Tag: props

Leaps and bounds

#design, Comic books, Convention, Cosplay, Crafting, Education, Learning, Sewing

The cosplay is coming along swimmingly, at least as far as props and accessories go. I have the grey boots I bought painted with a layer of black (I’ll probably add at least one more layer), then I got the headband for the Magik cosplay made.

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I did it myself, with a little instruction from a friend. The sword is also well underway, with just a little more to go. It’s going to take some geometry and stuff…you know, the stuff you learned in school that you thought you’d never need? Yeah, all that. Maybe if they taught kids these days that it can be used for cosplay, they’d be more interested in math. Forget Common Core–teach Cosplay Core.

My husband’s Shatterstar sword prop is done (finished that last week)… 13654169_1089736687785176_64311181774611607_n

…so now I can finish the sleeves on his costume. After I make my pleather shrug, that is. And the Spandex stuff. Have to do those pieces first, because that’s not stuff I can do by hand as we travel to Dragon Con.

Well, back to it. Can’t take too long of a break or I’ll break my momentum.

Crunchy crunchy

Corsetry, Cosplay, Time

Yep, Con Crunch is still on. Less than a month left to go before we leave for Dragon Con. On the plus side? I’m almost done sewing the boning channels for the corset. The negative? I have a shrug, a pair of Spandex pants, & a bodysuit to sew still. And I’ve never sewn with Spandex. Oh yeah, and when my boots come in the mail (I ordered the wrong size at first), I have to paint them black because they were out of my size in the black. So there’s that. Oh! And next Saturday is another propmaking session at our friends’ house (I feel like there aren’t enough thanks in the UNIVERSE to properly express our gratitude for their help and teaching).

I think I can do it, though, if I just buckle down. I’m trying to force myself to get to work and do more than I have been. It’s tedious sewing the channels because I have to pin thin paper to the fabric to allow the pleather to feed through the machine properly, which makes it hard to get even lines (and I end up with wider channels than I intended, meaning I’ll need thicker boning than the pattern calls for).

I think it’ll be easier for the pleather shrug, though, because I’ll be sewing the inside seams of the pleather and I don’t think there will be any outside seams to sew. That should eliminate the need for the paper pinning (I hope).

Enough of the whining for now. Off to the day job for a busy day, then back home for more sewing 🙂

Marching on

Comic books, Cosplay, Crafting, Geek, Novel, Sewing, Television

Now that I’ve given myself a break from cosplay sewing for a couple of weeks, I’m finally back in a sewing state of mind. I started on my husband’s pants for his Shatterstar cosplay the other day and am slowly making progress. (When I start sewing early in the morning, sometimes I don’t have the energy to sew for too long at a time…so I get done what I can, then remember that I haven’t had my Adderall and go back into the bedroom to mess around on the computer & take my meds.)

Once I get back into the swing of things, I know my pace will pick up. It will help that it’s the in-between season where most of the fall/spring shows are off air & most of the summer ones haven’t started up yet. Not that I’m a TV addict per se, but it’s nice to have time in the evenings to spend with my husband. A little bonding, something we can’t really do when I’m sewing because I get so focused that he ends up sitting on the floor playing games on his tablet.

With these newest cosplays, we’re going to try making some foam armor and props. It should be interesting, because neither of us has worked with the EVA foam before. Don’t know what EVA foam is? It’s basically those foam floor mats that look like puzzle pieces. Pretty cheap, but you can do a lot with them. We saw several panels on the subject while at Phoenix Comicon and my husband has been watching tutorials online to learn how to work with it. It seems simple enough, but I’m sure we’ll have a large learning curve to start with.

Now that the book “experiment” is over, I don’t feel as obsessed with checking my numbers every hour or so. It’s both a relief and a disappointment. A relief that it’s over, disappointment because I kinda liked seeing so many copies of my book being picked up, even if it was for free. Oh, well.