Leia costume from back in November (I think?) and Pixie from February-!  Still trying to catch up on photo stuff and work on projects for Dragon*Con.  I haven’t been back there since 2000 and am extremely excited for it!

Meanwhile, I had a fabulous time at a shoot with lots of friends down in New York City over the weekend and returned home to find a DD over on DeviantArt – thank you so much!  :O

I had a fantastic time at Free Comic Book Day a few weeks ago with Kelly (Dr. Natu) and Larissa (Enchantress)!

Seriously, it’s cool stuff. 

I exist!  I got engaged last month to that saucy Kelly girl (I like her a lot.  :B  ) – and we’ve both actually been working on costumes.  Unfortunately, a lot of costumes.  I’m making an effort not to post any progress pictures until I finish something in the hopes that it will keep me motivated and I won’t just end up with a bajillion more half-made costumes.  I don’t know, costume motivation seems hard to come by these days.  Sad.

Plans for Anime Boston are kind of meh.  Might stop by for a day, but not the whole weekend.

Let’s finish something this week.  Seriously.  SOMETHING.  Boxes of half completed costumes is not sane, I’ve got to cut out these shenanigans.

This is just a sort of simple tutorial for how I make my moony tiaras (and any other shiny things on costumes when I am feeling lazy).

Also, since this is a lot of text here is the short version:

Cut out craft foam and stick metallic spandex to it with spray adhesive or rubber cement.  Then attach other do-dads and stick the whole mess to your face.  Ta-da!

If that’s not what you wanted, here’s the long winded version:

Materials:

• Craft Foam (1 sheet of the thin (3mm) stuff)
• Card stock or light plastic
• Scissors
• Rubber Cement/Contact Cement or Spray Adhesive
• Gold Metallic Spandex (about 1 sq ft)
• Glue (E-6000!)
• Gem Thingy (Star or Oval Cabochon depending on what version you’re doing)
• Bobby pins to attach this thing to your face (optional)

Instructions:

1.  Draft up a pattern of the shape you’re making… There’s one for an eternal tiara here (meant to be printed out on a sheet of 8.5″ x 11″ paper – the both pieces together one is just for reference to see how it looks held up against your noggin.)

2.  Cut out the top and bottom pieces (just going to be assuming you’re using that tiara pattern, if not- I’m sure you’re bright enough to get the gist of how this could be applied to other shapes.

3.  Lay the bottom pattern piece that you’ve cut out on top of some craft foam (color doesn’t matter, it’s going to get covered up) and carefully trace it.  I’m a fan of using a ballpoint pen for this, but maybe that’s just me.  Also, make sure that the pattern doesn’t slide around when you’re doing this, it has to be pretty exact.

4.  Cut the traced piece of craft foam out.  I like to use big scissors so that I can cut the pieces out in as few cuts as possible.  It’s more likely that you’ll get little nicks/bumps in your otherwise straight line if you use little scissors.  Try to cut inside the line you made with the pen so that the craft foam piece ends up being exactly the same size as the pattern piece.  If you cut outside the line, your fraft foam piece will turn out slightly larger and throw things off.  I’m sorry if that seems horribly obvious, I figure I may as well say it since it could help someone.

5.  Trace your ‘top’ pattern piece onto a piece of cardstock.  Nothing too heavy!  It should be just heavier than regular printer paper (Er, I’m not using cardstock in this demo, but rather a really lightweight plastic since that’s what I had lying around.  It doesn’t really make a difference).

6.  Woo, now cut that top piece out.

7.  Make sure to hold your craft foam piece and cardstock piece up against each other and make sure they line up.  That’s… pretty important.  It’s going to look screwy if they don’t line up.  If using spray adhesive:  Spray the sides you want to stick together and… well… stick them together.  If using rubber cement/contact cement: Brush on a thin layer of the cement to both the cardstock and craft foam pieces.  Let them dry, then line them up and press them together.  Goopy rubber cement doesn’t hold as well as dry cement!

8.  AWESOME.  Now you have a goofy looking v shape.  Aren’t you so pleased with yourself?  No?  Fine.  Let’s make this thing shiny.  Lay your goofy v piece of stuck together cardstock and craft foam against a bit of gold metallic spandex and (just sorta eyeball it) cut out a rough piece of the spandex with about 1cm of extra space on all sides (yes, I’m using metric and English measurements.  I am all over the place… sorry).

