Casualty Cosplay

"Yes, indeed, we aim to please!"

2012-01-23T20:24:00.000+02:00

Lumiere and Cogsworth has been by far the most… expressive characters we have portrayed. I'd like to thank AG and co. who were at Desucon's photobooth on Sunday to capture the essence of the rivals in white pantyhose.

Photographer: Emilia Lahtinen

Lumiere and Cogsworth at Frostbite

2012-01-16T20:10:00.000+02:00

In all we had a nice and refreshing convention last weekend. Desucon Frostbite lived up to the expectations we had formed from last year’s Desucon. But there was one difference and that was obviously the weather. We didn’t suffer from any of the over-heating problems we had with Luminara and Barriss, even if we strolled whole Saturday in Snowtrooper gear. For Sunday we changed to our new costumes. Here are the first photos of them. Lumiere and Cogsworth, s'il vous plaît.

False arm

2012-01-05T07:00:00.000+02:00

Yoshimitsu's right arm was by far, the most complex prop I've ever done alone. Okay, okay! Hiron helped me out with fastenings and small stuff. The dummy was made from five different bigger components: under glove, fingers, palm, upper - and lower forearm.

Hiron made the black under glove by using a basic pattern. It both kept the parts better on their place as well as created the black joints and seams.

Fingers come together from 14 different pieces. They were made out of craft foam then glued to their cylinder shape by using a similarly shaped piece of black cloth on the inside. All parts were coated with several layers of water-glue mixture, which made the surface harder and protected the craft foam from the spray paint. Pieces of each finger were sprayed twice with russet primer, then once with glossy lacquer before they were connected with a black, flat rubber band that was glued on the inside.

The patterns for the fingers and the palm I found from the internet years ago. It was first made for Edward Elric but I had to do a rather dramatic remodeling so it would fit Yoshimitsu's design.

The palm was made out one cut-to-shape part that had two seams on the underside. The one going between the thumb and a middle finger was sealed with fabric and secured with tape. The other seam, going between my wrist and thumb, was fastened with three flat rubber bands. If the seam had been solid, I wouldn't have been able to put the palm piece on.

On the inner upper side of the palm, there was a piece of fiber fabric to make the back of the hand more firm. The piece was coated and painted just like finger pieces, and the same technique was used in the rest of the arm parts as well.

"What respirator?"

The upper forearm was made from nine pieces of craft foam and together they formed the big elbow ring and more narrow ring below it. The narrow ring was simple, it only had two pieces of craft foam which were supported with fiber fabric then glued to a cylinder shape. Why I made the ring out of two pieces instead of one is because Yoshimitsu's arm has two seams running all way down from the elbow to his wrist.

The big elbow ring was therefore made out of seven parts and inside the hollow ring was foam and fiber fabric to prevent the ring from collapsing. The rings were glued together with black fabric and final detailing was made with 12 pins that were on the both sides of the two major seams.

Moving between two work points was sometimes bit challenging.

The lower forearm was made out of two big pieces of craft foam that were supported with fiber fabric. Underneath was black fabric to keep the pieces together and small amount of velcro near the wrist to help to put on the dummy.

"I can see flying arm parts...."

The most outstanding feature of the arm were the 14 balls that were attached above the wrist. For the base, I bought paper balls, which was a adventure of its own as I was short of two balls. TWO! I was literally lying on the shop's floor and had my head inside the bottom shelf as I tried to reach the farthest boxes during my search. The paper mass balls were then covered with putty, sanded, coated with glue-water mixture and painted.

Fastening the balls was teamwork. I filled holes in the balls with hot glue then pushed ends of the fishing line strand into the glue. Now we had a fishing line loop. Hiron made fourteen small holes to the forearm, threaded a strong yarn through the loop and hole then made a knot inside the forearm piece. Knots were then secured with glue so that Yoshimitsu wouldn't lose his balls during a fight!

-yoki, out

Moustaches et le patch

2012-01-01T13:55:00.000+02:00

Last weekend we had a good laugh while trying on the wigs for our next characters. I had trouble keeping my composure after I had put the brown curly wig I had purchased for Cogsworth on Yoki’s head. She looked so bizarre with long hair! When we started our cosplay journey she actually had hair as long as the wig, so it shouldn’t have been that funny. I’m just so used to her short cut and the girly curls just seemed little out of place. The fun truly began when we applied the rolls Cogsworth has on the sides. We thought that we would die from laughter. And after I had finished the front tuft on my honey blond locks, we questioned if we could ever wear the costumes in public.

But something happened after I applied some make-up on us both and Yoki taped the mustaches on. Excuse me, Yoki’s face, what kind of miracle-maker are you? How anyone can look even remotely sane with those obscene hair rolls and mustaches? I’m seriously leaning to the idea that Yoki could look nice even as Gollum. To spice up Lumiere’s get-up I added a patch to accent his flamboyant nature.

I think Yoki will have the last laugh though. I’m going to wear crazy paned trunk hose after all.

A year full of costumes and conventions

2011-12-31T21:32:00.000+02:00

The end of the year is closing in and nine costumes, few projects and four conventions later I can look back to 2011 surprised, astonished and bit puzzled too. I really enjoyed last year even if there were struggles and setbacks. One single thing I’m really pleased with is our character choices. It feels like during the past year we have found characters that we can pull it off well and balanced. We have also polished skills with props and construction techniques.

Our first huge cosplay project reached a milestone in February, when we got our Snowtrooper costumes ready for a photoshoot. Before Tampere Kuplii we constructed the backpacks and were ready to participate in our first cosplay competition as freshly recruited soldiers. At Tampere Kuplii we were selected to the group of ten candidates, who got through to the second stage of the competition, which was an open voting on a website of a local newspaper. In the final battle our troopers carried us to third place.

We continued with Star Wars theme with female characters. For our first Desucon we arrived as Luminara Unduli and Barriss Offee and spend the weekend hanging around and enjoying the seats at the main concert hall. I think we have never sat as much at any convention before.

The next costumes to build were supposed to be Ivy and Yoshimitsu, but instead I found myself complying with Yoki's wish to construct “something new” for Kawacon. That something new was femme gijinka Decepticons; Princess Megs and Lady Star. While at the convention we got recruited for the cosplay competition and won, for our amazement. With the bot ladies we had our first real photoshoot with a real, live photographer!

The big project was still ahead. After WCS preliminaries back in 2010 I stated to Yoki that next year we are going to compete. And we did so with Ivy and Yoshimitsu from Soul Calibur III. And came second! That was the crown for our sixth year we have cosplayed together.

But the year wasn’t all about successful costumes and fun conventions. Starting from spring, around the time we started to print the fabrics for our Jedi Knights, I felt like something was wrong with me. My condition developed so that July and August passed by in a haze of pain and drugs. Even if some days crafting costumes or even getting out of bed was almost impossible, I think that working gave me something else to think about, than continually worrying and doubting on my sick leave. I could say that cosplay became my lifeline for a period of time.

Only two weeks before Tracon and WCS preliminaries I got diagnosed with a chronic illness. A week before Tracon I started my medication and without it I think that I couldn’t have been able to step on the stage back in September. Coming second in WCS preliminaries was a huge thing for us. For me just being able to participate was really important to me.

Photos of Ivy and Yoshimitsu: Emilia Lahtinen.

This year cosplay gave me little more that new techniques and garments to fill the closet. For a short time I thought that I might have to drop the hobby, but now that my health has improved I couldn't think more opposite! I'm really proud of what we have accomplished this year and wait eagerly for the next year and new challenges.

What I wish for next year next to straight seams and sharp scissors is health and opportunities to connect with other enthusiastic costumers. Happy New Year!

Casualty Cosplay - Holiday spirit

2011-12-25T16:51:00.002+02:00

Santa's little helpers

2011-12-24T19:26:00.003+02:00

"I don't wanna be a real boy"

2011-12-10T03:00:00.001+02:00

The end of the year is closing in with rabid speed, so I thought it would be good to look back in time and see what has been done. However, my pendulum faced a critical malfunction and tossed me all the way back to the year 2007 and our second pair cosplay.
The first armour, or more likely body, we ever made, belonged to a redheaded puppet master, whose peculiar frame has raised many questions. My new mission was to retrieve the armor from the depths of a wardrobe and make a short briefing about it, answering the scattered questions.

Cosplay memoirs: Mayuri Kurotsuchi and Akon from Bleach

2011-11-30T10:23:00.000+02:00

After browsing through old folders I had to make a post about our third cosplay together. We did quite many things with these costumes that we had never done: Yoki worked with insulation foam and I had a lesson from make-up and prosthetics, if Akon’s horns can be called that way. We attended to two different conventions with the costumes. Mayuri and Akon was our second day duo. The first day we wore Sasori and Deidara. The order was everything, because otherwise Sasori would have had weird dark smudges on his face.

What we learned from Mauyri and Akon was that always try out full face make-up beforehand. The morning was one of the most hectic ones we have ever had. Curses, oh the curses. Of course it took few years to rub in, because about year later the morning we got ready with Jasdero and Debitto could not be called calm in any way. In my opinion we survived quite well with Luminara and Barriss this year. Ho-ho, that's four years later...

The photos are taken from Ropecon, 2007.

Characters for Desucon Frostbite

2011-11-25T12:02:00.000+02:00

I have been so good! I actually managed to organize and pack our costumes more or less properly out from Yoki’s old room. Not few of them, but every single costume we have worn this year had been shoved there. But that is not the reason I’m writing a post, even if I feel that my effort is worth to mention. The true meaning of this is upcoming Desucon Frostbite, which is only seven weeks away. I think our convention season has never started this early!

