Monday, September 10, 2012

Others




I think that sometimes my boyfriend get's a lot of shit from me, but I think that's only for the costumes. They turn out so great, because me and him fight over every single detail from the beginning. He tells me something looks like crap, I cry, we fight, i figure out another way of doing things, and then we both decide that it looks 100 times better than it was at the start.

Explaining the phenomenon in words, almost seems ridiculous. I don't know if it's very beneficial to our relationship, but I do know that he's always the one picking off strings from me at the convention, or hair that I never wefted correctly. He's the one making sure I get to photoshoots on time, by going and talking to the photographer ahead of time, while i'm trapped in hallways being bambuzzeld with photographs.

I don't really know how to explain how thankful I was to have him at Otakon, and before Otakon. I know he seems to want to limit my groups to three and my new costumes to one a con, but he know it isn't going to happen. He also knows how much I love it, and I think that's why he's willing to put up with so much bull shit.

I get hit on like no other at cons, on facebook, on here. Last otakon, i had some guy tell me that I was his favorite character and he just needed to get a shot with me for his old man fantasies. I don't feel threatened by this, and I know that sometimes it gets a little uncomfortable to Yuri, but it comes with the turf. If I dressed the same way in normal circumstances, going to walmart, browsing the mall, chillin on campus-- i think I would still get the same negative attention.

This message doesn't go out to him, it goes out to every guy giving me that negative attention. Unless you want to be the one making sure that my underwear doesn't show, that in every picture that I take my zanarchand symbol is facing the right direction, or tying my shoes because I can't bend over, and holding me while i cry because I can't make something as perfect as I want it to be and scratching every idea that you throw at me, then you obviously have no grounds to be calling me anything other than beautiful.

My boyfriend is the best cosplay boyfriend, that I think anyone could have. I think even my cosplayers for last Otakon, were glad to have him as a buffer between me and them, and also as someone who could always find the tacky glue. Thank you Yuri, and I do love you, and I hope that you'll keep my x-men fantasy alive and cosplay the wonderfully hot gambit for me to do photoshoots with-- i mean err-- for me to love-- and drool over. :D

Friday, September 7, 2012

Rogue Runner-- I dunno that was corny


I thought this art was pretty cool [credit] ergo I shared it with ya'll as my first opening rogue is a beast and i'm hoping to cosplay her at AUSA. :D Tada! Be happy. I've been writing papers all day so forgive me if I start talking about psychological theories and shit-- i'll try to going back to sounding as personal as humanly possible.


So this is the jacket that I got via ebay. The seller was wonderful, super easy to work with, really have no complaints other than I was totally not expecting the jacket to be full length (I thought it doesn't look like it-- i guess it does). So, I have to find some way to get it tailored. The under armpit area seems really really large for some reason, so when i pick up my arms, like the whole jacket comes with me... Lolz. Overall though, I wanted a jacket that was pre-made partially cause I'm busy with work/college and the other part because I think it looks better with a real leather, tailored design. I dunno, we'll see where it goes.


The super suit! I totally keep going around the house screaming "WHERES MY SUPER SUIT!?" It's really getting on boyfriends nerves. So I got my suit from a place [here]. I didn't actually like their base model (pictured above), so instead I sent them an order for a custom one, and they told me they'd alter the existing one with no extra cost to me, which I was like-- way happy for to say the least.

It hasn't come yet, i'm super scared of the alterations to make sure they all go down right, if they don't I'll hit cosplay.com like a maniac asking for some sort of help on figuring out how to sew on spandex because I'm so at a lost-- aka the reason I decided to get it premade-- also for $50, like you wouldn't even be able to get the materials for it.


Bought this wig, it looks super lush and beautiful, and real, and everything that I wanted it to be but it hasn't come in yet. :{ Not so much a nail biter for this one, got it super cheep here, and if it doesn't work, it doesn't work right? The real debate is whether i want to do a curly wig too to look more like the beautiful cute rogue cosplayer that you see toodling (yep i made that up) on facebook. Still haven't figured that one out, right now i'm currently out of money in the ordering department though.


