KnowOne's Designs

Lady Loki for opening night of Thor 2: The Dark World

2013-11-10T21:32:00.001-08:00

Hello!
I know I have a few projects that need a write up before this one but I'm just so darn excited about this I need to post the write up now! It is also a work in progress due to some unfortunate happenings that night, so this won't be the last you see of it!
(I promise to get to the other posts soon, but look now you have some more consecutive reading material to look forward to!)

So.
Thor.
I have a confession to make. I never liked the Thor-verse before the movies. I know I know, hear me out. Rainbow bridge? Flying by swinging hammers? Loki's ridiculous pre-movie costume. Aliens who think their gods or the other way around...well that parts cool, but really it was all pretty silly. I did not want to see this movie and actually waited until it was out of theaters before I finally gave in. Holy Asgard was I wrong. This have been my favorite out of the Avengers movies (Iron man is a very close second) for many reasons. Reason 1: They exceeded all my expectations and made Thor and his world interesting, I was blown away! Reason 2: The costumes and props. Oh My Odin they are fantastic!! I literally watch this movie at least once a month and just drool over the designs. I love the combination between norse/viking stylings with the polish of something that is made to look out of this world. The textures are subtle but still purposefully and noticeable. I also appreciate how they change the costume designs subtly to show change for each of the characters as they grow in the 3 movies. Thor's armor gets more complicated and heroic as he grows as a person and Loki's gets more patina-ed and dingy as he goes showing the trouble he's caused leading to his downfall and more complicated inner turmoil on wanting to be accepted and carve a path on his own. I could go on! Reason 3: Chris Hemsworth is a pretty, pretty man and Tom Hiddleston is brilliant as Loki. I have not been so fond of a character in years (no it's not just because of his hair for those of you who know me..... but that plays a part :3 )

Look at this! How can you not love it?

Now than you know the extent of my love for this movie you can understand how excited I was to work on a costume from this universe. Not only was I going to build my favorite characters costume but I was able to get Meredith to re-design it for me so we could do another collaboration! I am in love with her design but I have another confession, I ended up changing the tunic/corset portion of it. I had so many ideas I had to try them!! Meredith was more than supportive of this and I am ending up having to make a third change to it in the near future due to the crappy material that the corset was made out of. I think it will be better in the end from this last change but I digress....

I was doing this as part of a group with other members from Project Hero and we were all trying to go for a more norse god/viking look rather than the clean one from the movie (as much as I love it!) Meredith always blows me away with her designs so I was ready to get started! Some poor planning last year cause me to put this on hold for a year or so but I'm actually happy this happened as it allowed me to have some time to plan.
My first change was that I wanted to add some scaling to it. I don't like the versions of her in entirely green metallic scales as that's not the vision I had for this but I wanted something to give off that affect. I ended up finding green pheasent feathers that were the perfect size, shape, and color. I had to use these! I decided to use a corset for the top and ditch the coin belt for a "leather" belt with young Loki's logo (also thank you Meredith for suggesting I read "Journey into Mystery: Loki" it was a amazing!) in an antique gold finish to match the horns.

These are both pre-detail stitching as you can see I left some pins in it

I then designed a top section that was going to go on top of the corset to house and protect the feather scales. I only wanted them on the top as an homage to the comics and a unique interpretation of it. I used the same material I was using for the arm wraps to cross over the feathers to tie the two together.

I then sewed some brown leggings out of 4-way stretch "leather" (same material I used for the sides on the top of the corset) tea stained some linen I ripped into wraps for my legs, and cut all of the wraps for my arms and stitched them together with big "x's" like I did on the middle of the corset in the last picture above.

I then proceeded to the horns and the wig. I pepped a horn from the movie helmet and Garrick filled it with foam and sanded it down smooth. He should be posting a video or a write up soon on his process for that. I then templated out the base of the crown out of paper and fit it to a mannequin head. Once I was happy with how that looked (I changed it twice to make it look more like Meredith's design) I cut it out of various sizes of foam. I glued it together and Garrick took care of the rest of the construction. Once he had it all together I added some bands of thin foam around the horns to make them look like they were actual horns fixed and bezel set on the crown. I then weathered it to make it look like oxidized, antique gold and am going to go back and add some more detail on the horns to make them a little more weathered to convey the "old horn" or "stone" look. Even though Garrick sanded them down and resin coated them before he molded them to give them the bumpy texture of stone of worn bone. I was going for a more rustic look. The whole head piece ended up being very light and very secure. I don't have to worry about moving my head and having it wiggle or fall off. I do have to watch how I walk through doors, however.

First design, wasn't digging it so much, too "Mera" looking.

Second design painted!

Needs a little more weathering but I am still pleased!!

I need to get some better pictures of the coins. Alas, I will still tell you about them! I had an idea that I thought was awesome, might be a little nerdy but it's a cool detail. I did some research on the Norse version of Loki and he had three kids, Fenrir the giant wolf, Hela the goddess of the underworld, and Ritter a snake that looks an awful like an ouroboros. I thought it would be neat to have their faces on the coins. So I sculpted 3 designs, had Garrick mold them, and voila! Hair coins! I sandwiched small pieces of the wig hair in between them and glued them together. I also added some black rooster feathers to the wig just to add another subtle detail.

I almost forgot the cape! The cape was simple. I wanted green and fur. I found both and sewed them together. I had some left-over gold thread from when I made Zuul a few years back so was a perfect way to clean out my thread box. i sewed the edges of this in gold as another homage to the movie design with the gold accents lining his jacket. I also wanted this to stay back and not hang in front of me so as to not ruin my feathers. Another costume detail form the movie I am in love with is the layering they did on their capes. They are set on shoulder pads to make them look heroic and pleated so the cape drapes beautifully behind them while keeping it behind them and not obstructing the front of their costume. I did something similar but no pleats as you cant really do that with fur. I made a harness (Meredith's idea actually) out of brown elastic that hold the cape on my shoulders without anyone being able to see the elastic. It's great! The edges of the cape are pinned up on my shoulders crating a collar of fur and a mantle so the extra fur collar wasn't needed. It frames the whole costume and shows off Loki's signature green enough to grab attention but not be over-whelming.

Here's the finished product! The Warmth drive went fantastically and we collected a lot of clothes and blankets for the homeless. Also the movie was amazing and I am making Garrick take me again this weekend! Everyone looked SO GOOD!!! Paul is an amazing Thor and I'm so pleased we all decided to do a Thor group! Deb's Black Widow is fantastic, I couldn't stop staring at it!! Cassie was great as Squirrel Girl, best one I've seen yet! And Jose was an awesome Cap.

Charlotte! You are amazing! thank you for taking pictures!!

My mom!

Gah!! I love this picture!! Everyone looks so good!

Sibling rivalry

I think I know who will win this one....

Stan Lee's angels?

Causing mischief, making bad faces...

Only bummer is I have to re-do the corset. This is last time I buy something out of China. I will be making my corsets from now on. I only wore it once and the finish on the vinyl ripped and peeled. Oh well, live and learn a new skill. I will show you my ideas for how to fix this since I spent so many hours on the feathers already!! TBC....

Deathstroke from "Arrow"

2013-08-12T12:13:00.000-07:00

I have a story to tell all of you. I was trying to keep this one a little low-key since it's pretty embarrassing, but I can't keep in in any longer. It's too funny....
I did something extremely dumb this past weekend causing me to have some unanticipated "free" time.
Let's get this out and over with.
I ran myself over with my own car.
More specifically, I ran my leg over with my car.
Yes I was driving.
No I was not intoxicated in any way, shape, or substance.
It was a perfectly timed accident.
I stopped my car on the curb.
I forgot to put it in park.
I tripped getting out of the car and fell on my knees.
My car ran my leg over.

Good news!
It's not broken!
However I am very much on crutches for the next week at least.
My dignity is another story...
I don't think that will ever heal.
The only way to handle this now is to laugh about it.
Speaking of humor...
I do have some serious road rash that Garrick is tending to since it's too gross for me to handle looking at. (I have a high pain tolerance but a low threshold for seeing blood/gore on myself, it makes my anxiety run amok).
I am lucky to have a great husband like him.
No I won't post pictures of it.
Eww.

I will be posting pictures of older projects I haven't gotten around to for the next few weeks.
That's a plus!

I've been meaning to post about this one since Phoenix Comicon.
This is my last minute build for DeathStroke from the series "Arrow."

Garrick and I had started watching "Arrow" and were instantly obsessed. We love when there is a good "real world" telling of a character and this is just that.
Let's be honest.
I don't have a huge attachment to Slade aka DeathStroke as a character.
But look at this mask.

I might add on arrow to mine later if I can find some driftwood to display it on...

How could I resist?!
There's so much weathering to be done and texture to create.
This was a much welcomed challenge for me.
I also have a friend who really likes Deathstroke. So I was thinking if this came out well I'd make one for him. Since I was happy with the outcome of this project, I'm currently working on a second one for him.

I had a hood pattern already made for DeathStroke since I was commissioned to make a fabric mask for the web series "Super Power Beat Down." For that one I we used the same face shell for DeathStroke as we did for Deadpool. This one that I made for myself I sued the shell we used for the Cobra Commander hood. You can watch the video here.
This was a pretty quick build since I already had the parts.
I didn't take as many in progress photos as I would have liked since I was on a tight deadline but since I'm making a second one, I'll take more this time around and post them when I'm done.

I first decided to double up on the material when I was sewing. I also went for a brighter orange, since that's what I had and what I knew my friend would like. To be honest, I like the actual prop a lot, but I like this orange better. It's not exact, it's how I preferred it, sometimes I like to change things on my preferences, this is one of them.
Doubling the material was a great idea. When I started to cut into it to make it looked frayed, the double material really filled out the empty space. I tried to cut along the same lines as the prop undercutting everything by a bit so when I went back later to burn the material it wouldn't burn it up so high.

I used scrap pieces of material to test out all of my paints and burning it first so I would know what to expect from the material. (Always a good idea to test techniques out first on scraps!) I did a combination of paints that would be more of a natural color, more dark browns, ochers, and oranges so it would look more like it was weathered on an island rather than the stark "cell shaded" looks you get with just blacks and grays.

I built up a little of the paint in a light layer to place where all the weathering would be. I took care to work it around the eyes, nose, and mouth very lightly to give it some character and to look like someone was actually wearing it.
After this initial layer was done came the fun part...playing with fire!
Spandex doesn't really burn, it melts. This was a lesson in getting that reaction to work for me, not against me. There was a lot of watching melting fabric drop and hope it didn't land on your toes and also using a respirator. This process stank. I also don't know what kind of harmful fumes it made by just burning the synthetic material but I figured breathing it in wasn't a very good idea regardless.