To fit the time of the year we are trying to finish our Snowtroopers to be the primary costumes. But because of certain restrictions the costumes have, we thought to have secondary costumes as well. We haven’t had ones since 2007, when we wore Sasori and Deidara for the first day of convention and Mayuri and Akon for the second.

There are at least two reasons for this rare event. We are going to Lahti by car, so we can stuff it full of boxes and suits. The other is the program. Usually there are just few things we want to see, but Desucon Frostbite seems to keep its promise of interesting and high quality content. Snowtroopers aren’t the most convenient costumes. It’s hard to sit comfortably and you get tired rather easily. And then there is the thing that you don’t see too well or hear much either. To avoid utter exhaustion we reasoned that changing during the day would solve some problems.

We have toyed around an idea of making Disney cosplay at some point. Even if Desucon Frostbite is anime convention, we decided that now that we had the opportunity, we would use it. The duo we are going to construct is from Beauty and the Beast with big personalities; Lumiere and Cogsworth.

We are going to make the costumes based on their human forms. I’m going to exercise artistic freedom to make the costumes look interesting and for the sake of my sanity, to bring them to the same century. Really, I don’t know what they have been thinking while designing the look for the character. It’s like Lumiere is partially from 1500s as Cogsworth is from the late 1700s.

Even if I mentioned of bringing them to the same century, I’m not going to pinpoint the costumes to any era. I’m just going to balance the pieces of the costumes to coherent look. This week I tried styling the wigs for the characters. They still need some attention, but I'm getting there. I’ve also have drawn the patterns and bought fabrics for the costumes. I also have the shoes and some accessories ready. Now I’m going to sew… And sing “Be our guest” all along.

Yoshimitsu- The human squid

2011-11-10T11:19:00.002+02:00

Yoki has always had some sort of weird habit to sympathize and pick characters who don’t look, act or anyhow resemble normal, so I wasn’t that surprised when we ended up brainstorming a human squid. What I really like about Yoshi and Ivy is that as a project it took place after we had become familiar with different kind of techniques. It didn’t take long before we had chosen the methods to use and how everything would be constructed.

With Yoshimitsu’s mask it was quite clear that we would vacuum form it. The only thing that caused some unnecessary work was preparing the mold. We had started to carve it from insulation foam with Yoshimitsu’s shoulder armor. Then we realized that we couldn’t fit it before it was vacuum formed from plastic, so it was very possible that it would not fit or that the proportions would be off. Excess work didn’t sound too appealing. Carving a block of material while visualizing a form inside of it, is lot harder than actually building the shape little by little.

We took a shortcut from making a cast from Yoki’s face, we bought a plastic mask from Punanaamio. Actually we bought two different models. After trying those on we would see which one fitted Yoki better. Having options is never bad, especially when you work with objects that don’t apparently go through quality control. The other masks had eye holes with one centimeter height difference.

After choosing the mask and making some sketches I sat down and started sculpting. I used DAS modeling clay and four days to get the mold done. It took some swearing, confrontations and almost two packages of clay to finish, but it was all good. The mold looked nice and after Yoki finished it with putty, it was ready to be vacuum formed. And that, if something was stressful! We really wanted the mold to work, but with different levels and details we were really worried that we would get wrinkles or holes. To add to the stress, I finished the mask mold just a week before our costume debut, so there weren’t too much time to redo it.

The first take… it was perfect! I might have yelled one well-known Finnish curse word pretty loud when the plastic got sucked into the mold. Later Yoki told me that she first misunderstood my expression of joy. She thought that we had failed based on the volume. Last thing for me to do was to get the mold out of its plastic pocket. I think I used about thirty minutes to an hour to that alone. Then I happily realized that my work with the mask was done and handed it to Yoki to paint.

Yoki painted the mask with the same color as the mechanical arm, but probably because of different base material the tone wasn’t quite the same. The mask turned out lot darker than we would have wanted, but because of the limited time we decided to roll with it.

We had to get the mask done before I could finish the headpart with the decorative panels. Earlier Yoki had printed the pieces for me. The five days I had left to work with the costumes, while Yoki was back at school I struggled to get the whole thing together! I say that it’s pretty hard to make fitting alterations by yourself. With pieces of clothing it still works somehow as long as you have flexible arms, but with a huge blob covering your head and face… It’s a different story.

With the head it was pretty much trial and error method both in patterning and construction. I had to seam rip a lot and many pieces, but in the end Yoshimitsu had a head.

The mask is attached with Velcro to the pouch thing. Inside the pouch there is a foam crest on top of the head to give it more height. To the foam crest I sewed a piece of rubber band that goes below the ears and behind the neck. The tightness is the only thing that keeps the head in place. The pouch itself has two layers. The first one is the inside, which is sheet cotton with plastic boning. The outer crest is made from craftfoam and metal studs.

If you are sharp-sighted you might have noticed that we left out the ear-parts. We made them, but because they were done in a hurry and they didn’t quite fit on the first try, we decided to skip them.

We chose foam to be the main material on Yoshimitsu’s tentacles. It looks solid, but is soft and flexible to allow movement. I started by making a sketch of the tentacles opened based on references. Then I purchased a piece of foam from Etola, where you can get any shaped or sized piece you like. And if you are lucky, you might find a suitable piece with many cut outs and get discount, because they are just happy to get rid of it!

After I had determined which tentacle overlaps the other, I drew the shapes on the foam and cut them out. I rounded the edges and carved the curls on the tentacles. Then I assembled the pieces and glued few seams together. The red fabric is interlock tricot I found from my fabric storage. I stitched it on the foam by hand, because it would have never fit under the presser foot. The first layer of fabric pulls the foam down and smoothes down irregularities.

The second layer… or actually three, gave me a nice rollercoaster ride of madness. I first started covering the tentacles with the same material as the head pouch. Then I realized that it didn’t stretch enough. I seam ripped. I decided that I need tricot. So I purchased some in light beige and dyed it. I knew it was little off, but decided to stitch it on. This was two or three weeks before the debut. After we had finished all the other pieces of Yoshimitsu’s costume, we laid them on the floor to see how they matched. The tentacles didn’t.

I still had to do the mask and the head pouch, so I kind of pushed the tentacle issue aside. Even Yoki settled with it, because she also realized that it was more important to get the costumes to presentable condition. I had gone through the local fabric stores few times already and hadn’t found anything that would be suitable, but then our mother made a discovery in form of pale colored interlock! Somewhere in between I dyed the fabric orange and finally finished the tentacles in the car on the way to Tampere.

The tentacles attaches to the vest with Velcro, hiding the support structures of the sashimono as well as Yoki’s waist line. The studs on the swirls are fabric covered buttons. The opening under the right arm is closed with small hooks and rubber bands, which I rolled in orange yarn. In the future we have planned using silicone or latex to give the tentacles more squid-like surface. Also airbrushing them to resemble the references more has crossed our minds.

Huge post! And I even left some things out. If you’d like to know more about a certain part of the construction, feel free to ask. Next I’m going to write a post about all the miscellaneous stuff from shoes to Ivy’s pretty hat.

One or two stencils...

2011-11-05T18:54:00.001+02:00

I asked Yoki to send me photos from the making process of our Ivy and Yoshimitsu costumes, so that I could refresh my memory before writing any construction posts I’ve been planning. While I went through them, I found myself huffing! Boy, what a workload we survived!

If I calculated correctly, our Soul Calibur III cosplay project required at least twenty different stencils for printed details. Only four were used on Ivy’s garments. The rest decorate Yoshimitsu’s pants, shirt, vest, head and also the flag or sashimono. For printing we used products from EMO-tuotanto. For the stencils we ended up using a clear plastic fabric, which you would use to make toilet bags. The stencil method has it limits, but we are pleased of what we were able to achieve with it.

Printing was actually one of the first things we started after I had finished patterning the garments. I think that drawing the stencils, cutting them and finally printing wouldn't have taken more than a week if we had worked continuously. Yoshimitsu's head part was actually done only five days before the debut of the costumes.

First little something about fabric printing: When you are printing with light color on a darker fabric, you need to have a opaque color which means a paste based covering color (peittoväri). When you are printing on light fabrics you will be using sheer colors (kuultoväri), which are mixed with emulsion base. Naturally the covering colors will set little stiffer than the emulsion based ones, because they are thicker in consistency. The colors we used are set with heat by ironing them, usually from the wrong side.

I'm not sure if the terms I'm using are the right ones, so if you see a obvious mistake here then please, feel free to correct me.

We started with Yoshimitsu's vest, which has different twirls and flower and leaf themes. We basically composed the print for the vest ourselves, but took some notes from the reference. It would have been almost impossible to make a exact copy with the given time. We just made sure that the flowers where on right places and then started to add the twirls. The color we used was ready mixed covering gold.

While Yoki worked on her vest, I moved to Ivy’s weird tailcoat corset. I started with the middle panels and then moved to the pink parts. The edges I printed using tape. First I had thought about sewing ribbon on the side, but then I ended up with printing because it would have looked bit confusing to have two different techniques in black in one garment. I mixed black pigment and base emulsion to strong, full color and added few extra drops because satin isn't really the most optimal fabric to print on.

Next I printed Yoshimitsu’s shirt and pants for which we had prepared five different stencils. One was a vine grid, two were flowers and the other two were leaves. I used the same stencils to print the base on the sashimono. For both of them I mixed covering and sheer colors in yellow to get slightly translucent outcome.

