Black Lagoon

Update from this year's kon. After a week of stress, the cosplay from Black Lagoon turned out really well. The idea grew from one friend's costume to being a group of 5.  A few things didn't work out in the last week but, I think, overall they looked really good.

Here are some pictures from the anime:

The two costumes that needed the most work was Revy (with the purple hair and tattoo) and Shenhua (with the Chinese dress).  Luckily for the Revy costume, we found most of what we needed at a Goodwill after weeks of searching.  The wig was bought online and styled by my roommate and the tattoo was drawn on by me using random designs that look nothing like the original but got the idea across.

For Shenhua, I was really worried about making the jacket.  I'm not so good at making sleeves and collars so when we found something similar at Ross's, I jumped at the chance to take a short cut.  We bought the jacket, took off the front lapels and tags in the back and sewed on the gold/yellow bias strips all along the edges.  For the earrings, we found some pearl look alike earrings for cheap, painted them gold using nail polish since the gold paint didn't work (which was a brilliant idea courtesy of my friend) used red tassels that we found at a fabric store and rolled them into the finished product tassels that turned out to be very light.  The shoes were also a trial but I ended up using fabric glue and a yellow string.  I had to sew the bows on so that her foot could fit, but it looks really good in pictures which I found amazing since it didn't look so hot up close.

For Mr. Chang and his minion (Chang has the scarf) we were lucky that they had those outfits.  My brother had a trench coat which was weird and awesome and we bought three yards of the off white material which I didn't have to end up cutting because my friend is that tall.

Our Rock (blue tie) didn't have hair because although we did get a wig, it wasn't a very good wig and it looked like a hair band gone wrong.  He wasn't in a lot of pictures, unfortunately, because he went to go play in a 40K (which is some kind of table top game that is really complicated) tournament.  He did win though so... CONGRATULATIONS!

And here's the final product.

We're already planning the costumes for next year, or at least bouncing around ideas.  This is always how it happens though.  The stress from this year makes me vow to never let it happen again, but it comes down to that last week and the sewing machines are at full throttle.

Sir Octo and his minions

Haven't been crocheting much because of kon stuff but I've been working on a set of evil birdies that are my original characters. It started out when my friends and I were playing that game where one person scribbles a line and someone else has to draw a picture from it. It turned into this unknown blob that we all had different ideas for. My idea was that it was an evil birdie with a skull on its head and it turned into these. I have three more to do.

The octopus was from when I was learning to make amigurumi and I only just finished his face.

Up at two doing kon stuff. Wish me luck!

Kon Killer Week

Next week will be the Anime Convention in my area. Around this time is the time that all the real work for costumes goes down. Every year for the past couple of years I've been making costumes for my friends but all the work gets put off until the very last minute and this year is no exception. Since I have nothing to show yet for this year, I thought I'd put up some stuff from last year.

Last year was a pretty good year for cosplaying because we had a pretty good group and a good idea for the cosplay. A bunch of my friends agreed to go as a group from Avatar the Last Airbender and since I was making the costumes from scratch, I decided to dictate that they'd go as the Fire Nation set of the costumes so I could reuse a bunch of the colors.

By the end, my mom, my room mate and I ended up making five costumes in the last month. We were lucky that we had two sewing machines and often times were making full use of them both. It was pretty crazy with super late nights in the last week.

The pants were all made kind of like pajama pants with elastic waist bands and some had elastic on the bottoms to hold them up. The tops were pretty generic tops too with only some of them being slightly more complicated with the gold edging. I used binding tape for the gold and the maroon parts. I think the most difficult top was the Prince Zuko one because I had to add the gold in the middle of the maroon (second from the left). The armor was a heavier fabric with interfacing to make it stiffer. It came out a little bulky but had the overall look that we were going for.

The characters are from left to right: Azula, Zuko, Sokka, Katara, and Ty Lee

Set up for picture:

Poses:

It came out looking pretty good overall, I think, but by the time we went to the convention, all I wanted to do was to sleep.