For the white streak, i got extensions from ebay also. I've heard though that the clip in ones just don't look very nice in the wig but i'm stubborn, so i'm going to try it anyways. If it doesn't work, I was thinking about just getting the long white bangs that arda has and parting them in the middle because it doesn't look half bad for the part and if arda wasn't out of stock of them when I ordered these, I probably would've done that first anyways.



Boots I'm still at a loss for, was hoping to just get some yellow patent thigh highs and alter them but that's seemingly proving impossible. If I do end up getting patent, shiny things, I'd add them with gloves made out of the same-ish material, if I can't, I'll just go with some simple cotton yellow gloves. I've given up on making gloves too. Haha.

Belt I haven't thought about, and patches I haven't thought about, and then with these missing components the costume will be complete and I will be able to duke it out with the rest of the georgia pearls.

If you have any suggestions for gloves, boots, belt, wig; please please please contact me. I am back on facebook, and you can message me there as well as commenting here.

Happy Cosplay and to all a good-- Morning. :D

Now I get to go to sleep so i can be all well rested for the doctor tomorrow.

Monday, August 20, 2012

Final Fantasy x-2 recap


The x-2 costume was really fun and easy to wear. Making it was another story. Make-up was messed up in most of these pictures so excuse the fact i haven't had time to learn how to use photoshop and edit them... Lol. It was hot, and i was sweating.



The earring I reused from the x costume. The wig I ordered from cosplayandwig.com and had to put another layer of extensions in it because of everything listed in the yuna x post. I thought flipping it up would be easy but I should've done it before the day of the con because just using gel wasn't good enough.



The hood pattern we stole off of an old cape pattern that we had laying around and then altered it for size after it was on there. Bought a little snap to keep it onto my neck and then attached the tail to it.The tail I dyed when we were doing some of the rikku costume scarf stuff. I just stuck part of the canvas into the red dye and splashed it up with my gloved hand to make the gradient and then sewed it into a little pocket.



I hacked a pony tail sized extension off and folded it in half and put a rubber band around it and then electrical taped it to the tail itself. This was covered with the canvas and then tied with a piece of black string I had lying around. The actual tail was made out of a thick rope cut to size and a red ribbon. My friend braided it for me (because I got frustrated) off of a YouTube video.



The shirt I made by making pretty much a normal halter shirt and cutting a giant triangle down it. We then cut off the bottom piece from about the breasts down and sewed a ribbed material to it to give the illusion of a skinnier waist (cause what girl doesn't want that?) The zanarkand symbol was made with hot glue. We cut a triangle the size of the one in the shirt and drew the symbol to this scale. My boyfriend put a giant thick layer of hot glue built up on top of where the symbol would be and then we shaped it and smoothed it with a sodering iron and a scalpel. Painted it with black leather paint.



The shorts were just some short booty shorts that i got from jcpenny for like $13 bucks. The bag was made from a scrap of vinyl found at some fabric store because i couldn't find a suede piece the right color. It's tassels were actually a ribbon that i found at joannes. The silver things on the bag were pre-packaged at jo annes, but we drilled two little holes in them so that we could fasten the little turquoise bead. Then we cut off the bottom of some brads and glued those on the bag for the little buttons.



The skirt was made from a simple gradient die. Each strand (for the tie) is a piece of the same colored piece of fabric folded over with a zig zag stitch over top of it. Then we added lace to the white part of the bottom of each layer of the skirt. The boots were just boots i got from target, they happened to have a little strap over them but i figured it wasn't that big of a difference. :S



Then the guns... Lol. Guns were made out of wood. They were annoying. Azure found a tutorial on how to make them, and it basically consisted of finding a picture like this. I cut apart each piece separately and then my mom cut them all out (cause i shouldn't be allowed around power tools). We sanded a whole lot, and painted them :D. The designs on the side were just done with sharpie.