Yoki continued working on the sashimono by printing the crisscross pattern on the tentacle shape. She created the crisscross by making a stencil out of tape and printing with the same gold we used on the vest. Surprisingly, the gold ended up looking rather pale. This was because of the different fabrics; the vest was wool mix while the tentacles were synthetic. The colors we were using are meant to cotton and cotton mixes.

Yoki also drew the stencils for the squid head and the… stringy-parts. She printed them with gold with a tiny bit of yellow covering color to avoid the washed out result of the sashimono.

I don’t know does the hilt of Yoshimitsu’s sword count as printing project, but it was “painted” still. I made the figures by freehand with markers based on reference and under Yoki’s watchful eyes. Yoki embroidered the yellow parts after I was done.

That was all I had in mind about fabric printing on Yoshi and Ivy. Next I think I will move to the interesting pieces, like Yoshimitsu's squiddy waist tentacles and mask!

Baby Jane made her first appearance

2011-10-31T00:37:00.000+02:00

Even if my Halloween didn’t go quite as I planned, I got my Baby Jane costume ready for a test shoot. Yesterday I scraped together the accessories for the costume; a corsage that I happened to find from my drawer and a black stay-up.

I couldn’t force myself to buy a proper pair of stay-ups just to ruin them. Instead I took a ridiculously cheap pair of stockings I had lying around. I cut the legs and made the wide top panel from the upper part of the pantyhose. Then I just sew the pieces together with a serger. I haven’t weathered the dress aside from cutting and tearing the hem, so there is still some smearing, ripping and burning ahead.

For the make-up I used different eye-shadows, some grey crème make-up, red lipstick, fake blood and 3D-gel. This was my second time working with the gel and I think I made some progress with it. The only down side this time was that the gel didn’t stick. It started to peel away especially around the mouth. While teasing my hair I came to a conclusion that I might buy a wig for this particular cosplay even if I didn’t originally plan to. I’m trying to decide whether to go with the concept art style or the dark bob. The bob is actually starting to intrigue me more and more.

By the way, is it just me or does anyone else get a questionable 80’s vibe from the dress?

Meat hook for Spider Splicer

2011-10-08T00:10:00.006+03:00

Oh, Halloween. What a great excuse to make a costume. Three years ago I made a version of Bubblehead Nurse and last year Miss Samara “Well” Morgan. This year by project is Baby Jane Splicer from Bioshock. I’m doing an early concept art version from the character, because I just find the messy red hair more appealing that the black bob.

Because I’m constantly looking for different ways to make hard props, I thought to try something new when building the meat hooks for Baby Jane. The basic construction method is pretty common, pulp board skeleton with foam cover, but the finishing is slightly different. (Read: constantly looking for ways to eliminate sanding.)

First thing to do before the build is to define the shape of the hooks. I could have studied the references before cutting the skeleton, but I trusted my memory, which again proved to be little off. My handles are like 0 when they should be like D. But I chose to let it pass this time, because the costume is not for competition purposes, only for fun.

1: The pulp board

I made the skeleton from two parts; hook and handle. The design of the hooks is pretty bulky, so I chose the width to be about 1,7 cm. One centimeter diameter would have made the hook look too frail and 1,5 was not enough, but with two centimeters it would have been just huge, at least for a lady character. I don't really know why I ended up with 1,7, it just worked.

Before gluing the pieces together, the shapes are traced on insulation foam. Both parts two times.

After I had cut the pieces, I sliced a slit on the hook and glued it to the handle. The structure may seem floppy at this point, but when the foam is added there will be more support on the cross part.

2: The foam

I used 2 cm thick insulation foam. The traced pieces are cut out. First the handle parts are glued. Then small slits are cut so that the crossing parts are sealed underneath. The sandwich is taped together. The glue needs to dry before anything else can be done.

Then it’s time to start cutting away the excess foam. I used a carpet knife and naturally cut myself during the first few minutes. So use gloves to protect your precious fingers, because sharper the knife is the neater the result will be. With dull blade you just end up ripping the foam.

The pulp board works as a guideline when the foam is cut round from the both sides. Some of the height needs to be taken away, because the hook should be 1,7 cm diameter all around. It’s better to cut less than more. The shape is finished with fine sand paper.

3: Paper Mache

You can use any adhesive you like for this. I just simply mixed together glue and water until I got the consistence I was happy with. It’s always best to start with glue and add water little by little. Ripped pieces of newspaper are dipped in the adhesive and laid on the foam. On curves the pieces need to be small so that they sit properly. Two to three layers will do.

I normally avoid this enforcement technique, because I never seem to get the surface as smooth as I would like to. But because the meat hook can look rough, the few bumps I was able to create didn’t bother me.

4: Coating

For the coating I used water, glue and wood putty in form of a goo. Goo in this case means a spread that is liquid enough to be applied with a brush, but also pasty enough so that it doesn’t drip. I went with gut feeling and didn’t measure anything. I still have to do the other hook, so I try to take notes and add information later about the amounts. The goo will last for few days under plastic.

The goo is spread thinly on the hook. Each layer should be dry before the next. I think I made three to four layers in total. And then it’s done; a meat hook to be painted and weathered.

Notes:

I’m going to paint my hooks with acrylics and will post photos of them when they are done. For the construction; you could use expanding foam instead of insulation foam. The finish could be just putty, but you would probably need to sand it. And if you hate sanding and refuse to do it, you could skip it with the insulation foam; your hook might only look rougher in that case.

Pretty, pretty Samara

2011-09-21T23:49:00.000+03:00

I made a post about Samara's costume last year and nothing has changed with that, but this time I used 3-D gel from Mehron to create the decayed effect instead of Erikeeper. I'm not sure what to think about the product really. The gel felt sticky even after I fixed it and the white cake make-up I used didn’t stick to it too well. The instructions recommended that the wished color should be mixed to the gel in liquid form, but of course I didn’t have anything for the purpose. And I had skin colored gel. Transparent one might have been better.

I think I’ll give the gel another go on Halloween with a new character... What? Did I say I'd take a break from costume making..? I don't recall doing so...

Here are some photos from our well hunting day with more typical, scary-Samara! All photos are taken by Yoki.

Costume cross-section- Barriss Offee

2011-09-14T22:14:00.000+03:00

In our version of Barriss’ costume there is seven different pieces; cape, scarf, cowl, dress, belt, shoes and lightsaber. I’ve seen other costumers and cosplayers with different solution. Some have done separate shirt and skirt or cowl attached to the cape itself. You can’t really tell how the costume is constructed when it’s on, so I went on with a way that was most suitable for us and my way of costume making.

The cape fabric was something we really searched for. Finally we accepted this synthetic fiber mix we found from local fabric store. It has velvety or brushed cotton type surface, but the inside looks like what you would use in a shell suit. Gladly, the printing emulsion worked on the synthetic fabric. We used a stencil roughly a size of an A4 sheet and used pearly blue and silver opaque colors from EMO-tuotanto. Needless to say, the process took days! Still it was bit faster than printing Luminara’s cape.

The cape is pretty much straight pieces of fabric. The back is gathered to eight large folds, which I sewed on a shoulder panel. The front is double layered and lifted from the front to the tip of the shoulder and sewed on place. The hood is patterned rather freely, it’s supported by iron on backcloth and the whole thing is lined with black acetate. The cape has hidden hook fastening on the front.

The scarf is actually my old “pashmina” scarf I bought for few pounds from London. I just cut it in half and thus sacrificed it to cosplay goddesses.

The cowl is sewed from leftover pieces of the cape. It fastens with hooks on the back of the neck.

The dress has four different fabrics on it. The top layer of the shirt is made from two crinkled and detailed tricot fabrics. As a lining is used lycra tricot on the bust in two layers to prevent transparency. The hem is made from heavy knit fabric with 5% elastane to ensure decent fall and flow. To make the look on the middle section of the bust according to references, I sew pin tucks for more detailed look.

The hem is half circle as the upper part of it is more or less like a tube. I sew the shirt part and hem part separately and joined them as a last step. If I wish to change the hem, the cut on it is slightly lower than the reference because in my mind it fitted Yoki’s physique better, then I can do it easily without having to seam rip the sides.

Yoki made the belt buckle from pulp board, craft foam and some yarn. Here is a link to a post she made about it. The belt is made the same way as Luminara’s; with brown pleather on top and awning fabric on the back to give support. Barriss’ belt is little darker than Luminara’s, so I used a sponge to rub dark grey acrylic paint thinly on the pleather. It actually worked really well. The acrylic set on the pleather nicely and didn’t crack even if I tried stretching it.

The black boots were found from same second hand shop as Luminara’s. There are five decorative buckles on the sides and reasonable heel to walk. Price for the boots was something ridiculous, like ten euros.

The lightsaber Yoki made from pulp board tube this time from plastic wrap container, craft foam, putty, black electricity tape, silver spray paint and finally screws and plaster buttons as details.

Samara's search uploaded

2011-09-11T17:30:00.003+03:00

Long time, no upload on our Youtube channel... Until now! Almost after a year of the completion of my Samara costume, I put on my best decayed make-up and headed out with Yoki in hunt of wells.

What if Samara lost her wells? Head here and find out!

Fembot business is serious

2011-09-10T14:42:00.001+03:00

Our Decepticon costumes could be labeled as lightweight costumes, but when we headed out with our photographer Karan on a sunny June afternoon, the amount of fabric in them felt too much. I’m just happy that we didn’t turn out all shiny and sweaty in the photos taken that day!

But the heat did affect us and it is truly visible in the photos taken that day… The sun must had melted our brain a bit, because almost half of the shots were… well, I just questioned whether I should post them or not. But then again, some of them just too funny! Random craziness and Karan’s snapshots from us.

