Pre-Production: Thranduil

I'm sure by now everyone has seen both The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey as well as the ~fabulous~ publicity photos of Lee Pace as Thranduil, the Elvenking of Mirkwood.

That's right. He's the most fabulous thing you've ever seen. Gingerhaze has kind of taken the fabulosity and flown with it, creating a series of Thranduil drawings and comics that are amazing and hilarious.

I long to be this fierce. Also, I want to wear that crown. Thus, what was originally going to be a joke costume has become...well...still a joke costume. But it's going to be well-made. And I am super excited about it.

After being extremely stressed out about finishing things for STL Comic-Con, I want to take it easy on myself before ACEN in May. I don't foresee Thranduil as being terribly difficult. First of all, I've got a pattern that I can adapt to the robe, and I found some fabric:

The crown will most likely be made out of aluminum foil covered in either PaperClay or Model Magic. No sanding required here because of the crown's texture. The red feather-like pieces remain a mystery to me, but I'll figure that out soon enough.

The only other requirements for the costume are some gigantic rings, stunner shades, and a pimp cup. BAM. Elvenking.

Wizard World St. Louis Comic-Con 2013

Apart from some minor hiccups and one small meltdown, St. Louis Comic-Con was fantastic!

My Sun and Stars arrived on Thursday night, and we immediately got to work with everything ever. Luckily, we were armed with Angry Orchard.

We spent the entirety of Friday running last-minute errands and finishing up costumes. Nora actually built an entire costume that day. But I'll let her tell you more about that experience.

We arrived at the con early Friday evening, dressed, of course, as Daenerys and Viserys Targaryen. It was a  triumph. Some of the highlights of the evening include Nora being asked if she was Tyrion Lannister, and me receiving a beautiful drawing of the Khaleesi from an artist whose name I've been furiously trying to track down (with no success, thus far).

twins!

We got home around 9:30 that night, opting to skip the Drink and Draw because we had so much work to do on our Lightning and Vanille costumes. We worked until 2 or so and then got up early the next morning to continue. I then had the aforementioned small meltdown because of my wig and other terribly inaccurate bits of my Lightning costume. But...after some convincing, I put that business on anyway, and off to the con we went. Nora spent the car ride drawing a l'Cie mark on her thigh.

our costumes aren't perfect, but we had a great time :)

We were stopped for many photos. Obviously, the con crowd had no idea just how terrible my Lightning was. There were fun times had by all, we got hit on (hey, nerd bros, just let ladies at cons be, alright?), and Nora purchased a Petyr Baelish pin because she is the worst.

I'm actually the best.

That afternoon, we changed into our Daenerys and Assassin's Link costumes, respectively, walked around some more, and then entered the costume contest, where we met some pretty amazing bros.
I got to have a Wizardtini with Aegon "The Conqueror" Targaryen, and we headed out.

Targaryens off the job

And then Sunday came, and it decided to blizzard. There was no driving into the city in that weather, so we spent the day being angry and playing Lord of the Rings Trivial Pursuit. We also watched some bad anime. It was pretty magical.

Progress!!!

I did a little math the today and realised that I only have 6 non-work days before St Louis.

Then  I began panicking.

My to do list is 47 points long. I still need to lose some more weight. And six days isn't even a week. 

So instead of giving up and crying in the shower (which, believe me, was incredibly tempting) I went into hyperdrive. And now I'm ready to share with you my progress on one of my most exciting current cosplays. Link Auditore.

I saw this fanart a couple of months ago and thought it looked totally awesome. Pretty much right away, I saw a few attempts at cosplaying it, but for the most part... it was just Ezio with Link's weapons. So I decided to give it a go. 

The first thing I did was sculpt and cast the resin belt bling. I'll do a real tutorial on this at some point (when I stop being lazy). I actually did this a few weeks ago, because I was really really scared that it wasn't going to work and I would have to abandon the whole project.

