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.

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.

Photos from AvestaCon

The last weekend in October was AvestaCon, a small local con that was held for the second year. I wad down sick, but I still went. I had promised to be a judge at the Dalarna Cosplay Championships, which is the regional championship that is there to encourage people to try out cosplay, and it was also a chance to take some photos of my costumes. It did end up with me loosing two days of work afterwards though, since I was home with a fever.

I had finally finished my TLJ Leia and wore it as a judge for the cosplay contest. I loved walking around with it and just swosh with my big coat. Photo by: Tom Larsson

Being down sick I spent most of my time in Hogwarts uniform, since it's so comfy and easy to wear. Photo by: Tom Larsson

Another of my very comfortable costumes is Melisandre. It's like wearing a nice and comfy bathrobe, and with my own hair. And when Anne-Sofie had bought an Elsa cosplay, we felt that we needed to take some fun photos.

Ice vs. Fire

Photo by Peter Bergman
Red Island Media (instagram) , Red Island Media (fb)

The location of AvestaCon is gorgeous for dramatic photos. I haven't really decided if this is Melisandre at the wall or at Storm's End

Photo by Peter Bergman
Red Island Media (instagram) , Red Island Media (fb)

The big plan for AvestaCon was to finally assemble our Pokemon superhero team, but we think that it must be cursed, we simply can't all be in costume at the same time. This time our Captain Carp was down sick, but Bellossom Girl, Umbreon and Togepi was there at least.

Photo by Peter Bergman
Red Island Media (instagram) , Red Island Media (fb)

Photo by Peter Bergman
Red Island Media (instagram) , Red Island Media (fb)

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.

Generic Hogwarts costume

So it's been around a year in the making, but I'm now finally happy with all the parts of my Hogwarts student costume. I haven't had time to take any photos of me in it yet, but I want to show you the components and also talk about how I developed it from a closet cosplay to an accurate costume.

Even if this is for a generic Hogwarts costume I'm going to use reference photos of the main characters.

My Hogwarts project started when I realized that I could make an easy closet cosplay from what I had at home. The main thing is that I own an official school cardigan, that I have bought from the Harry Potter Studio shop. I love it and it's comfy and I wear it a lot in the winter, and nobody knows that it's a Harry Potter piece. Overall I would say that official Harry Potter merchandise usually have a really high quality and is worth the price. The cardigans are pure wool, and are produced by the same factory that made the cardigans for the films.

This was my first try closet cosplay, I simply wore a black skirt and a white shirt together with my cardigan. I would say that Harry Potter is a great start if you want to cosplay. If you wear a school tie and a white shirt you will be instantly recognized as a Harry Potter character, without anyone looking closer on what kind of skirt or shirt you are wearing.

After the closet cosplay, I wanted something more accurate though, and I started with the skirt. For the girls' school uniform they actually switch skirt style. In the younger years they wear a pleated skirt, but in later films, or when they get older, they switch to a more simple version of the skirt. And looking at Ginny Weasly it seems to be ok for girls to wear slacks as well if they don't want to wear the skirt. The skirt is a wrap skirt, with a boxpleat to one side, and a fake boxpleat on the other side, that is the opening of the skirt. For the fabric I used a wool/polyester blend that I think is really, really close to the original. It's a suiting weight fabric that I found on ebay more than a year ago.

Rebelshaven.org has a great tutorial on the skirt, with photos to show off all the details.

This is the closure on my skirt, showing the pleat. The screen used skirts have a gold button at the closure and possibly one above the other pleat as well, they're not really seen though so I haven't added them yet, I might do that in the future. That would be more for me though, since it will never be visible.

The length of the skirt varies between characters, and can be anything from just below mid thigh down to just above the knee. If there is one thing with my skirt I'm not totally happy with is that is' shorter than I would usually be comfortable with, but that's the length that Luna Lovegood has.

The next thing that I switched was the shirt.

According once again to Rebelshaven the shirt is a man's shirt, with one breast pocked. The breast pocked is usually invisible, so that's not very important. It is important to note though that the shirt isn't white, it's that kind of hard to define colour that is somewhere between offwhit and light beige. I simply picked up a shirt at a local second hand store that was in the right colour.

To the skirt and shirt black or very dark grey tights are worn. After that it's time to add the house specific elements.

In my case it's my Ravenclaw cardigan and a Ravenclaw tie. The cardigan as mentioned is the official school cardigan from the Harry Potter Studios shop. Students are also seen wearing sweaters and vests, but I can't find the vest in the store. The store also carries official house ties, but they can be picked up a lot cheaper on ebay and other selling sites. It's important to note that the film ties did not have any house crests on them.

As for shoes there are a lot of options. This photos is also from Rebelshaven and shows Dumbledore's Army.

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

With one exception the shoes are not very specific to different characters. They show a mix of lace-up, loafers and Mary Janes in dark colours. I'm using a pair of soft black ballerina-shoes, simply because I already have them, I haven't bought them especially for the costume. 

Then of course no Hogwarts costume can be complete without some magic accessories, and I have my wand and my pygmy puff.

The pygmy puff was described here. The wand is made from a chopstick covered in black worbla and painted brown, it's still pretty dark though.

The final piece of my Hogwarts uniform is my Hogwarts robe. I was really deliberating if I should make my own or buy the official one. In the end I realized that the quality of the official robe is so good that I would not be able to make it cheaper and better. Last week when part of my sister's family was at the Harry Potter Studios they picked one up for me, so that I wouldn't have to pay for the shipping.

So that is my generic Hogwarts uniform.