Too sunny... And why is Princess Megs picking Lady Screamer's nose?

Stick 1, Megatron 0.

Armor from craft foam for Ivy

2011-09-08T00:58:00.000+03:00

Craft foam must be one of the most versatile materials there is when it comes to cosplay. I’ve used it before on Mayuri’s hat structures, in Sasori’s puppet body to imitate wood and for leathery look on Luminara’s waist cloth and armguards. And in one or two costume projects I’ve used it in details. But when I started to brainstorm our costumes for WCS preliminaries, I came to realize that I would build armor for my character entirely from craft foam. Thankfully, Ivy only has pieces of armor on her arms and shoes, but never the less; I was in for a challenge.

Even if I hadn't done any myself, I had read about making craft foam armors. This craft foam armor making tutorial is one of the firsts I bumped into years ago and I think it's possibly one of the most referred one out there. The steps on the tutorial are almost the same with how I made my armor with few differences on materials used.

One thing about Ivy’s armor is really convenient; all the pieces are more or less symmetrical. If you look at the upper arm piece, it looks the same whether you look at it from the front or the back. With the forearms and upper arms I could make one pattern and use it on either arm without problems.

And with patterns I started the project. After I has sketched the armor based on references, I used regular paper to define the sizes and shapes of the armor pieces. Everything else was rather easy to do, but for the breast plate I asked Yoki to aid me.

I traced patterns on 2mm craft foam and supporting parts of the breast plate from 5mm craft foam. Behind each craft foam piece I glued slightly smaller piece of fiber fabric, sturdy cotton stiffener used in upholstery. This gives good support to the piece itself and will prevent bending better than regular fabric would. Inside the breast plate I used cups from old bra. This made the whole construction process lot easier, because I already had right shape and size to build the armor on.

Breast plate details.

Some of the armor pieces required few layers of foam for details and rims. Some of the details on the references don’t seem to be as raised as others, so I used thick paper to achieve the look for those. In the arm pieces where armor flares out as in the upper arm and the wrist of the forearm I used plaster tape and putty to hide the seams which were necessary to create the wished shape.

There are some sharp angles on Ivy leg armors. Craft foam tends to reverted after bending, so some heat is necessary to forge it. I used hot-air blower to warm up the foam before pressing the folds on the ankle and shoe parts. I also used heat to create the knuckles on the hand plates, curves on the forearms and the plump on the upper arm. You don’t need to heat the foam long; few seconds with hot-air blower will make the foam moldable.

After gluing the raised pieces, back support and sanding the putty smooth, I applied few coats of gesso on each piece to seal the foam. Lastly I made a glue-water mixture and applied it with a brush to harden the surface. The glue also works great to create glossy finish for the piece.

As primer I used grey spray primer from Prof. The paint I used was silver chrome finish from Bravo Spray. I also planned to age and weather the pieces with acrylics, but the time was against me. Well, something to do before next wear!

The small brooch details could also be counted as part of Ivy's armor. I cut the base shape from pulp board and sculpted the shape from modeling material similar to Das modeling clay. After I let the thing dry, I gave it few coats of glue-water and painted then the same way I did the rest of the armor.

The fastenings on the armor are pretty much elastic band and Velcro. I glued the tips straight to the base shoes with Erikeeper. If you glue Velcro straight to craft foam or any other smooth surface it will not hold that well. I solved the problem by backing the Velcro up with something, this time to scrap tricot I had lying around. The fabric will give the glue nice surface to grip on.

In short, the hand plates fasten to the gloves with Velcro, the forearms close with Velcro, the upper arms hang on with elastic band, the breast plate fastens to the dress with Velcro from the sides, the rings on the ankles close with Velcro and the ankle plates you hardly saw me wearing at Tracon, because they were uncomfortable as they could be, also fastens with Velcro. The brooches hold on with safety pins glued on the backsides.

I’m rather happy how the armor turned out if the shoes are not counted in. Before I’m going to take Ivy to any convention, I’m going to redo the whole leg set and pay more attention to patterning the tips of the shoes. I also need to pad the heels themselves. They are too big for me, which made my walking look like duckling steps.

Few bumps on the road; trial and error with hand plates.

Ivy and Yoshimitsu at Tracon VI

2011-09-06T22:27:00.001+03:00

Here are some photos of our characters that I found from our cameras after Tracon. The photos are either from Saturday or Sunday. Most noticeable difference is my legs; on Sunday I tossed away the shoes I wore at the competition, because they were utterly uncomfortable. Few of my toes are still numb from wearing them. I also wore regular lace tights on Sunday.

What has happened?

2011-09-05T17:50:00.000+03:00

My first try for the transmission number three was in winter 2010, which was a long, long time ago. Now, after the dust from the non-stop costume making process had settled, I kicked myself and here is the result.

Now Hiron will have nightmares from Luminara's cloak.

-yoki, out

WCS preliminaries hangover and happiness

2011-09-04T12:36:00.001+03:00

"Too hasty!"

What a weekend! Two months of hard work really paid off when we were able to take home second place in World cosplay Summit Finnish preliminaries. Congratulations and all the best to the winning couple, Rimppu and Majo! It was great to compete with you and all the other competitors. The backstage was a nice change to get to a chatting distance from people who I’ve only seen on the internet and admired their drive for cosplay. And huge thanks to the judges! The feedback almost got me in tears (you wouldn’t know about Yoki, would you?) and the critics both from the costumes and the performance was truly valuable.

Not only the past few months but the last year has been a crazy costume journey. I started the year by finishing the Snowtroopers with Yoki, and then we were bound by fabric printing for Luminara and Barriss. I finished the costumes a day before Desucon just to start a new project with Femme Megatron and Starscream for Kawacon. The date for WCS Finnish preliminaries were announced after Desucon, so naturally when were done with the lady bots it was time to start the competition costumes, which were Isabella “Ivy” Valentine and Yoshimitsu from Soul Calibur III. Somewhere between I also took few commissions. Needless to say, the atmosphere right now is pretty exhausted.

I try to spend the rest of the year without any costume project… if I can. I’ve sworn few times that I will not work with costumes for some time, but found myself two weeks after the promise crafting something new. Maybe this time I won’t get the urge, because we’ve got some updating to do here on our blog. There is pile of posts waiting to be written from making of the costumes to the whole competition experience. The drive back home from Tracon VI I tried to figure out what would be the most convenient way to sort the different phases and pieces of the costumes. Would it be better to divide the project according to items or techniques?

Now I’m going to go and eat loads of chocolate. We declined treats before Tracon to keep in shape, so now I have some catching up to do! Later today I might gather together the photos our supporter aka mom took from us. Until then, chocolate!

Costume cross-section: Luminara Unduli

2011-08-24T16:42:00.000+03:00

Luminara's costume consist of ten different pieces. From top to bottom; headpiece, cape, brooch, shirt, arm guards, pair of belts with large buckles, waist cloth, skirt and shoes. She is also carrying lightsaber somewhere under her cape.

There is actually a pair of post, where I go through the construction of the headpiece. In short, it's made from mosquito net, modeling paste, small piece of foam and few different fabrics. The trim on the head piece is still not finished, I still need to add two decorative ribbons to it.

The cape ate five and half meters of brown wool, which I printed by hand. I used black pigment and the base emulsion for fabric printing from EMO-tuotanto. It was bit risky to use the colors on wool, because they are meant for on cotton and cotton mixes. The printing process took several weeks, because I had to do a negative print, meaning that I had to cut the pieces separately.

The idea for the pattern came from Yoki. After browsing through Rebel Legion forums I found credible verification for the plan. The whole body of the cape is actually one big piece of fabric. The sleeves form when the fabric is pulled from the hem up to the shoulder. There is narrow yoke on the front with snap and hook fastenings.

The back of the cape is heavily draped. The drapes are sewed to piece of fabric tape on the waist. The hood is only for a show. How would you wear a hood with the huge headpiece anyway? I modeled the hood on my fitting dummy before sewing it on the cape.

The base of the brooch is pulp board. The rest of the body is modeling paste and hand-twisted wire. The brooch is painted with acrylics. The body is black and green mixed together and the wires are copper and gold. I used a tooth pick to paint the wires. The fastening is a safety pin, which is glued to the brooch a with a piece of fabric.

The shirt fabric was originally beige cotton tricot. I machine dyed it with cotton lace I used on the skirt. The pattern of the shirt is pretty basic. The front panel is striped with crooked pin tucks on the wrong side of the fabric. The ribbons are braided from strings of pleather. The high turtle neck has a zipper on the back, so that the garment would be easier to get on and off.

The arm guards and the front cloth are made with same materials and techniques. The figures are craft foam painted with acrylics and glued on brown leather. The details are made with different tools, like hair pins and a seam ripper. The arm guards fasten with Velcro, which is actually movie accurate solution. The cloth fasten with Velcro to the belt higher on the waist.

The belts are made from brown pleather. They both have black awning fabric as lining to make them sturdy. The belts fasten from the back with to poppers. The buckles are made from pulp board and paper. They are painted with acrylics in gold and copper and weathered with watercolors. I like to use watercolors instead of acrylics, because they stick too fast and don't spread well even when rubbed.

The skirt has two layers. Ribbed, black cotton forms the first one with cotton lace that I had dyed earlier. Black cotton acts as lining underneath to give support to the first layer, which would be too limp alone and not hold the required A-line form. I had my old petticoat with two hoops the first time I wore the costume.

The boots are brown leather with warm tone, even if the color looks grey on the photo. There is three copper colored buckles on the side and moderate wedges. And they were found unexpectedly from a second hand shop for seven or eight euros. Good bargain.

