Sailor Crafty

Hold A Hanami Sakura Cherry Blossom Party Right Here In The States!

2023-07-14T17:59:00.051-06:00

It's haru (spring) and you're stuck in America wishing you could be in Nihon (Japan) during hanami, taking in all the pink blossoms and trying all the sakura-themed snacks and drinks that pop up at every cafe in Tokyo. Well, you might be able to celebrate right here if you take a bite of these yummy treats, close your eyes, and imagine your senpai (upperclassmate) sitting across the picnic blanket from you!

All of these treats and products are ones I have tried and reviewed myself. I would never lead you astray! I am using affiliate links so I will get a little kickback from Amazon if you purchase from the links. That's your way of saying "Sailor Crafty sent me!" <3

Make Your Own Sakura Drinks!

First off, my personal favorite sakura treat comes in the form of this drink powder you can find on Amazon by the brand Angel Specialty Products. Now, this powder is a lot more versatile than you would think. The main thing you'll want to use it for is drinks, but it won't mix well into cold drinks very readily. You will want to either mix it with a spoon into hot milk or milk substitute, or use a blender to get it all mixed into a cold liquid. Then put some whipped cream and pink sprinkles on top. It is sweet and has a creamy, light fruity-floral taste that just screams "I just found a cheaper alternative to flying to a Japanese Starbucks and it's awesome!". I've also mixed it with vanilla pudding, vanilla ice cream to make a shake, AND into sugar cookie dough to make sakura themed cookies! It even turns the dough that signature dainty pink color! I'm telling you, there is no end to the sweet sakura-flavored fun you're going to have with this large bag of powder. It will last you quite a while so buy with confidence that your spring is going to rock!

Now, this isn't the only sakura drink powder available on Amazon, however, having tried a couple other brands, this one brings the sweetness and flavor and the others just pale in comparison.

Make Your Own Sakura Cookies!

As I mentioned before, it is more than possible to make your own sakura flavored cookies. Amazon sells this SUPER cute set of cookie cutters with press-in molds. It comes with 4 different designs and all of them are SO pretty!

I usually use a basic sugar cookie recipe to make myself sakura cookies. Any recipe that has dough that will hold its shape well will do. I like to add sakura powder to turn the dough pink and it will add a little flavor as well. If it's not enough color or flavor, you can add drops of cherry candy flavoring as well as normal red food coloring until it's that perfect pink. You can also make icing with these added ingredients to make sandwich cookies! Then I use these cutters and press in the molded shape through the top. It can get a little tedious to do a lot of them, so pace yourself accordingly. Bake and welcome to haru heaven!!

Eat Some Sakura Flavored Candy!

Sakura candy can be harder to find, but if you jump on it in late February-early March when it starts coming into season for the blossoms you should have more luck tracking it down. I love these squishy little sugar clouds of lightly sakura flavored mochi!

Now ideally you'll want to snag some sakura Pocky. It's a super rare and special flavor and will sell out fast if you do find it online. I can vouch that it is delicious! However, if you can't find any, strawberry Pocky is nice alternative that has that beautiful pink color that will match all your other fun pink treats!

Make Your Own Sakura Squishies!

This next product is versatile because it's made from silicone, so you can use it for baking OR squishie OR resin making! Don't bake with one after you've used it for crafting though...this is a two pack so I used one for baking and one for crafting. Problem solved!

I made a batch of sakura sandwich squishies and it was so much fun putting them together! Use these molds for that perfect shape. This product by Smooth-On is the perfect fit for making soft, spongy squishies at home!

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I put pink glitter in the molds before I poured the foam mixture in. I also mixed pink resin color into the foam (which may have made my foam a bit more bubbly than it's supposed to be). I had to throw a plastic shoebox lid on top of the mold right after pouring the foam because it rises FAST. Best to do a practice run with a smaller mold and watch videos on safety practices before attempting this. For the "cream" in the middle, I used a regular icing bag with a star tip and some DAP Kwik Seal Caulk.

Get Out The Cute Sakura Dishes!

I bought this little set of glass sakura dishes and let me tell you, they are gorgeous in person! They are petite and each one is different. Great for soy sauce or dips or smaller candies, and when your party is over, they make very cute trinket dishes for your jewelry or coins. Get multiple sets to get matching plates for tea parties or a wedding display!

Dress The Part!

All right, here's the part where I get to toot my own horn a bit. I own a small business called Vanna V. (www.vannav.co) selling jewelry and apparel designs with many of them being - you guessed it! - inspired by my love of all things Japanese! My jewelry (such as the ones featured in this photo) are handmade or hand assembled by yours truly! I try to only use high quality materials and I am a trained silversmith. All my apparel and sticker designs are fulfilled through Printful using my original brand. It would make my day if you, a fellow "Sakura Maniac", would go check it out just for a second and let me know what you think! I am always trying to create things that are surprising or new in some way. Forget trendy, this is where you will find Feral Fashion and Fun!

-Love, Vanna/Sailor Crafty

Obey Me! RAD Uniform Cosplay Guide Tutorial

2023-05-15T11:51:00.012-06:00

Hello, fellow denizen of the Devildom! I'm going to try my best to keep this guide updated as I find new information so make sure to check back here periodically to get the latest on how to dress up as a demon (or self-styled MC!) from the popular mobile game, Obey Me! One Master to Rule Them All! by NTT Solmare.

And if you want to follow along while I build this costume myself, come follow me on Instagram (@sailorcrafty26)! Here is my current photo of my Mammon cosplay (work in progress as of 8-24-23):

Section 1: Every Demon Is Different!

The FIRST Step to cosplaying the RAD (Royal Academy of Diavolo) Uniform is: choosing your character! If you look closely, each character that wears this uniform in the game wears it COMPLETELY DIFFERENTLY! There are a few elements that are common between them, but some of those elements change between characters and some are a guessing game because you can't fully SEE those elements! Make sure to look VERY closely at the character to be sure you are getting it right!

Common Elements

Here are some of the details that all the RAD uniforms share.

Pants & Shoes

All the main demons as well as Solomon, Barbatos and Lord Diavolo have the exact same pants. You'll want to shoot for a dark gray with a red ribbon or bias tape, maybe 1-1.5" wide sewn into the side leg seam from top to bottom. Finish it off with a white, spaced out topstitch near the edges of the ribbon.

As luck would have it, they all share the same shoes which appear to be just a formal black or dark gray shoe with a slight heel.

Collar, Capelet, Badge and Tassel

Now this distinctive asymmetrical collar is surely the funkiest, most standout detail on the RAD jacket. It's half pointed collar, half sweeping sailor collar with 4 thin gold lines! Luckily for the fandom, the Obey Me! team was kind enough to submit a photo of the back of the jacket to help us understand just what the... devil is going on here. In the back, the sailor collar slants to the left and folds over the pointed collar.

Thank you SO MUCH, NTT Solmare!

The shoulder capelet is also demystified a little more through this illustration. It covers only the right shoulder. All the characters wear it the same way, and they all wear the RAD badge and tassel, and the little gold triangle clip and pocket topper. The only difference in these details would be that Diavolo's striped badge ribbon is striped blue and not red.

Sleeves

Sorry for potato quality. I'll keep working on it.

The sleeves are honestly really cool BUT might be a pain to actually make. They are quilted in a uniform diamond pattern (or just think of it as a square tilted 45 degrees). I was thinking about finding a quilted velvet to save time, but ultimately I failed to find a good match for the main dark gray jacket color. I would suggest using a thin batting and quilting it yourself using some kind of guide doing one set of lines and then crisscrossing it with the other set. At all junctions of the corners you will see a little teardrop shaped gold bead. Here are some links to similar finds on Amazon that come in large packs.

This is the one I actually used for a custom Mammon bjd I've been working on :D They are more spike shaped but I figure it's close enough.

Here's a pic of the doll as described above if you were curious~

You probably weren't, but hey, I'm proud of him so far XD

Here is another option although the quantity is *rather high* and also includes silver beads.

Elements That Differ Between Demons

Underlayers: Shirt, Tie, Accessories, Nail Color

Luci - black gloves, black turtleneck with alternating black and red buttons

Mammon - teal or green collared shirt unbuttoned at the top, loose yellow tie, rings on several fingers, white nail polish

Levi - teal or green collared shirt unbuttoned at the top, dark blue violet tie, teal nail polish

Satan - teal collared shirt fully buttoned, yellow bowtie, green nails

Asmo - teal collared shirt fully buttoned, pink ribbon tie, green and pink alternated nails

Beel - teal collared shirt unbuttoned at the top with orange tank underneath, orange nails

Belphie - teal collared shirt fully buttoned, medium blue tie, teal nails, white belt on pants

Lord Diavolo - black collared shirt fully buttoned, white tie with pin

Barbatos -

Solomon -

Length and Personal Styling of Jacket

All the demons have a peacoat style jacket with a twin line of round gold buttons down the front, however, they have different amounts of buttons based on length.

Lucifer - calf length; fully buttoned; 10 buttons

Mammon - He is actually MISSING the left side of the collar?!, right at the butt crease; open and disheveled; assuming 8 buttons based on short length

Leviathan - midway to knee; open; assuming 8-10 buttons

Satan - right at the butt crease; fully buttoned except for bottom left one; 10 buttons

Asmodeus - midway to knee; fully buttoned (except maybe one on the bottom); 10 buttons

Beelzebub - right at the butt crease; open; assuming 10 buttons

Belphegor - waist length (the shortest); two buttons done, two open; 8 buttons

Solomon - almost to knee; fully buttoned; 12 buttons

Barbatos - tailcoat style with white cummerbund at waist; fully buttoned (his is especially different so look carefully); assuming 6 buttons

Lord Diavolo - trenchcoat length; fully buttoned, jacket is deep crimson to differentiate based on his status; 12 buttons

Length of Cape

All the demons have a swept back cape over their left shoulders which are mostly tucked up into the right shoulder capelet as shown in the "back of costume" image above. However, Satan wears his hanging straight down, Lord Diavolo has his hanging longer than the others and is black and red (all the others are fully red), and Solomon's looks a bit more flowy than the demons'.

Slant of Black Sleeve Stripe

Ok this particular detail baffles me and could be a complete fluke, but the slant of the little black stripe on the jackets is NOT the same for every demon.

Slanting up towards the outside - Lucifer, Satan, Asmo, Diavolo, Solomon

Slanting up towards the inside - Mammon, Levi, Belphie, Barbatos

Rolled up sleeves and hiding it so anything goes - Beel

Belt or No Belt?

Belt and wearing it properly - Lucifer, Solomon, Diavolo, Satan, Asmo (ties it differently)

Belt and leaving it open - Mammon, Levi, Beel

No belt - Belphie and Barbatos

Section 2: Where Can I Buy An Obey Me! RAD Uniform Cosplay Costume?

Here are some links to the ones FMAnime makes. They have a few that they haven't gotten sample photos for yet, but the materials will probably be the same for the ones you can see so far.

For the underlayers, each demon wears their own favorite colors and usually a t-shirt or a collared shirt with some kind of tie. You can find very cheap "closet cosplay" pieces for these on Mercari if you don't mind wearing pre-owned stuff! I love Mercari because it is all US based and has been very trustworthy in my experience 9 times out of 10. Mercari is for US customers so if you're from another country you may want to look into secondhand websites that are local to you.

Section 3: What Patterns Should I Use To Make My Own Obey Me! RAD Uniform Cosplay Costume?

Here are some patterns that I found that you may be able to alter in order to make your very own RAD outfit!

This is the one I'm planning to use as it has really nice tailoring and some of the same seam lines as a RAD jacket.

Here is another Simplicity one that you could alter and includes the belt:

This one is great with parallel buttons and even a pants pattern! Made for men's sizes.

This one is more robelike but is another possibility:

Section 4: Accessories

Once I make my jacket, I plan on selling Etsy digital patterns for the smaller details like the cape, weird collar layers and accessories. Look forward to it!

One of the accessories you will want to get is the beautiful RAD badge. You have a couple options here.

1: Buy a 3D printed RAD badge.

There is a seller who makes a few different Obey Me! items with their 3D printer on Etsy named 2makidesigns (@2makidesigns on Instagram). Here is their RAD Badge you can buy. They have lots more incredible items like horns, tails, Asmo's centipede, and Mammon's Goldie card on their website!

