Stockholm comicon report

 After almost 2 years it was finally time for proper convention again! There were fewer tickets, so the crowds were smaller, and you had to have a vaccine pass or negative test to get in, but otherwise it was as before. It was so much fun being back together with cosplay friends from Nordic Legions and just others you meet anyway.

One of the guests was Evanna Lync, Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter, so of course I brought my Luna with me and had my photo taken with her. These kinds of photoshoot are one second affair, so you have to be prepared beforehand. I got a bit surprised when there was no plexiglass between us, so I lost some time and didn't exactly get the photo that I wanted, but it is good enough. She was really kind and it was she who placed herself really close to me and put her arm around me.

The rest of the Harry Potter cosplayers from Dalarna took a few round around the hall before I was going to be in the Nordic Legions' booth. I was in the booth with my jedi, but I kept the Luna wig since my hair wouldn't exactly look the best after quite a few hours under a wig.

I thought the blone looked quite ok as well. The jedi was really comfortable to wear at a convention. The only bad thing was that I had forgotten the belt that I hang my pouch from so I couldn't wear it. 

Saturday I started off as a jedi again, but this time in my own hair so no wig. We had some Nordic Base photos taken, and then a huge group photo in front of the replica of the Millenium Falcon (The Swedish Falcon) that premiered at the convention.

Then after lunch I switched to Princess Daisy, and it was soo much fun. She was fun to pose with, easy to wear, and it was pretty fun to take photos with more "serious" princesses.

On Sunday it was Daisy again, and now my friend Tom went as Luigi, we actually found quite a few cosplayers from Nintendo. Even if there were generally fewer cosplayers on Sunday than on Saturday.

All in all Daisy was a success, and it was sooooo great meeting all friends from the Nordic Legions again. I also managed to have three costumes, that all had very comfortable shoes. Daisy's orange sneakers were the best though.

Feet get tired even in comfy shoes though, and Milou was a bit sceptic when it came to the smell. Can't be worse than the stormtrooper armours in the changing room though.

AvestaCon photos

As I said in my previous post I had the opportunity to have photos taken with Red Island Media and he has already sent some of them to me.

My main priority was to finally get decent photos of my pilot. I have had several sessions with photographers for the pilot, and then they have disappeared without sending me the photos. This has made me weary about using photographers who don't get paid, or whom I don't already know. Thankfully I know this photographer, he is also the one who did the beautful Melisandre photos last year at AvestaCon.

Then I had just recently dyed my hair and I was really happy with the result, so I chose to do some photos of me as a regular Hogwarts student, so I could show off the hair. I'm calling these photos Autumn at Hogwarts

I had to have at least one photo of me as Luna as well though, and with some nice scenery around I wanted to have her in nature where she belongs

One of the best things with AvestaCon is the location, there are simply so many interesting things in a place made from slag bricks and with nature just around the corner.

ComicCon Stockholm 2019

It was time again for ComicCon Stockholm, which is the biggest comiccon-like event of the year in Sweden. This year I didn't bring anything new, but it was the first time I wore Luna Lovegood for a big event, it was also the first time that we had the whole HP crew from Cosplay Dalarna assembled.

Friday is always a slow day. I did a stint as X-wing pilot in the Nordic Legions' booth. I decided to have some fun with make-up though, I mean how often can you wear the green lipstick you got from your sister?

Matching lips and hairband

I finally had the opportunity to meet up with the amazing Britta though, at NärCon I had only seen her in a distance when she was wearing her costume. She is definitely one of the coolest and nicest cosplayers I know.

Saturday was crazy. Simply put they had oversold tickets and let way too many people in. It was so crowded that you could barely move. The queue outside was Celebration-like, stretching for hundreds of meters. It was great fun patrolling the queue though, and it's always fun when you do it in a group. This time there were four of us X-wing pilots going around.

I also had a presentation of the Nordic Legions. It was the same set-up as in NärCon, since I think that works really well. It was a bigger crowd than at NärCon, but also more kids who just wanted to see cool costumes and not listen to the "behind the scenes" of being in one of the big Star Wars costuming clubs.

After the talk I switched to Lune Lovegood for the rest of the day, and had a lot of fun with the HP Dalarna people.

When my bloodsugar dropped I even found some candy that was straight out of Honeydukes

The whole HP gang ready for action

We also made the Heroes Cosplay Walk on, but that was a mess due to the number of people and the organizers not setting a cap on the number of entrants. We got a lot of cheers from the audience though, showing once again that a group is always appreciated.

On Sunday I was in the Nordic Legions' booth as Luna, it was my first official Reel Icons troop. There were a bunch of different characters, which always leads to fun photos, but my favorite was the little girl who came as Luna and wanted to have her photo with me. She got to borrow my wand as well, and she was really cute.

Cape off with Batman

Dancing with Haddock, Tintin, Harley Quinn and Batman

Being confused over muggle technology

This is how it works!

Force vs. magic

Unfortunately I didn't feel very well, I had had a cold the week before, and now it returned. I got out of costume and finally got some good photos of my "I heart SW"-dress that I made a year ago.

I was really happy that I had hitched a ride with Monika and Niklas home, instead of sitting on the train. I then had to stay home from work for a couple of days, but now I'm hoping that I'm finally rid of the cold. Next event will be AvestaCon last weekend in October.

Photos are also from the Nordic Legions' camera, ArtyAnna Cosplay and Tinkky Cosplay

Luna Lovegood at ArCon

ArCon is the very small gaming convention in my hometown of Falun. On Saturday I took part in the FFG X-wing tournament, proudly wearing both my I heart SW-dress and X-wing earrings. I got quite a few compliments for both the dress and earrings, and as usual I was sadly the only woman playing. I actually did quite well, considering that I hadn't played more than two games in the whole year, but I had to go after 3 of 4 rounds since I had other plans for the evening.

