♥♥Tracon 9 ♥♥

♥Saturday♥

I was happy to be able to cosplay Guchuko on saturday. The costume had been just laying on my room ready to be used for months, but because of the wig incident I had to wait till this very day.. The wig was the biggest problem of the whole outfit. It had caused problems even before the convention and it didn't end there. At some point at the convention I realized my hands and guchukos white fur collar were purple. purple, because of the wig. the horrible thin wig had now dyed the white parts of the outfit.(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ

Guchuko in her natural habitat

Excluding the wig, Guchukos outfit is very comfortable to wear. I love her cape, eventhough I had to constantly watch the bows and I love the scythe eventhough it was a nuisance to carry everywhere with me. In the end all of the suffering was worth it and infact I didn't even feel like I was suffering at all. I just enjoyed potraying as one of my favorite character ♥～(‘▽^人)

Other than worrying about the wig I went to watch cosplay competitions. I really enjoyed this years show. Usually the mood of the performances have been a little too serious and the joy has been missing. But this year the missing joy was there and I found myself smiling after the performances. It made me want to participate even more in some kind of cosplay competition. I was also surprised by the number of cosplayers on saturday, It has been a while since I have seen so many colorful costumes and so many gorgeous props and details.(=^-ω-^=)

probably my favorite pic of this cosplay

Also later in the evening we had a little photoshoot of Guchuko. There are couple pictures I really liked :3

♥Sunday♥

Luka finding her way to her kingdom

I decided to wear sandplay Luka on sunday since it had been a while since I last wore it. The main reason It had been unused was that the hoop skirt wasn't firm enough and I haven't had time to fix it. I didn't took much photos of this outfit because I think I already have enough decent photos, but I did take couple dreamy shots by the lake.(•̀ᴗ•́)و ̑̑


Next time I'll make A HUUGE post about Pantheon wip, so stay toon~

Oh, ebay...

Let's talk about ordering wigs from ebay. To this day all of my wigs, I have ordered from ebay, have come in time and in perfect condition. The color has been just like in the pictures and I haven't had anything bad to say. But then Guchuko happened. 

I ordered two wigs from different sellers and I was supposed to put those two wigs together and make the perfect wig for guchuko like that. But I guess ebay had something else in mind. The first wig I ordered came in time... but the color was way off. I thought I could return it and get the right colored wig to replace it and the seller agreed to this. But I never sent the wig since it would have cost me more money to send the wig back than the value of the wig... And what happened to the second wig? well, the second wig never came. I waited for it to arrive over the estimated delivery time and then I contacted the seller. She/He replied that the wig was send to a wrong country by accident and gave me full refund... 

Needless to say I didn't expect both wigs not to arrive and so I had to leave guchukos costume and scythe at home while I went to animecon...

Since ebay had let me down I gave up on the idea of splitwig and decided I would order only one wig and dye it. So I did. Luckily the wig arrived really fast and the color of the wig was right. though the quality of the wig is not the best... there could be more fiber in it.. 

But let's move to the important part: DYEING THE WIG!

what you'll need:
-70% rubbing alcohol (or you can mix Sinol and water like I did.)
-acrylic ink 
-spray bottle
-wig stand ( or something else to hold the wig in place)
-comb
-protective gloves
-clips or pins to hold the upper layers of the wig up
-and the wig of course

step 1. You may skip this if you are using 70% rubbing alcohol. Measure the ingredients Sinol and water in the spray bottle. so that there is 70% Sinol and 30% of water. I used 1,75 dl of Sinol and 0,75 dl of water.

the ink I used

Step 2. Add the acrylic ink. I have no perfect measure of this, But add as much as you think is needed. The color will lighten when I'ts dry so try to make the color a little darker than you need. You can also mix many different colors of acrylic inks in order to achieve the desired color. 

all mixed up (only seethrough spray bottle I could find)

I'd prefer the spray bottle to be seethrough but if it's not I'd recommend to mix the color and alcohol in seethough container first and then move it to the spray bottle.

My beautiful wig stand, juicebottle filled with water and newspaper XD

Step 3. Prepare the wig. Put it in the wig stand and comb it. You can do this also before mixing any ingredients together.

Step 4. start spraying. The easiest way is to clip upper layers and start spraying first to the lower layers and then add some more layers and spray them and so on. Since Guchuko's hair is dip dyed I tried to achieve it by adding more color to the bottom and less on the middle of the wig where the "line" is. Then I used comb to make the shift softer.

Dyeing is very messy so I recommend using protective gloves. They kept my hand clean :3

As you can see the color is already much lighter

Step 5. Let it dry

Step 6. Rinse it in COLD water. then let it dry again. When it's dry comb it once again.

DONE!

Guchuko approves (•ヮ•)

Animecon XI 2014

Saturday:

I was cosplaying Luka megurine in her anti the infinite holic-costume. I'm very pleased with the costume and it was easy and comfortable to wear. And the wig is so so so pretty. Though there was a little bit too hot at the times but that was because of the hot weather. I was originally planning to wear Guchuko on saturday instead of Luka, but the wig for guchuko never came, in fact it was send to the wrong country and I had to order a new one. But I'll talk about that later.