2: 3D print a RAD badge yourself.

Render of the Obey Me! RAD badge by turret on Printables.com

I found a free RAD badge stl file on this website. It saved me hours of modeling work!! You will need to set up a free account on the Prusa Printables page but it's soooo worth it. Prusa is the industry leader in FDM style 3D printing.

For the ribbon you can either find a striped ribbon or layer red and white ribbons on top of each other for the same effect.

Tassle

As for the gold drapery tassle, I found a pretty good one at Joann fabric that includes one large tassle and a good length of twisted rope with it. If you want to go full accuracy, you will need a tassle on the front and the back of the costume. I plan on just putting the one on the front, then wrapping the rope around the shoulder and it should be close enough.

Brass Accents

There is a small gold triangle on the right sailor collar and a gold rectangle with attached black and red ribbon detail on the right breast. I used some brass sheet I had on hand (I have a small jewelry business) but you can really use any stiff material and attach it via glued-on pin, or 3D print them if you're savvy with that kind of thing.

Section 5: Obey Me! Wigs

If you are on a tight budget, Mercari is an incredible resource for affordable cosplay wigs. Keep in mind that they will likely be used wigs so if you don't mind washing and styling them yourself, it's an awesome way to buy a wig for a great deal! Mercari is for US customers so if you're from another country you may want to look into secondhand websites that are local to you.

Section 6: Notable Obey Me! Cosplayers To Follow

If you have Instagram, there are many wonderful cosplays from the Devildom that you should check out for inspiration! Here are a few of my favorites!

This one cosplays Asmo, Mammon, Barbatos and more!

@r_d_cosplay or Ryoko Divinity Cosplay

This cosplayer is the CUTEST MC Sheep!

@magicalsailormew or Magical Sailor Mew

How To Make A Sailor Moon Mid Transformation Cosplay

2018-05-14T16:57:00.001-06:00

For anyone who knows me, I have a penchant for being...different, haha. You will find lots of cosplayers dressed up as Sailor Moon, but I had never seen anyone try to do this particular outfit (or really, lack of outfit) from the series! I put on my brave boots and dreamed up a way to do it. The response was wonderful! People totally got the joke!

This was me making sure my makeup matched my fabric. So grateful that it did!! I used a Ben Nye powder with a wet brush, then added darker details with eyeliner and mascara.

I bought a pink Morphsuit, also known as "zentai suit" or full body suit. I cut the face out of it because I wanted to be able to see and interact better. The suit itself was very comfortable and breathable, if a little loose in awkward places because one size fits several sizes of people and I was too lazy to custom fit my own. I wore skin colored underthings which were invisible underneath.

I will haunt your dreams XD

I wanted to create a brooch compact that lights up just like Sailor Moon's in the show so I rigged a little foam one with a magnet and sewed a metal plate to my suit. Easy to remove for washing (my number one priority in costuming! Always be able to wash things!!)

Sanded the backing off some clear jewels so I could try and shine light through.

Used some foam with glitter foam accents to make a pretty compact!

Underneath is space for my glowy bits!

I used some cheap light up fiber optic hair clips to add dat glow.

This is for the odangos or hair buns. I had some pink fleece that matched my Morphsuit. I used a tennis ball for draping a perfect sphere.

Excess fleece removed.

Sewn up, turned inside out and stuffed.

Making the long ponytails. I stuffed some fleece sleeves and added curly wire to the bottom and the sides of my face for her signature curls. I added stuffed bangs to the forehead as well.

I also sewed some sparkly pink ribbons onto the suit around my body, arms and legs. For a fun prop I used a basic ribbon dancer from Amazon! I felt so magical, endlessly stuck in transformation mode!!

How I Made An 8 Foot Tall Lugia Pokemon Cosplay

2018-05-14T16:21:00.002-06:00

When creating a large creature, you want to find materials that are both lightweight and sturdy. I was able to buy a very large roll of something called Astrofoam from a local packaging manufacturer and drove it home in my SUV. It is about half an inch thick and is made up of closed cell bubbles of flexible plastic. HOT GLUE is the perfect adhesive to make the foam melt and stick to itself super well! This foam is very lightweight and was able to hold up with a lot of heavy fleece fabric glued onto it. Here was my big con debut at GEEX 2011!

Photo taken during our skit by Salt Lake Tribune!

I'll try to explain the process bit by bit to give you ideas on how to make your own amazing monster!

First, I wanted to get the scale of the head looking right so I made some paper mockups.

I used a drawing and some proportion math to figure out what the real life size would be. He turned out about 8 feet tall!

The foam head neck and jaw pieces. The foam has a bubbly texture which is fine because fleece is thick and will look smooth over the top.

Here are the wings, foam pieces with quilt batting in the joints for movement. I also lightened the weight by cutting some bits out of the hand. There is black elastic glued on to put arms through.

The eye turned out really cool and is just a triangle of FunFoam with a popped-out lens from sunglasses and a little white paper highlight. Over the top I used some clear plastic from some ornament packaging for shine!

The eye spike is more foam with blue stretch fabric glued over.

These will be the thigh pieces. The triangular cutouts are called darts and will give the legs a more rounded appearance.

These are the back spikes. Just foam rectangles with fabric sleeves.

This is the body cage. I went through a trial and error process of creating large strips and starting with the neck and tail openings. I connected those together with two long strips, then kept adding strips for shape and stability. I filled in the open spots with metal window mesh which held up pretty well when stored carefully.

This was a wire handle I made for the wearer to be able to flap the crazy long wings! I glued some vinyl over it to secure it to the wing and wrapped the handle in soft fabric for comfort.

Here is the wing after being covered in white fleece.

Bottom jaw being wrapped in fleece.

Sculpted his bottom fangs from Fimo and used clear nail polish for shine after baking.

Made a cute little stuffed tongue and glued the bottom jaw all together.

He looks so happy to be coming together!! I created a hinge with some pieces of plastic from a clothes hanger and then rigged a wire down to a headband with a chin strap. The wearer could actually move the mouth a bit!!

Sorry for sideways pic. These are the thighs after being covered with fleece.

This part was tricky. Draping the main body with fleece. You have to decide where your seams will end up.

This is his blue belly folded in half. Used a cheap blue satin.

Almost done!!

Tail and cat for scale. Just two flat pieces but I added some cross pieces on the back of it to keep the shape open.

Draping the tail in fleece. You have your fabric wrong side out and just pin it and cut off the excess, sew the edges together and turn it inside out and it looks amazing!

The good ship Lugia!

Here are some fun convention photos we took of him! The kids really enjoyed getting photos and hugs with the Beast of the Sea! We had two different iterations of the neck and tail pieces to try different things out. Cosplay is an ever evolving art and you adjust things to be more comfortable or to hold up better :)

Oh yeah, we made a Charmander too! I have a post about him!

Taken at GEEX 2011 by Salt Lake Tribune

Sailor Moon Custom Charm Cookies Made by Romi's Cakes!

2018-04-27T11:27:00.003-06:00

Yesterday was my birthday and I have been on a Sailor Moon kick lately (read: for the last like...24 years really but who's counting?). There was a local baker who I have been following for a couple years called Romi's Cakes in the Utah County area who makes the most AMAZING cakes, cupcakes, chocolate roses, and more. So when it came to what I wanted for my birthday, I knew she was the one I wanted to commission for something really special and unique!

I bought the set of Sailor Moon Charm Patisserie Cookie Charms online for around $30. They look absolutely SCRUMPTIOUS. They make me hungry every time I look at them. They're small and gorgeously colored with a pastel pallette, gold highlights for the sailor symbols, and tiny details on the brooches and cat charm. I always thought these would be totally sublime if someone could bring them to life.

My husband and I own a 3D printing business and we make a lot of custom shaped cookie cutters out of plastic. I created the cutters and took them to Romi to see if she could make my dreams of eating these charms come true!

Sailor Moon Patisserie Cookie Charm Set.

These are made of plastic with lobster clasps stuck in them.

AND HERE ARE THE EDIBLE COOKIES. YOU CAN BARELY TELL THEM APART FROM THE CHARMS!!!

Romi freakin' DELIVERED. Just look at this perfection. I was beaming all the way home after picking them up. AND they taste as good as they look. Of course I took tons of photos before letting my family tear into them...I had to immortalize this glorious achievement for all Mooniekind.

Here are the cute brooches/compacts from the 1st season of the anime <3

This one is my FAVE. Luna and Artemis making a heart with their tails??? ADORBS. And the hardest details to pull off but SHE DID IT.

Here we have the four sailor guardian bows and symbols: Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Venus. She even used gold shiny icing to copy the gold on the charms <3 And I have no idea how much time it took to get the colors so amazingly spot on.

In short...This was the best birthday present of ALL TIME. I hope you enjoyed looking as much as I enjoyed eating...they were too pretty to eat...but I am a sugarholic with no shame.

PLEASE follow ROMI'S CAKES for your artistic inspiration!!!

How to Make Money Buying and Selling Sailor Moon Merchandise

2018-03-24T17:41:00.001-06:00

I'm gonna tell you some of my fave ways to snag Sailor Moon goodies! These photos were all taken by me from my collection which grows and shrinks regularly. Let me know if you have questions about any of the items and I'll try and point you in the right direction to find them!

I have been a Sailor Moon fan since I was about 8. I know the merchandise market like the back of my hand and have been buying and selling collectibles since I started college. The show has had several surges in popularity, finally exploding as if it were brand new in the past 5 years. There are cafes and exhibits all over Japan and now a shop that sells nothing but Sailor Moon items! eBay is awash with hundreds of pages of merch both vintage and new. I've found a few ways to find great stuff and wanted to pass along the knowledge!

Facebook Buying and Selling Groups

Not all groups are created equal. One group I was in seems to be having consistent problems with its members so I don't sell in there anymore. Sometimes you'll post in a group and no one will respond. Pay attention to the number of members and the quality of posts before joining. I found a REALLY amazing group here after trying out several:

Sailor Moon Anime Buy Sell Trade

I joined it, gave it a chance, and can't believe how awesome the members all are. They are trustworthy and a joy to work with. It is a vibrant thriving page full of people who care for Sailor Moon and their fellow fans. This is a place where often you can find what you are looking for, sometimes brand new, for excellent prices that you wouldn't find anywhere else. It's a treasure trove.

eBay

Ebay Sailor Moon Search

I use eBay a TON but it's an especially great place to find what are called "lots". They are groupings of merchandise that people are hoping to sell quickly. I price out the individual items in a lot and if the items are cheaper than they would be alone, I buy it up.

Another great way to find stuff for cheap on eBay is to find listings that are misspelled or use less descriptive words for their items. They are items that people will have a harder time finding so you have less competition. It takes time to find them but they are worth searching for. I do a broad search like "sailor moon" and will see listings that say stuff vaguely like "sailor moon item" but the photo is something I have been searching for for months. If the photos look legit and the description and feedback seem trustworthy, give it a shot!

There are sometimes items up for "best offer" where you can put in your own price to see how things go. I always low-ball these to see if I can get a better price and more often than not I succeed! You have 3 chances to negotiate price so you might as well see how good of a deal you can get!

Mandarake

Mandarake Sailor Moon Search

This is a new/used goods shop in Japan that ships out from several physical locations or "shops" so you need to group your order accordingly. Each item will say which shop it is from. Shipping is usually around $9-12 USD (for me, in Utah, USA) which is reasonable especially for the item prices they charge. I have found a lot of rare stationery (like SunStar) and bags on there that would usually get snapped up on eBay for ridiculous prices. Sometimes they have other rare things like the "Excellent Dolls" so it's just good to search on there regularly. I also buy a lot of stickers for super cheap that I can put on my nails without feeling badly about what I paid for it.

Other Great Sites to Buy Sailor Moon Stuff for Cheap - Look for periodic sales!

Hot Topic
BoxLunch
Toys R Us
Barnes and Noble
Jbox.com
gamestop

This is known as the "cat tax" on imgur ;)

How to turn Volks Sailor Moon Dollfie Dream's Super "S" Outfit Into Her "SuperS" Outfit

2018-03-15T16:17:00.001-06:00

First of all, CONGRATS to all of you who were able to snag the official Super Sailor Moon outfit from Volks!! It sold out in SECONDS in the online Japan sale and I was one of the few able to somehow grab it before it was gone!

