Cosplay!!!

I though it was time to do a little snipit about cosplay, one of the best, if not the best part of conventions. I am currently doing two unknowns and one resonably common cosplay. Now before I go off telling you what to do, know this. I have only been to 1 day of a convention and that was in my home town Sea-town (Seattle). That was Sakuracon....9th year? I was going to go for there 10th aniversery but..the parents schedualed a trip over it...they didn't really now how serious it was yet. But I will be going this year for sure! Now my three costumes (one for each day of the three day con) are Miss Goldenweek (Aprilfools day in America) from OnePiece, Arale Norimaki from Akira Toriamas Slump, and the more known is Yuna (wedding gown) from Final Fantasy X .

Before and after shots

Miss Goldenweek came first and she was definatly the most painfull. Her construction was easy in terms of sewing difficulty but there was a LOT (and I mean a lot) of dyeing and painting. She only apears in a couple episodes in the series so reference pictures were hard to find. The worst part of the cosplay by far was the shoes and the stockings. The first picture to the left you can see my three attempts to get decent stockings for the costume. I spent sooo much time and money on stockings and paint. My first method was (the one to the right) where I just painted the stockings...but didn't use fabric paint *sigh*. The second method (left) was to tape the stockings and then paint them using a spray can of fabric paint, but the stockings are polyester and didn't want to dye/die. I FINALLY was walking through Display and Costume (local Halloween/Christmas/cosplay store) when I found these socks. AT LAST!!

The shoes were an issue too as I wanted to where my old converse (middle) but they were too small so I had to wear these hideous used-to-be-white shoes (right). I finally got these nice converse for Christmas! (Left)

My Yuna costume is going to be great as I have the worlds best Grandma doing all the sewing for me! I had to go get a decent pattern and pic out some (expensive) Satin (on sale) for the Bridal Gown. Yuna's going to turn out to be the most expensive costume due to the fact that she also has feathers everywhere, a bouquet (2 of them), a tiara, gloves, white shoes (4 bucks at Goodwill! haha), and earings.

Thanks to driftingheart.net for use of these reference pictures

As for Arale well...she is one of those characters that changes clothes a lot. Once you get the general sense of her style you just put something together. Essentials? Her hat, purple wig, and glasses!