I think that's everything... ;>> if you need any help with anything and want to copy me on anything, feel free to message me on facebook (Sugar Blossom Cosplay) or shoot me an e-mail at Acronymsoup66@gmail.com.










Happy Cosplay! :D and here are some group pics to follow up the mini tutorial.








Feature Wakka and Tidus


Featuring Auron


Featuring cast of X and X-2. 

If you have any questions of any of the other characters in my group... Rikku, Paine, Gippal, Elma... I would be glad to get you in contact with the cosplayers, or i probably know myself. :D So feel free to message! :D 




Saturday, August 11, 2012

Final Fantasy X recap

Le Finals :}

So Just In-case you wanted to know what happened with each of these costumes in the final weeks-- this is going to be a wrap up of how I made everything, and how everything finally got done. I will start with X :D Since it was the first game.


I bought the wig from a place called cosplayandwig.com. The wig was extremely easy to style and was nice and thick. However, it seemed like it was styled to a head that was smaller than the size of mine. Some of the cuts didn't line up correctly, so I ended up having to add another layer of wefts at the bottom. I used some bond a weave, to bond the wig fibers to some bias tape, which really didn't work all too well (I really need a wig heat gun thinger). Then I put the wig on my head and sewed the wefts into place.



The earring was made using a combination of glass beads from a Michael's set that i paid $5 for, and some sculpy. I used the sculpy for the abnormally long piece, and the tear drop piece. To make the tassel, i took some of the rope left over from my obi hibiscus and combed it out to become the tassel. I then attached them to an earring because I happen to have three piercings on my right lobe, which ended up hurting a lot by the end of the day.


The white "shirt" was made from just a piece of fabric in a long square with a hem around the whole thing. The jewelry I ended up buying online from Ebay. The sleeves though were also pre-made. <<; I'm a little bit of a cheater. Then, i took a very thin purple rope, because it was all that I could find and braided it to form the sleeves. Painting the beads for all of it was a pain in the butt, as they slipped out of my fingers.


The obi was a little bit harder. We made the the "bow" part as two squares, and then put a little rectangle piece around the middle of them to give the scrunched up appearance. Then the wrap around the middle was jsut that-- a wrap around the middle. For the color fading flowers in the middle, I glued fabric to hard paper, and then glued that onto the fabric. However, i found out soon at otakon that the adhesive that i used to keep the fabric on the glue was not the best ergo some of my pictures are missing my middle flower.

The pattern on the embroidery was hard as fuck, and me and my mother made all of the patterns and then put them into an embroidery machine, and lined them all up perfectly. We did the same thing with the circle in the middle, except around the light blue pie pieces, we had to actually hand embroider (and my mom did it all for me because she's awesome and i have super weak wrists due to carpel tunnel).


I guess this is the best picture i have of the hibiscus in costume. Wow. Sorry, this is shuyin guys out of costume... Um. Yeah, for the hibiscus, i never posted normal pictures of it so i guess i'll post some out of costume.


I dyed the blue cotton rope as I said above, cut out little foam pieces and spray painted them gold, then cut out each individual piece of the hibiscus in foam and made little pillows out of fabric to stick these pieces of foam in. On the back of each of them are little tiny stitches, because I hand stitched it all, and actually made two of them. The triangles were super easy. I just took material and cut it into a small triangle and then folded it on itself to give it the dimension. The fabric i used for the hibiscus were just quilting squares which i got for like 2 bucks each. I picked a dark, medium, and light fabric.


Made the beads out of sculpy, made the tassel the same way as i mentioned above. Painted the beads the same as above. Then I cut the sticks out of some craft dowels, and drilled mini holes in the end just to stick the string in and glued it there to make it look like the string goes all the way through. Just DO NOT use gorilla glue. That is all. Back to the general costume...


