The Dark Queen Rises

Test run the night before the con.

The Queen has risen. Those who must be kept are on the prowl...

But at least the Queen has a smile on.

Fuzzy pictures I'm aware. I'm sorry I couldn't/didn't schedule for a photo shoot. I wanted to work out some kinks before I have an accident in the costume...

Despite not being able to comfortably wear the Queen of all vampires all day Friday at Anime Boston '12, I was happy to have finished it. I also managed to win a staff pick ribbon. :D

New plans include Mimiru from .hack//sign, Erza Scarlet's Flight Armor from the Oracion Seis arc of Fairy Tail, Ame Comi Cheetah from DC Universe, and much more...

Boyfriend, Bling, and Bra

So the necklace has the round blocks added on. 

It's just the thicker/est foamies board from Joanns in black, repainted in gold acrylic paint, and stabbed through the center using a pin and some of the wire holding the other pieces together.

Then I worked on the bra/chestpiece.

Boyfriend being awesome and helping me cut out the pieces.

Glued some interfacing fabric to the back of the foam in order to give it some support as I did with all of the other major foam pieces. The base coat was 3-D fabric paint in gold. It was really shiny and pretty.

Then I sort of freehanded the purple swirls onto the foam cutout. I know I should have patterned it out first. (Will need to update these)

Then cut out more foam bits to make the top section of the backless bra.

Finally added on some of the scraps to add dimension. Which of course failed horribly. I ended up scrapping it for hotglue that was then painted over with the 3-D fabric paint in a lilac-y purple color.

Re-designed

Wow was I pleased with the second attempt/result.

After hot gluing all of the metal bits in place and covering the wrapped edges so they wouldn't tear me to bits, I followed up with the coins and some cut up mardi gras beads to act as spacers between the coins.

So many coins, so little time...

Then came some darted construction/posterboard paper that came in dual tone gold on one side and silver on the other.

After cutting darts like so I taped them up.

Then prepared them for the daunting task of upholding the crown.

Even here the crown is rather impressive

Ah handy dandy hot glue gun... Where would I be without you in this project?

This felt like it took hours. It probably only took me an hour. Maybe hour and a half.

Despite my rather unexcited facade I am quite ecstatic about the progress I made.

I couldn't get the camera to cooperate. Blech

Slowly Catching

After the necklace came ... MORE NECKLACE.

More generic Joanns beads.

Though those beads were used for another loop that would be a spacer for these round discs that were apparently there. Enjoying life I suspect... Cheeky bastards.

My apologies for the bad rotate. My mac was being hateful as was the Internet. That's what I consider to be the signature piece to the lovely Akasha. Props to the costume designers for providing a potential cover in the off chance of escaping breasts. Though they'd likely work terribly in that regard...

Well Well Well

Sadly I did not keep my own goal of recording the entire process of Akasha nor did I get a chance to snap some awesome photos of the finished product...

This photo is after finishing the belt to an almost 90%. Still needed a few things added.

After the belt I began the often frustrating work of figuring out the main neckpiece with the 7+ panels of a size I couldn't quite comprehend. Gah.

So my neckpieces ended up being much larger and pokier than I had anticipated (note to self when bending wire make sure to use needle nose pliers or some sort of jeweler's tools to provide some measure of comfort)

They're all connected to their neighbors via a very thin (low?) gauge wire found in Joann's Fabrics and Crafts.

I ended up redoing it as they were too spread apart to even show more than the middle three panels.

Silly wire     >>'

I was eventually able to connect them to a memory wire necklace that was first strung with some generic plastic beads also from the aforementioned store of goodies and cheap wonder.

As you can see the necklace parts don't go all the way around because I actually like my hair and don't want it (or my wigs even) to be completely wrecked from all of the knots in the wiring.

Jesus I couldn't look more tired. Yeaaa boy, college does that to ya.

Clearly I'll need to update this particular chunk of the necklace as I had organized the panels in the wrong order and need to fix that gap.