The lighsaber is made from a pulp board tube stolen from aluminum foil container, soft foam, glue, putty, screws, plaster buttons and black tape. The body was painted with silver and chrome sprays and the golden details with acrylics. I like the result a lot and the fact that is was virtually a free prop. All the materials used was found from our cosplay workshop.

Writing this made me realize that there is still some work to do with this costume like dyeing the cape darker and making the decorations on the headpiece, but I think I'll manage to finish everything before the next wear, which will be at Tampere Kuplii next spring.

Panic? No panic... yet

2011-08-23T23:13:00.000+03:00

Big promises were made in the beginning of this month. Hiron stated that we would make blog entries while working with the costumes for Tracon VI.

Surprise, surprise - no blog entries, but huge amount of following: searching reference pictures, pattern making, material shopping, sewing, ripping seams, drawing stencils, printing and dyeing fabric.

My "balls"

Not so soft stuff: sawing insulation material, doing negative and positive molds, sanding, putting, casting plaster, sculpting, craft foam crafting, vacuum forming.

Weirder stuff: sitting in a recording hut, voice acting, recording, fighting with audacity, embroidering.

The "hut"

Random stuff: painting, spray painting, gluing, using huge amount of tape and paper, sleeping, cursing, brain farting, nagging, death glaring, goofing, holding patents for drying components.

Casualty material: sticking oneself and others with pins, burning thyself with hot glue, cutting yourself with an utility knife, luckily just a little, breathing different types of dusts and fumes, following rainbows and flying pink elephants.

Back to work,
-yoki

We've got something!

2011-08-01T23:33:00.000+03:00

Last month was crazy, plain crazy. While Yoki travelled across Finland first taking care of her duty as an aunt and then tracking Saimaa ringed seals, I was married to my work for two weeks and then on holiday the other half of July. And somewhere between we worked on our costumes for Tracon VI!

Four weeks and this is the outcome? Pair of sandals!

The progress we have made is satisfactory. There is still lot to do, especially with the performance, but I could carefully state that we are half way there. Clothes are nearly done. Currently we are working on props and armors. Because of the workload the update speed will not increase much, but at some point I’ll make costume cross-sections from Luminara and Barriss and I also have some silliness from Megatron and Starscream shoot waiting on my photo folder.

Barriss' belt buckle

2011-07-28T18:17:00.000+03:00

As a padawan, Barriss Offee doesn't have many accessories, only the detailed belt buckle. Our version was made mostly from materials we already had, except the gold acrylic paint and embroidery thread had to be bought.

The main materials were thick poster board and craft foam. It's good to remember while drawing on craft foam that every line you press on its surface will be seen. So, note to self: draw on the backside.

After successfully drawing the shapes it was time to cut them off. A scalpel or a thin utility knife works well while scissors are too clumsy, except while cutting bigger shapes like in Luminara's leather cloth and gauntlets. I also trimmed some foam from the boarders of the patterns so that the pieces would fit in nicely.

Note: this wasn't the frame I used in the finished buckle.

An old hair pin proved to be an excellent choice for scraping, poking and dragging different textures to the foam. The Karelian pasties texture on the inner edge of the 'heart' was made by first pressing down then dragging the pin down.

That pin must be over ten years old.

Then it was time for the paintjob, and acrylics never fail you, unless you put too thick layer of it and cover all the textures you made earlier. Note to self: don't take too much paint. Gold, copper, brown, dark grey and their mixtures were used.

The surround was made from four strands of embroidery thread. They were "twisted" twice [due the lack of better term] and clued to place then painted with gold. Finally the parts were clued to the poster board base and weathered with black paint.

This one hasn't been weathered yet, but can you see were the ends of the thread are?

-yoki out

Luminara's headgear- The crest

2011-07-16T08:38:00.002+03:00

The crest for Luminara’s hat was bit of a challenge. I first tried making it out from cushion board the same way as I did the dome. It didn’t work too well. The shape was really hard to achieve and it would have needed supporting structures to hold the shape, especially after applying the clay. Also it would have been heavy because of clay coating and I wanted to keep the thing as light as possible.

Then I tried paper, thinking that paper mache would work as some hats I’ve seen were made from it. But I lost my temper with floppy paper pieces and trashed them. I was close to giving in to chicken wire, which was the last possible choice because it’s heavy, bumpy and my least favourite material to date. Then it hit me; mosquito net! The net can be sewn, it’s pretty sturdy but light. First time I used mosquito net on Mayuri’s hat. I wonder why I didn’t think of it sooner.

I started shaping the thing by making a tube from foam and mosquito net. Then I took pieces of net and shaped them around the tube on a wig head. I’m sorry I can’t describe the process any more detailed, because it was mostly done by staring at references and cutting and shaping free-handed. I think there are four layers of net on the thickest parts of the crest. It’s enough, because against presumptions the wool isn't heavy at all.

I made the trumpets one at the time and then copied the shapes and cut the other side. This way I got identical shapes. I sew the pieces together and after modelling the crest on the dome I covered the parts I thought to be fragile with gauze and glue. To fide unwanted bumps, I finally covered the crest with fleece.

After the glue had dried I took out my scaled pattern for the textile part. I cut the wool and started to stretch it on the crest. Different to the dome, no water was needed. The wool I used was woven, so there was enough stretch to the shapes. I only had cut one slit on the base of the crest. I hand-stitched the wool in place and glued the sides inside the trumpets. The draped part I stitch around the tube to cover the inner structures. Finally I put the hat on and checked that the hem part was the same length all around.

After I had trimmed the hem I started with the ornament ribbon. The ribbon is not the final one. I didn't find suitable material for the outer edges, so I only did the middle part of the decoration ready. It’s likely that I will spend some time with embroydery in the near future.

The base of the ribbon is satin bias and the black is regular satin ribbon. When you sew together two materials that tend to act differently, I recommend you use steady base while sewing. I sewed the ribbons with a piece of paper underneath to avoid uneven stretching. After you’re done sewing you can rip the paper out. You can wash the ribbon to get the tiny pieces of paper off the stitches.

I sewed the ribbon on the hem by hand. I showed the result for Yoki who was really exited, but still pondered the size of the crest. I told her that with the costume it looks just fine. Note to self: Try on the costume with accessories before blazing assumptions as truths. The hem was too long, so I had to rip the ribbon and sew it back again. But now I’m happy with the headgear, even if it’s not properly finished.

Cropped from a photo by Santtu Pajukanta. Note, that everything in my head, including my mouth is crooked.

Megatron, Starscream and mini shorts

2011-07-10T00:23:00.000+03:00

All photos are taken by Karan.

Finally, a report from Tampere Kuplii and our first competition

2011-07-06T19:40:00.003+03:00

We have been cosplaying as a pair for five years now and just recently we participated in a competition at Tampere Kuplii comic festivals. The cosplay competition was our main focus, so my report will mostly circle around that. There were two lectures we would've liked to see, but the other clashed with competitors photography session and the competition itself and the other was on the next day when we had to claim our car and leave. So we just hung around, which actually was really fun. We got to meet other cosplayers, talk about costuming and share thoughts. We actually met two other Star Wars cosplayers by chance! Both of them where members of 501st and the Rebel Legion.

Photo by Mikko Lintula. Creative Commons Attribution 1.0 Finland.

We arrived to Tampere on Friday and checked in to our hotel. It was close to the convention centre, just few hundred meters away. We warned the clerks that we are not moving in, even if we would soon carry few cardboard boxes inside. We also mentioned that we would attend to the comic festivals and thus look bit different next day. I think it's polite to inform the staff if you are going to stroll in the hotel in costumes. Actually the hotel was really costume friendly, minus the leaking steam iron which peed on my shirt. The child quests were thriller every time they saw us and Yoki even got her picture taken with bride-to-be.

As expected, we still had some things to do before Saturday. Tired from four hours drive, stomach full of Chinese I glued the last details on our packs lying on the bed as Yoki went through next days plan. We also "rehearsed" our short skit on the hotel room without costumes or props. The " ", because it was more like a walk through than an actual rehearsal. Most of the time we just argued where we would enter the stage. Too tired and exited we trusted to the saying that bad dress rehearsal (without the dresses) would guarantee that the show itself would go well.

The next morning we got the costumes on including light make-up and assembling in hour and a half. While it was our first wear with the full costume, it was also the first test run for the backpacks. We had finished the fastenings on Thursday evening. They worked, but for next wear they need little tweaking. Then we were off to the photographing. The second take gave a sneak peak from our performance to other competitors. As usual, we went with humor.

Photo by Jussi Sorjonen. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike-NonCommercial 1.0 Finland.

Slight excitement was in the air as we waited for the competition to start. We had a chance to check the stage before hand. We also informed the host that we would not speak, because we didn’t have voice amps. We did speak while at the convention, but wanted to keep the illusion of radio audio while at stage. Then we waited. First the audience was let in, and then there were some problems with the mikes. After everything worked the host went through the competition format. The competition was in two phases. After all the competitors had been on the stage the judges would choose ten finalists to be part of an open voting on local newspaper. The competition itself was catwalk typed, but it was allowable to do a short skit.

About our skit… The part we had planned went really well and I think the audience also got the idea behind it. But the second half of our stage time was probably more entertaining in all it’s unluckyness. Like I said before, our backpack fastenings worked great. I can’t say same about our armor fastenings. It just happened that the gluing on Yoki’s crotch piece failed at the crucial moment!

Note the threateningly tilted crotch piece on the left. Photo by AG.