Once this was done, I let it air out a bit so it didn't stink up the house, and brought it back inside for some more weathering. I ended up wanting to make the whole mask look dingy and filled a spray bottle up with really strong coffee and paint water. It took some rubbing and workign to get the material to absorb the water but it did. I would do a few layers of specific weathering in between and then drench the whole mask with the coffee/paint solution again. I did this about 3-4 times until I reached the point where i wanted to add some more substantial paint detail and was happy with color change from the solution.
This was my last step in painting. I made up a few different shades of the brown, orange, ocher mixture some with black in it and started to go heavy on the areas that had a lot of detail to them. I didn't want to over-do it too quickly, so I built this up in layers and checked it with the origional frequently.

I think it came out pretty darn close!

Still think I might add that arrow later...

I think I will shave down the cheek bones a little more on the face shell buck

So much weathering!

No zipper, this was just a display

Like I said, the color is different but I'm happy with it and had a ton of fun making it an learning new techniques. I am really excited to do more masks like this in the future and really push the limits on what fabric masks can look like.
This was the first mask I made as a display piece only. Technically you could wear it but it would probably smell weird and be pretty itchy due to the burning and shredding of the fabric.
If I can find some driftwood that's not crazy expensive I'll probably put this on it as a display and put the arrow in it's eye.
We shall see!

Let me know what you all think!

Chaser John Doe: Yumekui Merry

2013-08-03T16:33:00.001-07:00

Cats. Demons. Glorious red cloaks.

You must be thinking, “This must be something out of Jackie’s crazy dreams.” Nope. Just another crazy anime series. Crazy good! I finally got to make an anime costume. I am beyond excited!

Our friend Alex has been wanting a Chaser John Doe (Yumekui Merry) costume to wear to Anime Expo now for about a year. We hadn’t had the time with other commissions last year but this year we were able to fit it in. And fit it in we did! There are a few things I will go back and change (as there are with most fully wearable costumes) but altogether it came out great.

As my friend Shannon pointed out, this was a perfect fit for me since almost all of my favorite characters in animes end up having long red coats or capes. This was no different. It didn’t take much to get me on board .

I had a lot of fun making this one and working with Alex on this. I was able to ::gasp:: weather it as well!! Garrick did the mask, ears, and cast the face pieces for the boots. Alex and his dad made the “sword.” It was truly a group effort and I am very excited with how it came out. We learned a few new techniques along the way which is always a bonus.

We have a few pictures we snagged from Alex from AX and we'll be doing a proper shoot for it when it cools down (We live in AZ, it's 110+ right now, going out in a cape in all black sounds like a nightmare...)

Garrick decided to tackle the mask and ears. He should be doing a post about it on the Prop section at the top. New format you say? Why yes! We decided to brand both pages with KnowOne's Designs and separate the 2 into sewing and props. As cleaver as one black catsuit is, we should be more consistent.

That being said... here's the new layout!

Since this is the sewing section let me tell you a little about what I did for this project.

I tend to start on the one part of the costume that makes me the most excited about making it. Once I have that planned, the rest usually falls into place. For this one it was the cloak (surprise).

I started with the hood since that was the part I needed the most time to plan. I had an idea of how to make it work but I still wanted to give myself some time in case I had to go a different route.

I bought a crepe-like material that was very light weight and had a very worn texture to it. Anime characters usually walk a fine line between unnaturally pristine and clean and weathered. This was no exception. I wanted all of the wear to be in the cloak since that was the part that had the most expression. Hence looking for a very expressive material. I needed something with character and that was very light weight. John Doe has a very jagged point on the back of the cloak's hood and I wanted to try to keep that as expressive and exaggerated as possible.

I also wanted to keep some contrast since this anime is drawn with a lot of contrasting blacks to off set the white and the red in the costume. I decide to put black in the hood to off set the mask and hide any extra parts of the baclava that you might see. The rest of the cloak I left red so I could weather it on both sides.

This would have a better effect if I were wearing the mask buuut this was done in a short amount of time and as usual, I didn't take as many pictures as I would have liked to. I do like the frayed edge this material had that I left on the hood. Added bonus for pre-existing creepy features!
(Side note: I am not naked in this picture. Garrick pointed this out the other day. I'm letting you all know so you don't think I'm a creep and run around wearing other people's commissions naked around the house...or do I? You may never know....)

Once I was happy with how the hood looked I started on the cloak. It is actually in 3 pieces, the hood, the shoulder "shawl" and the cape part. I did this since the way his cloak is drawn I couldn't figure out how to make the it look the same and keep in in one single piece. This way it looks like it's all together but it's not. It's also easier to put on this way.
I made the general shapes for everything, sewed it two layers thick and then started weathering it. My favorite part!!
I cut the cape at the bottom to look like it's been ripped, stepped on, and caught on things and shredded. I then soaked in in coffee concentrate. It smelled glorious for days until the next step. I then spray panted it in a way to take into consideration how fabric would wear and adsorb dirt, from the ground up. The darkest parts were closest to the ground and it gradually became lighter the farther up it went. Again, I wish I had taken more pictures.

Once I was happy with this I moved onto the rest. I used a black catsuit for the base of the suit (surprise!) and sewed some white bias tape up the front for the lines. I got some white gloves, sewed a more flared cuff on them and made some boot covers. Alex really wanted the toe to be square so we went looking for some steel toed bots and then I padded the toe with some quilting batting to make it extra square and boxy. I was pretty darn proud of these! Garrick found a tiny oval mold and cast the little John Doe faces out of resin for us to glue to the boots. Small details are always the part that make a simple costume go the extra mile. We could have done these out of fabric, but they looked so much more polished being 3D and cast out of resin.

My second favorite part was the belt. My machine can sew soft leather! This was super exciting for me. I used the base of an adjustable webbed belt and sewed the soft leather on top. I then cut and glued the little belt loops and the front and then sewed them for added stability. I wouldn't use them as functioning loops, but at least they're not going to get damaged.

Not the best picture but now you can see how the tail attaches and how I sewed the leather on it while still keeping it adjustable.


(This was the cape pre-weathering)

And here it is in it's natural habitat, Anime Expo!

Now I need to start watching this anime....
Also, he has a kitty form...in a cape!

This needs to be in my life...

Quorra TRON: Part 3 R3CONFIGUR3D

2013-04-22T21:13:00.000-07:00

"Hey Jackie, are you going to build anything new or are you just going to keep re-doing the same stuff you've done over and over again?"

A little bit of column A, a little bit of column B....
I like getting things right the first time and in this hobby that doesn't always happen especially when you're trying new materials and processes for the first time. That means I have to re-do them until I'm happy with it!
Quorra has been a lesson in that. Mistakes. Failures. Success. Rinse. Repeat. Oh and lights, lots of lights.
This time I think I am 99% happy with the outcome. I'm mostly done with the sewing and about to hand it off to G to do the lights. Oh and we bought a helmet from a guy on the RPF named Crimson490 after our mold broke last year right before con. The guy does some great work, I am super pleased with this helmet. (when I find if he has a FB or something I'll link it) I have also passed that on to G to put lights in and shine up. G gets to do all the dirty work.

I was (and still am) working with limited quantities of material and trying to stay on a "budget" since con is approaching and I'm actually trying to make more money than I spend this year.
I tore apart the old Quorra costume I had as a pattern (QV.2 RIP) and made it a little bigger just in case. When working with limited materials, better to have to cut more off than not have enough. I was also going from a not stretchy material to a 4way fabric so I wanted some room to mess around with the fit.
This is my most favorite part of this whole costume and of sewing in general. The fitting!! I feel like I'm sculpting with fabric. I pinned my material down in it's appropriate spots, wrong side up and started pinning and tucking. I do it this way so I can draw on it if needed with chalk and so when I pin everything and go to sew, my seams are all done for me and I don't have to flip everything the opposite direction.

I was beyond ecstatic to be using a 4way stretch material this time instead of the kind-of-maybe-on-a-good-day-stretches-a-little-bit vinyl I used the last two times. This is a matte 4way and it looks perfectly rubbery which fits what I was going for exactly. I waited to sew the general fit of the whole suit before I cut out the chest pieces so I could draw that part on there once everything was the shape it was going to stay. When you have cut outs like this, you don't want anything changing how they lay or are positioned.

Sewed that all up. Did some fittings on myself and the dress form with the shirt underneath and then it was time to fit the disc mount. Garrick made a new buck for his vacuform table that was more even this time. Cut that out and fit it to where I wanted it. I decided to keep the whole underpiece of the disc mount since she looks like she has a tiny "turtle" pack under her disc.

I have since made it a little tighter fitting (my dress form has wider shoulders and "ribs" than I do even thought I set it to my measurements. Just a quirk I guess) so it would have less ripples in it. I also didn't want to make it too tight since when the lights go on it a lot of the stretch will be disabled do to the EL tape. I also am going to be putting the skirt part on after the lights go on since I had some placement issues do to doing the skirt first last time.

I did try something new with this. I was really concerned about using too much velcro around the neck area and having it be bulky looking but I needed a way to stabilize that area from stretching too much or at all. So I decided to try out some fusable interfacing! Never used this stuff before since I've never made a collar that's needed it. It's weird. It's also awesome. I wasn't expecting it to stretch in one direction so I had to plan around that. I also wasn't expecting the test piece to stick to my steaming cloth. I think the directions should have been a little more specific. Or I need to learn how to read...who's counting?! No more moving or puckering on that cut out! Whoo hoo! I did put some velcro in two spots to keep it held down, but not nearly as much as I thought I would.

This is on the back side of the fabric btw

I am using the same boots because they're awesome, the same pants (they are also awesome), and gloves (they need a repair but are thirdly awesome). I'll post more updates when G does the lights and helmet.

I know I usually post music I was listening to while I work and I'm still going to do that, but I don't know if Quorra would really listen to it. I needed some motivation and inspiration lately and this completely UN-likely source did the trick and gave me a new favorite artist. Macklemore is a really inspiring guy who is not afraid to call out his entire genre on their prejudices and inconsistencies. Thank you for reminding me that I do like hip-hop when it's not all about strippers, blow, and gold. Although he does have a song about gold, not feeling that one, but you get what I mean.
Quorra might like him, who knows :)

Back to Deadpool and Monarch repairs now....
I'll show you what G and I have been working on for Meredith when he puts up his post. She just launched her kickstarter for Hinges, check it out here.
Here's a preview of what we are working on:

Raksa the paper tiger

Rise of Cobra: Baroness and Cobra Commander

2013-02-17T22:27:00.001-08:00

Long time no see!
I'm back.
After much holiday fun time, getting the flu, and devoting my life truly and completely to everything Deadpool I have returned with a new black catsuit costume!
Surprised I haven't run out of new ones?
Are you kidding?
Seriously, I don't think in two life times I could even attempt to make every comic character's costume that is a black catsuit.
Yes, I know that was good planning on my part.
Thank you. :)

A year has come and passed since they decided to delay the next G.I. Joe movie until 2013. I cried a little too. FOR JOY! There was NO WAY IN HELL I was going to be able to finish it when it was supposed to be released last year. Also, the first movie was ehh...Snake Eyes costume is way more B.A. in this movie and Cobra Commanders new outfit is also significantly more awesome than the one they made J.G.L wear. I am bummed out about lack of J.G.L although he's probably ok with it. The marketing they're doing is pretty cool too. Lots of billboards with a steel cobra on them saying "Do you have what it takes?" making them look like military recruiting ads. Cobra Commanders new outfit is way more awesome than the one they made J.G.L wear.

