Nothing special, I'm just...

... Making new costumes!


Who am I kidding; I’m just too easily bored. It seems that I need to have something in the making or I won’t be satisfied. So after all the speculation, we are going to have new costumes to debut at Desucon in June.  I thought I could play a little game here and give some hint before revealing the characters. If you are inpatient, just scroll to the end of this post.


The characters are from manga adaptation of certain series. Finally we are able to cosplay female characters who are siblings! And I’m really happy that I can sew some modern, “real” clothes. We are currently in a situation where three people want to reclaim the jacket Yoki will be wearing after the convention.

I must also give myself praise that I get Yoki to wear a skirt. A short skirt.

Both of the characters have black hair and something sticking between their teeth. Yoki will be wearing light brown contacts, while I will re-use my blue ones.


One reason for choosing the manga version is that the gown I’ll be making for myself is really pretty. I fancy pretty dresses.

Yoki might be the one who gets recognized more, since her outfit appears in both anime and manga.

Time for the revelation! The characters we are cosplaying are Saya and Diva from the series Blood Plus!

Yoki’s outfit is nearly finished, I’m currently constructing Diva’s gown and will hopefully have it done on Sunday. I’ll try to make a post after I’m finished with it.

P.s Ja ei, äiti. En ole tekemässä morsiuspukua ja menossa salaa naimisiin, ei huolta!

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Trollolollolol

Well, I didn’t finish the red wig… But I might as well reveal that the costumes we are certainly going to make this year are female trolls from World of Warcraft. They weren’t mentioned in the post where I revolved around costume plans for this year. To be frank, I might as well delete the whole post because the content isn’t anyhow correct anymore. It seems that I’m at work for whole holiday season. So it's no for going to conventions or at least for two days, which means no competitions as they usually are held at Saturdays.

You’d think that I would be a wreck, but I’m not! I’m too excited about our trolls. They are going to be our characters for Tracon’s show competition, if that kind of contest is part of the repertory. Plans changed also on that front, because our original plan was to use characters from Star Wars universe. Not a bad switch, I’d say. Wow characters are certainly more familiar to the audience in roleplay/anime convention and show class gives nice freedom with the costume design and construction.

The construction part offers again new methods and materials. We are going to take our time and hopefully get the costumes in presentable stage in the summer. What I’ve noticed with some Wow cosplayers, the costumes are never really finished. They just keep upgrading, like in the game.

The red wig I presented in the previous entry was mine. Thanks to a nice flow I got going on yesterday evening, Yoki’s wig was finished just few hours ago. As my high tail up-do reached over my shoulders, I decided to make Yoki’s wig short.

It still needs some trimming and styling on the sides, but it has to wait because for that I need Yoki's head. The bone necklace is also something I made yesterday from leftover Das clay. The feathers were the result of an experimental dyeing process with disinfectant... Weird.

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Pretty in pink: Ivy's dress and hat

Photographer Anniina Väisänen

It seems that is has been long enough from the WCS preliminaries, or more precisely from the two months of continuous work last summer; I can look at the photos of the costume construction without flashback. So I decided to put together a post from the making of Ivy’s get-up.


The fabrics I used for Ivy’s dress are pale pink polyester satin and lilac cotton satin. After I started to gather the materials in December 2010, I soon realized that finding the right shade of pink would be most certainly impossible. After three months I settled to a pink that wasn’t as rich as in the reference but close enough. The lining is actually the same fabric I used on the gold trimmings. It’s just inside out. And it’s the actually the same as Yoshimitsu’s vest lining, which is two –sided taffeta.


Ivy’s peculiar tailcoat-corset combination was first on my list when I started to draw patterns for the costumes. I can’t recall have I ever struggled with lining as much as I did with it. I had to make few chances to my original plans with having a zipper on the side and making a fake lacing on the back. This was all because of the misguiding two layered look of the garment. The piece of clothing I made is one-piece with lacing on the back and plastic boning on the seams.


There is also boning in the body I’m wearing under the dress. The lace front, which I constructed from tulle and tiny pieces of black lace, is sewn on the body. The body is there to give some piece of mind, since the cut of the dress is rather…high. No flashing because no visible panties. Yes, that’s really a weird reasoning, but somehow makes sense. And I was wearing the tights under to body… Enough with that, every girl cosplayer knows what I’m talking about.



Most time-consuming sewing project along side dress was the rose embroideries, which decorate Ivy’s stockings and veil. The roses took rather long to complete. I could only blame myself, because after trashing the ideas of drawing the figures on the violet stockings with markers, embroidering them on a piece of tulle was next on my list. The other problem with the roses was to attach them to the stockings. Sewing them on didn’t work, because the stockings naturally stretch, but the roses didn’t. Then I realized to slip them between the two stockings that I was wearing! In the morning of the preliminaries! Yay!


