Thank you Cachalot and Dancingmad, you lovely ladies of Mass for letting me get on board!

Here’s what I’m currently working on:

Female!Franken Stein – Soul Eater (homage to Lust chapter -Book of Eibon)* for Anime Boston 2011

Female!Sanji – One Piece (homage to Tranny!Sanji) for Otakon 2010

Planning:

Polignac – Rose of Versailles* for ?? 2011

Steampunk OC* for ?? 2012??

18th century caraco (jacket) for Memorial Day Parade 2011

* = in conjunction with Ikasuze

I’ll post something more pithy soon as I’m keen on sorting my thoughts and plans out~ Time is not my friend this year so I need to be really mindful of it!

The gods of cosplay are fickle creatures! I managed to scrape together a trenchcoat for Tasuki in about 2 weeks, the thing was all basted together for Halloween, but boy am I unhappy with how it is holding together thus far.  Some things are just IMPOSSIBLE without a second pair of hands and/or a dress form, and adjusting custom-made pauldrons on a from-scratch trenchcoat is DEFINITELY one of them.  I think Cachalot and I are due to have a dress-form-making party. (DESHOU???)

I have neglected to post here lately and I apologize XD Halloween ate up so much of my time — as any good cosplayer knows, it’s basically a great time to test-run stuff for upcoming cons — and now that the flurry of pre-Halloween activity is down, I have time to do other important stuff, like, oh, I dunno, finish the ikasuze! website that I’ve neglected?  It’s going to be awesome once it’s done, we’ll have tons of photos and notes about costumes as well as some tips and how-tos.  But I just need to finish coding the damn thing!  Sorry Cachalot xD

Tasuki’s trenchcoat is an ongoing effort that will take a lot of effort to fine-tune.  But new projects always keep me going and I’m very excited about my 2010 costumes: Temari from Naruto (her ” semi-kimono” or 2nd look) and LeBlanc from Final Fantasy X-2!  I’ve been hitting the gym a lot just to get in better shape for these outfits, especially LeBlanc.

AI YI YI. I’d better keep going with those crunches!!

My next big cosplay, for Otakon 2010, will be Shiva from Final Fantasy X – yes, the ice-blue girl with the giant hair. Shiva as a cosplay appeals to me not only because of the amazing character design, but because I have and always will be a prop girl and not a seamstress. Weapons and armor and accessories and even wigs are more my thing than sewing is, although I have taught myself to sew somewhat decently. Such an amazing cosplay that requires so little sewing and so much prop making is ideal for me – and really, I can’t really think of ANYTHING for Shiva that requires sewing except for a few stitches of modifying a standard blue bikini bottom. (I COULD sew the bottom from scratch, but I could get a ready-made one for much cheaper, and for a 1% of the costume that I’m going to heavily modify anyway, I don’t think it’s worth it to sew it myself.)

So today over lunch I bought my Shiva wig – or, at least, I bought the materials to make the wig for Shiva.

Most of them.

It’s 1 long blue wig + 13 packs of extensions in 5 colors so far. I still need the foamcore batting for the inside of the braids, as well as blue yarn, which I have been told works well for bulk. I think I have enough extensions to cover all the braids, and if not, well, I’ll have to improvise! I ended up getting 5 different colors of blue/purple because the highlights in Shiva’s wig are various shades of purple and light blue, and I think that looks much more realistic than just straight cobalt blue.

The hair ties and hair rings I will get when I have finished assembling the wig, since I have no idea what I need right now, and how much.

I already have plenty of hot glue and upholstery thread. XDDD

$100 and counting!

I worked on my sniper rifle all weekend and am currently really tired of looking at it. I think I need a break, just a short one. I’ll probably not do anything on it this week until Friday or so. It’s supposed to rain Thursday through Saturday so maybe that will drive me down to the basement for some more work. I’m almost done, too.

My new favorite props medium: PAPERCLAY:
paperclay.com

I like to use Aves Apoxie Paste (basically a kind of stiff liquid epoxy) as a coating over my large props. It comes in two parts like all epoxies, and goes on kind of goopy and viscous. After it dries, it’s a greyish color and feels like plastic. It’s very sandable and durable, and put over a base sculpture, won’t ever come off. The problem is that sometimes this stuff doesn’t work in places that aren’t flat and need to be set on their sides (like a curved sword guard or a bottle) because it runs as it dries so you’ll get drips.

Paperclay solves that.

It’s a paper-fiber based air-drying “clay” that can be shaped and sanded after drying. It sands VERY smooth. I used it over a plastic bottle as a test and it came out very smooth and durable. It also sticks really well. I’ve heard that it cracks if you put too much on, so I haven’t tried to make anything large out of it, just used it as a cover medium. The texture is a little bit wood like, so I think I’ll have to paint a coat of varnish over it to get it to look smooth.

The grey bottle-like thing on the left side of the plastic tubing is covered with Paperclay.

I’ve been working on a sword commission for someone for the past 2 weeks or so and am almost finished. I suppose I should be posting in-progress posts and stuff on here as well for this kind of thing. As it is, the sword has been primed and will be ready for painting this weekend after I do a little more touch up and sanding.

I’m also working on a pretty fun project, Yoko Littner’s rifle from Gurren Lagann, which I TOTALLY should watch because this show seems right up my mecha alley. Except right now I’m busy catching up on Naruto Shippuden and rewatching Gundam Wing, because I think Shane needs to see GW.

Anyway, here’s Yoko with her giant sniper rifle of doom.