Progress thingy notice

Hi!
I just remembered that I haven't updated here thou I've been doing some coplay- related things..
But if You want the keep up with my work, head to my tumblr account!

Murmuring Day

;3

Sneaky sneaky..

Just a sneak peek from the gauntlets of my Knight Commander Meredith cosplay ;D

This item can't be shipped to your selected destination.

*Rant Warning!*

Le fuuuq!
Yet again that feeling,  "This item can't be shipped to your selected destination."


Ugh -___-'
So I've been hunting some Interlocking EVA foam floor mats (like the ones used in the gyms and so on) but so far no luck :/

I've emailed several promising places, but it has been mostly:
"We don't ship to Finland at this time"
Or the postal fees has been astronomical compared to the price of the product D: (Like 10 dollar piece of foam mat, shipping 250 dollars.)
Or it has been a bit too expensive for student budget :'D


Other option would be some kind of other Closed Cell Foam.. But I've only found shops that sells it about 50 meters at once :'D
But the search will continue!



And pestering the customer service wit "Will you ship to Finland?" questions!

Meredith hip armour

Hi!
Randomly I started to make Meredith cosplay :'D
Knight Commander Meredith is  from Dragon Age 2.

And I've been doing some experimenting, but here's the good progres I've done so far:

The first steps were to study her armour. So I downloaded a mod for my Hawke and took a ton of screencaps xD
And then I made patterns based on this study and traced them on some craft foam and camping mattress.

And then some cutting and glueing.. With superglue and hot glue.

Our cat Samus wanted to join his efforts too :'D

After gluing I used heat gun/ paint stripper gun to shape this a little for it was convex a bit wrong way. No pics, sorry :/

Next step was to ad a couple of layers of glue on top of the craft foam and camping mattress. For making it harder and for have a sort of priming for the paint.

I also glued some paper behind the hip armour so it would be a bit more sturdy. It doesn't show in these pictures but it is there.

And the next step was to paint it. For this I chose acrylics for they dty fast and look good.

As a base coat I used black paint with a hint of gesso.

And then I tried to mimic the reference images the best I could.

And here are compared the steps I made:

From left to right:

The final armour

Just the craft foam and camping mattress and the paper patterns I made:

Over all in one piece it took about two hours (because I'm such a lazy ass to do these) and because the glue took some time to dry completely.

But I'm really satisfied with the results :3

These are my first armour parts I've ever made!

These are so elastic so I don't think these will break easily. And the glueing part made it a lot hardr than I've ever thought! Totally worth for trying :)

Mask of a Slicer

From BioShock 1 (and maybe 2, haven't played it yet so I cannot say if there is this kind of masks in the game :'3).

Just a quick cosplay thing I made :3
I was going to cosplay a Splicer at Kitacon V (in Kemi) but I noticen I forgot the skirt I was going to use back at my parents place last time I visited them :/
But I wore the msk anyways :'D
I added some black makeup under it but I ended up wearing the mask as a sort of a hat (because it caused air flow to my eyes and it didn't feel nice because I wore contact lenses :/ Also it started to feel sweaty :'D).

I used this as a tutorial : Worbla's Finest Art mask tutorial

How to make a Custom-made Superhero Mask

And here's the result:

Made from Worbla's Finest Art sheet, some silk ribbon, white acrylic paint and golden spray paint (I sprayed it into a empty jar so I could get it into liquid form so it would be easier to paint).

P.S. BioShock is awesome <3

You should play it ;3

Shoes for Koakuma

I found the right shoes for Koakuma ;3
They are Dinsko's nice heeled shoes with laces. They're made of synthetic leather and the heel is about 8 cm (about 3 inches) high. They're super comfortable to wear <3

I'll add a picture later :'3

Dyeing Real Fur, Test 1 fabric colour in the microwave

So I was checking my Koakuma wings for dressing up as her for the Next Animecon 2012 (in Kuopio). But I noticed that the tape I've used in the wings shows quite ugly when I wear it so I decided to enhance them a bit with adding some dark fur.

I've got two real mink furs from my both grandma's  but I left the not so good fur to my flat in Rovaniemi. But as a savior I had third fur coat which wasn't mink. I didn't want to demolish the other mink coat because it was in much better condition than my other mink coat. So the only option was to dye the other unknown fur. It might be fox fur, but when petting it it felt quite "loose" and not as good as mink so it was chosen to be used as materials.

The first step was to rinse the piece with lukewarm water and vinegar and salt for about 15 minutes. For about a liter of water two teaspoons of each.

Second step was to squeeze the extra salt-vinegar-water from the fur, gently.

Third step was to lay the piece on top of cling film (no other, this is the best) and smudge the fabric colour to the fur thoroughly. After that you wrap the cling film around it quite tightly and place the package into a microwave secure container with a lid only placed on top of it so the fumes can come out. 

How much dye? I didn't have any black so I mixed it from four others. Couple of milliliters each. These are quite strong colours.

Fourth step (like in the title says) was to put the package into microwave. Four minutes with full blast, then flip it and another four minutes does the trick.

Fifth and final step was to rinse the fur with water. I did this several minutes until the colour stopped leaking from the fur.

And let it dry.

And the results (it's a bit darker in the real life).

Don't be afraid if it bubles and pops in the microwave, it did it with me too. And the smell that comes from it is similar to the baking of polymer clay in an oven. Quite plastic like scent.

Pro's and cons

+ easy to do

+ quick

+ doesn't require special equipment

+ the microwave secures that the colour will stay in the fur and you don't have to iron it or anything

- the fur shrank about 2/3 so it was tiny after I dyed it but the fur was more firm now

- the smell isn't pleasant, but not strong

- the fur also comes quite stiff because it shrank

This method was adapted from dyeing yarn.

Later on I noticed I forgot to bring my skirt from Rovaniemi with me home. So no cosplaying this time but this was a good experiment anyways :'3

Someday I'll try to boil the fur. The heat is needed to attach the colour into it.

And I hope the fur will not shrink so much :'D

If I left something unclear, please just comment on here ;3

I'll try to clarify it as much as I can.

Cheers!