I don’t know have I ever mentioned that I love making hats. I do, so Ivy’s cocktail hat was a pleasant task. The hat is made from the same fabric as the dress. The shape is created by cutting petals from sheet foam. I decided to trim the petals with black piping. The black veil I purchased from Belle Modeste. To prevent the hat from falling off my head, I attached it to my wig with clear fishing line.

Photographer Miika Ojamo

I have no idea where I got the stockings. I think I bought about seven pairs of tights before finding suitable ones. The fishnets are probably from Cybershop.

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Moustaches et le patch

Last weekend we had a good laugh while trying on the wigs for our next characters. I had trouble keeping my composure after I had put the brown curly wig I had purchased for Cogsworth on Yoki’s head. She looked so bizarre with long hair! When we started our cosplay journey she actually had hair as long as the wig, so it shouldn’t have been that funny. I’m just so used to her short cut and the girly curls just seemed little out of place. The fun truly began when we applied the rolls Cogsworth has on the sides. We thought that we would die from laughter. And after I had finished the front tuft on my honey blond locks, we questioned if we could ever wear the costumes in public.


But something happened after I applied some make-up on us both and Yoki taped the mustaches on. Excuse me, Yoki’s face, what kind of miracle-maker are you? How anyone can look even remotely sane with those obscene hair rolls and mustaches? I’m seriously leaning to the idea that Yoki could look nice even as Gollum. To spice up Lumiere’s get-up I added a patch to accent his flamboyant nature.


I think Yoki will have the last laugh though. I’m going to wear crazy paned trunk hose after all.

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Cosplay memoirs: Mayuri Kurotsuchi and Akon from Bleach

After browsing through old folders I had to make a post about our third cosplay together. We did quite many things with these costumes that we had never done: Yoki worked with insulation foam and I had a lesson from make-up and prosthetics, if Akon’s horns can be called that way. We attended to two different conventions with the costumes. Mayuri and Akon was our second day duo. The first day we wore Sasori and Deidara. The order was everything, because otherwise Sasori would have had weird dark smudges on his face.

What we learned from Mauyri and Akon was that always try out full face make-up beforehand. The morning was one of the most hectic ones we have ever had. Curses, oh the curses. Of course it took few years to rub in, because about year later the morning we got ready with Jasdero and Debitto could not be called calm in any way. In my opinion we survived quite well with Luminara and Barriss this year. Ho-ho, that's four years later...

The photos are taken from Ropecon, 2007.

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Characters for Desucon Frostbite

I have been so good! I actually managed to organize and pack our costumes more or less properly out from Yoki’s old room. Not few of them, but every single costume we have worn this year had been shoved there. But that is not the reason I’m writing a post, even if I feel that my effort is worth to mention. The true meaning of this is upcoming Desucon Frostbite, which is only seven weeks away. I think our convention season has never started this early!

To fit the time of the year we are trying to finish our Snowtroopers to be the primary costumes. But because of certain restrictions the costumes have, we thought to have secondary costumes as well. We haven’t had ones since 2007, when we wore Sasori and Deidara for the first day of convention and Mayuri and Akon for the second.


There are at least two reasons for this rare event. We are going to Lahti by car, so we can stuff it full of boxes and suits. The other is the program. Usually there are just few things we want to see, but Desucon Frostbite seems to keep its promise of interesting and high quality content. Snowtroopers aren’t the most convenient costumes. It’s hard to sit comfortably and you get tired rather easily. And then there is the thing that you don’t see too well or hear much either. To avoid utter exhaustion we reasoned that changing during the day would solve some problems.

We have toyed around an idea of making Disney cosplay at some point. Even if Desucon Frostbite is anime convention, we decided that now that we had the opportunity, we would use it. The duo we are going to construct is from Beauty and the Beast with big personalities; Lumiere and Cogsworth.


We are going to make the costumes based on their human forms. I’m going to exercise artistic freedom to make the costumes look interesting and for the sake of my sanity, to bring them to the same century. Really, I don’t know what they have been thinking while designing the look for the character. It’s like Lumiere is partially from 1500s as Cogsworth is from the late 1700s.


Even if I mentioned of bringing them to the same century, I’m not going to pinpoint the costumes to any era. I’m just going to balance the pieces of the costumes to coherent look. This week I tried styling the wigs for the characters. They still need some attention, but I'm getting there. I’ve also have drawn the patterns and bought fabrics for the costumes. I also have the shoes and some accessories ready. Now I’m going to sew… And sing “Be our guest” all along.