My boyfriend was supposed to wear pantheons glaive warrior costume (from League of legends) But it broke when we tried to put it on in the morning.... and we decided to enjoy the day without pantheon and fix it in the evening so he could put it on on sunday. So we spent the day watching cosplay competition and cosplay date and just hanging around instead of worrying when the pantheon will break down again. 


Sunday:

for some reason it's sideways O___o oh well
(and my face is derp XD)

I was wearing my cutie lolita dress from baby the stars shine bright which I bought from my trip to Japan. The print is my sweet mate kumya's trick or treat by the way. Too early for halloween, i know.. but it's way too cute not to wear it :3 When I put it on I thought that no one would want to take a photo of me since it's a lolita not a cosplay. But surprisingly many came to ask for a photo :O Or maybe it was just because i was hanging with pantheon that we somehow managed to fix during night? 

overall, I enjoyed the con, but it was neither the best nor the worst con I have been to. Next con I will be attending is Tracon and hopefully I can wear guchuko there :3

Guchuko, Guchuko, wip 3

Not much has happened since the last time I posted. I still haven't started making the costume and everything have been pretty much just waiting for me to lay my hands on them... for a month... But I have a good reason for that because I was in Japan so I couldn't do anything! 

It's readyy :3

Scythes size compared to me 

But anyways I have done some little things: I added some paint to the scythe and now I can happily announce that it's completely 100% ready! I also painted the mouths for the horns and added pins for eyes and they are almost ready now. The costume itself shouldn't be hard to make, so when I get to it is probably going to be done in couple days.

They are so cute (´ε｀ )♡

I was planning to make the wig from two separate wigs and sew them together, so I ordered two wigs. the first wig came... BUT the color is wrong ｡･ﾟﾟ･(>д<)･ﾟﾟ･｡It is pink instead of violet ;___;  It would cost too much to send it back to the seller and get a new right colored wig.. so  I must dye it...  I'm still anxiously waiting for the second wig to come, hopefully it comes in time. fingers crossed ~

what I got and what I ordered ;___;

That's how far I have got, next time I probably make an update of guchukos outfit. But before that I need to go to the fabric store~~ 

GUCHUKO wip 2

Just a quick update on Guchukos scythe and horns. The scythe is almost finished and the horns only need faces to be paint on them. I'm so excited about the scythe! It turned out better than I expected! I especially like the skull :3 It's so shiny and cute ^__^

Say yes to the fluffiness ♥

without and with petticoat! - the difference is huge ^____^

I made a petticoat for my Luka cosplay and it makes the dress look million times better! The petticoat was very easy to make, I followed a tutorial I found from youtube (though I added one more layer for extra fluffiness) I like the result a lot but i'm not quite sure if the petticoat is the right shape for this dress since it is more A-line in the pictures. But anyways here's pictures of the finished petticoat.

GO GO Guchuko! ★★★

A duck that accidentally happened while dealing with expanding foam XD

I finally started my guchuko cosplay (ﾉ´ヮ´)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ I decided to start the costume with the hardest parts for me: Scythe and laser firing ear thingies. So far my costumes have been mostly sewing and I have zero experience in making props (okay, I did make some parts of the asunas sword but it was mostly made by my bf) so making a scythe for guchuko seemed a little challenging to say the least. But since I have spent the last few days watching cosplay prop tutorials I couldn't help but to start with the scythe, even though sewing the costume would have been a better way to start the costume... oh well I like challenges (★^O^★)

First I made a base for the skull and ear thingies from cardboard. There is a picture of the skulls cardboard base below. 

After that I used expanding foam to cover cardboard bases. With the ear things I first did other side and after the foam was dry enough I made the other side. After the expanding foam was added it looked nothing like it should have looked (・・。)ゞ They were just bunch of deformed balls ヽ(ﾟДﾟ)ﾉ

It took about 4-5 hours for those deformed balls to dry completely and after they were dry I started to carve them with cardboard knife. It was quite easy since I had the cardboard base in them and I could use it in my advantage to carve the wanted shape easily.

From random to nice-looking laser-thing

After I had sculpt all the pieces I covered the biggest holes with a masking tape. Then I added wall filler to cover the rest of the holes and waited for it to dry. It took again several hours to dry, so making props is a lot of waiting... After it was dry I could sand the surface and make it smooth (´ ▽｀).。ｏ♡  I also added base coat and now all of the pieces are waiting for me to color them.

the skull when it was carved and the same skull after the filler was added and sanded.

a sanded one and none sanded one

But that's not all progress that was made during weekend! The scythe is also starting to get its shape:

hole was cut for the blade...

and the scythe was cut. (though the parts are not attached to eachother)

For the first time using these materials and techniques I think I did quite well. I'm very pleased with how the parts look so far ( ˘ ³˘)❤ and I'm very proud of myself ^__^ (now that I said that I have a bad feeling something terrible happens while I paint the parts XD)

It looks like it. atleast i think it does ^___^