Good thing for Project Hero that we're doing a Cobra group this year. We have, Storm Shadow, Serpentor, Zartan, and Shipwreck so far. (yes I know Shipwreck is a Joe).

Can you guess what Cobra's Garrick and I will be?

You're right!

Cobra Commander and Baroness. Who else would we pick?! Garrick loves playing characters with grating, nasally voices. Plus, he gets to walk around and yell at people to do his bidding. Much like he does as the Monarch. Fun times shall be had by all!

This is what I'm basing Baroness off of.

I like the gauntlets on this one best.

I Like the belt in this one.

I would like to add a few details to this to make mine a little different from the ones previously done. I found some awesome black small snake skin print vinyl to use as an accent. I am going to add some inserts to the suit with this and do most of her accessories out of this i.e. belts, holsters etc.

I just finished the contouring on the catsuit and adding the snake skin inserts down the sides. I'm going to be sewing the details on the legs instead of having them as armor. I don't think my thighs would work or look right if i tried to fit them in that armor. I'm going to off-set this difference by using a matte black spandex and outlining it in piping. It sounds good in my head, let's hope it's just as awesome executed.

Garrick is working on my armor for me. He just finished his vacu-form table and is going to try to vac this. Were trading since I'm sewing his Cobra Commander. If the armor is a success we might be offering this for sale. Stay tuned on our Facebook page to see if that comes to fruition.

Garrick wanted a creepy version of Cobra Commander so the voice would sound even more ridiculous coming out of this mask. His is going to be black and red to match me and because the jacket we found is black. (Deadpool is taking up all my time ((you're welcome)) so we are buying a coat and mask for this to save time. The mask is SOOOO creepy I love it.

Progress pics soon!

**Updates**

After a few re-designs, some errand running, and a few back to back work nights, we have some progress to show you! We have had to pick up the pace on this one since my job told me last week they are flying me out the week of the event for a training thing. Sooooo that mean's all my shiz needs to be finished before I leave, in 2 days!!
Garrick's cowl and coat are STILL not here. I'm sweating this a little. If his cowl doesn't come in I can make a passable one on Friday. If his coat doesn't come in, I don't know what we're going to do....

I have my suit all sewed and am pretty happy with it. There are always things I would like to fix/add but this is good for a trial run on the 30th. I still have time to change and add things before PCC. I'll show pictures of it when I do a make-up test with my wig and glasses.

I did decide on a last minute belt change. I am using the Batman begins belt they sell in costume stores and before you say anything, I know EVERYONE uses this belt for EVERYTHING but look at this Adam Hughes drawing above! He totally based her belt off of that batman one!! It even has the little cylinder and the small pouches on the side. I think my decisions are justified here...

Garrick has the work-up on the buck we made to vaccu-form the Baroness armor. You can click the link to his blog "KnowOne's Designs" at the top of the page to get to it. We should be doing the back of it tomorrow and then I'll be strapping it together with nylon webbing and the snake skin vinyl I've been using as accents for all of our accessories.

I had the buckle laser cut after many failed attempts at trying to cut something this small out of foamies with a dull exacto knife. I had had enough! I think we'll probably be going the laser cutting route form now on, it just looks so clean!

This is going to be the bracer for Baroness. I originally had this cut laser cut too but it ended up being too small. I decided to go with an easier design to cut out of foamies and based it off of the Sideshow statue above. I am pretty proud of it and it's symmetry. Still laser cutting things in the future, but I'm down to the wire on this one.

This is what I have done for Garrick so far.... His pants, his belt and sword, and his shoulder rope thing.....yea... Keep your fingers crossed our stuff gets here in time!

Since I haven't been able to do too much work on Cobra Commander due to supplies not getting here, my song choices have been aimed at Baroness.
She would listen to a lot of Florence + the Machine and Marina and the Diamonds as both are very classical sounding but totally weird at the same time, just her style.

Here's to cramming. I did it all through school, why would I stop now? ;)
More updates soon!

**UPDATES**

So I know you were all waiting for pictures and we have them! We haven't been able to do a photo shoot of them yet but some of the ones we got were pretty impressive if I do say so myself. Before we get to those you need to read my rant on how we got to the pictures....oh it's good...

I woke up the Friday before the event fairly optimistic that fate was going to smile down upon Garrick and I and deliver the pieces to our costumes that day. Wouldn't that have been nice? Well the mail came a little early that day and there was nothing. Abso-frigga-lutely NOTHING. So I panicked. Everyone needs a good panic every now and then. Mine are just more frequent than others, whatevs, get the creative juices flowing.
I ran to the closes costuming store hoping (here that optimism again) they would have something I could use as a base for this Cobra Commander hood. I wanted it to look executioner style and kind of weathered and messy so it was extra creepy.
I found nothing. I walked around a second time and found nothing. I don't know what I was expecting to find the second time, honestly, but I gave it the old college try. I decided I needed build this thing with stuff I could find in an hour. I went back to the "batman aisle" as I called it to see if there was something there that had a good base to use as a scowling brow profile. I found one of those kids masks, that have the batman face and ears and are a weird rubbery-hard plastic. Good place to start. I then looked for some pre-made executioners hoods (trying to cut down on time people!) Nothing. they had gimp masks, but not and executioner hood. Really costuming store? This is a Halloween staple! Took my Batman mask and bought some more crepe wool so I would have to come back later to get it when I go to re-make Garrick's Monarch eyebrows and beard. I still needed a coat and some coffee, so it was onto those two.
I stopped at a few Goodwills and they had nothing. My optimism is waning at this point. I decided to use the coat Garrick had at the house that he got from his Dad when he was in the Navy and start there. (I still can't tell if the thing is navy or black, it's so close to both it looks like whatever you put it up against) I went to SAS to get some silver buttons for it so the gold didn't clash. Then it was time for coffee.
Let me just put this out there, I am an introvert, I have to prepare myself to be in groups of people. When I go to drive-through place I am going there to get something and not commiserate with anyone. Then enters Dutch Bros. I love that they have coconut milk. What I don't love is that they basically crawl into your car and ask you how your day is. They don;t care that I have less than 24hrs to build a Cobra Commander costume and would porbably think I'm nuts if I told them. So after this dude basically held my coffee hostage while he gave me a weird pep talk I was onto the actual construction of this beast.
I was very focused so I didn't take too many progress pics, but this is basically how it went down.
I cut the Batman mask down to just a face shell, as seen below

Then I made rough pattern out of wrapping paper and came up with this:

I was pretty impressed with myself. I believe I yelled to Bastion that "I am a magical costuming unicorn!" This weird combination of mis-placed optimism and unwanted pep-talks I guess had worked!
We then stayed up till about 3 in the morning putting the final touches on my armor and Garrick's costume.
Here's the part you really wanted to see, PICTURES!

Bam! I cam together! I need to get Garrick a coat that isn't wool so he doesn't die and I think I'll make the hood a little bigger so I can get some more creepy wrinkles around the eyes. I am also going to spray it with Plasti-dip to it gives it a cool texture. I am going to make new gloves for Baroness so they're not so bulky. Also going to trim the armor out on the back so it has more shape.

You can see my bracers better here, I'm going to weather them before PCC

Yea weathering! I learned a new skill, yay life achievement!

Cobra motorboat!

Garrick's really liked being in the turret.

We were able to raise about $430.00 for Wounded Warriors so far with Project Hero. Check out our facebook page to see the auctions of the sketch cards that Ben Glendenning did for us to raise even more money for them.

Thanks to everyone who came out to support the cause and Deb and Paul for putting together such a great event! Ok well thanks to everyone for that day, the Morgan family for helping out and generally being awesome, Jason and his wife for driving out here, Charlotte and Bill for making me ride that bull (you know what I'm talking about) and Brian and Whitney for filming it. Love you guys!!!

2012-12-17T20:05:00.001-08:00

Santapool, complete with cotton ball beard and Deadpool Santa hat

Hope everyone is having a good holiday! I know we are! Sorry for lack of posts, despite this, we have been super busy. As is every winter here in Az we have to take the few weeks of cold to do some out door projects and stuff to the house. We also did a photo shoot of our X-Force costumes in Flagstaff since it was snowing a bit. You can see some of those in the X-Force Deadpool post, one our Facebook, on my main blog, and on our new Project Hero page.
Super fun!
We (KnowOne's Designs with Project Hero) adopted a family this year for Christmas and are still taking donations for them on Project Hero's website if anyone is able to donate.

We also filmed a short holiday video with "Santapool." It's pretty funny if I do say so myself and features KnowOne's Designs very own Deadpool. This is the start of something we have been talking about in Project Hero for awhile. We have many more ideas for some fun short videos we plan on making in the future to post on the new site and on Youtube.

Oh I also made this sweet Christmas wreath. I simultaneously found out how much I loathe crafting. I think I would go as far to say as I hate it. Anyone who enjoys decoupaging and I can not get along, that was just painful. I know do some pretty intense sewing and prop projects, but i feel that the end justifies the means. This did not. It only resulted in 3 unnecessary trips to Michael's the store that makes me impulse by and want to take a nap at the same time. I do think those balls I made would make cute Christmas ornaments to sell, however at this point I didn't even enjoy typing this paragraph let alone thinking of making those again. We'll see, they are pretty darn cute!

You know, I forgot to make a Deadpool one....

I have a lot of projects planned for the new year including some new Deadpool stuff, a Cobra group (yours truley will be Baroness and Garrick will be the scariest Cobra Commander you have ever seen), some Loki action, more Venture Bros, and maybe even some new and improved TRON stuff so you'll just have to stay tuned to see!

I will be updating both blogs soon, but I don't have a regular schedule as of yet since the holidays are still upon us. Hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday and thank you for all your support, questions, commission requests, and views. :D

~Jackie and Garrick of KnowOne's Designs

The Monarchs 2012 Halloween Venture...(haha get it?!)

2012-10-29T19:16:00.002-07:00

Oh the Monarchs....what a delightful mix of villain, gaudy, and awkward all bundled up into one arching couple.

The process of this build has been similar. Frustration, do-overs, and awkward all mixed together and bundled up into two couple's highly coveted weekends and you get the learning process that was this Monarch build.
Before I go too in depth on this, please know, we were in a rush. A BIG rush. We plan out plenty of time for our commissions and that leaves very little time to squeeze in our own projects resulting in many things that need to be re-made on this. Don't get me wrong, they look great, but I know we're going to wear these more than once and I would like them to last.
This was a big learning experience and a reality check for us. We do not want to produce anything rushed even for ourselves. We take pride in our work and want to give our projects the time they deserve. That being said my posts may be more infrequent from now on but they will be worth it! Expect updates soon on the pieces that we are fixing for the Monarchs.

