#usa cosplayer

Took some time, but I finally got a few good photos of my Tuesday (Carole & Tuesday) cosplay. I feel really odd wearing this cosplay since I mostly stick to male characters or warrior females. But I love how well the dress came out after two weeks of sewing. Hope you enjoy these.

Finally I get the share the full photos of my Princess Yona: Sword Dance cosplay. After all the struggle with shipping, I am so happy with how it turned out! <3

This cosplay also ended up winning Best Novice Category at Anime Milwaukee back in Feb. My first trophy! I am so happy, that I almost cried.

Back in Feb, I did a Heaven Offical’s Blessing photo shoot with my girlfriend. It was a lot of fun. We wanted to do it outside, but it was way to cold :(

I am not use to cosplaying the sweet and gentle type character. I really felt out of place. However, it was a lot of fun and I want to do it again!

This photoshoot was done in Feb at Anime Milwaukee. I really love Kakuriyo no Yadomeshi. The characters are amazing and well the food look soo good you wish you could eat it.

I cosplayed Odanna-sama while my girlfriend cosplayed Aoi.

Two weeks ago, at the beginning of April, I finished sewing my new cosplay. Tuesday Simmons from the anime Carole & Tuesday. The materials I used for the cosplay consisted of 100% white shirting cotton fabric, 100% polyester black suiting fabric, 100% polyester white knit fabric, 4 types of trim, two types of interfacing, three buttons, ¼ inch elastic, and one fake flower. I also bought a petticoat off Amazon and added more tulle to it, to reach the right fullness I wanted. 

I am not going to go into great detail about how I made the cosplay, but I will say that I used Wonder Under Interfacing to applique the black motifs near the hem of the dress. Once that was done, I satin stitched around all of the edges of the appliques. 

This was a rather quick cosplay that got sewn together in 4 days. A lot of time was because of the satin stitching that needed to be done at the hem of the dress.

Sorry for the horrible photos in my bathroom, it was the middle of the night when I finished XD

Here is Part 2 of my Yona’s Sword Dance cosplay WIP.

As I worked on Yona’s dress I used a light weight navy denim for the collar, cuffs, and hem of the dress. I left the sleeves unattached because I paid a friend do all the embroidery work. My hand embroidery skills are very limited and I knew I that a machine would do better work than I would. Once I recieved the dress back, I was able to sew on the trim that is between the denim and purple embroidery. After that I sewed the side seam of the sleeves and attached them. For the hem, collar, and cuffs I hand stitched them closed on the underside. I did not want a top stitch to be used for any of these areas. I wanted to make it look flawless. The lengthy part was hand stitching the hem. It took me about 2.5 hours.

For the sash, I finished adding the fringe. I would later add some gold foil to the denim fabric, which you will see in a future post when I do final photos.

For Yona’s shoes, I bought some simple black flats that I spiced up with some gold foil techniques. I had to go back to fill in some spots I missed with the foil glue.

This cosplay had a LOT of jewelry that I had to make. This was my first time working with beads and gemstones. It was very exhausting to find what I wanted to use. I picked gemstones that might be found in Asia.

First necklace: This necklace was the first one I finished and would be wrapped around the sword. It is made of three gemstones: 6mm amethyst round beads, 8mm blue dyed jade round beads, and large teal green apatite nugget beads. At the center of the necklace is a large Tibetan styled pendant.

Second Necklace: This is actually 2-4 necklaces in one, depending on your view. It sits around my neck and is the main focal point. It deals with a 3 tiered necklace that features  over 200 gold hematite beads and two lapis lazuli oval connectors. The other necklaces consist of 10 gold round pendants with 30 gold bar pendants and 6mm gold rondelle beads. For the gold pendants I had to file off two of the five hoop connectors to fit the style more. The necklace that consist of the pendants is actually attached to the last tier of the first necklace. this lessons the use of necklace clips and made it so that the pendants laid nicely across my chest.

Earrings: I have to say this was the easiest part to make of this cosplay. I used two large lapis lazuli barrel beads, two butterfly spacer beads, and two gold tassels.

The sword was also lengthy process to make, mostly because I am not much of a prop maker. I used a 24 inch long by 3 inch wide basswood, along with a smaller length for the handle, and thin balsa wood. The store was out of the normal 36 inch basswood that I would have used instead. I also used foam to add the layering effect on the handle. One of the major tools for the sword was a good burner. After I engraved the design onto the sword, I went over it with the wood burner. The wood burner also goes through foam with ease and made the designs go smoothly. Once the paint job was done I put two holes into the base of the handle and used some heavy duty white thread to tie the necklace into place.

I look forward to doing final photos this weekend.

SURPRISE!!! I haven’t posted anything about this on my Tumblr, but the last two years I have been working on a major project with my girlfriend. We decided to make our own Wedding Cosplays of Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian!!!! It took soooo much time to make these since some areas of the gowns were hand embroidered. Glad to finally share the final photos of these cosplays ^_^

If you guys would like to see the WIP photos and how these cosplays were made, let me know!