For a moment I froze totally thinking how we could possibly save the situation. Gladly Yoki saved the day! She glanced down, pulled her hands to cover herself and finally pulled the flag she was carrying in front of her. The audience laughed, I was able to breathe again and Yoki earned applauses. The host also stumbled in her words and finally just drove us off from the stage. We have some video footage from the event. Yoki will probably include it on her next transmission.

The rest of the competition went in a blur. I remember I tried to fix the crotch fastening while in the audience. After everybody had had their moment in the flashlights big group shot was taken. While the judges deliberated who would be the ten finalists the audience enjoyed trailers from upcoming movies. Conveniently the competition was held in a movie theater.

Photo by Santtu Pajukanta. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike-NonCommercial 1.0 Finland.

When the results were announced our costumes were called first. I remember I took the flag and tumbled down to stage and Yoki somehow managed to follow me trying to keep her armor together. We both were so exited and confused that we didn’t hear what the judges said about our costumes.

And then after group shot of the finalists, it was over. While we were leaving the area one of the judges stopped us and asked was it part of the show that the crotch piece fell. We laughed and told that is was just an accident. Thank goodness for helmets! I bet that there wouldn’t be any doubt about it being an accident if the audience had seen my expression the moment I saw the armor piece lying on the floor!

The winner of the competition was group of three from movie Despicable Me. We landed the third place after Black Rock Shooter. Thank you if you voted for us! And big thanks also to those who stopped us and gave positive comments about our costumes! Now the pain feels worth it.

Photo by Jussi Sorjonen.Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike-NonCommercial 1.0 Finland.

Next wear for Snowtroopers will be at Desucon Frostbite 14-15.1.2012.

Foretaste of Decepticon femme humanforms

2011-06-30T22:57:00.000+03:00

We made a record today! For the first time in our cosplay history we had a official photoshoot prior to wearing the costumes at convention. We headed out to the heat this afternoon with our ladyfied Decepticons and had the most pleasant shoot to date. Not because of the weather, we nearly fried, but thanks to Karan who worked as our photographer. Thank you a thousand times and few more to go with the rest! The photos turned out better than I ever expected! Also our location was most suitable for the shoot. Thanks to Yoki for that one!

I will make a full photoshoot post after the weekend, but here is one for a sneak peek. Enjoy!

Photo taken by Karan.

Casualty Cosplay, mobilize!

2011-06-26T20:05:00.001+03:00

Logging in...

Room name: Casualty Cosplay's costume crafting corner...

Two active members, one visitor...

Loading pictures...

Yoki: The prints are done. Now we only need to fill the gaps.

Hiron: What gaps? Where? In the insignia?

Yoki: Yeah, the stencil is not perfect.

Hiron: *stares at the picture of the insignia, then the stencil* Is it bad that I don't see the difference?

Yoki: *watches how Hiron puts on the black gloves* ..That's so creepy.

Hiron: *Megatron's voice* Come here Starscream, we got some unfinished businesses~.

Yoki: *Starscream's voice* Slagging no...

Hiron: Seriously, you need to learn how to pose like a lady. Look, twist your body like this and make a curve. *gives an example*

Yoki: Umm, like this? *tries to mimic and fails, totally*

Hiron: Okay... Good... Now loads of practice with that!

Yoki: If they could hold hands?

Hiron: ..Is the inner fangirl getting loose?

Yoki: I've no idea what you are talking about...

-yoki, out

"Oh, how it pains me to do this!"

2011-06-24T17:52:00.001+03:00

With the words of slightly lunatic back stabber and probably the most ill-used and unreliable second in command, I'll now present our up-coming costumes for Kawacon.

Princess Megs and her ~~loyal~~ servant Lady Star.

One boring afternoon I took a pencil and started drawing. Yoki being a Transformers fan and I'm also but in smaller scale, we've had few discussion about various themes around transforming robots. One circled around holoforms or human forms, I'm not sure which one is appropriate term. The result was these lady birds. I snapped a photo from the drawing with my phone and send it to Yoki, whose reply was: "...You have been officially infected by tf holoforms! Femme holoforms... Potential Kawacon duo~? :3"

And then after Desucon I found myself drawing mini shorts patterns. Now that I think of it, after agonizing work week, think I might have made too hasty schedule for the costumes. I really wanted to get over them quickly, because every passing day is off from making our competition costumes. The hurry have manifested as temper problems and common crankiness.

Yoki might think different, but I actually enjoy working with the costumes, because it's nice for a change to actually design something! Or modify, because half of the work was done already. I just had to transform (heh) blocky metal design into soft forms and fabric.

If the mood problems are forgotten, things are looking quite good. I only need to make Lady Star's legs and Yoki have her wings and head accessories under construction. Also our wigs needs some attention on styling department.

Talking about wigs, most disgusting thing happened today when we were trying the wig with the extras on Yoki. I tried to comb the wig from the forehead with my fingers, but actually stuck my thumb on Yoki's eyeball! It was squishy!

Because of Midsummer night celebration I'll have a free day from work tomorrow, which we will use finishing the costumes. We started with the costumes last Sunday, the same day we got back from Desucon. I took responsibility of patterns and sewing as usual. Yoki handled prop building and groundwork, because she has loads of knowledge from the source.

Maybe the costumes have something to do with a certain premiere here in Finland... Who knows?

Quick costume overview from Desucon

2011-06-22T12:04:00.001+03:00

Photo by Petri Haikonen

I'm going to write more about our Desucon experience later. Currently I'm possessed by crazy cosplay frenzy for two reasons. Last Saturday the preliminary date for World Cosplay Summit was released and I somehow found myself promising Yoki that we will quickly piece together new costumes for Kawacon. It was weird to dig up patterning paper and references almost immediatelly after un-packing freshly debuted costumes!

Our Jedis were probably the most comfortable costumes we have worn, but still they got some minus sides. The capes were hot as hell! Because the weather changed from cloydy and rainy to sunny, we strolled in civil clothes on Sunday. We desided that Luminara and Barriss will be counted as spring/fall costumes from here on.

Next to hotness one minor problem was that our hems got stepped on them few times. Next to being comfy the costumes were easy to wear. Meaning that we didn't need worry about fastenings failing. They were thought through and well secured. Well, except the lightsaber hilt D-rings, which both came off within the first hour.

In some previous post I already mentioned that there is still some work ahead with Luminara's costume. I need to darken the cape fabric, becase it's way too brown. Before Desucon I just didn't have time to concentrate on dyeing it. I'm also going to weather the cloth and bracers. And I need to come up with better solution for the D-rings. Yoki's costume could actually be regarded as ready. I might adjust the cape a bit, but next to that I can't think of anything else.

Last, but not least I want to thank everybody who took a photo from us and especially the ones who stayed and changed few words with us!

Time for the check list

2011-06-16T23:50:00.001+03:00

The title subtly indicates that I got the costumes ready in time! This is really something. Usually we got some gluing and hand-stitches to do on the night before or preferably on the con-morning. Last things on my to do-list were fastenings for the capes and Luminara’s wrist bracers and shortening Barriss’ scarf.

I ruined four hearts before I succeeded!

Tomorrow morning I’ll start the packing process. I got my check list ready and post-its around. They remind me from packing the tickets also. Then I just wait Yoki to arrive and then we’re off! See you soon, Desucon!

Edit: Bhah, I forgot I had to paint one tiny area on the end of Barriss’ lightsaber hilt! Well, something for Friday morning. It would've been inappropriate just to chill out.

Traveller inspired collaboration

2011-06-11T11:45:00.000+03:00

At their best, cosplay photographs act like any successful piece of art; they enlighten feelings, memories and stories. We have few times been truly dumbfounded, when we’ve had contacts from other countries, people with whole different backgrounds about our cosplay photos. Especially Yoki’s Snufkin have had positive reactions, which we will never forget. One of them was from Netherlands.

Piotr send us e-mail and asked if he could use one of the photos from our winter photoshoot for Snufkin. He is planning a hitch-hiking trip around the world and Snufkin has been his favourite childhood character. No wonder, I say. He also mentioned that he has read all Moomin books by Tove, so we were basically involved with Moomin maniac similar to ourselves. Thus, we were really happy to let him use our work on his blog's header.

Piotr’s blog, One smile journey can be found behind the link. We wish him best of luck for his adventure!

Progress of Barriss' costume

2011-06-05T23:28:00.005+03:00

It has been quite hectic for the last few weeks but we have managed to make progress with the jedi duos costumes, which is relatively good when considered the convention we're going is two weeks away. I only wonder, how we always manage to pick the most hottest costumes for summer.

Why so sad face? Answer: very persistent summer flu.

"You don't know the power of the Dark Side... Whoops, wrong side. "

Hiron's ultimate pose called: The Realisation of Passage of Time. Potential title for a Prince of Persia game.

-yoki, out

Tiny takes from the weekend

2011-05-30T00:32:00.000+03:00

While I sewed Yoki’s costume she worked on her belt buckle. Sadly we didn’t take any photos from the process, but maybe next week Yoki will make a post about her accessories.

After some minor hood problems I finished Barriss' cape. The fastening is still missing and I need to do a separate collar piece. The print looks great!

I tried Luminara's make-up. I’m really happy how the lips turned out, but the diamond markings still need attention. And I think I bought eye shadow with too subtle golden tint.

Yoki looked grumpy. “Get out of my lawn”, she yelled.

Luminara's headgear- The dome

2011-05-19T17:57:00.002+03:00

I realized yesterday that Desucon is only a month away. Inspired or horrified of the closing convention I started with Luminara’s headgear. I dug up the base I had prepared in February as a refreshing crafting project between Snowtrooper’s construction. The materials I used for the dome part was corrugated cardboard, lots of masking tape, modelling “clay”, tricot and flannel for support and padding and wool.