Let's start with the actual design here. The Monarch I decided to stick pretty close to home on his whole design just changing the shape of his face. Since we were hurried I didn't want to mess with prosthetic for this go around. I may try to find a hawk-ish nose in the future for Garrick but for now the eyebrows are enough. When working on this I was listening to a lot of EDM and I could totally see the Monarch dancing to MGMT "Electric Feel" in his nasally voice. I may have to record Garrick doing this....

Dr. Mrs. the Monarch needed a little tweaking....I would like to stay in my costume when I wear it so I modified the neckline. I have seen girls build corsets underneath to support everything but to be honest, I wanted something I didn't have to worry about being taped into and falling out of. When I get more of the yellow material in I am going to make it lower cut than it is in the below pictures,( I know, I know, you were all worried, you can calm down now!) but other than that I stayed pretty true to her design. I listened to a lot of Florence+ the Machine when working on her. I can see her signing "Kiss with a Fist" in her unique voice.

The very first thing I made were the wings. I had a ton of orange fabric and needed it to be wings so I went to town! I cut the shapes for the two large wings and for the two shorts wings and sewed them up. About 4 yrds total for all of them. I cut out the black wing tips, glued those on, Then sandwiched them in between the 16 yrds of inch black bias tape I sewed along the edges of the wings to give them a more defined comic look. The white details were last, they were cut out of white vinyl and glued on top of the black. Easy Peasy fresh and squeezy.

The body suit was bought and sewed down from Zentai-zentai.
*(Which, segue real quick. I think I am going to start making my own catsuits. I know how much love I professed for having them made and how much cheaper it is, but I have had some problems ordering these things and it's always something!! I would rather have to up my prices a little and have something made in the US, by me, and the only person I have to argue with is myself! Would you guys, as clients pay more for that? Let me know, I want feedback! I am really sick of dealing with these companies....)
Not much to say on that but to REMEMBER TO WASH YOUR FABRIC!!! I have to re-make Garrick's boot covers, not because they suck like mine, but because his gloves bled on the yellow when he would go to adjust them and now they look permanently dirty... I am not a happy Jackie about that, my fault, but I can still whine about it....it's my blog. :D

I then worked on my body suit. I bought a long sleeved leotard (I couldn't help myself, it was so cheap and made in the us!!) I cut out the butterfly design from the same fabric as the Monarch wings (one side) traced a mirror image of it and then ironed on some of the iron on backing to it so it would stay when I sewed it. I had never used this stuff before and it's pretty awesome but in hind site I should have just ironed it to a whole piece and then cut my design out of that...live and learn...

I actually started the butterfly design with some orange bias tape but the color kept bugging me. It was dayglo orange and I just couldn't handle it (picture on right). I wanted the costumes to match as much as possible. I initially didn't want to use the material that the wings are made out of because it frays. But using that iron-on backing and stop fray-stop helped with that.
I then sewed the yellow vinyl I have cut and made into thinner ribbons so I could edge the neck line. Awesome part about using the pvc was that it held the neckline in place and kept it from stretching bigger than I cut it. When I get more in to re-make the boot covers I'm going to deepen the neckline a little because of this. I wanted to go conservative at first so I could see how everything would "handle." (translation: I didn't have the "deep v bra" or any toupe tape and needed to be able to wear a normal bra under this.)

The back with the wings attached

My FAVORITE part of this was the wing material. This picture doesn't do it justice. It's bright orange with some red and yellow all through it and changes colors depending on how the light hits it. It's perfect and ties all the colors together. It's one of those fabrics that makes me feel like how I imagine a bird gets with something shiny, I just can't stop staring at it! Something like that can be time consuming to sew lol....

Garrick will probably post a build on his armor/gualntlets when he goes to re-do it just to compare the two processes. This go around we made it out of sealed foam and pvc for time-saving purposes. It will be hardened in round 2.

Our crowns were made out of QT cups and have either velcro or hair clippies glued to them. (I'm sure you can guess who's used what). We are going to make molds of them, clean them up and make them more 3D soon.
My gloves were bought and I sewed my collar out of the same material as everything else. I am considering casting it to make it look like hard plastic but the one thing I don't like about that is how it doesn't close to the next that way. I may leave mine this way or maybe make it out of foam and cover it, we'll see. I'm trying to make them look more like dolls that stepped out of a box, very clean, polished and stylized.

Boot covers....oh boot covers...
You works so well and this girl and this girl have a such a great tutorials but I still tried to take a short cut. Folks, don't take the easy way...it ends up being the painfully, mind-numbing dumb way. Garrick's boots I made completely and was very happy with how they came out. I only have to re-make them because of above mentioned fabric bleeding incident. I used some pirate boots that we had laying around and cut them down to the weird dude mary-janes you see in the far left picture. I gave them a pointed top to match mine to create more visual interest and style.

lady legs!

Mine were a different story....
I bought yellow pvc leggings thinking I would just glue them to the shoe and poke the heel through. Wrong.
I went with wedges so I could wear this for a decent amount of time. You can't use that method for wedges. I didn't buy enough fabric to make mine from scratch....so I had to get creative...
I sewed mine and then realized I had to make the thigh part bigger since I didn't account for the height of the shoe. This I was most proud of. I was able to make a v design on the back of each of the legs to add the needed thigh width but making it not look cobbled together.
This was a wasted effort since I ended up needing to add some to the calf because of my giant calves...oh well I tried. 6hrs later... I was done and convinced someone would tell me how awful they looked as soon as we got to the party. They don't from a distance, but they're sloppy for my standards (especially for 6 flippin hrs of work!!) and need to be redone. Also as a note for making boot covers for wedges. Only glue the cover to the actual part where your foot goes into for the shoe. Glue the side of the wedge separately. It will look cleaner and fit better in the end. I'll post some pictures of this when I do it to show the comparison.

Now for the fun part. I hand-made Garrick's eyebrows and goatee. I had a few ideas for this but ultimately it came down to time. I ended up using crepe wool and straightening it. I didn't use a flat iron although I hear you can, because I was down to the line on making these and didn't want to destroy my materials. I bought a mustache and goatee that had a lace base and glued the crepe wool to it with some floral wire in it to hold the shape. I then sculpted them into their proper shape and used some styling products to stick them together without making them look hard and glued.
When I remake these I am going to flat-iron the wool to get it less kinky (it felt like pubes...) and use some more glue to secure it before I start styling them with products. We then attached them with prosthetic adhesive. They held up pretty well for me not really knowing what I was doing so yay, new skill acquired!

I tried something new with my hair. I am all about wigs but my hair cut is nearly perfect for this costume so I did an experiment. I curled the ends of my A-line bob up (it's asymmetrical so one side is longer) and pinned them with bobby pins to hold them in place while I hair sprayed and glued the crap out of them. I let them dry, and they stayed! It was awesome! the longer one got a little lopsided by the end of the night, but I was so impressed I will keep doing this for this costume, it's looked dead-on to the character!

Here are the finished products (for now) with our AWESOME friends Deb and Paul as the best Brock Sampson and Molotov Cocktease I have ever seen (not just saying that because they're my friends either ;)

**UPDATE**
You can vote for us here for the 2012 RPF Costume Contest!

Our friends are awesome!

Kissy-face! I love how Garrick's holding his wings in this

We made the Phx NewTimes!

Go Vote for us on theRPF!!
http://www.therpf.com/gallery/groups/p4337-venture-bros-group.html

She-Ra Princess of Power

2012-09-14T17:08:00.001-07:00

Before you get to your regularly scheduled (mostly) post, I want to explain how I think I'm going to organize my posts and builds from now on. I will try to keep costume builds in one post. If it's something that has taken me a few weeks to build, I'll update the post with an "**Update!!**" at the part that has been newly added. If it's a tutorial that I did from working on a costume I will do a separate post for it but try to create a hyperlink so both posts link to one another. This will keep down clutter and make things easier to find for all you fine folks. :D

Gotta love the 80's!
This has been such a fun commission to work on! I'm really glad I have been able to do this because it's something I would have never made for myself and I have done a few things I have had the ideas for but haven't tried out until now (like her B.A. head piece!!).

I based the head piece on this picture by one of my go-to and favorite artists Stjepan Sejic.

How awesome is that?! I thought it was fantastic. The rest of the costume is based of of her original design to keep it simple.

I know, I know. This is HORRIFYING! It's my dirty work mannequin head. Just think, it stares at me while I work all day, jealous yet?!

Now that's a head piece!

These are just the paper templates I made to make sure everything fit together and looked good before I cut it out of foamies.

I tried to go with the curve that already existed in the foamies so it would fit with the contours of the head better. This also helps to counter-act the curling that can sometimes happen when you seal it with the glue mixture I use. I am still in the process of sealing them before I paint them, they will be gold when they're done. That will probably be next week's post ;)

I am doing the belt, gauntlets, and boots details with foamies but not exactly the same way. For those pieces, since they will be getting a lot more action as far as movement goes, will be wrapped in my favorite stretch vinyl and then painted with Montana Gold spray paint. I SWEAR by this stuff. It's acrylic, pretty flexible, and goes on so even. Another future update.
Here are the "wings" unpainted. The shinier one has been sealed with the glue mixture, the other will be sealed tonight.

Let's take a step back and talk about the design for this dress. I have a decent amount of commissions (for someone who is working a seperate 40hr/wk job, planning a charity event, working on my own Halloween costumes, and trying to re-landscape my yard(s)) already due to wonderful clients before Halloween so I didn't have much room to take on something epic when I got this commission. I decided to go the modification route which is kind of like a fashion/costuming treasure hunt for me.
I found the dress, boots, and sword on ebay and decided to modify them. The dress I hemmed to the clients preferred length. The boots I cut a design out of the tops of them and added some embellishments to make them look more detailed. The sword is my most prized find! It's a Thor foam sword that is nearly the same design as the She-Ra one that just needed to have the "Thor" logo painted over and add a few red gems to the hilt, done!

Boot and Sword and Fabric mess....

I did sew the cape and make all of the gold details (black parts in pictures). I modified the cape design to attach to the gold "feather" parts on the top of her dress to make it more functional. I initially had this elaborate idea to make this kind of harness with those clear bra straps, but I have to confess, I HATE those. I know sometimes they are necessary, but come on, I can SEE them, they are not invisible. I try to avoid them at all costs.

I have been having fun with matching songs to characters but this time my awesome friends
burnt me cds of Davey Havock's new group Blaqk Audio. Remember A.F.I?! OMG it brought me right back to high school! I luuuuuurrrrvvvved them! First time I realized I like goth music and dudes with long hair (sorry Garrick, but you know this!). It was also the first time I got kicked in the head in a pit at a concert...FUN TIMES.
It's ALL I've been listening to. Synth-Goth is not really She-Ra music so I'll just guess on this one. I think She-Ra would kick ass to either Kelly Clarkson -Stronger (especially if she's mad at He-Man that day) or anything by Dragon Force. I'd love to hear your ideas on this stuff! Am I the only crazy one that does this?!

