Edna Mode Cosplay

LittleLoloCosplay as "Edna Mode" from Disney's The Incredibles.

"Edna Mode" is a quirky fashion designer who creates costumes for super heroes, most notably known for saying "No capes!" and "I don't look back, darling..."

I made this costume dress in under 5 hours (over a span of 3 days), using mostly decade-old remnants from past projects. In total, I spent less than $40 to make this.

Dress: Made from upholstery vinyl and fashion pleather, a roll of insulating foam, sport zipper, black corset boning, with stretch gauze lining and pink shirting trim. Everything was remnants (free) except for $2 worth of pink fabric.

Glasses: under $10, purchased via Amazon Prime.

Boots: $30 purchased at Nordstrom (I "splurged" here since the rest of the costume was basically free)

A snapshot of my pattern pieces.

I drew my pattern from scratch. For the dress, I just traced one her shirts and used the same pattern for the front and back. I cut the V neck out of the front later.

The sleeves were the most time-consuming part of making this dress. The pattern for the sleeves was a little tricky, but here's a little explanation of how I made it. 

It took three layers of sleeve to make all of the arched pieces.

I started with a lining made out of a breathable stretchy gauze in the shape of a normal sleeve or mutton sleeve. Then I cut 6 copies of a "top" sleeve out of the vinyl (3 layers per sleeve) and split each of these into the arched shapes (which I numbered so I would know which order to put them in).

This is what the sleeve looked like before cutting the triangles.

The finished sleeve.

The real trick to sewing this vinyl was LOTS and LOTS of baby powder!

A zipper in the back makes it much easier to put this dress on a 2-year-old.

Costume Stress Testing, Toddler Style

When you're making a costume for a toddler, you want to make sure it will hold up to toddler antics. I put this Boo costume (from Disney's Monsters, Inc.) on my daughter to see if she would like wearing it. It's a bit like wearing a sleeping bag, with flippers. Needless to say, she liked it so much she started dancing around!

After I posted this video on Facebook it quickly went viral and amassed over 1.2 million views! Wow! I can't even read all of the comments, but apparently a lot of people know someone who has a little girl who would also make a really cute Boo. :)

Once I finish the costume I'll do a blog post on it. All I have left is finishing the hood and getting the eye stalks attached. I may also need to make the shoe "flippers" all over again because her feet grew.

Fun fact: I started making this monster costume months ago, but my daughter was scared to get into the "tunnel"; the costume did not look like clothes to her! Now that she's two-and-a-half, she is much braver. Once she is three I will see if she might be interested in wearing foam armor.

Christmas Tree Geekery

My Christmas tree is up!

Over the years I have collected a lot of Star Wars ornaments (mostly from Hallmark) that I received as gifts. When shopping for Christmas gifts for a nerd it's hard to go wrong with Star Wars ornaments!

I also have a lot of Disney ornaments. When I was a kid my sister and I had a mini Christmas tree that we filled with only Disney ornaments so I have a whole shoebox full of them. My hubby likes to go to Disneyland a lot so I try to get a different ornament for each trip.

I love my Arena Battle Padme ornament because that was my first Star Wars costume I made!

The Looney Tunes ornament actually has working gears with a handle you turn to raise and lower Wile E. Coyote. Cool!

Captain Kirk is my only Star Trek ornament but he looks awesome commanding from his chair near the top of the tree.

And that  little fox is just cute, isn't it?

2012 Pax - Day One

Serah from Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Riven from League of Legends.  We found a great backdrop and the crowds were missing so we took advantage of getting of a few good shots.

League of Legends tournaments were a big deal at PAX this year.  The grand prize is $150,000.  That's a lot.  They had live commentators, and crowds so big they were sitting on the floor.  It was like the superbowl!

The set up at the different game company booths were quite different but very flashy.

Cosplay is a growing thing at PAX and some people were very creative with their characters.

Moogle and Chocobo from Final Fantasy

 

Can you see who is on their head?

Sacred 3 had a cool setup, so I decided to take a little creepy photo with the throne.

The Storm Troopers are getting down with Dance Central 3 before it is released.

Found a random tatoo on a guy that was just pretty cool

The Pokemon tournament is a cool idea, where 8 Pokemon Gym Leaders are walking around the con, and you can challenge them at any time with a White/Black Pokemon game.   You can spot them with their green scarves.

Even some of the local eateries were using gaming topics to encourage people to come by

2012 SakuraCon (Pre) Art Show

Just like Ava who was preparing for Emerald City Comic Con last week, this week is my turn to be gearing up for SakuraCon, the Northwest Anime Con.  ~YAY~  This is my cosplay event of the year.

Just like last year I have reserved spaces in the Art Show, which is a auction for art pieces, and portions of the profits go to charity.

I know I know, it's not anime or video games, or even japanese related, but they are soooo cute! and it is chibi.

