A little less, but more than it was :D Yuna from X

Well, as promised. Here's the update on final fantasy X :D Whilst I am watching DBZ. Forgive me, because it is 5am here, and I am very sleepy, and however unenthusiastic i may sound, i promise that that is just my exhaustion :D

The Bow

Mom just about killed me for the perfectionism that revolved this bow. It was made 3 times? Maybe four. The first time it was too pointy, the second time it was too floppy, the third time i don't really remember, but this is the fourth attempt.

Granted, this bow isn't actually perfected nor sewed together, because it's still awaiting embroidery. However, until then this bow will remain pinned together. Speaking of embroidery, i was thinking of using a pansy as the flower part inspiration

Something like this possibly? Less detailed and obviously smaller. For the leaves however, we're probably going to do most of it by hand. Placing the flowers with the embroidery sewing machine, and then connecting them with green thread with the normal sewing machine. I hope that makes sense. This is one example of an already embroidered obi, and i hope to turn mine into something like this one. No idea how to do the hibachi flower, or the circular pie pieces in the middle, or the faded petals... However, We'll try our hardest! And I think that it should work.

The Skirt

As you can see, the skirt's pleats have been ironed in. We're (me and mommy) having a hard time keeping them there. But we're going to wait till we get the embroidery into the skirt before we try drastically to force the suckers to stay in. 

Thinking of a couple different flowers for the embroidery on the skirt. Here is an example of what the flowers look like. As you can see, they're kind of stars. Thinking of using something like these, they're called Bauhinia. I'm also thinking of maybe using pointy Cherry blossoms.

I guess we'll see what happens, either way, i know it'll turn out amazing, especially considering these little details are going into it <3 I think this is one of the things I love the most about cosplay.

Things I have left to do:
Hibachi flower
Staff + Staff head (If you have a lazer saw, totally hit me up for a commish)
Fixing minor details on the sleeves that aren't really pictured here (ribbon, beads)

Embroidery obviously

Trying to get the pleats to stay

Um, uh, everything else :D

Until the finish, I'll keep ya'll posted. :D Happy Cosplay! 

Stud muffin.

Niki / Paine / AzureStarlight / Azure here, for the first time in far too long. xP

This is what I've been up to. I managed to figure out a pattern of sorts for my little capelet. While I'm sure Paine's capelet is actually one piece of fabric folded over, I've decided to go ahead and simply sew two pieces together, so that way the wrong side of the pleather won't show. Also, it should make it easier to wear.

So I cut some of the pleather so I could start on that when I have a chance, and decided to go ahead and start on all of my little "metal" studs for the bottom layer of the capelet. Here's the deal with those. I spoke to the creator of the Paine cosplay I found the most impressive on cosplay.com, and she let me in on a little secret. She simply cut inch by inch squares of craft foam, punched through them with brads, and spray-painted them silver. I couldn't even tell it wasn't metal, in all of the photos I looked through. The only problem I could see with hers was that some of the studs had a tendency to rotate, because she actually punched through the material of the capelet with the brads, and that was how she attached them. While I might go ahead and do that, I think I'm going to secure the studs further on the back side of the material so that they won't rotate. Micah's momma found the brads I want, by chance, so once I get those from her, I'll be ready to punch them through the foam and get to painting.  :3

Here are some photos I took while working on the studs.  :)

I think it looks like a miniature bookshelf all stacked like this.  :3

DOMINOOOOOO

My scissors are all jacked up from all the crazy art projects I've subjected them to... xP

The squares are all one inch by one inch. Some are a little off, just because the dimensions of the foam sheets unfortunately weren't as precise as they claimed to be.

What will probably come next in my series of cosplay things to do is to actually go ahead and sew up the capelet. I'm still in the process of losing some weight, so I want to wait to make my shorts and leggings, since those will also be made of pleather. But I think that the capelet shouldn't change much even if I lose some weight before Otakon. I can't decide if I would rather sew the seams to the bottom, stud-filled piece, then attach the studs, and THEN sew it to the top, or if I should just do all the sewing in one go and then attach all the little studs.

Things I still need to do (mostly once money permits):
-buy boots
-order contacts
-make shorts
-make leggings
-make suspenders (buy red pleather)
-make/put together belts
-make five million little decoration-y thingies
-pretend sword doesn't exist

I will give another update with photos soon!

Gettin da parts done :} Yuna X-2

I have done a lot with both costumes, and the help of my mother, and boyfriend. So much, that I have decided to post them in two separate posts. :D If you like this one, make sure that you subscribe to our blog so that you can see the others! :D

 Armbands

The armbands were made by using a thick stabilizer, and then sewing the cotton to it. They're then laced up with the same white "string" that I used on my top, because I haven't gotten around to buying black string yet <<;. Me and my wonderful mother have been so worried about the rest of the costume, that small details like these slipped. Besides that though, I like the way they turned out :D

Used a little machine to put the snappy things in, except we ran out of black snappy things, so we could only do one armband for the time being. Ordered some more off of Amazon though, so they should be coming momentarily, and then I will have a pair! :D

Z-Symbol

Boyfriend and AzureStarlight (which you can add her facebook page here.) make fun of me cause for the life of me, i can't spell, and Zanarchand is one of those words. So we're calling it the Z-symbol from now on. I've tried three ways of making it, hot glue, wood, and clay. 

First, AzureStarlight and Yuri (boyfriend), helped me to trace the hole in my top, to ensure that it was the right size.Then, after that, using an ipad. We stretched the Z-symbol pattern from the anime itself, and fit it to the newly cut out pattern. AzureStarlight then traced the pattern, so that the symbol and it were the same size. :D The light from the ipad, truly helped with this progress.