**UPDATE**

Here are the finished pictures!!
After much struggling with this darn gold paint, I finanally found that design Masters would keep it's finish on that vinyl. Design Master's is a great spray paint that is usually used in floral applications and has some stretch to it. You may be wondering why I didn't just use gold vinyl. Well, it looks cheap to me, like REALLY cheap. If I were to make this again I would like to make everything armored so then I would have to worry about paint issues. Might do that and throw it up on ebay before next Halloween!

I am so happy with how this came out, especially that head piece!

I am SO sad I didn't run around with this headpiece on before I shipped it! Dumb.


Look how cute she looks in it!! I am floored! :)

Finished boots, sword, and gauntlets.

There's the finished build! From conception to the client, I am incredibly happy with how everything came out. I had a lot of fun with this one, especially since it's not something I would have ever made on my own. I liked it so much I think I might go back and make it again but with the armor like I mentioned earlier. If anyone would be interested in it, let me know!

Aurora Rise

2012-09-01T11:02:00.002-07:00

Hello!

As you can see, I am really working on trying to have a section dedicated to Deadpool. It started out as a joke...then it just made sense! It's still under construction so bear with me.

I would like to take the rest of this post to talk about the event Project Hero ourselves are putting together. We are working with the wonderful people at Aurora Rise to hold a raffle to help the victims of the shooting in Aurora Colorado at the midnight release of the Dark Knight Rises.
Aurora Rise was already able to reach 20,000 dollars so far to help pay for some much needed surgeries. We hope to add to that and continue their efforts.
We are having it September 22nd at Samurai Comics (Camelback location) where we will be holding a raffle with some pretty awesome prizes, artists will be drawing and signing, and you might just see a few Bat-fam members walking around talking to people and taking pictures. I am hoping to have the raffle live by next week. We will start with the items we have but will be adding additional ones up until the day of the event. You do not have to be at the event to win or to enter. We will be taking raffle purchases through paypal (info for that coming soon) and will be able to ship out prizes to winners, all you have to do is answer your phone when we call to tell you, you've won!

Check the link above at the Project Hero facebook to see the raffle prizes we currently have and check back to see what we've added. Any support is welcome, please spread the word. What happened to these people is an awful thing and we want to do our part to help.

Pictures of the raffle items we have so far....

Lovely trio of Bat-themed busts from the ever-talented Meredith McClaren

Awesome Batman drawing by Brandon G. James

2 signed Prints and an art book from Jamie Tyndall
Jamie is just one of those genuinely nice people. He was so generous to donate some pieces when we met him at ACE! and he was such a great guy to be around. Check out his stuff!

Stunning Catwoman replica goggles from the Dark Knight Rises by Ron
(Watch the video, they work!!)
youtube.com/watch?v=bUeebvYDZyw&feature=youtu.be

We (Know One's Designs) will be donating an 89 Batman replica batarang as well, I just don't have a picture of it yet since it's being molded. ;)

More to come!!

One Red Deadpool

2012-08-25T15:37:00.000-07:00

Let's sum up what's happened since my last post....

I broke myself on a trampoline, twice. I spent two weekends laying on the couch in a percoset daze since the second time was my neck taking it's Revengeance on me for bouncing and bending my back the wrong direction the week prior. (Yes I sound old...I'm not. My health and my cat habits just make me seem that way)

I have been planning a charity event with our friends in Project Hero to help out the victims of the shooting in Aurora. We got the good folks from Aurora Rise on board for it too. They are having their big event this weekend. Check them out they are doing a great thing and I hope to add to their efforts in September.

I have a few commissions I have been trying to work on.

I have gotten a TON of interest in Deadpool lately. Thanks for all the excitement everyone! I DO have one request. If you have a simple, quick question that's fine ask me here or on Facebook. If you have questions about commission pricing etc, please go to our "Like" page on Facebook and in the notes section is a commission form, PLEASE fill this out before you send us an email. I love the interest in what we do, but remember I do work another 40hr a week job, have a side job (this), a blog (also this), house, husband, and cat that all need my attention as well and I don't have a lot of time to try to decipher requests. The commission form has everything I need to know to give you a quote. Remember I am visual too, I love when people send me lots of pictures to explain their ideas. :)

I know I have said this before am seriously considering making an additional link on here called "Deadpool's Corner" or "One Red Deadpool" just to put all of my posts for him.
I am almost done re-doing Garrick's X-Force Deadpool. I did it to show my very patient and awesome customer commissions the updates I wanted to make to it before I did it to theirs and asked what they thought. This is a situation where the phrase "It's better to ask for forgiveness after than permission first" does NOT apply! I am making some different changes to Garrick's that I will show when I am all done and I think they're pretty B.A. if I do say so myself....and I do say so...myself. Expect some more Deadpool posts in the near future.

Greypool before with the vinyl

Shoulders with the vinyl

Re-done "athletic-cut" shoulders with matte metallic spandex

Re-done torso black parts pinned waiting for top stitching. The red lines are where Deadpool's black normally extends to. I made it cover more for Garrick to hide the seam ripping from the vinyl and to create more heroic proportions. Commission 1 wanted the black to not extend past the red lines, see I told you I like visuals!

I had another idea awhile back and I just decided to put it on here. I usually listen to Pandora when I sew. I don't like silence when I'm trying to be creative. Every once-in-awhile I here a song that I feel the character I am working on would have on their personal playlist. this first happened when I was making Black Cat. Taio Cruz's "Break Your Heart" ft Ludacris came on and for whatever reason, I just felt this would defiantly be something she would listen to. It fit her "love em' and leave em' mentality and if I were a thief I would want a good beat to steal to ;).

Speaking of Black Cat and what super heroes would do in real life, check out Meredith's latest post in her gallery section for what they would look like. She took a few of the more famous DC and Marvel ladies and drew some more "real world" outfits and based their body-types off of Olympians. I'm in love and have been fan-girling over this for a week now. Remember, Meredith is the one that we worked with on the Wasp re-design. She's awesome on concepts and well, art in general.

Having Deadpool be the subject of most of my time lately, I feel he could be anything goes. This song is also a clue to the version I am basing Garrick's Greypool off of as well. Deadpool would probably go from something ridiculous to something hard and heavy. This week is ridiculous, Carley Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" Don't even tell me you can't see him dancing to this!
Is this nerdy? Yes. Am I maybe going through Glee deprivation? Yes definitely. Lots of things I do don't make sense or even go together, get over it.

More projects to come! I think I've got enough to post weekly for a while, woohoo!

The Monarchs

2012-07-11T21:44:00.001-07:00

Guess what we're doing for Halloween?!
I know I said I wasn't going to do posts about things I wasn't actually working on...well maybe I said that to myself, but that's besides the point. I am at a training conference for work and I have SO many ideas working through my head that I need an outlet through something and since I wasn't willing to pay extra to have my sewing machine as an additional bag, I am writing this blog. I am still researching some fabrics for this, my secret project, and Redpool so I can't even get the satisfaction of buying anything!!! To top that off, I get to sit here and watch everyone else post pictures about SDCC. Something else I am not at! Don't get me wrong, I really do like my job a lot, the people I work with, and am having a great time here but seriously SDCC and WGU did you plan to have your events moved to the same week again?! Saves me some money at least ;)

So what I will start on when I get back (and paid) are the Monarchs. Garrick, Deb, Paul, Christa, Andy, and I are going to do a Venture Bros group for Halloween!

Garrick and I will be the Monarchs. (he can do the voice so well!!! I, however, will need a cigar and some gin before I can try to pull her voice off) I am also working out like crazy....I do love costumes with no pants, but I don't have a jacket on for this one to hide my behind...so pistol squats here I come!

Deb and Paul will be Brock and Molotov. Oddly enough, Garrick had a heart shaped eye patch he was able to give to Deb to start her on her Molotov journey...(don't ask)

Andy is going to be Hank in his Batman suit:

Christa will be Triana:

This will be awesome and I am SO excited!! I will order my fabric when I get back and post all of the boot covers and armor I will be making on here as I go. Sorry for the short post, but I am stuck in a place where I can't sew!! I also spent the little time I had before I left making sure Garrick knew how to take care of himself and the cat while I was gone.....

Re-do's, repairs, and redpool

2012-07-06T16:51:00.000-07:00

Re-Do's
Back to work!
I have a few things I need to repair and re-do and a few things to start. Wasp and Greypool are my main concerns but spandex world is out of the fabric I need for Greypool's shoulders.
I have another project I am REALLY excited about but I'm not going to say anything until I know I can get it going and have it ready to sell by October.
G and I have a lot of pep ready and in the works to be folded and molded. Haha that rhymed. I also have some baby stuff to start sewing for people. So much to do, I'm so excited!!!

Until all of those projects are more fleshed out, here is the promised work- up on how I made my Wasp wings.

I researched bug wings for an entire night before I found the ones I liked. Surprisingly, her wings are based very close to actual wasp's wings, go figure, I just thought they would find whatever was pretty and go with it.
I then drew a pattern of sorts to scale on giant grid paper.

After I had this outline, I used two different thickness's of armature wire and hot glue to make the skeleton of the wings.

Then I used this crazy stuff I found called Fantasy Film to make them iridescent.I thought the color I had picked out would be more yellow or clear, it ended up being "pinker" than I thought. I still like it. I am going to try something different when I go to make Pixie's wings. If I like how that comes out better than these then I'll re-make these. For now they work, they as durable as wire covered in shrink-wrap can be and they're pretty.
This stuff is like pretty shrink-wrap and I suggest testing it in small sections first. It had a pretty big learning curve when you are doing something on this scale. All the tutorials I watched were for wings people were making for bears and dolls. You have to work in small sections, one side at a time, and be very, very sparse with your glue or it looks like a literal hot mess. Glue only the armature wire, do not glue the film to itself, it will look horrible and not translucent anymore. Make sure not to get the heat too close or you get holes in it and then you have to rip it up and start over. I re-did these about 3 times before I was happy with them.

I then built a wing harness out of heavy-duty elastic (it ended up looking like a tactical sports bra) that the wings could be inserted in through the back of the catsuit.
Meredith gave me an idea on how to cover where the wings lay in the suit. (I was down to the wire on this build so covering the wire was not my top priority at the time.) She told me to build a small triangular sheath, kind of like the ones Wolverine has on his gloves for his claws. Genius!

Repairs
I have to re-do the palms of my gloves. I used this awesome fabric paint Jacquard, but it it not good for things that go through continual stretching. The yellow cracked (but the silver stayed!) and peeled at PCC so my hands are behind my back most of the time in all the pictures. I am going to order some milli skin that I need for the Monarchs and use some for the palms. I.hate.sewing.gloves. Have I mentioned this before, because I do, with a passion.