Super Sailor Moon from SuperS season with Gashapon rod and diecast Crisis Compact keychain charms

The Super Sailor Moon outfit in the anime has two versions. The first version from the third season, Sailor Moon S, has a "hearts" theme, where she has two compacts (double the sparkly prettiness!) and the Spiral Heart Moon Rod with which she performs the "Rainbow Moon Heartache" attack.

In the fourth season, SuperS, everything stays the same except for the compacts, which are now winged and pink, and the wand, which is the Kaleido Moon Scope. She performs the "Moon Gorgeous Meditation" attack.

I wanted to see what items you could buy that would help you transform your Dollfie Dream that wouldn't cost too much as the doll hobby can get very expensive very fast.

Kaleido Moon Scope

Lol the Proplica would be too big for her of course! But great for me!

For the wand, I found that the gashapon Kaleido Moon Scope fits very nicely for her! It is gorgeously detailed and proportionate. I don't know whether the Miniaturely Tablet Rod could work as well, but that one is distorted in proportions. You can find the plastic gashapon rod on eBay for around 16-23 dollars, however I highly recommend shopping around as that is an elevated price. You might be able to find one through a Facebook group like THIS one (it's been my fave out of the ones I've tried) or Mandarake which I highly recommend for shopping anything Sailor Moon for fantastic prices.

Crisis Compacts

The compacts that the Dollfie Dream outfit comes with have convenient little clips on the back to attach them to her outfit. Whatever SuperS compacts you find to fit her will need to have some modification done to make sure they stay on.

When I was first looking for a solution, I noticed that the compact on my Super Sailor Moon Twinkle Dolly was pretty much a perfect fit. The downside would be destroying the Twinkle Dolly to get the compact off of it which would be sad. And you would need two of them! Perhaps two bootlegs would work...

You can just hear the little Sailor Moon pleading "please stahp"

However, someone informed me that the "Little Charms" series was mostly based on the sizes of the Twinkle Dollies and might be a better way to go so you don't have to be destructive. I haven't tried this method yet but I plan to if I find a good price.

Lastly, the metal diecast charms can also work even if they are slightly big and also heavy. I was able to find two for VERY cheap on ebay. The reason why is because they were two different colors and a bit scuffed up. I haven't attached them to her outfit yet but I think I can glue a paper clip to the back of them so they can clip on.

I hope this helps you find a way to upgrade your cute dolly! Good luck out there!

How I Made a Daenerys Targaryen Snow Coat Cosplay Costume For A Barbie Doll - Game of Thrones

2018-02-21T15:42:00.000-07:00

My friend wanted to be Drogon for Halloween and commissioned me to make a Daenerys fur coat for the Barbie he found with silver hair - perfect for the project!

Here is an awesome place where we found reference images for this outfit.

http://www.makinggameofthrones.com/production-diary/embrace-the-north-with-this-collection-of-props-and-costumes-from-beyond-the-wall

I happened to have this super silky minky type fur fabric lying around.

I drafted a little paper pattern for tiny Miss Stormborn.

Then I copied it to muslin and tried it out.

NAKEY BARBIEEEEEE

It looks big, but we can easily adjust seams smaller later.

There is a distinctive zigzag pattern as far as I can tell on the original outfit, so I used some thick black thread and starting adding zigzag stitching in close lines down the fabric. I spaced them a little farther towards the bottom.

I was really excited about how it was looking!

We have a 3D printer so we printed a very tiny 3 headed dragon brooch for the Mother of Dragons! I painted it silver with Rub n Buff. I also had a chain lying around. My friend did a great job braiding the hair of his Queen.

Last I added cozy little sleeves.

VOILA! We have the famous queen ready to fly!!!

And finally: soft little felt booties for the little lady <3

Making A Sick Dragon Foam Armor Cosplay Costume - Final Fantasy XIII Lightning Returns Dragoon Garb

2018-02-15T16:21:00.000-07:00

Updated 12/18/2019

This costume was made over the course of about two years. I have little kids and don't get a lot of time to myself! But the long wait was worth it to me as I could take my time with each piece and not get freaked out by deadlines.

Photographer for this shoot was the incredible Alyssa Tsuchiya !

Lance prop made by the married cosplay power couple Crepuscular Cosplay. They have MAD skills in wigs, cosplay and props!

Off an my most amazing adventure! This is my first ever armor build. I'm so happy with it and can't wait to make more! You feel so amazing wearing it...it just changes your mindset so completely. No longer timid, I'm ready to kick some butt!

Reference Images

Modifications I made to the design:

-I decided to cover my legs fully. Stay warmer, easier to manage, easy to attach stuff to.

-Used fingerless gloves to have access to phone and whatever else at the convention

-My back isn't laced up at all, just solid purple

-Decided not to do the silver knuckle pieces as of now

-I didn't weather the cape but plan to do so later to give it more realism

One of the few back shots to show the cape and other details

I tried to stay true to all the rest of the details in the costume so I would feel like I was the real deal!

Base Layers

I really like having as much of the costume WASHABLE as possible. Here is what is going on under the armor.

-something called a "dickey" in black from ebay for like $3 that fakes having a turtleneck on. Very similar to this one.

- a black tank top that was thin. As little bulk and heat as possible. Bought it for $1 at a thrift store

- a corded sweater from ebay for $10 for the purple underlayer. I cut away the bottom half of the sleeves and the sides of the torso. The cool part was that those pieces were then big enough to be used on the sides of my thighs.

I cut out the sides and hand sewed the edges.

- for the legs I used some really soft, buttery black leggings from Amazon for about $13 and added attachment points with velcro and purse magnets for the leg armor pieces.

- thrift store knee high boots in good shape for around $12

Vinyl Side Armor Dragon Scales

I made a paper template of an individual scale and cut a bunch of scales out of fake leather. Then I painted the edges a lavender purple with a small brush. I added some Jiffy Rivets to both hold them together and add detail. I made a fabric panel and sewed the scales onto it.

Dickey with tank top and velcro under the armpits

Elastic bands keep it form-fitting and velcro keeps it from slipping down

Dragon Medallion Coins on Belt

This part was time consuming but well worth the detail I got out of it! There are a bunch of little "coins" all over her belts. I sculpted each type out of Permoplast clay, created a silicone mold with Smooth-On Oomoo and then cast a big pile of them out of lightweight Smooth-On white fast curing liquid plastic. I got really good at estimating the amount of plastic I needed by the end of the run.

Clay sculpts. They are a bit rough but I wanted them to look like ancient money anyway.

Foam core mold

Silicone casting

After casting the plastic many many times over the course of a week, then I sprayed it with Valspar metallic and they looked like aluminum! It was the best silver paint I've worked with yet!

Gotta grubby them up a little bit to look more real! Dabbed some brownish acrylic in there and wiped it back off. This is called weathering.

Pile of weathered medallions!

Timejump to when they were finally glued onto the belts months and months later.

Breastplate

First I made a template using Kamui Cosplay's method of wrapping yourself with plastic wrap, then duct tape, then drawing on the duct tape. It's actually trickier than she makes it look!

Then you flatten it out and trace it to pattern paper, and then to foam. I used 1/4 inch cross-linked EVA foam from Foam Factory.

This is the flattened shape, then I used contact cement to glue the darts together, and then a heat gun to shape the breastplate to closely fit my body.

Next I started on the dragon detail. The foam I used on the breastplate is a little lower density than normal Funfoam and the dremel beat it up a lot (I'm still new to using it). So I tried it again on red Funfoam and it looks a lot better than my first attempt.

I made a paper template, traced it onto the foam, cut it out with a craft knife, then drew where I wanted the bevel to be. Then I rough cut the bevel with my craft knife and dremeled it smoother.

Rough cut

After dremeling. Starting to get smoother!

Making a template for more details

Aw yeah, starting to look more like a thing!

Glued down the details. Made the collar. Used DAP Kwik Seal to smooth and fill edges and blemishes.

Plasti-dipped with 3-4 layers. People recommend you use darker colors like black or gray because it helps the paint colors be more vibrant but this is what I had in the garage *shrug*

Base layers being painted on. After this I weathered it by taking watered down black acrylic paint, saying a little prayer, and wiping it all over my beautiful paint job to fill the valleys with a bit of darkness. Then you wipe what you can off and it looks like real metal. It's magical! I also finish my pieces with clear gloss spray to give it a little shine and protect the paint.

This is the process I used for pretty much the entire rest of the costume. It was very time consuming and sometimes I didn't get the color matching quite right, but overall it looks ok.

Shh, did you hear that? It sounds like a big blonde idiot-in-law to me...

Abdomen "Bahamut" Scales

For these I used the thin Funfoam you can find at the craft store. I cut out the scales, shaped them a little with folding and curling, and used the wrong end of a paintbrush to push in lines so they would look more like dragon scales. Then I glued on the edge detail.

They look pretty awesome stacked up like the final product!

Then I primed them by spraying gray Plasti-Dip. Then I rubbed in Silver Rubn Buff. It got goopy in some spots and wouldn't smooth out. Maybe I needed to warm it up first. Added purple acrylic paint with paintbrush.

Next was weathering. In the next few photos you can REALLY tell the different between just paint and adding the shadows/texture!

Final product! I sewed them to a fabric panel that attaches to the bottom of my breastplate.

Codpiece, Butt Cover, Thigh Guards

Gotta guard those lady parts! Here are a few progress photos with the same process described above.

And so on and so forth for the million other armor pieces that were in this outfit haha!

Belt Buckle

This is just 3 layers of foam - 1/4" lower density EVA, 1/8" Funfoam, and 1/4" Funfoam on top and googly eyes for the "rivets".

Base paint colors. Took me about 3 tries to get the colors looking right!

Weathering. My black acrylic paint was not watered down enough and I was afraid I had ruined the piece! It looks like a mess...

Then I discovered you can take 220 sandpaper and take the color back a notch wherever you want to. I love the way the lighter edges make everything pop!

Fastenings

I used a lot of different types of fasteners on this. Lots of velcro and lots of purse clasp magnets. You can get them in bulk from Amazon. The spiked arm guards use bar and clip type clasps, kind of like a hook and eye but flatter.

Calm serenity <3

I am a Knight of Etro, sworn to protect the souls of humanity!

You'd better hope I don't swing this in your direction!

One fun thing that happened while I was at Anime Banzai 2019 in Layton, Utah --- I won the Friday Hall Cosplay Competition!!! It was such a validating moment when I was presented with a ribbon. I had no idea I was being considered for any kind of prize!

Anyway, thank you SO MUCH for reading this! I really hope it helps somebody with ideas on how to make some epic armor! If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask!

Come follow me on Instagram to see my latest dabblings!

Long day. A warrior needs time to reflect and renew.

Fun Patriotic July 4th USA Things To Make With Quilt Fabric

2017-07-06T17:00:00.001-06:00

I have the coolest neighbors here in my Utah town. A little while after I moved in to my current house, an amazing fabric designer, Samantha Walker, gave me some pieces of her fabric after she heard that I like to sew. She designs through a company called Riley Blake Designs, and her stuff is just INSANELY cute. Just look at some of these collections she has done:

One of the many cool pieces from her Parade on Main collection.

She has a cowboy themed collection.

Fabric with dresses on it! How META is that?!

Adorable Glampers setting down for a night of glamping.

If you don't see these for sale on the Riley Blake site, just do a search on Google for her name and what's on the fabric. The designs are sold on many quilting websites and physical stores, not just Riley Blake.

I hope I've convinced you that she is just AMAZING. So when she gave me a pile of fabric from her Parade on Main collection based on fireworks, rockets and patriotic festivities, I fervently promised to make some unique items from them and blog about them to help promote her like crazy because she deserves to be known.

But you know, I kind of...had just had a baby. On top of that, I also had a toddler. So life dragged me under, and for two years I was heavily in the trenches of motherhood. It completely stifled me artistically. And mentally. But we won't go there. Because THIS is a long delayed triumph -- I've actually created something that I can finally show to the world.

I call it Sammy the Eagle! Because Uncle Sam + Samantha Walker, that's why!

It's...different, it didn't quite go as I planned, but if it even inspires ONE PERSON to go out there, buy some of Samantha's fabric and whip out the most adorable BBQ apron the world has ever seen, then my shoddy work here is fulfilled!