Then on Sunday it was the cosplay day and of course Cosplay Dalarna was there. I decided to dress up in my full Luna Lovegood costume for the first time. Since AvestaCon I have gotten my Hogwarts robes and a much better wig. The wig is from CosCraft UK and is called Jeri. I bought it in milkmaid blonde. Now that was actually too light of a colour, but I sprayed it with the kind of coloured spray that you use to cover up growth lines in hair, in this case I use L'Oreal's light blonde, and that made it dark enough.

Me and Tom did some costume research. Most of the convention is actually just gaming stations, including both real old school games and VR games. I prefer the old school stuff.

It was the first time when we gathered all of the HP gang from Cosplay Dalarna.

Photo: Madelene Thoms

There was a professional photographer there, but I haven't seen those photos yet. I did get some proper photos of Luna thanks to Tom though.

And at least one not so serious photo, but it's actually the one that shows off the costume the best.

I sent the photos in and I am now an official member of the Nordic Reel Icons, and yes it's been a bit of a goal to become a member of all the organisations that make up the Nordic Legions (that is the 501st legion Nordic Garrison, the Rebel Legion Nordic Base and the Nordic Reel Icons).

I'm going to bring Luna to Stockholm Comic Con, and I'm hoping to be able to style the fringe of the wig a bit better then.

From generic to face character: Luna Lovegood

In my last post I talked about my generic Hogwarts uniform, for those days when you just want to be a background student, studying for your OWL rather than fighting Voldemort. That costume is so comfortable. It is a perfect con costume, to wear to the show floor when you just want to wander around and look at stuff, but still be in costume and be recognized as being in costume.

I don't want to be just a background character though, and since the basic uniform is the same you only need to add some accessories to turn the background character to a face character. In my case it was easy, I want to be my favorite Ravenclaw - Luna Lovegood.

Last year I made her distinct earrings and necklace. I also made a v.1 of her beetle ring. Since then I've remade the ring with tiny beads, but using the same tutorial. I have bought a replica wand, rather than trying to make my own.

The one thing I'm really proud about though is finding the perfect shoes.

This photo shows the shoes of Dumbledore's army. Luna being the character she is of course has shoes that are different from the rest. She is the one wearing the Mary Janes with assymmetrical straps.

http://www.rebelshaven.com/images/costumes/hp/shoesref.jpg

I started off by searching for assymetrical Mary Janes, but it turned out I could only find shoes with the strap going in opposite direction from the ones Luna is wearing.

I then started to think about "how would a costume designer approach the shoes for Luna?". I set up a few parameters:

1. The shoes are off the rack. This is not a character that is special enough to have specially made shoes. Also since there were young adults playing the characters it would probably need to be easy to find the shoes in different sizes, if the actor changed shoe size inbetween the films.

2. They are probably high quality, but not too expensive

3. The soft leather and chunky sole is the kind of style that is popular with alternate/hippie/nature inspired fashion.

With that in mind I started searching for shoe brands with words like organic, natural and things like that, and I immediately found the brand "El naturalista". As soon as I saw the first shoes I knew that I had found the right brand, they had that distinct chunky sole seam that Luna has on her shoes. Then it was a matter of sifting through the catalogue of El Naturalista shoes until I found Luna's shoes.

They even have that little button that Luna's shoes have. The only thing that the costume designer has done is to cut off the little brown and green brand tag on the outside. Now of course until the costume designers confirm that these are Luna's shoes I can't be 100% that they are right, but I'm 90% that this is the actual brand and style worn by Luna. Once I had identified them I found the shoes on Amazon.

They are definitely the most comfortoable costume shoes that I have. They look a bit worn, and that is because I wore them all summer long because they were so nice to walk in, especially at Medieval week in Visby.

The one part I'm a bit unsure of when it comes to my Luna costume is the wig.

Luna's hair ranges from very curly and almost white blond

To a more yellow blond and straight hair.

As of now I'm using a curly and white wig, but I am on a lookout for something more yellowish and straight. The wig I have is good enough to do for now, I'm just wondering if I can find something even better.

AvestaCon

The last weekend in October it was the first try with a small convention in Avesta. I was ther both representing Cosplay Dalarna and the Nordic Legions.

The Convention was held in a really fascinating building called "Verket" which is an old iron foundry, all built in wonderful brick. I love these old industrial buildings, and it was a great environment for cosplay.

Verket i Avesta

Cosplay Dalarna had a corner where we showed off some of our props and costume parts, as well as working on some smaller projects.

We had also offered to show visitors how they could work with different materials, so for that reason the organizers had bought a lot of worbla. We decided that the best things to do, that was simple, easily recognizable and quite quick to make were wands. We made wands, and had kids from aroud 8 doing them as well, by wrapping chopsticks in worbla and then create different markings and decorations with more worbla.

wandmaking in progress

On Saturday I held a presentation about Nordic Legions and cosplaying for charity.

Link to a short video from the talk

For Saturday I wore my Mon Mothma, since it's comfortable and I could do crafts in it. On Sunday I premiered my first version Luna Lovegood. It was also a great costue since I had to leave after lunch in order to go to a work-related thing, and it was practical to have a cosplay where I basically just needed to take off the wig and tie and then nobody would guess it's a costume.

Unfortunately I ended the event with dropping my wand on the brick floor and it broke, so I need to get a new one. Well I need to get a lot new things to upgrade Luna to a more accurate version, but I still enjoy this first version.