AND....like I said before, I will be re-doing the armor pieces so they are removable..

Redpool
We sold G's Redpool and I was also commissioned to make another, yay! I might post some of the new things I have decided to do with it, we shall see. This blog is going to turn into "One Red Deadpool" soon, oh well, I have fun sewing him and everyone still loves him so good for me good for you the reader. ;)

Next week... Monarch plans? or Project Hero? Redpool? New Projects? Who Knows?! Stay tuned....!

ACE Comic Expo 2012

2012-06-29T17:09:00.000-07:00

Just when we thought we could recover from Phoenix Con we remembered we said we would go to Albuquerque for ACE Comic Expo 2 weeks later. I know what some of you are thinking...suck it up! I go to :insert number: cons a year! We just had a table for the first time... we have a lot to learn ;).

We drove up with Deb and Paul on Saturday. Best. Carpool. Ever. You guys are our standard travel buddies from now on. If we weren't on a deadline we would have stopped at waay more awful roadside stops. We did stop at a few awful dinosaur ones (couldn't resist!!) we missed knife world and the world's largest dream catcher...

We got there, met up with Jason and got into X-Force and pranced around, literally...
This con was nice because it was big enough to be interesting but small enough that you could really talk to the artists and people there without being rushed. This was also our actual debut of Project Hero so it was good to make connections. I have a few things I'm waiting on before I officially announce Project Hero on here so hold tight. It's for charity and it's awesome...that's all I'll say for now.
We decided that with group costumes we need positions and to decide on poses before hand so we don't look so disorganized. We did that here and it worked! I also made a big effort and drank a few energy drinks so I wouldn't make awful tired faces in all the pictures. :P

We met a really awesome artist Jaime Tyndall who generously donated a bunch of stuff to the Project Hero cause. We will be raffling some of it off soon. It's nice to meet people like him who are so supportive of the community and who are very talented as well!

This has been a weird, crazy week full of cat bites and hospital visits so this post is short.... but full of pictures....
and Tumblr!! I finally figured it out and how to use it (shut up) and will be developing the layout more. I will be posting pictures on there that I don't post here or on Facebook, so if you want to see our sneak peaks and awesome stuff and you Tumbl (is that how it's used as a verb?) you should follow us here!

I don't know why I thought this was so funny, but it is!

Little Ang!!

Awesome!

X-Force!


Project Hero in action!

We got our poses down ;)

Next week:
Fixing stuff: Wasp, Deadpool, Domino, and ideas for Antman

Phoenix Comicon 2012

2012-06-21T19:56:00.000-07:00

I know this is a little delayed but we had a lot going on during PCC and after so it took me awhile to get around to this. I think I have so much to talk about from events since the last time i posted I might have at least 3 weeks straight of Friday blog posts, woohoo!!

Let's start with my story...
Garrick decided 6 months ago that we were going to have a booth at PCC 2012 this year. I laughed. I laughed a lot. I didn't laugh when he bought the table. This meant we had to haul ass on producing stuff, like finishing the TRON costumes (that we had been talking about for 2 years), trying to put together our Avengers costumes (which worked out really well since we tied that in with Meredith), X-Force Domino and Deadpool, oh, and we bought a house in the middle of this, a house that needed fixing. It didn't need a major overhaul, but as you've read, I definitely waged full blown chemical warfare on the backyard. We also painted the entire house, patched holes, replaced plumbing, sealed the garage, and tried to nurse the rest of the landscape that I wasn't trying to kill back to life. So long story short, we were REALLY busy!!

Our stuff!!

Batman wears underwear too....

We had a lot of other things we wanted to have done by the show, but we worked around it. (Quorra helmet mold breaking). It was a good learning experience all in all and we got a lot of really good ideas for next year. We are even going to have stuff for sale next year! We also met a lot of really great people through this. Despite my disbelief, scoffing, and general unhappiness with being on a forced deadline I'm really glad we did it (Garrick is also glad I'm glad lol). Meredith is also an awesome booth buddy and next year we will be having someone (volunteers?!) watch the table while we're away so she is not bombarded with questions of EL, urethane, and general construction questions.
All in all, we had a lot of fun seeing everyone, hanging out and finding terrifying dolls in a basement, watching girl ponies gather around pretty boys, trying to create photo-bomb opp for Shannon and the Samurai crew, taking pictures of phallic foods, and generally watching Garrick, Paul, and Jason play together, skip in costume hand-in-hand, all while Deb and I laughed hysterically/played damage control. (Thanks guys for staying with us!)

(on a side note, Garrick and I need rooms with separate computers. As I'm trying to type this while he is spinning my chair around and thrashing in his boxers to Ke$ha trying his hardest to get me to pay attention to him....yesss separate work rooms....)

I have, as I do after every con for at least one costume, some things I need to fix on Wasp. I'm going to make her armor removable (so I can sit down!!) and redesign the general shape of it so it's not so linear and severe. I need to make a "wing sheath" as well. Meredith gave me a very good idea!

I am working on the faces I make... I promise....

Garrick is also deciding is he wants to try to build a War Machine or Ant/Giant Man for our Avengers group with Project Hero (more to come on them in a future blog post!!).
Ideas? Comments? Suggestions?! Let me know. Also Meredith and I will be doing another collaboration on a costume since that went over so well. I'm not telling what it is yet....

Last PCC comment, would have liked to have been able to walk around more and talk to people and see other booths. Will need volunteers next year!

Anyhoo...here's some pictures!!!

yay!

Little Gohan was so cute!!!

Garrick finally got to play with Power Rangers!

I'm starting to envy Paul's wig collection

Best Barda ever!!!

Project Hero! (minus Garrick)

X-Force Project Hero

We made the New Times!

They do exist...and light up!

I thought this was a great picture, you all look great!

Oh an if anyone finds the picture of me as Domino hanging on a wall with Jay and Silent Bob, I NEED that picture kthxbai!

Wasp and Deadpool progress

2012-05-11T17:10:00.002-07:00

Oh boy....there's nothing like the 2 weeks before a con, especially if you are getting a booth for the first time. There have been days that eating, showering, and leaving the house have not happened (you think I'm joking..)
One such day was the day before Free Comic Book Day (I did shower...I promise) I spent 14-16 hours the day before trying to get Wasp wear-able and I did! I also passed out in the upright position when we got home and made some horrible faces in pictures but damnit it was mostly done!

Whitney and myself

Ryan, Todd, Deb, Garrick, Paul and myself
(Avengers assemble! now with Batman, Bane, and Deadpool...)

WHY would you give Deadpool the hammer?!

Garrick posted about the armor pieces and the awesome spray paint we found here. He did a great job on it too! Only problem was something that we coined as "handruff"...read his post, the explanation is in there and it's not a gross as it sounds.

Big thank you to Hero Comics and Samurai Comics for having us, sleep deprived and all!

I still have to do the piping on the gloves and the wings on Wasp, looking to try to finish the gloves this weekend and the wings next week. Let me tell you, piping is AWESOME but it is way time consuming! You have to pin everything especially when it is mirroring itself on both sides of a costume. Oh and welting feet have saved my life, I love gadgets. I am currently collecting interesting presser feet if anyone has any suggestions. I love things that make my life easier! Don't you?

Awkward crotch shot...but it was the only way to show the piping!

I think I would have imploded if it didn't turn out to by symmetrical.
I did a little piping on Deadpool as well and have a little more to do on the mask and the legs. So far so good! I will be finishing the shoulders, gloves, and arms this weekend. I'm excited to get the eyes finished, they are squinty eyes! I think I've talked about this before...anyway Deadpool should always have awesome facial expressions. Once PhxCC is over we might start casting those in urethane....we shall see...

Oh and I think the wig I got for Wasp is an Ouran Host Club wig, Haruhi's to be exact...whatever it's still cute and she is a girl and so am I so there.

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We did see the Avnegers and it was AMAZING! Glad to get excited about a movie again especially one with lots of props and costumes in it. I think I need to see it again so I can focus on the movie and not go nuts over all of the design elements and have a bagillion ideas about how to use them running through my head while trying to focus on the story. Lady Loki is in my future...let's just say that.
When I get paid this week I will be donating our ticket prices to this charity Hero Initiative. If you love comics and all great things that come from them donate to help take care of their creators. Most comic artists are freelance which means no benefits. This organization provides help for those artists when they need it.

Now back to work...

Avengers Wasp

2012-04-20T11:13:00.000-07:00

Are you excited for this?! I am! I am so happy to be working with Meredith McClaren on this costume. She has such an eye for costumes and design in her work I couldn't wait to make this. It will be even better since Garrick and I are sharing a table with her at Phoenix Comic-con this year (table 433!). You should stop by...just sayin' :)
Meredith and I were talking about making certain characters costumes more "visually interesting" by trying to incorporate more tactical designs and lines and this is what she came up with

I LOVE the piping on the legs and gloves. I had never though of this and it is going to be awesome. The only change I made to her concept is the palm of the gloves are going to be a similar yellow to that of the bug parts. I even got a wig that is pretty dead-on for this, hell yea for plans coming together!

Wig:

The bug pieces I am basing off of this girl. She does amazing work and goes by "Riddle" as her pseudonym. She sculpted the bug parts for Wasp and then had them Chromed in gold (there is another term for Chroming something in gold but I don't know it so deal). I am not that fancy right now and I want to try sculpting something smaller first like a new Black Cat mask before I take on body armor. That being said, Garrick is helping me out with this (We're trading, I'm sewing his new D.Pool and Nick Fury) and we are making it out of foam. We made boob molds out of giant Easter egg bottom so we could heat mold the foam on top of those, we're so smart. He should be posting his progress soon.
I also love her eye for tactical and small practical details in her costumes. You can't see it in this picture but she made wing holes in the back! If you turned into a bug you would need holes for your wings to go through too! Small, but great detail. Check out her gallery, it's super impressive!
I will have wings with mine purely because I have been dying to make to make them! I am going to use the wing hole idea so I can go with or without wings depending on the event. So there. My bug parts will not be identical to this but similar, I want to put my own spin on it as well.

I wanted to give you a little glimpse into my work process since I had to re-make all of the patterns for Deadpool (they were lost in the move).

First there is planning...

then nomming....

Ok I really just wanted to post those to show what I have to go through to get the cat to leave me alone anytime I have to do things on the floor. I use wrapping paper for my patterns for two reasons. 1. it's gridded on the back side! Measuring I own you now... 2. I can pin through it. Almost everyone has it laying around the house so you might as well use it!

Long post long...I got a lot of my pieces cut out and seams ripped this week and once I get my welting foot in the mail I'll post some pictures/tutorial of how that goes.