I meant it to be a little costume type thing that my kid could wear around July 4th to cute out the neighbors as they try not to burn down the mountain while shooting Whopping Whistlers and all those other crazily named doohickeys. He didn't really care for it, but was gracious enough to allow me a couple photos to show the scale and versatility of the outfit.

It's not perfect, but HE is, so it works.

I have a couple more projects in the works. This particular one only used the striped and dotted fabrics that are meant to complement the COOL stuff, like these designs:

So if you missed a chance to make something fun for July 4th this year, get an early start for next year! Make some gifts, some teddy bears, some cute dresses and quilts!

How To Make a Bojack Horseman Horse and Princess Carolyn Cat Cosplay Costume

2016-11-07T21:43:00.003-07:00

For Halloween this year I got inspired by the show Bojack Horseman on Netflix. It has human characters and characters that have animal heads. I think they added the animals just so they could make hilarious animal jokes. My favorite is Princess Carolyn, the hard working talent agent with the head of a Persian cat. She is also crazy bright pink. She does things like bat at a toy mouse while she's on the phone, scratch her scratching post, and land on her feet after flying out of a taxi.

She often has a stern look on her face while as she constantly has to call out Bojack on his horsesh*t.

When I took a look at Carolyn I realized that this costume would be super simple to do. I just happened to have a bright pink Morphsuit from a previous costume that I now considered to be retired now that I have gotten lots of pics in it:

Remember Transforming Sailor Moon? Those were some crazy times.

I also had leftover fleece fabric from making Sailor Moon's hair for that costume -- JUST enough to cover a mascot head! I grabbed some pieces of AstroFoam and got cranking on her head. I just made a foam cage and did basic draping over it to make it pink, then added details with pipe cleaners and fabric scraps. SO easy and can be done with any type of flexible material, probably even cardboard. I see out of the mouth which is black chiffon type fabric and two little nostril holes I cut under the nose to be as subtle as possible. I made this head to function like a bobblehead, with my neck exposed so I would look more like the character.

Foam cage

Draping is fun. You make darts by just pulling the fabric tightly over your shape, pinning them, then cutting off the excess fabric. After that you sew the darts and turn it all inside out.

Ears and floofy hair. I made a long tongue shaped piece, stuffed it and added wire to curl it up. The ears are fabric over AstroFoam.

Getting her expression just right. Had to decide between smiling, stern, sarcastic...so many good ones to choose from!

Almost done. I decided at this point to add some puffy cheeks on the sides to get that nice Persian silhouette.

For her necklace, the drawing is very basic and could be deciphered to be either gold or yellow. I went with yellow to make it cartoony. I also made the pendant attach to the "chain" in a more collar-like fashion, using a keyring to join the two through small eyelets. The collar is just a strip of bias tape with snaps in the back to put it on and the pendant is a piece of yellow fun foam with a plastic jewel glued on. This was all stuff I have lying around in my craft room.

Funfoam yellow matched the bias tape yellow. Yay!

The rest of the outfit was just thrift store finds. I got very lucky to find red high heels, a teal green dress and a yellow sweater all at the same DI. They all fit! I found a blue sweater for my hubby's Bojack outfit with a diamond pattern on it. He already owned jeans and a gray jacket and of course one of those hilariously wacky horse masks you can get anywhere.

I added some gold spandex fish to my dress last minute just to have that extra detail on the front. I just glued them on quick and dirty. Only a couple people knew what we were at the Halloween parties/trick or treating, but really, things are done for the glory of the internet where everyone who's looking for you can find you ;)

Anyway, I loved representing this silly show with my hubby and I'm so glad this wasn't hard to put together. Halloween shouldn't be stressful! It's just fun all around!

Here are some photos that I had my three year old take. He's not bad to have around ;)

Toddler took pics with my phone...this was one of the better ones hahaha.

Bojack seems a little...hesitant, as usual.

I'm a kawaii, not kowai, little pumpkin! Hope your Halloween was so fun!!

How to Make a Sora Cosplay From Kingdom Hearts II

2016-11-07T12:28:00.000-07:00

I recently sold my Sora outfit to someone in Georgia. Sora was my second major cosplay that I made back in 2005. Oh those were the days... the cosplay scene was just starting to really take off as the internet became a better resource for photos and materials. We still didn't have great wigs to choose from but we worked with what we could find.

Sora is a typical Square Enix boy, a mashup of all the things that are signature Squeenix. Spiky hair. Zippers in dumb places. Clothing or gear that is just too heavy for normal people to consider using. Shoes that could double as boats. His overall look in KHII I would call "sporty street", complete with king's crown bling on a big chain. Assless wading chaps plus leg saddlebags are an interesting touch. Also pauldrons on the shoulders, because you gotta protect those. At least his look is super symmetrical, unlike most Squeenix protagonists, who prefer to wear most of their accessories on just one side. Lightning is crazy asymmetrical. Wearing her costume feels so weird. See photo below for some examples.

Anyway, I first got the idea to make Sora while working at JoAnn Fabrics in early college. I spotted a chain with those crazy large links and I began to obsess over how I would make him.

Wig

I bought a cheap 80s brown punk rocker wig and cut and styled it myself but it wasn't quite what I wanted so I asked my friend's mom to style it for me since she did that on the side. It turned out a lot better after she handled it. I had to re-style it after every couple events and eventually it was just such a mess that I had to toss it. I had great fun wearing it. I know it wasn't perfectly screen accurate but it was special to me :) I made a lot of friends those first few years who I still talk with today. I even found my very own Riku and Kairi <3

Necklace

I felt very clever when I figured out how to make this. I had the chain from the fabric store first. Then I got a 1/4 inch thick piece of fun foam and cut the crown from that. I painted it silver with nail polish. I took two quilting pins and stuck them through the sides of the foam, through the chain, then into the middle prong of the crown. Then I cut the little ball things off the top of the pins. It was so screen accurate it made my heart sing!

Jacket and pauldrons

I decided to make the jacket from scratch, something I hadn't done a lot of so it pushed me into new areas of sewing. I had only made simple things like skirts and pajama pants before that. I modified a simple jacket pattern by shortening the sleeves and the length and also making the hood pointier and longer and the back a bit more curved. I wanted the shape to evoke the feeling of the classic Nomura piece where Sora is eating a popsicle while standing in the waves. The black fabric was a soft sweatshirt knit and the white parts where made from a slightly shiny knit that had a fluffy backing. The jacket was durable, washable and so comfy and soft.

The pauldrons were made of pieces of foam covered in a shiny gray vinyl. I used velcro and snaps to attach them to the jacket so I could still wash the jacket. Washable cosplay is the best kind of cosplay!

Tank top

I bought a thrift store tank top that was the perfect sport jersey material, navy blue and slightly shiny. I added white material to the neckline and made a red and white pocket for the front.

Gloves

I bought a huge pair of Gore-Tex gloves at the thrift store. They had so much stuffing and insulation in them it was staggering. I cut the fingers off and just tucked the raw edges in each time I put them on. For the stripes I used just regular bias tape. I made a little vinyl piece with silver button covers attached and sewed it onto the gloves. They were comfy and because they were big they gave that cartoony feel.

This is what Gore-Tex gloves look like on the inside. So much fluff!!

Pants

I had a navy blue pair of gym shorts underneath. For the chaps I bought a pair of pants that was several times larger than my size. I added white trim and elastic to the bottom of the pants and the waistline. That way the pants billowed outward from my knees to look cartoony. I added a ring of quilt batting to further add to the effect.

Saddlebags

I made these from scratch and they were fully functional. They were super great to have at conventions and carried all my stuff! I made a long rectangle, added some black bias tape on the outside for the "X", then folded it and sewed it but left enough for the lid. I folded the edge down to make a triangle and used sticky bag velcro to hold it closed. I bought lots of yellow webbing strap (like the strong kind you have on the bottom of backpack straps) and attached it to some metal rectangular rings from the craft store and it just hung off my hips and around my legs with no extra velcro or snaps but you could easily put some on the pants to help hold them on.

Keyblade

My good friend surprised me by buying me a very screen accurate Keyblade at Anime Expo in 2007. It was made from solid metal. It was so, so heavy. I will forever be indebted to her for her generosity.

This was my original Keyblade...Teh KeyBlay'd XD

I had people sign it with Sharpies. It was really fun.

Ahh, much better XD

Have fun on your magical journey <3 AND YAY Kingdom Hearts III IS COMING SOON!!!

How To Throw A Jurassic Park Dinosaur Party

2015-06-07T19:26:00.000-06:00

Jurassic World comes out next week! This is an historic occasion deserving of a great premiere party to gear up for the next installment of the groundbreaking series known as Jurassic Park!

I threw my friends a party this weekend complete with a marathon of all 3 Jurassic Park movies, fun host costumes and an array of themed dishes sure to satisfy any hungry T-Rex. Check out some photos from the party and an explanation of the dishes to get some fun ideas!

Here's a video that summarizes everything we did. For more details, read on!

To dress my family up as Jurassic Park characters, I headed to the local Savers thrift store. I found everything I needed in one go (lucky!). Here's the breakdown of what you need to complete the look:

Dr. Alan Grant: cowboy hat, aviator sunglasses, classic red paisley scarf, blue denim button up shirt with breast pockets and rolled up sleeves, brown belt, khaki pants, comfy hiking boots

Dr. Ellie Sattler: wispy updo, medium blue shirt or tank, salmon pink large button up shirt rolled up at sleeves and tied at the waist, brown belt, khaki shorts, comfy hiking boots

Tim Murphy: orange striped shirt, blue paisley scarf, blue denim button up with short sleeves, khaki shorts, comfy hiking shoes

Check out our outfits! We had a blast being dressed up to greet our guests!

Next, you want to make sure you have a broad array of dishes both sweet and savory for all those carnivores and herbivores stomping into your kitchen! Here are some fun ideas!

Bugs in amber: lemon Jell-O with gummy bugs suspended inside. I messed up mine - I wanted those bugs right in the middle of two layers, but my first layer of Jell-O didn't set up as quickly as I thought and my bugs sank to the bottom. Oh well!

Triceratops Horns: your favorite flavor of Bugles snacks

Compy Droppings: chocolate and coconut covered almonds from Costco

Mr. DNA strands: cherry Pull N Peel Twizzlers

Brachiosaurus snot "God Bless You!": green pistachio pudding fluffy fruit salad (sometimes called ambrosia salad)

Montana Dig Parfaits: layers of chocolate gravel (found at WinCo's bulk section), chocolate pudding, crushed Oreos, marshmallows, whipped cream and some official Jurassic World gummies

Costa Rica Sorbets: these are the most amazing thing at Costco. Little tropical sorbets in real fruit rind cups! They're delicious!

"Spared No Expense" Ice Cream: basically any good ice cream bars. We chose the Magnum from Costco. Remember that scene in Jurassic Park where Ellie is talking to John Hammond and eats some ice cream? "It's good!" "Spared no expense."

Jurassic Pork Butt - Hold on to your butts!: this is pulled pork in a crock pot, easy peasy. Look for pork shoulder butt (whatever that is?!) and throw it in your crock pot for 7-8 hours on low with some Dr. Pepper. So good with some Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce!

Stegosaurus Tails: Li'l Smokies in a small crock pot with grape jelly, BBQ sauce and ketchup for 1-2 hours. Then stick some toothpicks in the end and it's a Stegosaur Tail!

"It's a veggiesaurus, Lex, veggie!": for the obligatory veggie tray. I did carrots and Veggie Straws.

Official Jurassic World dinosaur gummies: found at any grocery store right now. They're great, get some!

Dilophosaurus Venom: any green drink, we chose Mountain Dew.

"Look at how much blood...": red strawberry Fanta. Tim says this, fascinated as he watches the T-Rex tear up a Gallimimus in the first movie.

Sandwiches with fun meats: Ham - John "Ham"mond, roast beef - raptor leftovers, turkey - "That doesn't look very scary. It looks more like a six foot turkey!" - some dumb kid from the Montana raptor dig in the first movie.

"Now that is one big pile of sh$!" or Dino Doos: no-bake cookies

Trilobite cookies: These were provided by my lovely friend Cassi, in 4 different fun flavors.

We also almost made "where's the goat?" salad by making a regular spinach salad with goat cheese but we ran out of time and room in our tummies. It was a great marathon and we still have tons of leftovers. Guess we just need to hold another party! In the words of John Hammond after his friends witness a bull being demolished by raptors: "Who's hungry?"

