The Life of a Cosplayer

Best Thing Ever (Days 725 - 726)

2012-01-28T16:00:00.000-08:00

Sitting at the computer, I glanced over to my sewing area, and I saw a roll of butcher paper. My mom's an art teacher and sometimes brings home butcher paper from her class, and I use it to make patterns. It's the same roll of butcher paper that's been in my sewing area for a couple of months, but for some reason, I got really excited that I had it. On another note, I am finally going to be

Avatar (Days 720 - 724)

2012-01-26T23:21:00.000-08:00

I recently started re-watching "Avatar" The Last Airbender" because when it was on Nickelodeon, I only got to watch most of Book I, and it's still really popular (especially with the next series coming out). So, of course, I want to cosplay from it, and, of course, I have no money to do so. I'd love to cosplay Ty Lee, she's just so fun, and since I'm taking ballet again, by May (shortly before

AoD 2012 Panel Times (Days 711 - 719)

2012-01-22T01:21:00.000-08:00

So the panels that my boyfriend and I will be running at Animation on Display were scheduled."Magikarp: A History" will be Saturday (February 18th) at 3pm and "Rattata: Top Percentage" will be Saturday (February 18th) at 4pm. Personally, I'm not thrilled with having to do two panels back-to-back, but my boyfriend's happy about it. The only perks that I can see is that we don't have to run back

The Usual (Days 701 - 710)

2012-01-12T19:24:00.000-08:00

Change of plans! (As usual.) I'm postponing all new cosplays until I get some other stuff taken care of . Nothing major, just stuff I've been meaning to do that I haven't yet. So I'm just going to fix up some of the cosplays that I already have, since currently, I have no complete cosplays. Formerly complete ones have been taken apart for updates and were never put back together, heh. I plan to

Happy 2012! (Days 684 - 700)

2012-01-02T15:21:00.000-08:00

Also happy 700th post! I don't really have any New Year's resolutions, cosplay-related or otherwise. I have goals, sure, but they're not specific to this year or anything. I updated my 2012 Convention & Cosplay List, but it's still incomplete and is always subject to change. I'd love to actually stick firmly to my list this year and not spend bucketloads of money. I think I did pretty good at

My New Hat (Days 680 - 683)

2011-12-18T00:14:00.000-08:00

This is my"Why did I stay up until 4:30am making this stupid hat?"face I made a new hat for myself. It has construction issues, but it's warm, and that really is all I care about. It has attached "sleeves" with pockets on the ends. The sleeves also double as a scarf. You can buy these pretty much anywhere right now, Target, Hot Topic, JC Penny's, for $25, which is exactly why I'm not selling

Quick, Easy, Simple Manicure

2011-12-14T02:11:00.000-08:00

When I cosplay, I like to keep my nails simple and unnoticeable, as they are in most anime and video games, but of course I want them to look nice too. Outside of cosplay, my nails are usually crazy colors and can get pretty damaged. So here's how to do a quick manicure that looks simple and pretty, even if your nails aren't in the best condition. Your nails have to be grown out a little bit for

BAC White Elephant/Yankee Swap

2011-12-14T01:19:00.000-08:00

So on Thursday or Friday, my friend sent me a text asking if I was going to the BAC White Elephant/Yankee Swap. I hadn't intended to go because I didn't want to spend any more money on cosplay things this year. However, she offered me a ride and asked me to be a part of a Christmas Gurren Lagann cosplay group, and I really wanted to go anyway. I went as Christmas Yoko, even though I had

Days 673 - 679

2011-12-14T00:27:00.001-08:00

Well school is over for the year (Winter Break), and Christmas is coming up fast! Hopefully over Winter Break, I can finish a cosplay or two. I'd like to finish Callie, but I'm pretty sure I'm broke until after Christmas. I went to another BAC gathering really last-minute, I'll have a separate write-up for that. Also went to a Christmas tree lighting ceremony, the same one I go to every year

Christmas Yoko (Days 661 - 672)

2011-12-07T02:32:00.001-08:00

photo by AnimeCraft Entertainment I went to Holiday Anime Faire this past Saturday, and you can read my full review of it here. There were about the same amount of cosplayers there are there are every year (not many), the cosplay contest went quickly and seemed to have fair judging. I cosplayed as a Christmas Version on Yoko (Gurren Lagann), the response to my costume was very positive, I had

Thanksgiving, Black Friday, etc. (Days 656 - 660)

2011-11-26T01:16:00.001-08:00

I hope everyone's Thanksgiving went well, and if it didn't, I hope you at least got some interesting stories out of it! I didn't participate in Black Friday shopping because there really wasn't anything that I was interested in fighting people for. I mean, there were good deals on stuff I liked, but not stuff I needed, and I still haven't figured out what I'm buying for anyone, so I couldn't shop

Yoko Wig Review

2011-11-21T00:34:00.001-08:00

It took a while, but here's the review of the wig that I use for Yoko. I've never written a review like this before, and I have no format to go by, so I hope this turns out well. I ordered "~Posh Red~ Tengan Toppa Gurren Lagann Yoko Cosplay Wig" from FashionGarden3000 on Ebay. Generally, I've heard to be wary of buying items with really long names or the word "cosplay" in the title, because

Fabric Folding (Days 654 & 655)