Akasha's Skirt

is a big pain. It kind of looks/ed like a Georgia O'Keefe painting due to the way I cut the material and sewed it up.

I have yet to invest in a sewing machine simply because the handsewing is a nice easy way to lose track of my hands and just relax. I guess once again I found some idle work for my hands to whittle away the time.

Nom

I have so far bought 5 yards of chiffon/organza (I can't remember which I had purchased right now) for the overlay/skirt and some sort of swimwear lining for the underskirt. 1.5 yards of purple chiffon/organza. A beadwork book. New fun tape. A skirt pattern that ended up being useless. Total spent so far: $110 ish.

The skirt is surprisingly irritating to work with as a result of my laziness in cutting the fabric and not really considering what I honestly needed to do to make it a circle skirt. Damn. At least I'll have the extended belt covering my mistakes.

-Kimdolion

Akasha's Hair...

Is causing me aneurisms. Dear god how can this hair be such hell to imagine.

I'm considering straightening my own hair for the well straight bit that hangs under her elaborate plaiting. The plaiting could be done using Katie Bair's World of Wigcraft godliness. (Wrap extensions/loose fiber around colored batting of sorts thus pseudo fluffy hair that I can wrap around in a big beehive cone thing)

I could also utilize an addon ponytail and then do the aforementioned plaiting on top of it. Though this might put a lot of stress on my own hair since the ponytail would be combed/drawstrung into my hair with this fluffy thing added on top in addition to the headpiece.

My god this is going to become quite trifling...

Maybe I'll also use a Kanekalon jumbo braid for the plaiting business. I just need to find black batting or whatever to wrap it around. Hmm..

My next cosplay

is starting to seriously look like Queen Akasha from Queen of the Damned as played by Aaliyah (RIP).

I've been weighing her against Erza's flight/swift armor from the Oracion Seis story arc. One of my friends is apparently attempting Vampire Hunter D so that added to my already insurmountable like of Akasha. It'd be hilarious to fight each other in the hallways. Anyway,

The fight between Akasha and Erza was sort of decided on a few issues. Time contraints of course, resources another duh, finally difficulty/skill. I'm happy with how Aisha turned out for my first cosplay. I'm definitely revamping her wig and reattempting the damn leg band (it fell off at the beginning of the con so I decided to forgo it for the con and just re do the damn thing later). I'll also have to rework the breastplate to sit firmly on my breasts/chest without me constantly adjusting (oh what hell that will be to remold that fucker).

Anyway for Erza and Akasha it was beadwork versus swordwork. I know nothing of making props but I am well aware of many a tutorial to help me out. It might be simple enough but her twin swords for her swift armor might be a bit challenging especially if the only time I'll have to work on this is on campus.

Akasha could be cheated a tiny bit with a belly dancer skirt (to save me time for beadwork). The rest will all have to be done by me. (I once found a costume selling for 2k and it wasn't even accurate. What the eff? At least movie accurate, I know the book is different but I do love the portrayal of Aaliyah. Fantastic).

So for Akasha I've been doing a bit of researching. I'm torn between two skirts because from the reference shots I've scoured the internet for show her black main outfit as this somewhat transparent yet solid black fabric.

http://www.missbellydance.com/Belly_Dance_Satin_Full_Skirt_p/skc10.htm

http://www.missbellydance.com/Belly_Dance_Chiffon_Full_Circular_Skirt_p/skc18.htm

The first is satin and the second is chiffon. Both seem to be somewhat see through, though the chiffon is clearly more so. I almost wonder if I should just buy both and decide when I can see for myself. Then I could use the loser skirt for the arm sleeves. Though it would likely have to be the chiffon... Fuck that'd be about 100 bucks right there. It'd probably be best if I checked out the silk market out here in China and Jo*Ann's for chiffon like material. This might become difficult really quick... Eff...

I'm going to post on cosplay.com's forums and I'll return with some results hopefully.