Finished Domino X-Force

2012-04-06T14:54:00.000-07:00

That presser foot is amazing!! If you haven't been reading my rambles (that's silly of course you are....) I just bought a Teflon presser foot to finish Domino up before and Avengers vs X-Men party at Samurai Comics. I got everything done but the elbow and knee pads (even the "tactical" parts, those were made out of drawer liner, I'm so resourceful...).
::Special thank you to Hero Comics for inviting us!! Sorry we couldn't make it dressed up but it was fun hanging out!::
Here are some pictures that the wonderful Peter Vincent took (He's the Spiderman in the photos) and let me tell you, I am making some absolutely great faces in these....

Man...do other people make faces like this or is it something you're born with...ugh

Garrick also wore red Deadpool for the last time...(it was starting to smell...even after we washed it...)

This one is for all my homies...or maybe personalities? Definitely personalities for Deadpool...

My make-up came out great! I was super pleased with it! You know what I didn't do...was take a close up shot of the black eye. I was finally able to blend some blue into the black and match the white eye to it so that way I wouldn't have the focusing issues I did before. (didn't help with all the dumb faces apparently...) I'll take some pictures next time I do Domino and post a make-up tutorial for it.

Onto X-Force Deadpool! I'm using this as my main reference photo

I will also be working on this Wasp, and Nick Fury intermittently since we need Wasp and Nick Fury done by the Avengers premiere. Since we haven't ordered any of the material...I will work on Deadpool first so I am using my time most efficiently. Look at me time manage like a pro. Wings for Wasp may not be done in time for the premiere....definitely by PHXCC.

Did you notice something different? Yes! I fixed my banner to have Wasp on their instead of Black Widow. that costume never happened and it probably never will...

Year of the Catsuit

2012-04-02T17:25:00.000-07:00

You may be wondering why I titled this post as such. Well I have just discovered that the wonderful world of sewing is a lot bigger and better than my previous skills suggested. I have mastered darts. Not just boob darts...ALL darts and let-me-tell-you, they change everything! Therefore I have thus titled this blog post "Year of the Catsuit" because I will be re-making all of my previous costumes ( AH Catwoman and Black Cat) and making all of my new ones (Wasp, Baroness, too many more to name) using my newly mastered skillz. SO excited for Wasp btw...won't disclose anything now....but it's going to be AMAZING!!

My mind was further blown by the discovery of all of the numerous presser foots out there. (This Teflon one I have coming in the mail better rock my world and top stitch Domino like a dream or I'll rage.) There are one's for Blind Stitching, making sure vinyl doesn't pull, and hundreds of others! Yes I realize a lot of you are probably saying to yourselves "Where has Jackie been, she goes to Joann's frequently, is she blind?!" When I have my mind set on something, yes it's like I'm blind. I never had a need for these things before so I never thought to look to see if they existed. They do!!
I am still somewhat of a novice at this so I am figuring things out and learning as I go constantly. Having the dress form has changed everything. I can visualize what I want something to look like now and try it out with out trying to make these complex drawings and patterns that just take too much time. So yay me and my new knowledge and knowledge skillz (skills always needs to be spelled with a z...). My goal by the end of the year is to be comfortable using patterns. I have struggled with these before because laying the out is not how my brain works, but I need to be able to use them better so I will try.

I was able to put the quilting in the sides of Domino and darted the front stomach area and the back. This is the most amazing thing ever! I actually have a body now and my boobs aren't squished and pulled down, they sit where they are supposed to! I am amazed. You can't see the difference on the dress form as much since it's not exactly my same body shape but you get the idea.

I have also redone the gloves so they are more tactical looking. I hate sewing gloves. I mean I really really hate sewing gloves.That being said, I will buy them pre-done as long as I can. This way I can still add to them if I want but most of the stuff I hate about sewing gloves is done for me. Yes it's lazy. Everyone has their thing, gloves are mine.
I have been searching different types of tactical gloves trying to see what parts of them I like the best. I really like the padding on the back of the hands. I made my own since the weight lifting gloves and tactical gloves I bought were too thick and made my hands look like boulders. I also added some padding to the palm and cut off three of the fingers so they looked more like tactical shooting gloves (you can tell I've been playing a lot of MGS...).

(nope didn't paint my fingers, they're just that pale)

I also did a make-up test to see if I could add some blue to the black eye to make it stand out. Not only is it really hard to focus with the contrast but it causes me to make awful faces in photos and gives me a headache. I am trying to do the make-up like someone would if they really had that pigmentation. I decided to play with some different shades of blues to emphasize her blue eyes and define the eye while still going with the rest of the look. I also found a deep blue lipstick that I am going to use as a highlight to the black. ( I didn't take a picture because I did the test before I took a shower and my face was way greasy form doing house work and exercising... you're welcome)

I will be wearing this on Tuesday the 3rd at Samurai Comics on Camelback for their Avengers vs Xmen party with Garrick as Deadpool (red version not X-force, that catsuit did not come in before the weekend either). I'm not 100% done with this but I had promised we would be at this event so it's done enough to wear. Still missing some top stitching, elbow/knee pads, and the different fabric pieces (I didn't get my presser foot in before the weekend, so deal....). The AZ Avengers will be there as well along with some great artists.

Hope to see you there!!

Domestic Warfare

2012-03-24T17:53:00.000-07:00

Oh Hello!
Where have I been you might ask? Well there are a lot of answers to that. My least favorite answer is that I have been forced into waging domestic warfare on my front and back lawns. I don't have a traditional lawn yet, unless you count hundreds of varieties of weeds a lawn... I have been trying to get all of them under control for the past 3 weeks so I can start planting and eventually have a semi-adult looking landscape before the ridiculous heat-explosion that we in Arizona call a "summer" hits. I can't say this was completely boring. I did get to use a blow torch....chemicals... a weed-wacker....and wear a pink respirator all at the same time.

"Oooooh exciting!!! Please Jackie tell me more about your adventures in being a boring shut in!"
Ask and you shall receive!

I also went to the Desert Botanical Gardens annual plant show to pick up some plants I hopefully can't kill. I have a black thumb. Maybe even more than that, maybe my thumb is the essence of death. Point it in the direction of something green and it instantly wilts...unless it's a weed, then it grows more...
Let me tell you what my plant list consisted of:
Horsetails
Devil's Backbone
Blood Flowers
Bat-Faced Cuphea
Lady Slippers
Ghost plants
"It sounds like a recipe for a curse, or someone went through a list of plants and picked them based solely on their names." (I did...so what...)
Speaking of my black thumb, I looked outside today and my Bat-Faced Cuphea already looks like it's dying...now I'm killing them with a glance?! Ugh.... One down one to go. I only bought two plants, the bat-face and a lady slipper. Since I seem to kill things, I thought it best not to blow hundreds of dollars on foliage that may not last due to prolonged exposure to myself.

I was finally able to plant in the flower pots we have on the front of our house!

Green and alive...for now....

I did venture out of the house for this festival...Holi!

Holi is an Indian festival celebrating the colors and vibrancy of spring. Shannon invited us since she had to go for a school project and it was tons of fun!

(I know all of you were secretly wondering.....yes, when I blew my nose it was bright pink for a few days and yes that shit stained all it came in contact with)

Oh and I was able to start this:

I did remember this was a costuming blog....
Look! I got a dress form too! Hopefully a male one will be on it's way, those are way hard to find. (thank you Garrick's grandmother and dad for getting these for us!!)
I also have a Teflon presser foot on it's way. That's right I'm stepping up my game! No longer will vinyl seams own me, I will destroy them with my beautifully executed finished top seams now!

As for updates, I broke my new years resolution of updating every Friday. Let's face it, I knew that was going to happen, but it got me to try to update more often. I will shoot for every other week and maybe throw a random personal rant in there somewhere.Why? Because they're fun and I like talking and thinking that all of you find me as interesting and as funny as I find myself.

Tonight...HUNGER GAMES!! (shut up, the books were awesome....)

Domino, MGS4, and retail therapy

2012-02-24T08:14:00.002-08:00

Good news, I got my catsuit in the mail so I can start remaking Domino now! I was going to post some "concept art" but it turned out less than desirable. I don't know if you all knew but I can draw, just not how you think. I can draw anything I see. Coming up with concept art is a struggle for me because I need lots of reference pictures and time. Let's be honest, I didn't want to spend the time re-doing this one. So there. You don't get to see it. Sorry. Check out my friend who can draw!

My weekend will be spent two ways. 1. Sewing 2. Lamenting the end of MGS4.
Yes, I cry at the end of video games. And books. And movies. I cried at the end of MGS3 even harder than MGS4. I mean sobbing, awful, ugly crying. I'm not proud. I get really into those things so when they're over, I search to fill the void. What most people would do is go and get the next book in the series, or the next game etc. What do I do? I become every capitalist's favorite person...I buy everything and anything that relates to said game/book/movie. Shirts, toys, pants, you name it, I'll buy it. Ok, I didn't really buy those pants but I thought about it. :)
I do take solace in the fact that I have yet to finish Portable ops and Peacewalker so yay for that. But before I say my next comment, I want all of you Raiden haters to just shut it, I like him, he's B.A., and I will play the shit out of Revengence (It's a word NOW, so suck it).
There is rumor floating around that there will be a MGS5. As much as I selfishly want that, I think they need to give Snake a rest. The end of 4 was painful and I don't know what there is left to tell. Do a game about Boss if you must, that would probably be pretty awesome if you ask me, but let Snake rest.

Also there WILL be a Meryl and Jonny (aka Akiba) costume in Garrick and I's not-so-distant future. Come one, slick his hair back and Garrick looks just like him...and acts like him...

Hope you enjoyed all the links, next week I should have some pictures to post!

Birthdays, Daft Punk, TRON, and Paintball

2012-02-17T16:49:00.000-08:00

This week's post is a little different than my normal posts because it's about my mad cake decorating skillz!!
Let's be real, that statement is a joke. I tried! I thought I would show that I do things other than make costumes in my free time. I guess I didn't preface this with "other things I do well", it's http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7785699815060139987#editor/target=post;postID=6775976128030834499just "other things" for now. Since most of my time goes to that nerdy hobby, my other hobbies/activities suffer...(MGS4 I will finish you this year...) Now onto my first adventures with fondant and making light discs out of it.

It was Garrick's Birthday last week! Happy Birthday Monster!<3

We had a party and there was cake....and beer...and unexpectedly porn....thanks to our friends' awesome present of Pintsize and Winslow from QC with Pintsize holding a batman porn, because Pintsize always has porn...

I thought I would redeem myself and try to re-make the cake I made Garrick last year. Every year I make Garrick a themed cake usually of whatever he's obsessed with at the moment made with his super-secret-birthday-cake recipe Most come out pretty awesome (companion cube, ghostbuster symbol, light disk part 2) some don't (dark tower and light disk part 1).
Last year I thought "how cool would it be to make a light disc into a cake?!" Since we were using so much EL I thought it would be even better to make it light up. Well I was wrong. It was a sticky glowing mess. I should have used fondant but I thought "no icing will keep the EL in place better, I can even use that blue gel icing to make it look like it's in the cake!" I was very wrong, again. It was awful. I was embarrassed for Garrick.