How to Make a Neo Queen or Princess Serenity Cosplay from Sailor Moon

2015-05-24T14:17:00.005-06:00

Photo by EGP Photography

Many girls dream of becoming a beautiful princess complete with crown, dress and glittering jewels. Here is how I made a Neo Queen Serenity cosplay from scratch. I hope this can help give you ideas on how to transform yourself from gorgeous gal to full-on Moon Goddess!

Neo Queen Serenity's dress is an empire waisted sleeveless gown with a large butterfly-like bow attached in the back and gold details on the top. It seems pretty Grecian in design (but I'm no fashion expert). It looks like a soft flowy material that may possibly be stretchy as it clings to her legs, then flows outward at the bottom. She also has a beautiful jeweled gold crown, a crescent moon on her forehead and swirly gold earrings. The whole design is simple yet extremely elegant and regal.

Dress

The pattern I used was the Kwik Sew 3400. It is a nice basic empire waisted dress with a train on the back, meant for wedding and formal gowns. The chest area fit me a little weird though so I suggest making a prototype from muslin and trying it on before you cut into your good fabric. This way you can adjust the pattern to fit you better.

I used a shiny satin for the chest area, then a bit more matte satin for the rest of the gown. My good friend Garnet Runestar suggested I use netting as a layer between the lining and the outer dress for shaping. It adds a little stiffness and wards off wrinkles. Look her up, seriously. She is my local expert for epic gown cosplays. She will be at Anime Expo as a guest this year!

The gown pattern has a simple A-line flow to the skirt but I wanted it to be a mermaid line skirt to more closely match the references. I put on my muslin mockup of the original pattern, inside-out, and pinned the dress down the sides and brought it in close to my knees. I cut off the excess fabric and picked apart the muslin pieces so that I now had a mermaid gown pattern. You can see in the below pictures how the final gown looked with the alterations.

I was going to try putting a see through chiffon layer on top of the satin layer to create the gathers that are in the reference photos, but it just ended up looking really bad so I took that layer back out. If I ever make this dress again, I'm going to try a stretchy white pleated plisse fabric that is used in dance costumes.

Not as elegant as I was hoping. Plus I just have no idea what I'm doing XD

For the gold circles, I made a paper template using one of those compass/pencil things. Just a short chain of circles was all I needed.

Hurry, pattern while the baby sleeps!

Next I measured how many circles I would need to encircle my chest. I added a couple extra too, just in case. I traced the circles onto iron-on interfacing, then ironed that to my gold crepe back satin. It made it much easier to cut the shapes in the fabric!

After cutting all the inner circles out from the gold piece, I pinned a long strip of white satin behind the holes. Then I satin stitched the edges of the holes. My machine doesn't have a nice close satin stitch, so I just used a the tighest zigzag stitch I could manage and went around the holes 3-4 times each. It was really annoying to have to do so many, haha.

After that step, I turned the fabric right side down onto the shiny side of a slightly larger strip of satin and stitched the edges of the big circles down. I cut off the excess fabric on the outside and turned the whole thing inside out. Now it has clean edges and can be sewn onto the gown.

There she is, Miss America!

To further embellish the dress I added two rows of gold plastic beads from Hancock fabrics both right under the gold rings and at the waistline seam. I simply hand-sewed them on.

Accessories

Crown

For the crown I used a material called Worbla's Finest Art. It is well known on the cosplay scene nowadays. It comes in sheets and can be re-shaped using a heat gun. First I patterned out all the layers and details I would need, then transferred the patterns onto the Worbla.

To shape the crown I used a bucket as a template for the curve. I then heated and added the different Worbla bits on. I also used Apoxie Sculpt to add some dimension to a few parts (the white parts in the photo). When that was cured I used several layers of white Gesso to prime the whole piece and sanded it as best I could. The texture of the Worbla unfortunately is very hard to cover up with Gesso but there may be other alternatives that work better.

The next part was painting the crown with gold acrylic paint. The red parts are painted with nail polish, one of my favorite cheap ways to add accent colors. I also sprayed the whole thing in a clear gloss. I glued on jewels and added a little comb on the back with some Worbla so that it would slip into my wig or hair and could be secured.

The first comb was this one, an actual comb with a handle that I cut off. I later switched to a few smaller combs with gripping tines that actually grab the hair. A couple bobby pins helped secure it even further.

Forehead Moon

I used Fimo bakeable clay to create the forehead moon. To make it that perfect, circular crescent shape I used a small circular cookie cutter. I painted it gold with acrylic paint and added clear gloss. To attach it to my forehead I applied a little spirit gum.

Earrings

I created the earrings from Fimo clay and some jewelry findings. I made a shape that looks like two leaves joined together and twisted it in the middle narrow part and curled the end. I also made the beads from Fimo. I painted them with gold acrylic paint and added clear gloss.

Wings

I had some see through pink material that I added wire to and created a fastening with snaps in the back of the dress so the wings would be removable. I also had the lower part of a back bow for Super Sailor Moon that I recycled to use with the wings.

Bolero/Sleeves

I made the bolero as a fun new take on the puff sleeves that Serenity has in princess form. I thought it would add a regal touch to the whole ensemble. I found this amazing silver brocade at Hancock Fabrics that I felt was just perfect for my vision.

Patterning out the puffy sleeves took forever because I didn't quite understand how to make the round 3D shape into a 2D one on paper. I tried several things and finally figured out something that would work.

The patterning process...bleh.

The brocade was very thin and frayed a lot so I had to be careful with it. I also lined it with quilt batting to help it stay puffier. The base bolero pattern came with the gown pattern so the torso part was easy. I also added a queenly collar accent by taking two long pieces of brocade and sewing them together with some batting in between. Then I sewed horizontal lines to create a quilted effect and sewed the collar onto the jacket.

Shoes

I found some really cool clear shoes with rhinestone accents at DWS, but white or silver and maybe even gold or pink shoes would go just as well. It's really up to you since the artwork never really shows her feet. Make sure they're comfy is all I ask!

Wig

Here's a video on the process of making the wig. It's very visual and should help you understand how to put everything together. For the verbal process, read below.

I pieced together the wig from a couple Arda Wig products. The base wig is a Chibi in 081 Platinum Blonde, but you can use any color you like. I bought two of their buns and one ponytail clip in the same color.

I styled the bangs first by cutting them, then separating them into 3 layers and curling each one, then blending them together. I also added a couple strands to the sides that are longer.

Original Chibi bangs, before and after. Derp!

Bangs curling process.

I stubbed the pigtails on the Chibi and glued them so they would stay together.

Stubbing, before and after.

I cut the ponytail clip in half after taking out the clip and then tied one half around each stub.

This is what a disassembled ponytail clip looks like. It's basically a mini wig! I cut it in half, between the wefts, and preserved the elastic for each half so I could tie it around the stubs.

Then I took the buns and tightened them to be a little smaller and pinned them over the stubs using bobby pins. Bobby pins do get pushed out easily so I suggest hand sewing the buns on for a much more secure grip. It's a very easy process and looks very clean when all finished!

Here is the whole ensemble put together!

Photo by EGP Photography

Have fun transforming yourself or your friend into the magical Moon Princess or Queen!

How to Make a Volvagia Dragon Cosplay From Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

2015-05-13T11:36:00.002-06:00

Ho man this project. Creature cosplays are my passion for sure, but this one was extra challenging! So let's just jump right in!

Volvagia is a long skinny dragon that lives in a volcano and eats rock people called Gorons. If you've ever played Ocarina of Time, you will be familiar with this Fire Temple boss whose battle is basically a much more dangerous version of Whack-A-Mole, where if you don't whack it, it will spew fire in your face and drop red-hot boulders on you. Also, he has a fabulous mane of hair made of flames. You do not want him to swish it into your cute little Hylian face.

Snake-y, firey goodness. This is the official character art for him. Finding good in-game reference photos was really tough. I had to screenshot videos of OoT:3D since the graphics are quite a bit better than the original N64 version, but still really tough to see the details.

There were a couple ways I thought about approaching this project, and my end product was much different than my original vision, but I am happy with how comfortable and wearable it was. Here are some photos so you can visualize it while we're talking about the process it took to get here.

HAHAHA THE LEGS ARE THE MOST GLORIOUS PART.

People would say "nice job, bro" because the legs are pretty ambiguous as to my gender.

My first approach to the design of this costume was to do the entire tail. A few options I considered were wrapping it around my body or magically making the tail hold up behind my back in an up and down serpentine pattern, or perhaps making it a two person costume. See the following illustration for an idea.

Pretty ambitious, complete with sound effects and lighting. I haven't figured that stuff out quite yet, but my husband did get an Arduino set up with all the sound effects from the game!

I played around with the math for proportions and came up with a 22 foot long dragon...pretty dang big to drag around at a convention. I even made an Astrofoam skeleton of rings to see just what that would look like. It took up the whole length of my living room!

Satisfied that that was definitely not going to work for a one-person costume (though a Chinese dragon style, multi-person puppet would have been pretty cool!), I re-designed it to just look like the dragon was popping up out of the ground whack-a-mole style like in the game. Tons easier and would take less time and fabric.

The Head

Designing the head was my absolute favorite part. First I drew a side profile and a top-down view of the head to scale. I cut out the two drawings from foamcore board and crossed them with each other to make a kind of guide.

Initial design drawing to figure out proportions and where scales should be.

Side profile of the head.

Top-down view of the head.

I then filled up the foamcore with two $3 cans of Great Stuff Foam Spray to test out the carving method I've seen other cosplayers use for props. That stuff is crazy. It expands a ton.

Oodles of noodles?

Next I took a box cutter and started carving down to my guidelines and shaping out the big, bulbous eyes on top. I kept shaving away a little at a time to produce the skull of the dragon. When I was done, I noticed there were a lot of bubbles and gaps and it didn't have the amount of detail I was hoping for. I'm not sure what the plan was after that. Perhaps fill in the rough spots with Bondo? It would probably make it too heavy.

My next approach was to use the foam head as a base for a different material to be sculpted over it to create a hollow head. I tried out Worbla, but wasn't satisfied with the look of that either. I wanted to get all the nuances of scales and bumps but Worbla is just flat and really hard for me to shape and figure out.

Decided to use styrofoam balls for the eye shape.

Patterning fabric over the foam.

Final shape to transfer to Worbla.

What a dragon head looks like when it's flattened.

Hmmm...well, let's see what it looks like when scales are added...

While it looks cool, it doesn't quite have the dimension I was hoping for.

Finally, I decided to visit Special Effect Supply in North Salt Lake, Utah. Here is their website. I knew if I just picked the brain of a professional I would get great ideas. I had thought about molding and casting but the guy said it would be pretty expensive in materials at the size I was planning to do. He suggested I sculpt the head from clay, then do a fiberglass shell coat over that and sand it. It made sense since the details I wanted to do were not very small or complicated. I bought a 45 lb box of Permaplast from them. My wallet said ouch...it was about $180. Still, I only used a couple pieces of it and there is tons left that I can use for other projects.

I again used the foam head for a base and cut a styrofoam ball in half to replace the original spray foam eyes. I laid a layer of clay over it and went to work. It was extremely therapeutic and I can't wait to sculpt again. It took about 4-5 hours and I was very pleased with how it turned out.

Initial marking to see where scales would go.

Lots of dimension added! I love it!

The fiberglass shell was the most time consuming and difficult part of the process. It was gooey, smelly, and you had to work very fast to get each layer on before it hardened. There were some gaps between layers and drips and just all kinds of craziness when it was done. I sanded for hours and hours to get it to a satisfactory smoothness. Thank goodness dragons are supposed to be rough and rugged anyway.

Post-sanding. Soooo much sanding...

Also, cleaning out all the clay was a pain.

I put Apoxie Sculpt in the thin places and smoothed out the sharp edges of the head.

Apoxie Sculpt filled in any imperfections or weak spots.

I spray painted a base coat of black, then added some gold and gray highlights to achieve more dimension. I really enjoyed figuring out how to highlight it so it looked cool.

Final product!

For the horns I used Astrofoam and cardboard to achieve the shape. Then I used a fun, easy technique to create the ridges. I merely took some rough ugly fabric with texture in it and made pleats in it and glued it onto the foam, smoothing down the raw edges with medical tape. Voila! Scaled horns. I spray painted them black and painted details on with acrylics.