I believe I haven't posted about these on CraftersInDisguise yet.  As some of you know I'm a fat of mini top hats (well mini hats in general) and after the success of my Moogle Top Hat I've wanted to create many other characters into top hats. 

Instead of making new fabric top hats in Yellow and Miku turquoise I'm going to use foam clay to make them.  Here I've got two Pokemon and a Vocaloid.  I'll have many hats on display; some will be on alice headbands, some will be attached with ribbons; and some can be worn with hair barrettes
(I promise to blog more about these in the future)

• Pokemon Oddish
• Pokemon Pikachu
• Vocaloid Miku
• InuYasha Character Kilala
• Xxxholic Mokona
• Naruto
• Pokemon Snubbull
• Pokemon Clefairy
• Pokemon JigglyPuff
• Pokemon Meowth
• Pokemon Psyduck
• Pokemon Jolteon

yea I notice it's a lot of Pokemon, but it's the easiest to come up with that would be sellable due to the popularity of pokemon fleece hats.



As you can see I have made Prints of my Kokeshi Anime characters.

I did a whole set of them

• Ourna Host Club
• Kuroshitsuji
• sailor moon
• tsubasa (clamp)
• code geass
• final fantasy
• naruto
• hetalia
• inu yasha
• vocaloid
• tiger and bunny
• card captor sakura
• Panty and Stocking
• Xxxohlic

I know that the blog is online for the whole world.  But for anyone in Seattle who is going to SakuraCon, please check out the Art Show and see my pieces :)

Little Mermaid Graphic

I've found some Deviant artwork that was quite intriguing because instead of shading their pieces they used textures to give their art depth.  As I continue to practice my vector skills I wanted to give this texturing a try. 

I started by creating my piece in vector graphics using Microsoft Expressions.  Then adding the textures in Adobe Photoshop. 

I think it turned out quite well.  I also love those transition pieces in which you can see the artist's step by step in making their creations.  So I tried to make one.  Although because my history only saved a small number of steps I had to cheat for the earlier steps.  :p  It still looks cool though.



Sparkly Peter Pan Tricorne

This is the first hat I've made from scratch, including the frame.  I fell in love with a Tricorne hat I found on the head of a steampunk cosplayer at SteamCon.

So I liked how real tricornes have the bowl shape curve for the head instead of those ~cheaters~ who make the middle stick out like a top hat.  I was able to get this shape by molding the buckram in a bowl and letting it dry.  Buckram is covered in starch and can be stretched and shaped wet and will stiffen in that shape when dried.  Or course being me it had to be a mini hat :)

This was definately a lot of *firsts* in this project.  It was the first time I used fabric glue.  I didn't want to stitch on the trim, just cause it makes it look less magical.  So I tried fabric glue.  Wow I'm impressed at how well it worked.

Being my first time and expecting to fail I used fabric scrapes; because the hat ended up turning out better than I expected I was now stuck with this sparkly green hat (Previously used for a TinkerBell costume).  Um how to make this less flamboyant and more cool.  Looking online at some other tricornes I noticed a lot of them used feathers.  So adding some red feathers, and oh a pirate sword, and that's how I got my Peter Pan theme.  Pretty cool huh?


When I started I said I was going to judge my success based on how much I wanted to make a second hat after I was done.  Like I said, I expected the first one to be a failure, but if I learned enough to make a better second one than that's considered a success.The fact that my first hat came out great means I met beyond my expectation. ~SCORE~

Characterized Gacha Toy

I always love those japanese toys in which they merge a disney character with another object.  Such as Mickey Cookies, Winnie the Pooh as a Purse, Dumbo as a TV, Stitch dressed up as Peter Pan, Donald as an Umbrella, or Buzz Lightyear as a Cars.  Ok I got carried away, but I loves these.

So I was playing with Microsoft Expressions playing around with vector drawings and came up with these.  These are based off of those japanese  capsule toys

Micky and Minnie.

Who am I?????

Inspiration - Movie Posters

I came across an artist on DeviantArt, Mr-Bluebird. 

He recreated several series of movie posters.

Alfred Hitchcock Series

The way he uses just two colours and simple designs yet it says soo much.

Whimsical Journeys Series

I love his use of extreme colours to push the wildness of these magical lands

 Paul Thomas Anderson Series

I love how he can incorporate text as part of the image.  Also how the picture has movement to it.

Pixar Series

Using well known but not main characters makes gives this a mild, yet recognizable unqiue posters. 

And then THE BLOB

Giving the classic comic book look with the polka dot gradients really helps date this movie. 

This artist has many more Movie poster and other print pieces that are amazing. Approaching these classics from his own perspective just makes my creative juices flow (oh he's a MUSE)  Should check him out on either his DeviantArt account or his personal site. 

http://mr-bluebird.deviantart.com/

http://www.combustibleart.com/Home.html