Wig work day

Today I decided to try and untangle my Rarity wig. I've had it for two years now, and I've been so worried that doing anything would destroy the beautiful curls. Now the curls weren't beautiful anymore though, it looked like a matted mess with some curls.

 There are a lot of tutorials for wig care out there, but the basic thing to remember is to work with a small piece of hair at the time, and work from the bottom and up. It takes a lot of patience though, not my strong suit and a big reason why I have put it off even if I've seen that it was needed. I didn't wash the wig before untangling it, since I haven't used any Products in this one. I also didn't have any kind of detangler/lubricant in it, that would probably have done the job easier.

After around three hours of work the wig had turned into this.

It's not as curly, but it's tanglefree and still quite wavy. My plan is to recurl it, but I couldn't find my curlers. Still it's looking so much better and I wouldn't mind wearing it in this more wavy shape either. I have braided and put it away for storage now. Long wigs should always be braided when they aren't in use.

Now I need to work on the tail. The tail is basically the same wig, but tied up. It's in a worse state, since I've been sitting on it for example, and the hair is veary teased from rubbing against stuff. I also need to take a break from the work due to my bad left shoulder. I hold the hair that I'm working with in the left hand and pull with the right, the pulling motions were simply too much and now my shoulder is aching.

My Little Pony Rarity

So for NärCon this summer I did a fun costume, and it was Rarity from My Little Pony. I never got any decent pictures of it, but I have some from Comic Con Gamex.

This is Rarity. She's my favorite pony because she's a fashion designer, most of the episodes about her shows her sewing clothes, she's stylish, she's a bit of a drama queen so it's fun to be over the top when cosplaying her, her magical unicorn ability is to find gems (so yes, she's comfortable in mines) and she wears red glasses from time to time. Now the part with the red glasses was better with my old pair, that were red.

Now I've seen quite a lot of MLP cosplays that consists of a kind of corset and poofy skirt. I didn't want to do that though. MLP is a children's show, I would prefer to have a costume that's elegant without being overly sexy.

I chose to use the Vogue 1208 pattern.

I've had it in my pattern stash for quite some time, but haven't had a good reason to sew it. The Rarity cosplay would be a good way of testing the pattern. I definitely thought the elegant pattern would fit a classy pony like Rarity. I don't have any pictures of the construction, it was a project that I didn't hae enough time for really, but I still wanted to do it. I used a white duchesse satin for the outer fabric and a charmeuse for the lining. One thing is that being in a hurry and cutting two layers of slippery fabrics made for the finished pieces not matching exactly, but I don't think it's too visible unless you look really close.

Rarity's cutie mark, the symbols on her flank, are turquoise diamonds. I liked that the bow of the pattern was quite angular and mirrored the cutie marks, so I made it in the same fabric, some kind of heavy, poly satin. For the cutie marks themselves I made by cutting out a diamond pattern, cutting them out in the fabric, more or less free handing the lines on the marks with triple straight stitch. I used a satin stitch to go over all the edges and then I sewed them onto the dress.

I ordered two long, curly purple wigs on ebay. One is used for the hair and one is used for the tail, but I don't have any pictures of it. Basically I sewed the head cap of the wig into a small white bag and attached it to a wide elastic. I wear the elastic around the waist, and then the tail goes out through a whole in the dress.

The unicorn and her necklace, Rarity's element of harmony, were both found on Etsy. I'm also carrying Opal, Rarity's pet, but I have a full post about her here.

At Närcon I wore a pair of white tights and a white sandals, but I think it actually looks a lot better with pantyhose and my white high Leia boots.

This is a really comfy costume. It's not hot, it's not tight anywhere, and it's possible to walk for hours in the boots. The wig gets a bit warm, that's the only downside. Until the next time I'm going to wear it I want to make a pair of pony ears as well. I also want to make a matching turquoise handbag of the leftovers from the fabric that I used for the bow and cutie marks.

As for make up I use a lot of turquoise eye shadow and then a purple lipstick.

Comic Con Gamex 2015, Stockholm, Sweden

The Stockholm Comic Con Gamex was held for the second year, well Gamex is older, but the adding of Comic Con was made last year. I definitely think this is the main pop culture event of the year in Sweden. It's a great mix of film, games, panels, cosplay shows and a lot of people. I would say it was even too many people on Saturday, wen this picture was taken. Then it was almost impossible to move around on the floor. This year it was held in a new venue, the Friend's Arena. The Arena is the national football stadium, so the convention was built on a floor over the pitch. This also made for interesting stages for the panels, since they used the seats around the pitch for the main stages and jsut had them separated by temporary walls from the rest of the arena. Overall I thought it worked really well actually.

I had gone to a friend outside Gävle, Valbo to be exact, already on Thursday evening, so on early Friday morning we drove off so that we were at the arena in Stockholm by 8. The Nordic Legions were there with a stand and I trooped by being in the photostand and take part in the parades. On Friday I wore my Endor Leia, with the helmet since I didn’t want to fuzz with the hair. The Comic Con audience is a bit different from the regular sci fi cons though, so not too many people wanted to pay for taking a photo with us. It was planned that I would be in the stand quite a lot in my handmaiden together with an R2 droid and Queen Amidala. The girl doing Amidala had suffered an allergic reaction though and couldn’t wear any face make up. So we tried to just have the handmaiden and droid in the stand, but people were totally uninterested. For the rest of the weekend my handmaiden was switched for Wall-E, since he’s a lot more popular.