Option 1: The clay one was made using air-dry crayola clay. The problem with it was, the pattern that it was built on top of, was made of paper. The clay was a little bit moist, so when the paper and clay began drying together; the paper began to crinkle, and the clay began to crack. :{

Option 2: Making it out of hot glue. Boyfriend put layers upon layers of hot glue onto the symbol itself, and then we are alternating to melt it down and add hot glue to the spots it needs to. I feel like I like this option the best because it's three dimensional and it also is incredibly flexible, however it takes tons of time and patience so me and him tend to only look at it when there's nothing else to do.

Option 3: Mother than took things into her own hands. She cut out a piece of wood, from some of the scraps of my guns (guns ;~;-- still unfinished). I'll probably paint it and keep it in-case the hot glue one doesn't come out correctly and/or I don't get around to finishing it.

The Shirt

Thankfully, the shirt had a pattern. Thankfully meaning, the skirt from X is driving Momma bonkers because there is no pattern and she's the only one that can sew in a straight line. <<; Sorry Momma. So, we took the pattern that the shirt was made out of, and added a ribbed pattern to the bottom of it, to give it the texture that the shirt from X-2 has, and of course, cut out the eyelet.

Sounds simple, right? Ha. The problem with the material is it was incredibly stretchy, and I am incredibly skinny. Plus, the z-symbol had to go in the front, and if it were to be fragile at all, pulling this top over my head and back every time could cause the z-symbol to break :{. Ergo, we put in a zipper and some little snaps.

Also, picking lace was painstaking. We wanted stretch lace, which of course they don't sell at any of the fabric stores around here. Mommy, during all her breaks at work, looked for the lace and ordered a bunch of different kinds, and picking two was actually really hard. I wanted two that would match well with each other, and this also made mommy mad. However, I found two that I think are beautiful, and they ended up on the bottom of the top.

Things yet to do: Finish Z-symbol, add lace to the bottom of the un-made skirt that matches the top, and then of course figure out something to do about a bra. Just don't look at the frowny face.

The "Satchel" and Belt

The problem here was finding the material. We were looking for a suede that wasn't brown and wasn't white and wasn't orange. Which, is seemingly impossible to find. I was worried about ordering online, because you can never really tell what color fabric is online :{ We (Mom, Boyfriend and I) ended up finding a vinyl, that's the correct color in one of those scrap fabric bins. So we began to make the "Satchel" out of that.

Guess it's a good time to tell you that over the weekend i also graduated, ergo the graduation duck. Lol. :D Anyways. We stole a belt buckle from a  cheap walmart belt (and the belt was really ugly might I add), and we just have decorations to put on it. I layed them out in the next photo. The only thing I don't like is the color of the fringe, which I will be changing, as soon as I find something that looks better <<;

In Conclusion...

I decided not to show you any of the whole costume pictures of all the pieces put together until the end of this cosplay session, which is i guess in 76 days :{ Otakon is so close.

Quick list of changes i'm going to make:

• Different color strangles
• D-links and decorations on belt bag
• Snap on belt bag
• Black tie on arm bands (as well as two of them...)
• Edges of the bag :D
• Leather Cuff for wrist 
• White Shoe laces for boots (not pictured)
• And... My guns (;~;)

Beware of a post coming about Yuna from X, as well as progress on some of the other costumes from the group (AzureStarlight needs to post badly), and progress on my guns (;~;). Until then, Happy Cosplay! :D

Wigs for one, and wigs for all!

Today, I tried on like seventeen wigs seemingly. (actually it was only three and you'll see them all below. We got our Yuna X-2, Yuna X, Paine, and Rikku wig from a website called cosplayandwigs.com which i really recommend for group cosplayers because they gave my group a discount <3.

First-- we did our hair. I find that the easiest way to do under wig hair for long hair is to do two french braids, and plan on teaching all the cosplayers similarly.

So, let's start off with Yuna (because that's me!!!)

Two wigs, $30 each from that cosplay and wig shop that I mentioned previously! :D The one on the left is Yuna from X,  and the one on the right is Yuna from X-2, which I will be using for the group shots.

So Yuna A, and Yuna B. The one on the left almost feels natural on my head while the right does not. :{ It's not so unbelievely tight that it hurts obnoxiously though, last year i wore the giant hoops on my head which I think hurt more than any short brown wig can. Also in the picture on the right, you can see my hair line. Considering I have brown hair, this isn't the largest deal, but i can see it, which annoys me.

So, naturally me and Paine posed a little bit. I was thinking of maybe using some sort of temporary hair lightener on my hair line so that it does look more natural. I don't know though. Everyone else doesn't thinks it's a big deal.

Niki right here, is showing the admiration of her beautiful wig. So on to paine! This is her, just styling it mostly with her fingers to get the wig to perk up in the manner that it needed to. She'll be doing more styling, and posting her own posts describing this styling. So stay tuned! :D

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your long hair.

Oh wait, you're not Rapunzel! Dx Paine, gtfo. Because Rikku hasn't been able to get over to try on her wig, I did it for her to make sure that nothing was abnormal, etc, and to figure out how to properly connect this little pig tail that paine is sporting oh so beautifully.

The wig company that we bought the wigs from connected the hair for the excess pony tail to this giant clip thing. And at first, this made me scared cause I had no idea how I was going to connect this to Rikku's wig. (which is a normal short blonde thing).

The wig itself is also really thick, just like all the rest, which made the pony tail surprisingly easy to attach. we used the braids, and a little bit of the pony tail to cover up the clip.

Shuyin's wig is complicated. Matt wants it to look like this, but it doesn't at the moment. So his wig is going under construction, with beautiful artist Niki at his side. He will also post progress later. (I hope).

So here are the three wigs. We really need to get better at posing with each other <<;

Happy Cosplay! :D