And yes, that's an instagram. Instagram is where I post all my best progress pictures, so you'll probably see quite a few pictures like this. 

Anyway, once I decided I could handle the costume, I went out and bought the fabric. I'm making it green and gold, not green and red, because I don't want to look like a christmas elf (although it's causing me physical pain not to stay super true to the original design). So I got that magical fabric. And sat on that fabric for a while. And then I worked on Vanille until I suddenly realised that I either had to get into gear or give up. 

(My face when I saw how much fabric past-me had bought)

Anyway, I killed most of the sewing tonight. The hardest (most labor intensive, at least) part was the lace. Ezio has this lace on his vest that I somehow never noticed until I started working on this costume. Fortunately, I already had all the lace (I have a serious lace problem) so I just pulled that out and got to work. I started by cutting out and sewing together the coat and vest (and their linings). Before moving on, I stuck the lace on the coat.

(I guess this part is kind of a tutorial) I started by drawing lines on the fabric where I wanted the lace. Then I sewed the two small lace bits onto the fabric facing away from one another, so that it would fan out from the ribbon. All of the lace that I have is either not wide enough or WAYYY too wide, so I kind of used two pieces to make one for this. Finally, I sewed ribbon down the middle, being sure to sew in as wavy of a line as possible, because I hate myself. 

Achievement unlocked: Lace Up. 

I got the point of the hood to stick out by ironing interfacing into both the fabric and the lining of the point before sewing it together. Eventually, I'll embroider a triforce there, but for now I'm calling it quits on that. I've started doing some of the "embroidery" around the edges of the coat. 

Obviously, I don't have the time (or patience) to embroider a design around the bottom of the coat, so I've started painting one on. 

Because I'm self-sabotaging, I decided to do this free hand.

Note to self: you're an idiot. Anyway, it's been arduous, but the two sides now mostly match and I've got about half of it done. I'm way too tired to do anything more on that, so I'm just going to have to work on that tomorrow.

Also to do tomorrow, I need to finish the gauntlets. Leather is expensive, so I bought a $7 jacket from Goodwill (which turned out to be real leather!) and cut off the sleeves for my gauntlets. Then I trimmed and hemmed them and tomorrow I will be hammering grommets. Wham, bam, thank you ma'am. 

(pictures of my bad sewing and how it looks on my arm kind of!!!!)

In later news, I've started serious work on my weapons for this costume. Or... the shield, at least. I used foam board for the base and now I'm building onto that with cardboard. I'm going to go over the cardboard with papier mache tomorrow to smooth it out and I might go over that with bondo or paperclay. I'm totally playing this one by ear. Progress photo: 

Blammo.

I'm going to bed now. I hope your night is going well, Moon of my Life. Post pictures of Lightning soon!!!! I'm super excited!!!

Nora's Cosplays in Progress

Or as I like to call them, "Inprogressplays"

I don't call them that. I've never called them that.

Assassin's Link: 20%
Vanille: 80%
The Doctor: 90%
Chell: 99%
Saber: 15%
Tonks: 99%
Codex: 10%
USO Girl: 60%
Batgirl: 15%
Pony: 0%
Kaylee: 99%

Anything that's at 99% means it's done, I just have a few details I want to redo or touch up.

New Convention Season, New Blog!

My old cosplay blog was going woefully un-updated, so I decided to join forces with my dear friend and moon of my life, Brittany (girlieshoes). This blog will document our progress, our completed costumes and, most importantly, the achievements that we unlock in the course of our cosplay mayhem. You can check what achievements we've earned in the achievements tab. We'll be sure to post updates entitled "achievement unlocked: blah blah blah" (yes, those words exactly) whenever we accomplish things, since that's the way we like to talk about the progress that we've earned.

Basically, we're ramping up for St Louis Comic Con and trying to get as many costumes ready as possible. I'll post my current cosplays list in half a moment and I'm sure Brittany won't be far behind me.

Adieuuu!!!!