I primed the whole thing with Gesso since spray paint would just soak through the fabric. It still took several coats of spray paint to achieve desired results.

The horns are attached to the head using metal ribbon called hanger tape, some wire and Apoxie Sculpt to hold it all together.

The harness was an interesting part to figure out. I had heard of the movie effects industry using something called a "corset harness" to attach things to. I made one and it's just a tank top that laces up at the sides and has sewn in channels to stick the PVC pipe rigging into. I crossed my fingers that it would all work out and I'm pleased to say that it did. I made sure to add foam padding to the shoulders to help me last longer while carrying the weight of the head.

The channels haven't been sewn on yet, but they are just open-top rectangular pockets sewn to the outside of the tank top in four places.

The PVC rigging in the harness was shaped using a heat gun, another cool technique I had heard about from other cosplayers. There were four pieces total, attached with L connectors and then taped together at the top. The PVC slips into channels in my corset harness so I can carry the weight of the head with my torso as well as my shoulders.

You can see the blue foam pad for my head in the rig. Below that is the chin strap used to pull down the jaw. To the right is the inside of the corset harness opened up with the shoulder pads added.

Inside the top of the head I put a huge wad of Apoxie Sculpt and placed 4 bolts into it before it cured. I drilled corresponding holes into the PVC and attached the head, then screwed nuts onto the bolts. For added strength I just placed even more Apoxie Sculpt over the PVC pipe and into the top of the head. I wasn't sure if it would work but it fortunately did.

The lower jaw of the dragon is made with a Worbla base covered in fabric. I wanted to try doing a moving jaw like I had in Lugia. I made hinges with hanger tape from the plumbing aisle. It's a metal ribbon with holes in it, super cheap and VERY useful for all kinds of stuff and comes in copper plated and steel. I used Apoxie sculpt to mount the hinges in the sides of the head, then put a bolt through the hinge and mounted it into the jaw.

The mechanism for moving the jaw is pretty simple, but didn't move it very far for the amount of effort I had to use in pulling it down. I put some foam on a rigid piece of plastic and drilled holes in the plastic for some wire. I mounted the wire to this and then the jaw. I used some elastic to make sure the jaw would return to the closed position when I relaxed. To move the jaw down I placed the foam/plastic piece under my chin and pulled down hard in a nodding motion.

The arms were made with two sleeves and some upholstery foam "muscles" sewn in and covered with some fun lava fabric. I scoured the internet for lava fabric for a time and turned up empty. One day I went to Hancock Fabric and there it was in the cotton quilting section! It was magnificent!

Dragon muscles. Hawt.

Trilobites? Nope, just muslin patterning to figure out the scale spacing.

The hands are some homemade gloves with foam sewn in for the big dragon fingers and vinyl stuffed claws. It was fun play-fighting with them!

Inner workings of the puffy fingers.

Plushie dragon claw will squeesh you!!

Luna, you just had to ruin my post-workout selfie! GOSH!!

The fabulous fire-hair is just tons of strips of different scrap fabrics cut in a jagged triangle chain pattern like you see in the game. I attached them to a piece of mesh that is attached with magnets to the back of the head.

I had to really rush the neck and body covering process because I wanted to be ready for Salt Lake Comic Con. I did try to enter the cosplay contest too but their online system never confirmed my entry. Then I was just one person off in the standby line where I waited for hours just to be told I couldn't get in. It's the last contest I will attempt to be in for a while I think. It's just so much stress to compete. It's way more fun to travel the halls and play with other cosplayers!

I used some velcro to attach the red lava fabric and the yellow belly fabric up the sides so I could get in and out easily. It worked pretty well. The bottom of the costume is just some brown craft paper glued on hastily in the morning of the con. I think I will make more of a "dress" in the future to cover my pastey legs haha. I added a couple slits in the chest for visibility. Since the yellow fabric is a little see through, my visibility was actually really good! I was able to last 4 hours in the costume as the weight distribution was pretty even. As long as I didn't lean to any one side for two long, I was easily able to balance the whole rig.

Here are some fun photos of me messing around with some Link cosplayers! It was so fun to interact with them!

I boop...

YOUR NOSE!!!

Oh snap, I'm outnumbered now...

Found a red tunic Link! SO PERF!

Such a sweet Link cosplayer!

And here is my official Salt Lake Comic Con portrait <3

THOSE LEGGGGGS.

Can't wait to get some awesome Zelda shoots in with my friends, hopefully this summer!!!

How To Make A Lightning Farron Cosplay From Final Fantasy XIII

2015-01-18T14:42:00.001-07:00

Beware: this post is LONG. I talk details. This is for the dedicated cosplayer who is diving into this project and wants to be as informed as possible!

This costume was the most technically challenging one in my arsenal to date. It involved using a ton of materials and techniques new to me. I wanted to go for the most authentic look possible with every detail thought over and presented in a realistic way.

I was at a Salt Lake Comic Con sponsored New Year's event and some photographers were hanging out and taking photos. I felt dumb without any props so I bought this dumb laser sword thingy so I would at least have something to hold. Lol.

I really like this detail shot. It's unusual but really shows some of the effort I put into the boots and "saddlebag".

I am proud to say that I won my first major convention awards in this outfit. I received beautiful glass trophies for 2nd Place Intermediate Cosplay and 2nd Place Intermediate Craftsmanship at Anime Banzai 2013 in Layton, Utah. It was an incredible experience!!

Wig:

Arda Wigs "Ferrari" style wig, $35 - they have a lot of pinks to choose from! LINK

I had to make some major changes to the wig to get it just right. First off, Arda PACKS their wigs full of wefts. The volume on this thing was ridiculous. Lightning's hair hangs very close to her head and face in most reference photos. I took a seam ripper and took out every other weft in the back and left the top mostly alone. It ended up being really helpful to save those wefts when I cut the bottom layer too short - I just added a long weft back in!

I used some hairspray and gel to gently spike the bangs as her hair is more delicately spiked than Cloud's. I use a fair few hidden bobby pins to pull the hair close to my head on the back and near my ears.

This photo was taken mostly to show off the cool Lightning Returns shirt by Six Eyed Monster - it glows in the dark!!

Jacket:

I got extremely lucky and found out that God Save The Queen Fashions has made a great hand drawn pattern that comes with more than just the jacket pieces!

I paid $60, but the pattern is currently $54.99 on her site.

The pattern came with the jacket base, gloves, basic jacket pocket outline, cape holder, skirt, boots, cape, and weapon bag. Some of the pieces weren't as screen accurate as I wished so I modified or added to them as I saw fit. Also, it only comes in one size, which I happened to fit into, so keep that in mind before purchasing. You may have to alter it for your own body.

First fitting of the base pieces.

I used her jacket pattern base with a cotton that was like a very thin, soft denim. I lined the inside with interfacing for stiffness and a brown faux suede that shows on the downturned collar. I made the pockets with another type of thin suede. I had to design the inner lining of the pockets and the flap on top, but these were minor pieces in rectangular shapes, so not too hard to do.

Strategic Velcro holds down flap edges that want to curl up.

There is a LOT of hardware on this jacket. The most notable pieces are those T-shaped clasps on the front. I searched far and wide for the perfect clasps and came up empty for months. Then I came across this site that sells pieces for people who make handbags and luggage! They have an enormous catalog and guess what I found!! They are called "fireman clasps". Once you know that, you can find them easily online.

They had those special T-clasps, and almost everything else I needed. Now, this site Ohiotravelbag.com is for bulk orders I found out. If you only want a couple of this and that, you need to order through their sister site, Hardwareelf.com. It's kind of a weird process to order. You have to email them first to get the ball rolling. Here is what they said to me in an email reply:

Please go to www.hardware-elf.com. Click the "retrieve quotes" from the left menu. Enter quote number (they will give you a 6-digit number in your email correspondence) and zip code 12345. You can then order the items you requested.

They are really friendly to work with. So the process is: go through the catalog at Ohio Travel Bag, pick out the buckles and items you need, WRITE down the item numbers, sizes, finishes and quantities you need, email Hardware Elf, and then order from Hardware Elf. Eventually you should be able to get those sweet, accurate clasps ;)

To help you out even more, here is the full list of hardware I bought from their site for this costume. NOTE: these page numbers are subject to change on their catalog, so this is only a loose guideline to help you find them!:

x3 of C-1460 (p. 161) (the cool looking T-shaped clasps on the front of the jacket) I think I ordered these over the phone in a separate transaction from the rest, so I'm not positive how much they cost. I want to say around $4 each.

x1 of 4430, 2 1/4", nickel (p. 196) $7.29 (belt buckle for the underbust belt. I cut off the two prongs for it to work.)

x1 of C-1897, 1 1/2", Nickel (p. 221) $7.95 (belt buckle for skirt belt)

x1 of C-1921, 1 1/4", Nickel (p 212) $2.19 (I think I ended up not using this one?)

x2 of C-1311, 2", Nickel plated (p 124) $0.99 each, $1.98 total (did not end up using these either)

x3 of P-2655, 1", nickel (p 140) $1.55 each, $4.65 total (square buckles for jacket T-clasp to hook into)

x1 box of jiffy rivets, 307s (7mm size), nickel (p 9) $11.95

x4 of P-2833, 1", nickel (p 125) $2.75 each, $11.00 total (for the straps on the jacket pockets and shoulder straps)

x6 of C-1415, 3/4", nickel (p 204) $3.20 each, $19.20 total (for the straps on the boots)

x1 of P-2894, 1", nickel (p 125) $1.95 (for the strap on the leather leg bag)

economy shipping was $11.95, so order total was $80.11.

To secure the clasps on the jacket, I bought some Jiffy Rivets from those same guys. They didn't work great but I'm probably securing them wrong. I think some chrome look paper brads (like you used in grade school!) will work too.

Jiffy Rivets "just hit to fit!". Maybe I wasn't hitting hard enough, because they kept coming apart...

Those are large buttons with the holes filled in and painted. I had made a hole in the jacket and glued the ends of a jiffy rivet to either button and secured them together through the hole.

Here is a view of the shoulder strap out of its buckle. The buckle was secured with a little square of fabric that was hand sewn in.

The Jiffy Rivets acted as a pivot for the leather pieces and I didn't want them to droop down. You can kind of see the white thread where I sewed the leather piece to the jacket. The leather piece is folded over and glued with Gorilla Glue.

Here are some of the details near the collar.

Planning out where those fireman clasps will go. It had to look just right!

I was feeling pretty fly upon finishing the jacket :D

Turtleneck:

Easiest part of the costume. Found the perfect dark brown knit turtleneck with the vertical ribbing pattern at Savers, cut off the sleeves and added a zipper. The zipper pull is one that I had on a small travel purse. I love using thrift store purses for their hardware! It can be a cheap way to get a bunch of buckles and spikes. You can reuse belts like that too!

Necklace:

Here is the official necklace on the Square Enix online store for $139.99. You can also find similar items for cheaper, I just wanted to have the cool one with the rolling jewels :p

Pauldron:

The shoulder armor piece is made primarily from Worbla, with green painted leather straps and some snaps, and lined with some black fleece so it would rest softly on my shoulder. I painted it with acrylics and attempted to use some shading techniques that have been touted by people like Kamui Cosplay. I love the extra dimension it gives to the colors!

Here is a helpful link that helped me get an idea of how to go about this piece.

I found another great downloadable pattern HERE if you need help!

Cape:

The cape pattern from God Save The Queen fashions was just a little instruction to make it a half circle, but I disagreed with this design and made my own. I made a long trapezoid and put 3-4 pleats into the top.

The cape holder was a thick piece of leather with another piece stuck on with Gorilla Glue. That glue is kinda hard to work with as it spreads while it dries and you have to clamp it for forever. I tortured my poor sewing machine trying to add the stitching pattern around the edges of the leather. I glued the top half of some nickel snaps to the bottom piece of leather. The big buttons glued on the tips of the cape holder are regular buttons whose holes I filled in with wood glue and sanded, then painted gold.

To attach the cape holder to the jacket, I used velcro as I believe in washing my costume pieces. To attach the cape to the cape holder, I made a little black felt piece and sewed it onto the red cape piece, then added snaps to the felt piece and onto the holder. That way the fabric cape is completely detachable from the leather and can be washed.