2011-11-20T20:27:00.001-08:00

The other day, I tried to sew a hat for the boutique that I'm supposed to be selling at, but my machine kept jamming and I just about threw it out the window, so I stopped. While I was sewing, my boyfriend was folding some of my fabric for me. He folded an entire bin of fleece, which is a lot, but I still had about four times as much left. After my boyfriend went home and I stopped sewing, I

Styling Yoko's Bangs (Day 653)

2011-11-19T04:29:00.001-08:00

I randomly had the urge to try and re-style the bangs of my Yoko wig today. I'm not sure if you could call this a tutorial or what. It is what it is, but I hope it's helpful in some way. The wig that I have is not heat-resistant, so using a straightener or curler to get the fluff and roundness into the bangs is out of the question. I used this method on another wig and it worked perfectly. It

Kin- Yoobi 2012 Venue (Days 650 - 652)

2011-11-17T23:59:00.001-08:00

So I haven't done cosplay stuff for the last few days either. I was going to make a small wig styling tutorial today, but never got around to it. Although, I do have good news! Ki-Yoobi Con has confirmed its date and venue for 2012! This is a huge improvement on the timetable from previous years, when sometimes the venue wasn't officially confirmed until the day before or the morning of. In

Days 648 & 649

2011-11-15T04:47:00.000-08:00

So I really haven't done much of anything since the gathering, but I wanted to catch up on blogging. I finally put away my Galvantula wig after it sat wrapped up in a mesh bag for months since I last used it I saw it almost every day and just left it there. I feel bad, I thought it was ruined, but after a gentle brushing, it looks better than ever! I plan to use that wig for my Ironette cosplay,

BAC @ Exploratorium (Day 647)

2011-11-14T15:51:00.000-08:00

I went to the Bay Area Conventions gathering at the Exploratorium in San Francisco with my boyfriend and two friends. The gathering started at 9:30am, but in our usual fashion, we slept in and didn't plan to leave until 9:30am. I had talked to the gathering organizer beforehand and let her know we were going to be late though. Also in our usual fashion, we didn't leave when we planned to. Luckily

Done Before Midnight! (Day 646)

2011-11-12T01:06:00.000-08:00

Today was pretty much exhausting. First I fixed Christmas Chi's ears. I'm surprisingly happy with the way they turned out too! That was pretty much the only easy part of today.I then planned out how much fake fur I was going to need. I decided on a width of 11/2 inches, and measured around the bottom of the skirt, the bottom of the capelet, and the neck of the capelet. At this point, I also

Progress (Day 645)

2011-11-11T02:12:00.000-08:00

I made a considerable amount of progress on Christmas Chi today. First, I finished turning the top into a shawl. I'm extremely happy with the way it turned out. As mentioned before, this outfit was originally a children's dress, which I stitch-ripped into two pieces. For the top, I removed the arms and opened the sides, leaving only the shoulders connected. I re-sewed the shoulders back on and

Christmas Chi! (Days 237 - 644)

2011-11-09T23:26:00.000-08:00

Hecka last-minute, but I finally figured out that I was for sure going to the BAC's Exploratorium gathering this Saturday, and I chose to cosplay a Christmas version of Chi from Chobits. I decided this less than a week from the gathering. Not including the wig, this cosplay has a budget of $5, and it's actually working out very nicely! So far, I've spent about $3.There is an official Christmas

JoAnn's Etiquette

2011-11-03T17:19:00.001-07:00

I was going to post this with my last post, the story of the horrible trip to JoAnn's, but the story ended up really long, so I decided to make a second post for this. Also, the story post was very rage-filled, and I needed to calm down to make sense out of this post.I'd like to start off by saying that these might not apply to every fabric store, or even every JoAnn's, but here's how things

Ridiculous JoAnn's Trip

2011-11-02T00:08:00.000-07:00

I had a pretty miserable time during my most recent trip to JoAnn's, mainly due to people not really knowing what they're doing.I went to JoAnn's for a quarter yard of brown fleece to finish a hat that someone requested. I selected my fabric, pulled the very full bolt off of the shelf, and grabbed a number from the cutting counter. At the time, there was one employee cutting fabric, and only two

Halloween (Days 633 - 636)

2011-11-02T00:03:00.001-07:00

Halloween felt very rushed, but I still had a lot of fun. I pretty much just did makeup and then played laser tag. Makeup took a lot longer than I thought it would, and laser tag only lasted fifteen minutes. Then I went home and watched TV.Pictures coming soon!

Halloween Preparation (Days 629 - 632)

2011-10-29T23:31:00.000-07:00

So I've practiced my Halloween makeup twice, and I still don't entirely know what I'm going to do for sure, but here's what I did so far.First time playing with Zombie makeup in a long time. This was sort of a half-practice for my boyfriend's Randall (Ugly Americans) cosplay also, as I have no idea how to properly mimic a missing nose. I have some ideas, but in this practice, I didn't use any

GZR Cosplayer of the Week (Days 623-628)

2011-10-26T03:32:00.000-07:00

Some time last week, I was interviewed for Game-Zone Recreation's Cosplayer of the Week, and it was uploaded this Wednesday.I've noticed that the more I see myself on video, the less I hate watching myself on video. I don't know if it's because I'm learning how to conduct myself on camera better or I'm just getting used to it, but either way, I'm definitely not complaining.GZR's Cosplayer of the