Made the skirt, without a pattern. Mom figured it out. I don't know how. Made the flowers in the same cheater way with the embroidery machine. Took regular machine with a tight zig zag stitch around a pattern that we made out of chalk. Put a hem in the skirt after the fact. Forgot to measure the skirt with the cosplay boots, which made it about an inch too short. Shhh. I hate that in some pictures ergo, i don't show them. :D


The staff was made with a resizing program, to make a giant version of the round part that I then traced onto some wood after cutting out with a scalpel. Did the same thing with the dark blue parts, which don't look dark blue in this picture... I spray painted it gold. Painted the rod red and blue with some painters tape, and then wrapped the areas that were gold on the stick with some electrical tape that i had from guard. I then taped that off and spray painted it too-- actually boyfriend did most of that.

The silver part was made with a giant bolt, that was somehow magically cut, and then we used some pieces of pvc to screw onto both the pole and the staff head itself. The round part on top was honestly just the end piece of some pvc pipe, that we cut and spray painted silver. Then we glued it on.

Well. I think that's everything about the costume, other then the fact that elma did a wonderful job with my make-up and making me beautiful.

Here are some spam pictures:









Overall, I'd like to repeat this costume with a crew, so that it gets some more recognition, because I worked really hard on it, and other than a few flaws, I think it was a beautiful costume, and mighty fun to pull off. Um... I think that's it. If you ever have any questions about any of my costumes feel free to message me at Acronymsoup66@hotmail.com, or look me up on facebook (Sugar Blossom Cosplay).

:D Happy Cosplay!

Friday, July 20, 2012

Final Fantasy X Embroidery Story


Thought this was a wicked cool picture. Well, without further adieu, i finally got the time to work on and come nearly close to finishing my X costume. I have no pictures of the staff because it is actually at my fathers work, getting the top silver piece done.

I mean the piece that attaches the gold head, and the blue staff to each other with enough support that the entire staff doesn't fall apart... hopefully that'll be done by Saturday-- considering the convention is-- six days away now @_@. But what you've all been waiting for-- embroidery


As you recall, the skirt previously looked much like this-- just a normal blue pleated skirt--

The flowers looked like this prior to be embroidered, and we used my mother's new brother pe 770 to do so. :D Learn more about this process here.



With Azure's help, we drew out the general pattern with some chalk onto the skirt. Then we took the normal sewing machine, which my mom actually got a new one, and did a really tight zig zag stitch with a thread that had a little bit of shine to it.


The pins are just there to hold the pleats until the day of the convention. Um, uh, it was obnoxious and annoying, and I shed a lot of tears.


Final skirt. :D Only thing that's needed would be a little slit in the side (considering i currently cannot go up stairs). And now to the Obi!


So if you recall, the Obi originally looked like this. Me and my mom made all the embroidery patterns for it, stitch by stitch, in a program called buzzedit. This program is not for the weak of heart.


It's a very odd program, and involved a lot of copy and pasting from previous designs. After we finally got the design finished and looking close to the anime, we had to size it.



Glued thick paper to the back with temporary adhesive to give the embroidery the ability to stand on it's own.


We printed them out, life size, and then adjusted and changed them as needed; which was probably the hardest-- awkwardest-- thing that i've ever done for cosplay. Ha. And then the embroidery started. (If you ever need any of these patterns for an embroidery machine and you have no idea what you're doing, feel free to email me at acroymsoup66@hotmail.com and i'll give them to you!)


The image that I showed you, in PE design is the embroidery going down the center of the obi here.


The obi's pattern in full. I couldn't get the whole pattern because I happen to be skinnier then yuna, but i used the following picture as a template and tried to get it all correct in the front, and then-- look better for my shape in the back considering most of it is covered by the bow.



It's then got velcro on the back to keep it together, cause i make a poser obi instead of a real one :D


Left to do for this is to embroider the dark blue by hand in the middle of the circle, because the machine couldn't do it. It ended up getting all caught up in the machine and almost completely broke it, so i don't recommend doing this. And I have to figure out a way to do the flower above the circle-- which i also have no idea how to do.

Anyways. Happy Cosplay! :D More very soon!

More pictures:




Next up! Hibiscuses for the masses.