From top to bottom it consists of:
Black shoes
Black tights
Dark grey wool wrap skirt
Off white man's shirt
Ravenclaw tie
Ravenclaw cardigan
Ravenclaw robe
Wand

It is a mix of thrift shop finds, things I've made myself and official products. I'm hoping to take some photos of me in it fairly soon.

A pygmy puff from Harry Potter

As an accesory for my Harry Potter costumes I decided to make a pygmy puff. The pygmy puff is an animal that's basically just there to be cute and fluffy.

Official HP pygmy puff toys

When I saw a Christmas ornament in a store, for less than $2 I decided that I could probably make it into my own pygmy puff. The ornament was quite small compared to the official toys, so I'm guessing that my pygmy puff counts as a miniature pygmy puff. But it was really pink and fluffy.

I first cut out a circle in fosshape.

I made some gathering stitches in the fosshape and tightened them to make a rounded shape, I then heated the fosshape with a heatgun to harden it. The fosshape shrinks a bit when heated so you need to take that into account.

I used the same method to make a smaller rounded shape. This one was heated and stuck to the bigger shape as a snout, only using the glue that's in the fosshape itself. The ears were small wedges that were sewed on to the fosshape before heating it and the snout to make the whole face hard.

I cut out some small pieces to act as paws and painted it all in pinkish brown. I then sewed the face and the paws on to the main body. This was possible since the ornament was also soft. The thread that I used for sewing is hiddend among all the fluff.

Finally I glued a pair of eyes on to the face, where I had put the stitches that I used to attached the face. So the stitches are hiddend under the eyes. I used hotglue for that, since the surface of the face is quite uneven and I wanted a glue that smoothed that out.

I've kept the ribbon that the ornament hangs on. That way I can keep the ribbon as a strap and hold the pygmy puff in the hand and shake it as i it's moving, without throwing it away.

I've named it "Rosie the pygmy puff". Since "rosa" is the Swedish word for pink.

A sudden Luna Lovegood costume

Most times a costume project involves a long planning process and careful thinking. My latest costume came up as a sudden idea on Sunday, and now I'm planning to debut it at Avesta Con last weekend in October.

I'm not a Harry Potter fan, but I  enjoy bith 5he films and the books. Still I've never felt like doing a costume from them. On Sunday Artyanna posted a line about doing a Hufflepuff costume and I started thinking...

I am a proud Ravenclaw and three years ago when I visited the Harry Potter studio tour I almost bought the official cardigan. Not because of me being a HP fan but because it looked good and I was on the hunt for a nice grey cardigan. I didn't buy it but spent two years regretting it. Last year my sister and nieces went to the studio tour and they bought the cardigan for me. So I own the right cardigan, I then looked around and found my favorite wool skirt and a white shirt after my father and I realized that I already have most components of a Hogwarts uniform. I also have a blonde wig from my Elsa UFO.

When I put all these things on I realized that I should have done Luna Lovegood years ago, and she's such a great character to cosplay.

So now I have
1 ordered a Ravenclaw tie
2 ordered Luna's wand
3 ordered 2 m dark grey wool fabric for a proper Hogwarts uniform skirt
4 asked my sister to help me make her braded dirigible plum earrings.

I also need to find a pair of flat Mary Janes and learn how to tie a tie properly but I hopw that's not too hard.

Harry Potter studio costumes

Over Easter I went to the Harry Potter Studio tour, outside London. Even if I'm not a HP fan, I enjoy the books and films but not as much as to call myself a fan, I had a great time. There were so many costumes around that you could get really close to, and I love being able to stare down details on how professional costumes are made.

I would have loved to see and hear more about the creation of the costumes, as it was the only costume creation process they talked about was Voldemort. One of my favorite things was seeing a finished Beaux Batons school uniform, next to both the hat block and a dressform with the draped pattern.

The rest was mostly just going around and ooohing and aaahing about the costumes. I must say though that most of the most beautiful costumes were clearly the ones worn by Death Eaters, but maybe that's not so strong when you consider that our heroes run around in quite normal clothes most of the tim.

I think this gown, worn by Narcissa Malfoy, is probably a new favorite. If I was ever to recreate a HP costume this one would be very likely. I also took a lot of detailed photos of the lace applique. I really like the horizontal seams on the petticoat, that would be interesting to try and recreate.

My absolute favorite costume was this one, worn by Bellatrix Lestrange. Unfortunately I don't think I will ever be that good at working with leather that I will be able to recreate it.

Just look at the details of the holster, the sleeve and the corset. It was totally gorgeous, I was just standing there drooling for a while.

Then of course it's fun to see details of some costumes like this of Voldemort's robes.

I guess it's a sign of a costumer when you take pictures of the hems, but not of the whole costume. I thought that it was fascinating that the front is clearly hemmed, but the back has started to unravel a bit.

I also always feel a great relief when even professionally made costumes have problems with puckered seams, especially when working with slippery fabrics. This is Hermione's ballgown from Goblet of Fire.

Umbridge's costumes were interesting because it was clear that they were all made from the same pattern, just in different fabrics and with some differing details. It was pointed out, and I have never thought about it, that her costumes gets aggresively  more pink the more power she gains.

I got very surprised about the colour of the lining of Harry's invisibilty cloak, until I realized that it's not lining, but rather it's doubling as a green screen for the special effects to work when he's wearing the cloak.

I'm also a bit tempted to try and recreate this gown, if I ever decide to do some 16th century costuming. It's my favorite style of renaissance, and the colours are really nice as well.

All in all I had a great time, I think I took around 150 photos of so in total, and me and my nephew spent almost five hours at the tour. I definitely recommend it if you have the chance to visit.