-rip the thing off, and I ended up taking chunks of the shirt with it. I still haven't decided what to do to cover that up, but I'm thinking just stitch it and then make small holes and stitches all over the shirt, make it look intentional. I also took in the sides of the shirt some, since it had no shape to it whatsoever.

It's a little bit big on me, which I love, it hangs well, and the fabric is super comfy. I decided to put the little bump things on the hood instead of making a hat and trying to match fabric and stuff, but I'm having trouble getting fabric pieces big enough to make the bumps. I tried using the extra from where I took the shirt in, but it wasn't big enough. I guess I'm going to cut the longer sleeve to match the other one and use the fabric from that.

Really, it doesn't look like I did anything to the shirt if you've never seen it before, but whatever. In the picture, I wanted to compare the size of the little bump thing to the rest of the shirt to see if it was big enough, so I balanced my wig head on top of my dress form. Earlier that day, I figured out that I could take the top off of my dress form and attach a wig head. That might creep me out though.

I also finally started working on my boyfriend's Magikarp cosplay. It's going both faster and slower than I thought it would. On the one hand, when I get a chunk done, it's a huge chunk. On the other hand, details area pain. I cut out the two main parts of the tail and sewed the back together (needed a seam down the back for roundness) and attached the tail to it (a secondary reason for the seam). I added all of the scale outlines to the front piece (pictured left), and I started adding them to the back, but didn't finish.

The Magikarp wig has been sitting in the sewing room since February, but my boyfriend finally bought the yellow extensions that we needed for the front of it. They're just the cheap Hot Topic kind, but I'm hoping with some hair spray or something they'll be manageable. Usually when I wear that kind in my own hair, people can't tell if it's real or not, so as long as no one looks too closely, they're passable. My boyfriend looks like an Asian rock star in his wig, which is hilarious because he's Mexican but is always mistaken for being Asian. (I promised him I wouldn't post pictures online, but I'll be able to after the con.)

Fanime Planning (still...) (Days 571 - 579)

the dance performance that I mentioned in my last post is over, so hopefully I'll be able to work on cosplay more.

I decided that to cut costs even further for my Koffing cosplay, I'm going to use an old pair of jeans that already have a hole in the knee. I'll have to figure out a way to stop any holes from ripping further during wear too, but I guess that's later. I'm really looking forward to destroying a pair of jeans though. It sounds like it's going to be a lot of fun!

Here's a good tutorial that I found on distressing jeans, if anyone's interested.


I'm not going to use all of the techniques in that video, I'm mostly looking at ripping holes, the thing with the sandpaper, and bleaching. I'm also not getting a wig for this, even though I found some really nice ones for $10. Instead, thanks to the brilliant mind of my friend FoxBerry, I'll be making a hat. I've already figured out how to do it, save for a detail or two, and I believe I already have the fabric. The real bonus here (other than saving money on a wig) is that once I figure out exactly how to make it, I can *gasp* sell them! Though none that I make will ever be as good as the first one, that's just how it is.

I also found this picture of a Weezing gijinka that I was really attached to until I found the Koffing one. It's so adorable, and I had been thinking of a way to cosplay Weezing, though I'm not sure why, but it didn't stick in my head as well as the Koffing one did. In any case, it makes me want to have a little bomb prop. Though that's more time and money that I may not have. However if someone wanted to cosplay this when I cosplay Koffing, I might just love them forever. I'm just saying.

My boyfriend's and my panel, Magikarp: A History has gotten it's finalized time of 7:00pm on Sunday. You can RSVP on the facebook event here if you like, as well as get more details about the panel.

In addition to doing that, I applied to be a model for a "Mystery Designer" at Fanime. I don't know if I'll go through with it, since it'll take up Friday evening and Saturday morning and early afternoon, which would make me miss the Pokemon gathering, and I've had some pretty bad experiences with "random" designers, so we'll see what I think of this designer if/when I get chosen and meet them.