On Friday I also had a panel about make-up and hair. It went ok, but people were clearly more interested when I had my wigs with me and showed how you could style them, rather than going through the Amidala make-up. I think if I’m going to do a panel like that in the future it would be best to just concentrate on hairstyles, and try to show some more example than just the cinnamon buns.

I also had time to look at the qualification for the Swedish Cosplay Championships, or at least the run through of the contestants. I watched the different cosplay competitions all days, but this is where I really show my total illiteracy when it comes to games and manga/anime. I hardly recognized anyone, except for the Elsa.

It was interesting to see a competition where performance is an important part of the competition, but to be honest I thought it was more interesting to see the competition on Saturday when they just went up to the stage and showed some poses. 

Saturday was really crowded, I didn't have any scheduled trooping to do, except for the parades, that meant that I had time for just some fun. I had brought my Rarity costume with me, and in the crowds it was nice to have a costume that is quite cool, except for the wig.

I had even remembered to bring Opal with me, I forgot her at Närcon this summer, and I met a really nice looking Dischord on the floor. I had hoped for more MLP cosplays though. 

For shoes I used my Leia boots, and I thought they looked great for Rarity, and they are comfy so that's always a plus for a cosplay.

On the con floor I also found a really nice looking Rey from The Force Awakens.

We quickly recruited her for the The Force Awakens photo shoot that me and Björn, the Nordic Base’s Han Solo, wanted to do at the end of the day. We had to wait until the end of the day since he needed to put some grey in his hair, and had to wait until after he was done in the photo stand. Micke of the R2 builders in Sweden had done a BB8, and Sigge also had a droid from TFA, so together we quickly gathered all the TFA characters and droids we could find.

Me and Björn also took the chance to recreate that one Han/Leia shot from the TFA trailer.

On Sunday we were all quite tired, the after troop dinner on Saturday had been a really quiet affair and we were all in bed before 22 I think. It's great to have a really comfortable costume to fall back too on the third day of trooping, so I went as Endor trooper the whole day. 

Me and Ingeli, the CO of the Nordic Garrison, had a talk about "Ladies of the Legions - Star Wars and female cosplay" and I think there were definitely a couple of seriously intersted people, the kind that might actually think about joining the legions in the future.

As I've mentioned I'm really not into games, but it's impossible to not notice that the game Star Wars Battlefront will be released in a couple of weeks, and it's produced by a Swedish company. This also had the effect that for once people thought that a lone Endor trooper was pretty cool as well, I heard a few "wow, that's a costume from Battlefront" around me. The Battlefront stand, where you could play the beta of the game, had a huge backdrop, with an Endor trooper facing an ATAT walker, so I ended Sunday with taking my chance of making the backdrop three dimensional.

All in all this was one of the funniest conventions in a long time. I don't think I've ever had so many fun photo oppturnities, both as Rarity, Leia and Endor trooper. The Comic Con Gamex is definitely turning into one of my main events of the year.

MLP cosplay, Opal is done

All the mane 6 in My Little Pony has a pet. Rarity'a pet is the cat Opal.

And of course I wanted to have her with me. I went to ebay and found a white fluffy toy for quite  cheap.

It's actually a Disneyland exclusive for one of the kittens in Aristocats. Now I love Aristocats so it did hurt a bit to cut off the pink bows. I got the big pink one off in one piece though so I can reuse it.

Then I had some wonderful purple trim that's been in my stash for too long. I did have some turqoise beads but they were too big to fit around the neck, so I went with some clear ones instead.

Then it was just to attach the neckband and make a little bow for the top of the head and sew it on.

So at least Opal is ready, now I just need to finish my costume.

Next project

So it just happened that this year I'm going to NärCon, the biggest cosplay event in Sweden. I was tempted to go there last year, but since I don't really feel at home with the anime/manga part of cosplay I didn't know what I would do there. Well this year I'm treating myself to a weekend of fun, and if I don't like the convention I'm happy to go and explore Linköping, since I've never been there.

Anyway for this convention I realized that I wanted a costume that's more comfortable and made for summer weather. That really disqualified all of my Star Wars costumes. I've also felt a bit uninspired lately, so I felt that I needed a pure fun project, where I don't need to obsess over accuracy. What to do, what to do.

Then I realized that there was a character that would fit right in, would be fun, and I feel very connected to.

She likes cats

She's from one of my favorite childhood toys/TV-series, even if the revival is better

She wears red glasses

She feels at home in a mine

She's a seamstress/fashion designer

She's a drama queen. Ok I hope I'm not a drama queen, but it's so fun playing out ALL YOUR EMOTIONS, which means I can go all in on the play part of cosplay.

Who it is?

It's Rarity from My Little Pony of course

And yes, whenever I'm working on a costume deadline I always make sure to play her Art of the Dress

Now things have started to arrive in my mailbox, but it's still a bit of a challenge to turn myself into a white unicorn with purple mane.