This year was a little better....

At least you can tell what it is. I wanted to put EL on it but we ran out of time and I figured I shouldn't tempt fate twice. I even drew the lines on it with edible silver dust!!Look how fancy-pantsy I am.
**note If you are actually going to try to make your own fondant, go on the stiffer side and add more powdered sugar. I think I could have gotten straighter lines if I had added a little more. Especially if you are dying it a dark color like I did. You will have to add extra. My mixer was protesting and heating up since I had to make two batches. so i backed off since I didn't want to kill it.**

I had some left over fondant and decided to make two special cupcakes for our friend Ron who's birthday was a week or so before.

Should have taken pictures of them before everyone started drinking....oh well!
(Don't hate on my MS Paint skills all you tech-savvy photoshop users...I'm keeping technology old school.)

Oh and we went paint balling with Deb and Paul (yay!!)
And I got one of these...

in my armpit...

Btw, I'm thinking of doing a new theme for my paintball gear, MGS foxhound inspired...let me know if you have other awesome ideas!!

Quorra v.20

2012-02-13T10:30:00.000-08:00

Before you say anything yes I'm still working on it. Life has gotten in the way and I WILL have this done for PHXCC this year, no exceptions! Garrick is helping me with the helmet (by helping I mean doing all of the parts I don't like, i.e. sanding, sanding, and more sanding) and is going to try to cast it before we work on the final version for me.

What makes this version different is the fact that I actually had a dress from to work with that my wonderful friend Shannon let me borrow.You may be thinking, "Gee Jackie, don't most seamstresses NEED a dressform?" Yes. I just like doing things the hard way... I also got a bigger sewing desk so my back doesn't feel like it's 80 yrs old when I'm done hunching on the floor for hours. We are in the market for a male and female dress form now, yay!!
Garrick also updated the costume by vac-u-forming the disc hub, now we have additional storage for batteries and it doesn't look like it was cobbled together from QT cups....which it was. We also decided to bite the bullet and just use EL tape. It looks soooo much better! I also made a new shirt that is a better "black" it has a better feel and texture to it.

So here is my progress thus far. We have to do the sleeves, the helmet, and I'm going to get a new light disk that's white instead of blue. I'm using my same boots because they're awesome but I did get a new wig that I cut myself and am pretty damn proud of! Garrick is going to make a "program" costume for himself, he just hasn't decided on the final designs.

Back

(Yes I know it's a Rinzler disk, It was the closest one to me and I was too excited to find the Quorra one)

Front

Both of these have the lights on them now, they're just in boxes and I don't have the dress form to display them on. Once I finish the sleeves I'll take some completed pictures.

New wig!!

Ulquiorra

2012-02-03T16:56:00.000-08:00

Hello!
Longtime no post?!
So I've decided I'm going to try to be responsible with this blog and update it more often. My goal is to post every Friday ::gasp::! Baby steps now, I'll start with some older projects I haven't gotten to and then see if twice a month is more my speed. Anyway, there's something to be said for having goals right?
What I'm hoping to gain from this is feedback from all of you, a way for me to feel responsible and actually make the goals I set, and to have discussions on all of this. So there, take that New Year.

Shhh.... I'll tell you a secret....
I secretly LOVE anime. The more I think about it, maybe having an amine character tattooed on my foot gave that one a way a long time ago...oh well. the point is I like anime and I would love to do more costumes from it but the characters really don't fit my body type...I've got the boobs down it's just most of them aren't very hippy... good to point out since I picked the one character to do that is the exact opposite of boobs and hips...Ulquiorra from Bleach (I have a way with intros don't I?)

Why did I pick a character as skinny and un-lady -like (He's actually a dude....) since I made a rant about it in the above paragraph?

Jackie, but this is cross-play?! You crazy!
Oh I know.
But....
I really liked his colors and I wanted to do the make-up....
It's the little things in life right?
Also I think if I stick to my work-out routine, his costume is baggy enough for my lady-bits to stay hidden with lots of tape and sports bras. :)

Here's my practice run of the make-up. I like it but I went to heavy on the black on the eyes. Next one will have more finesse and movement. I'll also probably get a wig and do this with an airbrush. We'll see about that last one....
I did find a pep file for his "bone helm"....that sounds dirty...:) I'll post pictures of that when I start it.
I also may seek some professional seamstress help on this since I HATE sewing pleats.
Boots I'll make out of wellies. Sword i got a plastic one that i'll paint and re-do the hilt.

Speaking of sewing, I'm in the market for some dress forms a male and a female, any suggestions would be appreciated!! Then I can post more blogs because my sewing will be more awesome!

Things have a way of working themselves out... aka the Death and Dream story

2011-07-01T19:07:00.000-07:00

Things don't always go as you want them to or even more rare, as you plan them to. Thus is the story of how our plans to make the Darkness and the Angelus for Phoenix Comic-con 2011 turned into a pretty-darn-good-if-I-do-say-so-myself version of 2 of Neil Gaiman's endless Death and Dream.

First, let's start with the factoid that I don't think there's been one event yet that Garrick and I haven't been rushing to finish something up until the day of the deadline. Ah, such is the life of procrastinators...That been said, I actually had Darkness and Angelus planned out for over a year! Serves me right for planning ahead!

I have loved the Darkness/Witchblade for a while now so it was only natural that I would bribe Garrick into dressing up like Jackie. We had planned a few different ideas on what we wanted it to look like from the classic Darkness and Angelus to a more modern "plain clothes" take on these characters. When doing "over-the-top" characters, I usually like to take a "plain-clothes" approach to translating their costumes into real life. Not everything that's drawn will look good in person. So I decided to base these ideas off of a few concept drawings I had seen.

The Darkness/Jackie Estacado

I had an idea (I know it's rare...) since Garrick and I were working with EL wire so much for all of the TRON stuff, I thought how great would that be to try to incorporate our new-found skills with that and use it for something different. Since I though Garrick would be more comfortable in a nice suit instead of another spandex catsuit with many felted muscles underneath I thought it would be fun to show the duality of the Darkness in a way I have never seen any one portray him.

My idea was to make a panel on the inside of the lapel of the jacket that was composed of between 10-15 pairs of glowing eyes. We would make this by cutting varying sizes of EL tape and cutting the shape of "darkling" eyes out of electrical tape and taping that on top of the EL. Through the placement and the setting on each battery pack we could achieve a flickering effect in varying degrees for each set of eyes so they would look like they are living in the dark of the jacket. This would only be a low-light or night time costume in order to show off the effects properly. I was pretty proud of myself for this one, too bad it hasn't happened yet...

The Angelus/Original Host

The Angelus I decide to take the same approach to. Not only am I not comfortable wearing next-to-nothing, but that doesn't really challenge me as a designer either. So I decide to take a page from Adam Hughes and his "Women of the DC Universe" spread and model the Angelus's clothes after Wonder Woman's dress. The two characters are similar in the way they carry themselves and their attitude and WW pose in that picture struck me as a pose the Angelus would take, hense where I got the dress idea. Gladiator heels were then a must and the wings and color scheme were going to be modeled after Stefan Sejic's drawing of the Angelus Timeline.

Alas, this also was not meant to be just yet...

Now that you have that background of planning here's one giant run-on sentence about what actually happened.

(deep breath!)

We went to Goodwill to find Garrick a nice suit and pants and found one that also had some colored cumber buns that I could re-purpose for Zatanna, in the same trip I found a black double grommeted belt that was in my exact size which I bought because I had always wanted to make a Death costume and you don't really find things like that often so we went home to order the wigs and the feathers but decided to wait on the feathers because it was only a month away and we didn't know if we were going to get them in time to actually finish them properly so I decided to do a plain-clothes version of Witchblade since Jackie and Sara had a baby in the new issues both the costumes would still go together (see picture below) but then we

ran out of time to make the Witchblade and the Darkness gauntlet and the wigs came in and they were awful, mine looked like a tranny and Garrick's looked so emo it hurt so.....

(deep breath!!!) I remembered buying the belt and thought "hey I have black hair, and black pants, and black boots, and a black blazer, and a smiley face pin that Ron left at the house that come free with the jackets he bought (that left at home when packing for con...), and white make-up I should go as Death" all I would need is an umbrella and an Ankh so I told Garrick and forced him to be Dream by re-styling the emo wig with tons of cheap hairspray, doing a test run of the makeup, and having him try it all on with the suit we had just bought and there you have it, that's how Death and Dream were born!

I just recently bought some black contacts for Dream and some grey ones for Death so hopefully we can get a photo shoot set up soon!

We had a great time at Phoenix Comic-con this year, went as Zatanna and Batman on Friday because well it's hot hear and any excuse for me to bust out my "no pants" costume the better! We were able to spend time with people we hadn't seen in awhile and we even made a bunch of great new friends! Here's a collage to show everything: (not I forgot my camera in the hotel most of the time so i can't take credit for any of these photos, thank you to the talented people who took them!)

New Years Costuming Resolutions

2011-01-04T16:34:00.000-08:00

You may be asking, "Gee, Jackie hasn't posted in awhile, did she give up costuming?"
Answer: No I haven't given up costuming or writing for that matter. I'll tell you the name of the thing that has keep me from basically everything (including eating and sleeping) for the past month and a half. I goes by TRON.

Before I get into that I would like to talk about my New Years costuming resolutions. Yes I know everyone makes generic ones like "I'm going to lose weight" or "I'm going to be nicer" and they usually end up failing miserably. Well I'm not, because I'm that awesome. For example, I rang in the new year in my Quorra costume dancing on a roof top with Daft Punk'd, beat that! :D

resolution 1.) Finish Catwoman. I have been putting this off forever. She needs a pvc suit and gloves and new boots, end of story. This will happen.

resolution 2.) Have the Angelus and the Darkness ready and done by Phoenix Comic con 2011. Again this will happen. I can't let the nice editor at Top Cow you gave me his personal info to send him progress pics think I'm a lier now can I?

Resolution 3.) Have professional photos taken (in the winter) of all of our costumes. I can't enter into featured blogs or contests because professional picture always look better. I want to build a portfolio and do my work justice!

Resolution 4ish...) Stick to my diet/exercise plan (oh and I won't fail because I started in November and if I could make it through Christmas I have the will power of...something that has a lot of will power. I also want to take my work to the next level and constantly improve my quality and design which leads me into my next topic...

TRON

This will have an entire post dedicated to itself once I get some completed pictures back. Let's just say so far this is my best work yet!!
Here's a teaser pic that was taken at TRON party we went to. It was a test run my arms and leg didn't light up yet and I didn't put on the boot armor.

Let me know if there's anything all of you would like to see me make this year. I have some ideas like Pixie and Velocity but would love some suggestions!!

Hope everyone had a great holiday and an even better 2011!