I took advantage on our Snowtrooper helmet dome mold for the cardboard skeleton. I actually had done one dome before, but because I didn’t have anything to shape it over it became too big and bulky for my taste. With the mold I was able to get the shape close enough and with little tweaking and trying it on it finally took nice, fitting form. I used hot glue and masking tape to keep the structure together.

Next I took about 250 grams of modelling material and rolled it to thin sheet. Then I covered the dome with the clay substitute. Then I left the dome to dry before the next step. After the clay is dry, it’s almost impossible to alter the shape anymore. The cardboard dome was correct size for me, but it was bit too round while my head is more oval. I padded my wig head with plastic to fit my head size and taped the sides down to create the right shape on the rim.

After the clay was dry I covered the dome with tricot and applied glue-water mixture all over. The tricot smoothed out some of the inconsistencies in the clay and because I was too lazy to sand it I added flannel on the front to hide all the remaining bumps. I only applied glue on the edges to keep the fabric soft. I also didn’t cover the whole dome, because the back part will not be visible under the, uh, curtain..?

I had bought the only brown wool with smooth surface available on the local fabric stores. Not the best time of the year to buy wool, I say. I stretched the fabric over the dome and added water to where I had to stretch even more. Damp wool will stretch nicely and with little effort, but will not revert as a warning to the aspiring hat makers out there.

I haven’t lined the dome yet. I’m still thinking will the hat need some support system or elastics inside. To write this post I took a break from trying to figure how the shape of the, emm, curtain structure on the top is achieved. I’ve tried three different methods this far and I think it’s time to move on to mesh-wire-paper clay- direction.

Oh yeah, I finished the brooch! At least something is ready!

I could've take a photo of the finished thing with missing rings and attachment... Oh, well.

From pale to olive: Barriss make-up trial

2011-05-16T08:05:00.000+03:00

"You call me pale?! Why don't you take a look in the mirror then..."

Four of our costumes have required more make-up than the basic foundation and enchantments. Mayuri was the first and he was followed by Jasdero and Debitto. From them we learned that for applying oil-based products you need damp sponge like with water-based ones. Not dry. You might quess that it took some time to apply the paint...

After realising that it was child’s play to create Samara’s look last Halloween. Even if we have some body paint stuff behind us, we never actually made try-outs with exception of Joxter's nose. By miracle they just have worked adequately. But we don’t like to settle for that with our new costumes, so we had a trial for our Mirialian chicks, more specifically for Barriss who will be portrayed by Yoki.

We had in mind of doing a tutorial, but because we didn’t have all the right products we decided to share our experience as a regular post. And the make-up isn’t that hard to do if you just have patience. The hardest thing is to apply the diamond shapes, but when good position is found for both the model and for the one doing the make-up it will go fast.

I started with the base. I applied Grimas’ Créme Make-Up with damp sponge. It’s best to tap the color on to avoid streaks. Then I fixed the paint with transparent fixing powder. I think we will buy tinted powder later on, because the white powder will catch flashes and make the skin look really pale, which I noticed after taking photos from the process. At this point the golden eye-shadow would be added, but we hadn’t purchased it yet.

Comfortable position is everything. Note the pillow started when I was 18 and never finished.

Then I started with liquid eye-liner. I used it for making the diamonds shapes on the nose and cheeks and lining the upper eyelid. Again the trial proved useful. Because the eye-liner was water soluble, it was rather hard to even get the color on, yet try to make the shapes sharp. I think three layers would do the trick. I did only two for the trial. For eyes I think I’ll use pencil eye-liner, it can be also added inside the lash line safely. That was actually my first idea and purpose, but the pencil was missing at the time we started the make-up.

Then I added black mascara, black lipstick and darkened Yoki’s eyebrows a little and we were done. It’s annoying how nice facial structure Yoki has; she actually looks pretty with the crazy make-up!

In all the process took about an hour. We’ll buy the products we missed and have another trial, possibly for Luminara's look. I also need to study my camera options more, because the photos Yoki's skin is pale compared to what it really looked like. Next to practising my make-up Barriss' also needs some more attention; the diamond shapes extend further on the cheeks.

Under construction: Barriss' cloak

2011-05-13T22:05:00.007+03:00

During the last four evenings, the only sound that was heard was: thump thump thump thump thump thump thump and some unmentioned Finnish words which happened to escape our lips during the process. Indeed, it was time for printing Barriss' cloak fabric.

As I said, this project took four evenings, Hiron helped me out during the first two. We made one template out of soft plastic that was found from our local fabric store. The downside of this material was that it started to curl as the pattern had a lot of small strands in it. I got really frustrated with it while doing the final two lines, consisting 16 individual prints. But clearly I weren't as frustrated as Hiron during the first evening when it looked like the pattern was wrong, parts being too far apart from each other and the color was too light.

After going through most of her emotion arsenal, (the time I decided it was best to retreat) Hiron made a simple solution for the problem. She linked the small figures together with a brush, used more blue color in the mixture and finally pressed the wet print with a paper, removing the excess paint and making it more animate.

The template of doom!

There was another small problem with the template. After doing three lines, we noticed that the pattern started to look smaller and it was clearly missing parts. The paint had stuck on the template, closing the holes and making a nice layer on the plastic's surface which acted like a sticker tape. For this, there was a easier solution: a wash.

So after sitting, kneeling and lying on the floor for hours the print was finally finished, now only thing left to do is to create the network-like structure and put the cloak together.

Casualties: one telephone directory, yoki's right index finger and few stiff back muscles.

-yoki out

Typical situation with changing plans

2011-05-09T19:24:00.002+03:00

Changing plans with costumes, conventions or schedules must be one of the most typical situations (or problems) amongst cosplayers. We are no exception. After Tampere Kuplii we unanimously dropped Bakacon from our convention list because of Yoki’s exams. Now, after being somewhat crippled for weeks first by back problems and now with swollen knee and notorious spring flu, I’m completely assured that it was the right choice.

As a duo, it’s really easy to tell the other party if a costume idea doesn’t appeal too much or if you've had a change of heart. Dropped and changed costume plans happen so casually between us that we don’t even remember to report them. I think our long-term readers have noticed that. If I were to count all the costumes we have thought about doing, the list would possibly be at least double the length of the list of the actual costumes.

Crazy things have been introduced here on our blog with our possible projects. Talking about lists, I thought I could make one and try to clear out what new costumes we are going to do for this summer:

Luminara Unduli and Barriss Offee from Star Wars: Attack of the Clones

That was short… These costumes we will wear at Desucon, which is the next convention we are going to attend to. Of course we have plans for the autumn, but at this point it’s too early to go there.

"I find the lack of your ergonomics, while constructing your lightsaber disturbing!"

Under construction: Luminara's cloth

2011-05-05T23:25:00.000+03:00

Yesterday was the “May the fourth be with you”-day and I spend it according to theme; constructing Luminara’s accessories. This time I worked with the cloth she has attached to her belt. I managed to cut all the pieces and some I even prime painted. You could tell by looking around my apartment that the material I used for the cloth is craft foam. After months of static Finnfoam dust I’m happy with the some foam scraps wandering around.

I scaled the design from printed image and drew it on pattern paper. I traced the shapes on craft foam in two different colours. The markings and details I made with various objects and I’m using acrylics in brown, copper and gold. I still have much work ahead. Especially the detailing will be troublesome as there isn't many close-ups from the cloth.

During the upcoming week we are truly going to work with Luminara and Barriss as Yoki is having days off from school. We'll start printing the fabric for Barriss’ cape and hopefully finish the lightsaber hilts for both of us. I’m also trying to make some progress with Luminara’s headgear. I have started with it, but after realising how hard it is to find the right materials for it, I’ve just pushed it back.

We might also have some video stuff coming up.

Snowtrooper: Costume assembly

2011-04-26T21:45:00.000+03:00

Our Snowtrooper costumes consist of sixteen different components per set: pants, shoes, knee plates, crotch piece, abdomen plate, pouches, thermal detonator holder, jacket, chest plate, shoulder straps, backpack, shoulder bells, arm guards, hand plates, gloves and helmet. In this post I will go through the fastenings and assembly.

The crotch piece has a plastic buckle on the side on a canvas strap. The buckle was placed on the side, because opening the buckle would have been hard to find the buckle under the cape with thermal detonator etc. on the way. The pouches have double loops and they hang on canvas belt, which goes through the abdomen plate. The belt has a plastic buckle on the side. The thermal detonator holder has two aluminum "loops" to keep it on place.

The knee plates has elastic band glued inside the outer edge of the piece. On the inner side and on the end of the elastic band is Velcro.

The shoulder straps are fastened to the chest plates with screws and nuts. Between the strap and the chest plate is craft foam cushioning, so that the parts would sit tightly and not scratch each other. The canvas straps of the chest plate suspenders and similar straps with D-rings for the backpack connects to the same screw. The harness is fastened with a plastic buckle on the back.

All the parts from the chest set. Here you can see how the chest itself is constructed from four pieces.

The arm guards have elastic bands on the wrist. The cuffs on the guards are craft foam. The palm plates attach to the gloves with Velcro as well as the shoulder bells to the jacket. The backpack has canvas straps with Velcro glued and screwed on it. The straps slip trough the D-rings when worn.

The helmet has cushioning on the forehead. The buckets are actually so form fitting that they don't need anything else. The visor is attached to the dome snugly with Velcro. I wanted the visors to be removable, if we ever needed to pack tightly: the domes can be stacked, like almost all of the armor parts in the costumes. That is also why the back cowl on the helmet is taped on and not glued.

