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 

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

Much adieu about guns...

There are 110 days till otakon and my guns are still not done!

So, every weekend for a couple of weekends, I've spent slaving over theses guns. The main problem is, i keep making corrections <<;

So as I said previously, I didn't like the color gold on the forks. So I sanded all of them down, and got most of the polish off. I then, took a wet rag to remove any of the sawdust so that they would indeed be ready for a good painting.

I used this kind of spray paint, the rust-oleum metallic in gold. I was hoping to get a more metal looking sheen on them, and less of the christmasy, glittery, yucky color that they were previously

Spray painted them as they were done before...and i haven't taken a picture of them dry. Sorry. I also made the little encasing on the top of the gun, cut it with a scroll saw, and it's in the filing stage.

Re-sanded these to fit along the barrel of the gun. It was a pain in the ass and took some of yuri's patience, but as you can see, we got through it.

Then I repainted them as well. I also bought some screws to put into both these and the gold parts, when i finally get the whole picture going. Eheh. One question that I have is do you think that the guns, forks, grips, and any other pieces should be sprayed with a resin gloss? 

Thanks for your input and feel free to subscribe! Happy Cosplay :D.