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Ivy and Yoshimitsu at Tracon VI

Here are some photos of our characters that I found from our cameras after Tracon. The photos are either from Saturday or Sunday. Most noticeable difference is my legs; on Sunday I tossed away the shoes I wore at the competition, because they were utterly uncomfortable. Few of my toes are still numb from wearing them. I also wore regular lace tights on Sunday.

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Zombiewalk with Samara Morgan

I started with the Samara’s dress about one and a half weeks before Halloween. Patterning and sewing took little time, dyeing ate the majority. I started with the dyeing in the evening, so that I could continue on the morning, let the fabric dry when I was at work and then start the cycle again. I bended some rules with the dyeing and was quite happy with the result. There were few mishaps, but the final result was better than I had expected. Over all the material choices, technical solutions and structures worked well. I’m pleased that I chose to line the whole dress, even if I thought it would be pointless to see the effort for Halloween costume.

First I thought Samara would only be qualified as a Halloween costume. Boy, how wrong was I. Through my costume history Samara might be the one I have enjoyed the most as an event outfit. Even the fact that the make-up took approximately two hours didn’t bother me. There were no props to be handled, the costume was comfortable to wear and acting like the character didn’t require much. Mostly I just stared in front of me, face as blank as possible. Probably slightly evilishly.

I think that the happening, where I wore the costume affected the experience also. Even if Samara isn’t practically zombie, Zombiewalk might have been the best event to take part in this particular outfit. The character was recognized by many and I lost count how many people wanted to take photo WITH me. That was rather new to me. Usually there are one or two scenarios like that at conventions. Now I even got stopped during the walk itself. I must say, it was flattering and fun.

Photo taken by Tommi Joutjärvi.

The walk itself went well with few interruptions on the way. I want to thank my companion, who went with me with short notice, that being a day. Weirdly and also little sadly, it wasn’t Yoki who attended with me, but my older brother. Thanks to our LARP background, it wasn’t hard for him to scrape together an outfit. On the five minute drive to the starting point of the walk, I made him a pale, sunken eye make-up. I have no idea how it really looked like. It was too dark everywhere to evaluate the result.

During the walk we had some problems keeping track of each other. My brother’s vision was blocked by a scarf and mine by hair. I was able to follow him by voice, while I myself hobbled forward without a sound. The next evening the limp walking style proved to be straining. My right calf was stiff and sore for the extent where I could not walk properly and my lower back felt little weird. Samara survived without a scratch. Keeping eye on the next wear, I only need to take off the excess glue and toilet paper from the cuffs of the “skin sleeves”.

My brother is the faceless lurker behind me on the far left. Photo was taken by Tommi Joutjärvi.

As cosplay fan video nerd, there are few additional ideas I’ve been pondering, the weather just aren't the best for them. But that is for sure that Samara will be seen in the future.

The next time Zombiewalk is organized I’m going to drag Yoki with me. Take a notice, old friend!

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Halloween is just around the corner

It’s little over a week till Halloween and I’m starting out with my costume. And it begins as it always begins, me on the floor kneeling and crouching. Today I used my free time making patterns for a dress. When making costumes, I always start from basic patterns. I have two or three different sizes on my closet fit for me and Yoki. It’s quick to pull them out and start cutting and taping the wished forms from them. Personally, I hate going through piles of magazines in hopes of finding close enough patterns. Sometimes it might be quicker, but my short temper rarely bends on this matter.


Next to making rather easy patterns and cutting the pieces out, I sewed the bust and started to dye the sleeves and the hem for the dress. I’m not sure if my take on the dyeing process will work or not, or rather will the colour stay after first wash. What I’m using is antique grey Dylon dye intended for washing machines, which I found when going through my mixed supplies, but I’m not going to stick with the normal routine. I’m just messing the fabric with the dye free hand. Does anyone have any ideas how to make the dye stick? I might try ironing to attach the colour after the pieces have dried. But still, I’m not too convinced that the colour will stay; at least it will get lighter. Then again, it’s a Halloween costume. I don’t know will I ever use it in other circumstances. For future projects this could be taken as a learning process.


The mossy and decomposed dress in making belongs to a girl, who gave me few nightmares back in the days; Samara Morgan, “misunderstood” kid down the well. She is also typically associated to a ring type thing and a video tape. There are two western versions from two movies obviously. I chose the first one. I think I haven't even seen the second. According to Youtube the "second" Samara is more spider like, quick and evil thing.

If it’s not crazy cold, I’ve planned to take my little girl out for a stroll for local Zombie walk... even if she doesn't practically eat brains or any random body parts.

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