Arm Bands and Sleeve:

Both of the armbands are made with leather scraps from Tandy Leather, my local source. I wish I could find the link to where I found the "pattern" for the top armband with the seemingly impossible woven pattern. It said to make a bunch of X's and overlap them such that you get that cool effect. It worked great. For the bottom armband, I made a template with holes in it at even intervals, poked the holes through the leather, then sewed in the chevron pattern with some yellow thread. For the metal end things I found some Nickel Belt Buckle End Tips on eBay for a couple bucks. They have little teeth that bite into the leather for a good hold.

Paper armband sewing template

The arm sleeve was very easy to make from shiny black stretch fabric. It's a long tube with a hole for my thumb to prevent it from sliding out of the blue glove I wear over it.

Belts:

The God Save The Queen pattern does have a pattern for the underbust belt, which I modified to be a bit wider. My machine did not like sewing the leather and ultimately broke. I would study up on leather sewing if I were you...I believe I did not use the right foot and the walking teeth on the bottom left little marks on the back of the leather. You could also easily use faux leather for this piece. The belt for the skirt is a belt blank I got at Tandy leather.

To help the underbust belt stay put on the jacket, I used velcro. Velcro is some amazing stuff. It really helps your costume stay looking magically perfect when used strategically.

Skirt:

The God Save The Queen pattern came with a pattern for the skirt pieces which was very helpful. I modified things to fit me better and did flat felled seams where possible to make it look like a real denim skirt. I used a light brown denim fabric and wore booty shorts underneath for modesty AND I have found in reference photos that this is canon to Lightning ;) She is either wearing a skort or shorts under the skirt. I also wore nylons just to even out my pale legs.

I bought a little bit of leather cording for the crisscross in the center front and colored it yellow with Sharpie. I then threaded it through some eyelets.

Here you can see a hidden snap that holds my leg bag in place. Otherwise it would hang too low and get in the way of my legs!

Showing the flatfelled seams for that jean skirt look.

Leg Bag:

I used real leather from Tandy Leather again. This DeviantArt member saved me with her tutorial/pattern here. I also found another great guide just now here. There are so many helpful people online that saved me a lot of time and stress! I used real leather and made it so the straps snap to the purse so it's easy to get on and off. All the pockets are functional and make it easy to carry stuff around at conventions. My favorite types of costumes are the ones that can carry your stuff!!

Inside of main pocket. I use bits of sticky back Velcro to hold the corners of the flap down. Once again, it's little details like this that help your costume stay looking like you just walked off the promo art!

This was the zipper I accidentally sewed facing the wrong way. Luckily this is just a perfectionist detail that doesn't matter to anyone else haha.

Back of bag, showing where all the straps snap in for easy dressing/removal.

This bag was rather complicated. Two things I learned were 1) leather stretches if you aren't using the right machine foot, and 2) make sure your zippers are facing the right direction for max accuracy.

Gloves:

For the main blue part I used real leather from Tandy Leather. Gloves have to be soft and supple. I think all in all for this outfit I spent around $200 on leather...yeah...authenticity has its price.

The God Save The Queen pattern saved me again. There is a glove pattern in there but it doesn't have gussets so I added those in. Gussets are the little pieces that go between your fingers. I also lined the gloves in a thin suede to help the leather not get warped from sweat. The gloves are very tight but I wanted them that way to look like Lightning's. I made gray straps from leather look vinyl. The gold pieces are made from foam (bottom flat layer), sculpey ("bullet holders"), toothpicks (lines under the "bullet holders") and Jiffy Rivets. I painted them and attached them to the gloves with velcro in case I decide to remake them.

Inner lining made from thin suede.

To make the ridges, I lined some paintbrushes up on a paper template to space them evenly, then took a rectangle of rolled out Fimo and sculpted it over the brushes. Worked great!

Cut and glued some toothpicks to FunFoam with superglue.

Used Jiffy Rivets to put it together.

Learned that FunFoam just soaks up spray paint, so I used Gesso to prime it and then painted the whole thing again. I learned so many things from this outfit that it blows my mind.

Boots:

The God Save The Queen pattern does come with the boot pattern which I used and modified a bit. I used pleather for all pieces and belt buckles from Ohio Travel Bag. Everything attaches to some black shoes I found at the thrift store with sticky back velcro, although this is a temporary solution. I need to probably glue/sew all the parts together so they don't come apart at conventions.

Made so many shoe belts!

Weapon Bag: Haven't made yet, will update when I do!

Gunsword/Blazefire Saber: Haven't made yet, will update when I do!

TOTAL COST: I can't even get an accurate number because of all the little things that went into this, but here is a rough idea:

Leather: $150-$200
Official Necklace: $140 (I paid more due to poor yen to dollar ratio at the time)
Pattern: $60
Hardware: at least $80
Shoes: probably under $10
Fabric: at least $50 for all the various colors and types I needed
Odds and Ends like glue, Velcro, etc: probably $30?
Worbla: maybe $10 worth
Shorts, Nylons, Turtleneck: $20
Wig: $35

Grand Estimated Total: around $600 (faints...oh dear...but I guess people pay this for custom work anyway!)

Value to me: priceless. I learned about leather, Worbla, glue, pattern drafting and altering, hardware use and modification, painting, wig dyeing, cutting and styling, glovemaking, shoemaking, bagmaking, pockets, and professionalism in presenting your craft to judges in the maker industries.

What a journey, and it will continue as I repair things and add on to it. I love this character and thanks to Lightning Returns, I have a whole new set of beautiful outfits I can drool over and dream about making someday. I've already made a "closet cosplay" of her "new world" outfit from the Special Ending:

I wish you the best of luck on your fantastical cosplay journey! Thanks SO MUCH for reading this and pass it along to your FFXIII cosplay friends! <3

The Costs Of Starting A Small Craft Business

2014-12-03T14:04:00.001-07:00

All right, it looks like I have all my stuff set up to be compliant with local and national laws so I can finally tally up what I had to spend to get going.

For those of you who don't know, I registered Sailor Crafty, LLC in the state of Utah. *small fanfare*

Yes, I am an official business, and here's why I chose to go this route. I'm an artist, see, a nerd artist. We nerd artists have a lot of fandoms we participate in, and we like to make stuff that celebrates our love of these fandoms. A lot of what we do dabbles in what we call "copyright infringement". There are varying levels of infringement, but basically if you are using anybody else's characters in any way, there is potential for legal action and no one wants to lose their home over something so small as "I made a plushie of so-and-so and sold it for $5." There are thousands of makers out there selling their wares openly online and most of them won't be prosecuted, but the fact is that they are all gambling and hoping the creators don't take too much notice (other than to give them a shout-out, of course!)

I'm guilty of said activities as I like to sew, draw, 3D print, etc. other people's characters and sell them. I have a little Etsy shop, a YouTube channel, this blog, and a Facebook page with my stuff displayed throughout. My wise husband admonished me to put the liability on a business entity rather than my personal assets should I be targeted by say, Square Enix, Sanrio or Nintendo. It's also a much better way of tracking expenses and revenue so I can figure out how well I'm actually doing. Plus there's that little thing called "taxes". So here is a breakdown of all the steps and costs of the things it took to get me all legal to sell in the state of Utah.

Reserve business name with the state: $22

State business registration fee (recurring annually): $48

Open a business checking/savings account: $20
I think some of that went into the actual account, can't remember, but part or all of this is some one-time maintenance fee. I went with my local UCCU branch since they had the best overall plan for my tiny business.

Register with the city of Orem (recurring annually): $30
I had no idea I was supposed to do this until a couple weeks after I registered with the state. It is important because you have to charge taxes both at the city and state level for customers that live in Utah. So my combined tax rate is 6.85%.

Get a home inspection ONLY IF you are to have customers in your house (1 time fee): $60
Most of my stuff happens online, but I have had a couple people who I did some sewing for and they came in to watch Leon while I did their projects. So in the interest of being as safe as possible, I went ahead and paid this fee.

Oops, my fire extinguisher is not up to date this year! Get it inspected. They said it would cost $6.50. Surprise! It actually costs: $40 (Service/Hazmat?Travel Charge!! I should have just bought a small new extinguisher!!!)

Freaking out and installing some handrails on your stairs because the city's inspection list says you need them: about $50
The inspector didn't really seem to care about that specific part! He was really shocked that I would even have people past the front living room, but I explained to him that no, I have people actually come down to my sewing lair in the basement so they can help me plan out their project sometimes.

So my overall total at the end here is:

$270.

$78 will be charged annually to keep my business registered and legal.

Guess how much money I have in my business bank account 2 months after I started my business? $270. It took me two months to break even, and some of this counts as "investor capital". This means I sold some items I already had when the business started which would have counted as costs. So basically I'm in the hole right now when you really think about it. Your experience may vary, especially if you are not bringing customers into your home. That would have saved me about $150 right there, but I get that you don't want to be sued if someone falls down your stairs or you had a house fire and nothing to put it out with. So keep these things in mind and make sure to save up for these types of fees before you start up your business!

How To Make A Fi Cosplay From Zelda: Skyward Sword

2012-12-22T12:05:00.002-07:00

Come read all about how I brought Fi to life through the magic of cosplay! The below photo is an updated version of the outfit. This post shows how I made the old version and I will talk about the newer version below all that.

If you would like the short version of how I made this costume, watch my YouTube video below. If you want to see lots of work in progress photos and read looooots of details to get a better idea of how everything worked, read on.

In 2012 I showed up to Anime Banzai in Layton, UT dressed as Fi from The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. I loved that game overall, though sometimes the gameplay was tedious or outright nervewracking (those spirit levels! So many near heart attacks!!). The storyline and music really nailed the feel of the whole Zelda series and it was so cool to know that this was where everything started. Flying around on giant birds? HECK YES. The characters were awesome.

And then there's Fi.

Fi is part of the storyline, but the game developers also use her as an annoying sidekick that even breaks the fourth wall and tells you your batteries are dying. She's a more dynamic Navi. She speaks in some ancient gibberish language (which ultimately works out since you never hear the speaking voices of the other characters throughout the series). I did like her elegant, graceful dances when she helps Link gain new power. Her singing face is downright scary though.

I'm not exactly sure why I chose Fi. I've seen several approaches from other cosplayers and wanted to try something a little different. It's a design that's beautiful in its simplicity and elegance.

The main thing I wanted to get right for Fi was the arms. Her shoulders and arms are supposed to be reminiscent of the Master Sword hilt, so to me, that meant a sculpted look. In the game, Fi looks like she is sculpted from ceramic, glass or metal with a glossy shine. I wanted to make sure the hair and the arm pieces were the right shape.

Here is how I did the arms:

I had a large piece of Astrofoam on the bottom, then 3 "U" shaped pieces glued with hot glue on top of that. There are also darts in the bottom piece to help create a rounded shape.

Both wing forms

I bought some satin and glued it over the foam forms. See how it creates that "sculpted" shape?

Both wing forms with fabric glued over them.

Bottom side of the forms.

My camera is terrible at picking up light at night. Anyway, here I am just making two long rectangles of satin to create the ruffles on the edges of the wing forms.

Here is how the forms look with ruffles attached.

Next, I'll show you how I did the headpiece. Fi has a very precise "hairdo" that looks like ice cream with a little point on top. It's really cute!

I used 2 pouches of white model magic and rolled it out with a rolling pin. I wanted to get uniform thickness as much as possible.

I wrapped my own head with plastic wrap and masking tape, marking the masking tape with where the bangs needed to be on my head. Then I got a wig head, put the plastic wrap form over it and stuffed it a little so I could have a decent head double. Following the marked guides on the masking tape, I shaped the model magic over the head into the shape I wanted.

Model magic is a marshmallowy substance. It isn't easily smoothed down like clay. I had lumps and imperfections everywhere, which is alright because I planned to cover it with the satin I used for the cowl/wings. Her hair and face match her wings so it made sense to use the same fabric.

Model magic smells weird as it dries. When it does dry (this took about two days in the thickest parts) it feels just like a dried marshmallow. Still flexible, but holds its shape.

Basically I've created a "helmet" that fits very snugly to my head. This wig head has a strange face...it was donated to me by my grandma but I don't know whether she drew it on. Someone also wrote in pen on the bottom: "Don't fart". Knowing my dad and two uncles, I bet all of it has a lot to do with them...