Front.

Back obviously.

Under construction: Luminara's accessories

2011-04-18T21:15:00.000+03:00

Next to leather gauntlets and cloth Luminara has few more accessories. She has a brooch fastening her cape on next to pair of belts and a lightsaber. The brooch I made last year already. I thought about re-making it, but after I examined the reference pictures I settled to it. There is still painting and weathering ahead, but I could say I'm on the winning side with it.

I've done lot of brain work with Luminara's belt buckles and few days ago I took the bull from its horns and started crafting. I've seen buckles that resemble the original ones, but never have I found exact copies. Nitpicky as I am, I had to get as close as possible. I have the simpler buckle done and fail-painted. The spray paint I used was really poor quality. I was able to get the bubbles out, which can still be seen in the picture. I'm going to paint it again with acrylics and trim the edges a little.

After painting the buckle, I need to weather it with black paint to give the design more depth. I also need to make the other, more difficult one and then come up with a fastening mechanism. I'm leaning forward to making the front of the belt “fake” and hiding the real buckle or snaps to the back, where the belt is covered by the cape. This way I would not need to worry about ruining the buckle while trying to make a tongue to it or about breaking the whole thing.

We have thought about applying to Rebel Legion with Luminara and Barriss, which makes having a lightsaber or the hilt of it necessary. I started constructing version 1 saber hilt a day prior to the buckles. The base is a carton tube from baking paper container and the covering is craft foam. There are insulation foam structures in both ends of the hilt. With the previous materials the hilt is really light, but looks neat. After covering it with glue I will paint it and add buttons and other required details.

As I stated the saber is just a version 1. If we get accepted to the Legion, we will make sabers with the blade later on. I also wanted to have little simpler props to work on now, because we are going to wear the costumes in two months and we will be busy on our own quarters for at least a month.

Snowtroopers got shot a bit

2011-04-13T23:54:00.000+03:00

We didn’t take photos at Tampere Kuplii for few reasons: our pouches weren’t suitable for carrying my camera and we didn’t see that well under the helmets to actually get the model on the screen of Yoki's digital one. But Sunday morning we left our hotel early to take some photos of our costumes. Here is the outcome:

Back from Tampere Kupl-z-z-z

2011-04-10T22:35:00.000+03:00

Home, sweet home, I say and send hearts to Yoki who needs to travel three hours more. But I bet we both are really happy with how the con went despite the tiredness. I will write more of how everything went from the last minute repairs to well rehearsed competition entry next week. Now I can hardly get this two paragraphs post ready. It has already taken ten minutes…

My Tusken impersonation. I'll also load the few photos we took next week.

I think this will only apply to the Finnish readers, but you can find an open voting on Aamulehti’s webpage for the best costume at Tampere Kuplii! Go and cast a vote!

March progress and March progress

2011-03-31T08:48:00.000+03:00

I had planned to be in good standing with my projects this week, but then my job totally crashed everything. Past few weeks have been pretty unstable. I've had to spend extra hours at work, which had an effect on my costumes. And it seems that the uncertainty is going to continue few more. I pushed our Jedi costumes in the back of the closet and tried to spend free hours I had finishing the backpacks for Snowtroopers. To be honest, they are really killing me. Tampere Kuplii is just weeks away and some parts that I thought would work on them didn't live up to expectations. Now I need to come up with a plan B and at the moment I have no idea what it could be... Nyaaa!

But something I was able to do considering Snowtroopers and their first public appearance. That thing was a flag. We are not going to have rifles or any sort of weaponry what so ever with us. The blasters we left to be nice crafting project for lazy summer days. Instead we are going to roll with Empire emblem on a stick. The base of the flag is just regular cotton and the paint is basic white wall paint. I tried to make the logo look worn out and messy, but didn't quite achieve the look I was going after. I need to wear out the emblem maybe by scraping it with something and washing the color out. Easily portable stick has been found and is waiting for minor alterations. I'm going to paint collapsible fissing rod black and make some security attachments.

Somehow I squeezed sewing in my schedule, so I was able to do something with March also. The jacket is fully appliquéd and the pants are finally done. Last year I already worked with the accessories; the pendant and the “bell” on the tip of the hood. Even if they are almost done, I think I’ll redo the pendant. I don’t know what I was thinking back then, but now that I compare the proportions of the jacket to the pendant, it’s just way too small! Gladly it’s pretty fast to build, so that is least of my worries. Bigger one is the hood, for which I have made nothing more than a trial pattern.

I still need to check that the tips of the silhouettes are sharp.

Super-skinny pants. I haven't had courage to test if I can sit on them or not...

I think that it will be safest to leave the hood construction after Tampere Kuplii, if we anyhow manage to survive it. I was happy to notice that the weather could be quite nice! We might not look like we actually have crawled through a slushy battlefield afterwards.

Edit: Things happen, so I'm back to business with the backpacks! Esa took the parts I was hesitant about and made them work. Now I'm sure there is a chance that the costumes will be ready in time, hopefully even before the eve of Kuplii!

Third moment uploaded

2011-03-26T21:42:00.004+02:00

After a long silence Sasori & Deidara moments number 3 is finally out and viewable on Youtube. I will also announce that there will be less ninjas in the future. We have few ideas for the moments but the Akatsuki interviews have been shelved, for now.

-yoki out

Comic relief!

Upcoming cosplay from March Story

2011-03-18T17:49:00.000+02:00

We got our costume plans for the summer conventions somewhat cleared last weekend. It seems that instead of Luminara and Barriss we are going solo to Bakacon. Yoki has been growing her hair out for Snufkin and I know she is dying to wear the costume again, so it’s Snufkin for Yoki! Now that I actually need to do a single cosplay I thought it would be good time to reveal my project, which I started last autumn as a time killer. I have done a lot for the costume and also have featured the making process here many times without giving series or character information out.

The character I’ve been working on is March from March Story. March Story is written and drawn by Koreans, but in my books it’s manga. The comic was first published in Sunday GX and first volume was released by VIZ last autumn. I’m looking forward April, because the second volume should be out then. I think March Story is one of the few comics I have fallen crazily in love with. Cosplay-wise it’s also the only costume I’m making based on a character which might or might not be recognized by anyone at all. The visual side of the manga is great, but the story is also good! If you are interested in tragic stories spiced with humor, carnivals and bloody and thorny things I think you should check the series out!

Cover of the first volume of March Story.

We laughed with Yoki some time ago, that our cosplays are rather monochromatic and March is no exception. It’s also bit challenging to do a costume based on only few colored covers and panels, which vary rather much. But then again, that’s the fun of it too! I’m now working on the jacket, which is coming together nicely. I’m doing the black shapes by appliquéing them. Only thing I’m feeling bit insecure is patterning the crazy hood. I’m not good with hoods. I tried to avoid them while back at school and now I’m feeling the consequences of not paying attention to them.

I’m going to make a better update from the costume in a week. By then I hope I have solved the problems with the silly hood. The earlier posts featuring this costume includes information about how I striped the pants, constructed the suitcase and did the buckles for colonial shoes.

In the convention post I stated that Snufkin and March have similarities. Don’t they?

Luminara Unduli, the knee buster

2011-03-13T21:35:00.001+02:00

I recently started one of this year’s big projects, which is Luminara’s robe. It’s not a big project only because of its size, but also in the way I’m going to execute it. I thought that I would now, after making some progress clear out why the “Project Luminara” is big and why it got a slightly barbaric nickname.

I’ve wrote about searching right fabrics for our Jedi duo’s robes some time ago. While with Barriss I got really close to what I was looking for, the selections in fabric stores didn’t fill the requirements of what I visualized to be the correct or acceptable material for Luminara. And I went through few of them in the bigger cities in Southern Finland. In the end I chose wool flannel, because it seemed like a good bargain and the brown was subtle enough to act as a background for the upcoming pattern.

First try out with the possible construction modeled on a mannequin.

The original robe material for the movies seems like it was woven. I never thought weaving it as an option, if anyone wonders. I’m not that good with looms or that crazy. Printing was the first option from the start. My dear home town doesn’t have good craft store, so it was time to travel, again.

I went to visit Yoki on my free days, found a shop I was looking for and fell in love a little. It had like… everything! And the staff was really helpful. It’s been years from my last bigger scale printing experience, so I happily took notes from professionals. I ended up dragging along three kilos of printing emulsion next to smaller containers of black pigment and pearl cover paste in plain and blue for Barriss’ cape. No casualties on this stage yet, if sore neck is not included.

No casualties occurred when I started to cut the templates for the print either. I was not going to use a screen or a stencil; instead I cut wormy and bulky pieces out from clear plastic film (Thank you for clearing the word out, Batsy!). These pieces I placed randomly on the fabric to create the pattern. Compared to screen printing, I chose this slightly slower method, because I can skip the screen washing and as long as I’m able to keep the printing space prepared, I can work when ever I feel like it. When the tools you are working with is the fabric print and a piece of foam it’s really quick to pull them out, work a while and then be going. For example, one morning I arranged the plastic pieces on the fabric while I waited my eye liner to dry. Small progress is progress still.

The printing is the brutal knee buster! I work on the floor, because my sewing table is not nearly big enough for five meters of fabric. If I want to stand up, I’ll need to stretch for few minutes before my left knee feels like cooperating. Either the working posture is horrible or I’m just getting old.

I calculated that with this speed and overlapping projects I’m ready in two weeks with the printing. Then I’m going to dye the whole fabric to make it darker and possibly if I feel like it, create more texture to the robe with needle felting. Big project is big. And I’m wearing a support bandage on my knee.