9.  Iron that piece of metallic spandex.  Please.  Look at how wrinkled that piece I was using is- ick, no- bad.  (Remember to iron on the non metallic side)

10.  Spray adhesive or rubber cement the top of your v piece (the side with the cardstock showing) and the wrong side (not the shiny side) of your metallic spandex.  If using rubber cement, make sure you don’t get any little balls of cement.  It’s really important that the rubber cement is completely smooth- any little bumps are going to be pretty noticable.

11.  Lay the v shape face down on the metallic spandex so that the sticky sides are now together.  Carefully smooth that front surface down/apply some pressure to make sure that the entire front of the v is stuck to the metallic spandex (these descriptions are AWFUL, I’m sorry).

12.  Spray adhesive/cement the back of the v AND the sides of the craft foam (yes, even though it’s only 3mm wide).

13.  Stick that all together (wow, descriptive) but don’t pull the spandex too much if you can help it.  Trim the excess fabric as needed so that it doesn’t all pile up on the back of the tiara.  At the base of the v you may need to make a cut and do some clever folding.  Hopefully the pictures help because I’m really sort of giving up on adjectives.

14.  SUPER COOL.  Now you have the base of the tiara.  It doesn’t matter too much what the ends of it look like since they’ll  be tucked up under your wig/wig cap, but I like to trim them so they’re even and there aren’t little bits of things hanging all over the place.  Now, using your fingernail or the eye of a needle… or… whatever… pinch in a line down the tiara to define that tiny ridge between the craft foam and card stock.
Since I am not so great with these descriptions, hopefully the pictures will let you know what ‘pinching in a line’ means because seriously, I just am not sure how else to explain it.

15.  You’re (mostly) done!  Now you can just glue on the shiny star/oval/thing of your choice to the middle of the tiara and stick the whole shebang on your forehead.  I sometimes use bobby pins to attach the tiara to my head under the wig cap- or sometimes I just don’t pin it at all and simply slide the ends of the tiara up under my wig after I’ve put the wig on.

One last note… this isn’t how I made the Myu tiaras.  Only the anime/manga ones.

Happy Holidays!  As with all of my updates lately – I haven’t really done much cosplay-wise.  Though Kelly made a outfit based on the Tonner Dolls (Ghost of Christmas Future) and let me do her makeup and take some pictures which was extremely fun.  I still have an unhealthy number of unfinished costumes which continue to stare mournfully at me every time I enter the workroom.  I feel like I’ve learned a lot more about photo stuff in the past year that I haven’t really had a chance to incorporate in my own cosplay photos which… is a bit annoying.  That, combined with my newly cleaned work area and swanky new toys (camera accessories) may finally drive me to finish some of this crap and get some new photos.  …or maybe I’ll just have more tea and watch movies with Kelly.  We’ll see.

While I don’t usually post about bits in zines, etc. I’m making an exception here.  Mechademia is a very cool publication put out by the University of Minnesota Press, and they did a piece about cosplay photography which they were kind enough to include me in!  Thank you so much Eron, Christopher, and Jenny (though none of you are likely to ever see this post!).  I’m really honored to have my work included and reviewed so highly!  @_@  Mechademia 5: Fanthropologies is available here.

Potter Party Potter Party Potter Party – Yay!

We hung a bunch of fake candles from the ceiling to imitate the great hall at Hogwarts, made Butterbeer and Firewhiskey labels to cover our beer with (Magic Hat, appropriately), had faaaar too much wizard themed food, and were extremely nerdy with HP related games and trivia.  Also, dry ice makes everything and anything loads more fun!

Thanks for coming, guys!  :B

I have still done no costuming lately (Halloween really doesn’t count).  However, since I am super excited about the new HP movie this month (and a certain HP themed release party) I’m just going to post some random HP crap.  Sounds good?  No?  That’s fine, deal with it.

I’m selling Sailor V – !  I have no intention of wearing her again and rather than take up space in my closet I’d like to see her go to someone who wants to wear her.

eBay listing is > here <