Now the fun part...pinning darts into the satin that will cover the head. I had to decide where the most strategic places would be for seams. Her head should be seamless, but the available materials limit us cosplayers sometimes.

Excess fabric is cut off and darts are tight to the head.

After I took the satin off the head, I had to cut a copy of the flattened shape on the other side of the fabric because the bangs are asymmetrical.

The head form as it dries. There were lots of little wrinkles from the plastic wrap that was underneath.

I feel like something out of The Wizard of Oz or Whoville :D

Next I sewed the darts in the satin and hot glued the satin onto the Model Magic form. I really like the results!

There are some wrinkles here and there but overall it looks good from the front.

For the under dress, I used a basic sleeveless dress pattern and added a hem to the bottom that is padded with quilt batting. Also just sewed some gold ribbon onto it.

The cowl was pretty easy to figure out. I took a duct tape dress form and just started pinning and pinning...

Cowl glamour shot to show how tight it is to my neck. Also I put the wings with it to kind of gauge how it was looking. Eventually I sewed the wings right onto the cowl. There is an invisible zipper in the back that lets me get the cowl/wings piece off with minimal effort (though I do usually need someone else to unzip it).

Let's talk about the fun part: making the big jewel!

I had never done anything like this before so it was a big exciting experiment. I had seen other cosplayers do amazing things with resin casting so I bought some EasyCast from Hobby Lobby. Check out my adventure:

Started out with cardstock to come up with the shape and size of the jewel.

I wanted to create fill lines on my mold so I figured out the bottom dimensions of the jewel and stuck that piece in the mold pattern and marked it.

See this plastic model magic box? It's about to be dissected...

Used my pattern to cut out the pieces from the Model Magic plastic box. This was a huge risk because I didn't know whether this plastic would tolerate the chemical reaction OR the heat involved with resin casting. I took my chances because it was the only way I could think of at the time and the box had such nice flat surfaces. It worked out luckily.

Mold with fill marks put in with sharpie. I simply used clear packaging tape to stick the pieces together.

At least I was careful about one thing: my own personal safety!

Here is my setup: the mold, stuck in a piece of model magic to keep it level, some newspaper, a paper plate, some craft sticks for stirring and the EasyCast resin.

For the dye, I used blue and green food coloring. I heard from someone else that it would work "in a pinch". It mostly worked...but it didn't dissolve completely so there are little dark dots all throughout the cast. Don't be lazy like me--use the official resin dye you can find at Hobby Lobby or online.

Okay, so it actually worked somehow, with the exception of the mold leaking quite a bit because my taped seals didn't go all the way up the sides. They DID cover the area I needed however so I still got my full jewel out of it. One more reason not to be lazy!

For the jewel setting I used a glitter Foamie sheet! Way easy to make a pretty jewel setting from. Some cutting and glue and it's done! In my later, nicer version I made the setting with Worbla and gold paint. Looks so much better!

I glued some fleece fabric onto the back of the jewel for easy attachment to the cowl. I simply sewed it into the cowl :)

Before I had a Dritz dressform...I taped my duct tape dress form to my vacuum for pictures. You CAN do amazing things with limited resources! Haha.

Believe it or not, the greatest struggle I had with this costume was the legs. Fi has these stockings with a very precise pattern down them, black background with teal diamonds.

I found some great see through diamond black tights online. Underneath those tights I wear a pair of mint green ones that show through the diamonds. This picture is awful for lighting but the effect in real life is pretty good.

Anyway...back to Fi. For her face, I've seen a couple different approaches. Most people go with a mask, but it's those generic masks from the hobby stores that have really creepy face shapes. Fi has a cute young lady face with large almond eyes. I debated for a while on whether to do a mask. I bought one from JoAnn that I believe I can form into something that resembles Fi with a little dremeling and paint work. It's shaped like a butterfly but I can fill in the gaps.

Would Link players want THIS following them around a con?

Mostly I just think it's offputting for people to look at and talk to a mask. I had the same dilemma with my Sailor Moon transformation costume. For Banzai, I decided to go with face makeup.

I bought some stage makeup from the local costume shop, TaylorMaid. It's called Ben Nye in the color "blue spirit", which was more than appropriate for Fi. It's a dry cake powder and you can apply it with a wet brush directly onto your skin. I absolutely LOVE this makeup. It is light and breathable and doesn't make you feel hot or uncomfortable. I barely remembered I had it on. It matched the light blue satin really closely.

It will rub off onto other things a little bit at a time, but it stayed on all day at the convention with the exception of the area right where I was blowing my nose (it was a little cold outside).

As for shoes, they are just black pumps from Saver's. Easiest part of this whole crazy thing.

The best pic from Banzai is the first one we took right outside of the con.

Later on I was invited to be a part of an epic photoshoot at a castle-like location in Provo so I made some adjustments and updates to the outfit. First, the model magic "helmet" started to crack and fall apart so I remade it with some green foam that is about 3/4 inches thick and re-covered it in satin. It's far more comfortable and durable, even if it doesn't hang as close to my head. I also added a little diamond jewel to my forehead using spirit gum

Next, I revamped the setting on the large jewel on her chest. Instead of the sparkly foam, I made it more dimensional using Worbla and gold acrylic paint.

On the wings I added large pockets for my arms to hang out in so I could flap the wings and stay a little warmer too.

Here are my fave photos from our shoot! Link is cosplayed by my insanely talented friend SugarPoultry. You NEED to see her art! She is a master at drawing dragons, werewolves, Dr. Who and so much more. She also sells t-shirts of her work!

Let me dance for you!

I did a LOT of jumping to look like I was floating! Here I teach Link the Skyward Strike.

Master, there's an 85% chance that a giant bird might poop on your head at any given moment.

I must go, my people need me!

I like the feeling of this one. I was trying to evoke the same feeling as this promo art although I couldn't quite remember what it looked like at the time.

Hope you enjoyed this and that it helps you on your cosplay journey!

How I Made The NinjaBee Mascot Costume

2011-12-07T18:45:00.001-07:00

This is a blog post about how the mascot making madness started.

In my junior year of the BYU advertising program, I began looking for a place to complete my required internship credits. Being a shameless nerd, I started looking at local game developers for any sort of marketing position. I found out about NinjaBee Studios, an offshoot of Wahoo! Studios, close by in Orem. They had a PR position open so I applied and got an interview. From the sounds of it, they were looking for someone with more of a PR focus than an advertising focus. As we talked, I let slip that I was into costuming and they eventually asked if I could make a mascot outfit for them. I reluctantly said yes, as I had never taken on a project of that magnitude.

I can only think the word "magnitude" in Admiral Ackbar's voice. Hehe.

So NinjaBee's logo looks exactly how you think it would:

I came up with a design that would make sense on the human body but changed up a couple elements for the heck of it:

It was kinda...meeeeehhhhh. So they had someone at their place come up with a new design:

Much, MUCH better! And it matches the look of the logo while still being practical to wear.

So next, I started drafting patterns with cardstock paper and masking tape. This part was fun and not too hard actually, thanks to the design having mostly flat planes. It was much like a big 3D puzzle with flat pieces that just needed to be cut at the right angles to make it fit around the body. I also re-designed the abdomen (the part with the stinger) to hang more behind the person instead of straight down to allow for users of different sizes and heights to be able to wear it.

I can't remember whether I found the foam before or after the pattern was cut out...anyway, I bought a huge roll of foam wholesale from a local packaging company and started cutting it and gluing the pieces together according to my pattern. This is the same foam I made Lugia and Charmander with later with awesome results.

Luna surveys my work. I had to redo the chest piece a couple times to get the correct shape.

Here is how the foam inner skeleton ended up looking. The hands and feet are still in cardstock draft mode, but the body, abdomen and head were ready for the next stages:

At this stage I took the outfit to NinjaBee for approval...they LOVED it! It gave me a burst of energy to try and complete it before GEEX 2010.

The arm and leg pieces are two pieces of foam glued together at the seams (I cut the edge off at an angle to help the piece open up) and then sewn for added seam strength. I wanted them to open up even more to not be so tight on the wearer so I reinforced them with steel hanger tape (same stuff I make cookie cutters with!) and wire. This was kind of a jury-rigged method for keeping the foam more opened up, and it worked pretty well!

Next, I lined all my pieces in black ripstop nylon fabric from JoAnn. I figured if the mascot gets sweaty on the inside, nylon would be the easiest thing to wipe and sanitize for repeated use.

For the "skin", I ordered 5 yards each of black and yellow vinyl. I got it from http://www.discounteddesignerfabrics.com/. This place is AWESOME and will send you free swatches of fabric so you can see if the color and texture will work. I found the two colors of vinyl in the exact same thickness and they look great together. I cut out all the vinyl skin pieces and sewed them together, then put them over the foam and glued them into the inside edge of the foam.

The underside of the head, all finished, and the foot, ready for the vinyl to be glued under.

The wings were a bit tricky. I made a frame out of thick gauge wire that I hand-bent into the correct shape using a cardstock pattern as a guide. I sewed some see-through mesh fabric onto the frame, then glued a strip of black vinyl all around the edges. The hard part was getting the wings into the thorax piece. I put the wire through the back, then bent the wire ends towards the armholes to flatten them (don't want them skewering the user) and glued some foam over it to try and hold it in place. I hope it worked...

The head was tricky but also fun. I made eyeholes, then used aida cloth and window screen mesh to make "buggy" eyes that stuck out from the "helmet". I glued some white felt on for highlights. I also opened up the mouth for more visibility. I created a ninja mask that went around the whole head and tied in the back. The wearer can see through the mask in the "mouth" as well as out the eyes. The finishing touch was a shiny black pair of wire and vinyl antennae!

The head before any embellishments

Kind of a creepy smile there, Bee!

Figuring out the mask pattern by pinning it onto the foam

So I finally completed all the pieces by GEEX 2010 (just barely, I think a week before actually!) and even gave them a simple sword to complete the look. Here are all the pieces that go into wearing it:

-one head

-one chest, wings attached

-one abdomen, complete with sharp stinger!

-two arm armor pieces

-two calf armor pieces

-two feet (basic boot covers with elastic on the bottom to hold your shoes in)

-two 3-fingered gloves (very simple, with a stuffed layer to puff it out)

-one sword

-wearer's black clothes underneath

It's sturdy, can take a beating and won't hold onto dirt, so this mascot should last them for years! Here are some photos of the final product.

This is the guy who got the PR position. He looked great in it!

I went as Sora to GEEX and got a stylin' photo with my main Bee:

All in all it took me over a year to complete the costume...my excuse is that I had school and marriage and all kinds of fun things going on at that time. I could probably crank out the same thing in 2 months if I really applied myself now that I know what I'm doing :)

Charmander Mascot Cosplay

2011-10-25T21:10:00.000-06:00

Hi guys! Wow I have a ton of content coming up so sorry if it's overload @_@ I will separate things into distinct posts so you can read it in bite-sized chunks (if your mouth is the size of Venusaur's...hahaha!).

FIRST: I made my friend a Charmander cosplay for the GEEX (Gaming and Electronics Expo) in Sandy, UT. The head is made of the Astrofoam stuff I used in Lugia and Blizzard fleece. Before I put the teeth, nostrils and mouth in he looked a lot like a ninja turtle:

Charmander and the plushie we used for reference :3

I used a basic animal costume pattern from JoAnn and modified it so the zipper (in this case the velcro) goes in back. I put some foam in the front to give it more dimension for the "belly" and stuffed the hips with polyfil fiber to fill them out a bit. The feet are foam and blizzard fleece. The tail is a foam triangle, lots of polyfil stuffing and blizzard fleece, while the flame on the tail is just fabric and stuffing. I also made little puffy gloves for the 3-fingered hands.

Here is the head after we added nostrils, eyebrows and Fimo clay teeth painted with clear nail polish to give them some shine:

My reference pictures showed that Charmander's head basically goes straight to his body with no thin neck, so when we made the head we just made it wide enough to cover the wearer's shoulders:

The eyes on the head are made from felt, green fabric and some black mesh fabric (for embroidery I think...it's called Aida cloth or something). The wearer can actually see out of the mouth because we carefully selected a red fabric that didn't look see-through from the outside. The tongue is just a small pink pillow basically. Everything is held together with hot glue with the exception of the seams in the fabric, which were sewn.

RAWR! Charmander is ready for GEEX, Halloween, and beyond!!