Quick sick!Okita "photoshoot"

I didn't have to go to school today because my schedule is still a mess and, besides, I only had one lesson today. It would have been quite a pain in the ass to get to school because I would have had to wake up piss early (*cough* 05:30 Swedish time) to take the bus and then walk some kilometers from the bus station to my school... and my right foot has been derping rather painfully the last days ever since I dropped my damn laptop on it... OTL Sucks to not have mom driving you on the mornings, hahaah.

Soooo I woke up quite early and decided to do a quick Okita "photoshoot" because I was bored and home alone. I can't really call it a "photoshoot" because it was just me and my camera. ._.
I used the self-timer for some photos but it was kinda hard, or well, damn hard to get everything right. Oh well, I got a few good ones, although the lighting was bad so they are kinda.. err, 'grainy'. But I thought it fit the mood somehow so I don't mind the reduced photo quality all that much and besides, I didn't want to turn on the lights because it made photos turn rather fugly orange-y.

If anyone wonders what that blue thing is it's my shinsengumi haori.. used it as a blanket.. kind of.
I look like a tired mess... and that's what I was more or less. XD lol it rhymes...

When I got fed up with trying to use the self-timer I just went to take some egophotos self-photos instead.. although I only got one I liked enough to publish...

Bbbbbbb, this reminds me... back when I was in Eurokangas yesterday I also tried to search for that light purple fabric I had seen before they moved which I could have used to remake Okita's kimono. I didn't find it. ;_; pffjhfiudhiuf

Remake, or not remake?

So err, earlier this week me, my mom and my twin went to Eurokangas in town to check if they had some stuff we needed. Eurokangas has a huge sale going on because they will move to another local in town and this is the last week the sale is going on.

While wandering around I spotted in those random "fabric leftover" boxes a very pale light purple fabric... and my thoughts immediately went to my sick!Okita cosplay. I think that's about the same shade of purple that I had used. I have no clue how much fabric that piece consisted of or how much it cost though. I'm wondering should I buy it and remake my Okita kimono? I'm not satisfied with the one I made to Desucon because it was so rushed and there's just so many things gone wrong with it... lining cut too short, cutting mistake ending in seams at a "not accurate" place, too short (especially annoying/embarrassing in my eyes because I do kimono kitsuke) etc. BUT. I'm not sure will I wear this version of Okita to another con (read: I have too much cosplay plans and too few cons to wear them too) even if I did a remake. While I did like wearing it -and I can imagine myself wearing a remade version- I can almost bet on that the day I make his wafuku and western versions those will take its place.
Although I still want to do a sick!Okita photoshoot.

So... I'm rather perplexed, should I buy that fabric and remake it if there's enough of it and it doesn't cost me an arm and a leg or should I save that money in favor of future cosplays and just do the photoshoot with the fail!kimono I already have?


By the way, for your information that shade of purple is a bitch to find at least in my hometown and neighbor town, hence why I can't decide should I pass it up or buy it now when I got the chance to remake it.

Desucon 2012 summary

Pfhaah, I'm finally back home from my first summer!Desucon ever. Desucon was held in Lahti 8-10 June 2012. I had a blast, it was so much fun despite more-than-usual breathing problems, ME GUSTA VERY MUCH!! I'm so going there next year again!

My journey to Desucon started on Thursday morning by train. I managed to finish my cosplays in time for the con, although last minute and mom and stepdad modified Ichito's shoes for me because I was busy packing my stuff. :'D

Yay shoes.. and thus my cosplays were ready ~

I slept in Omenahotels with Jäärä, Ri-chan and Sukka from Thursday to Sunday. So much night derp and fun oh my god. xD PILLS!

I cosplayed shikai!Jushiro Ukitake on Friday and hung out with our Bleach cosplay group. We went to eat in a Chinese restaurang together a bit after the con started. I must say I wasn't too fond of the food. I do like Chinese food in general but I've eaten better.. but maybe that's because me and two others sat in another table from the rest and most of the different foods were on the other table and I didn't bother to go there because I was feeling very weak...

On Saturday morning and earlier daytime I cosplayed Ichito from Asaki, Yumemishi but I changed into yukata!Souji Okita from Hakuouki: Shinsengumi Kitan later because, even though I really liked my Ichito cosplay it was quite uncomfortable and I'd rather not have a headache during the whole main con day. Jäärä cosplayed Miku from the same game and changed into Chizuru also.

On Sunday we had a Hakuouki group with Jäärä as Chizuru, Zkitsune as Harada, Ri-chan as Saitou and me as Okita. I think Sunday was my favorite day in terms of hanging-with-friends-fun. Even though shikai!Ukitake was, again, my most popular cosplay during the con.

Photo by Miika Ojamo

I didn't attend any panels or even buy any merchandise (I have so much stuff in my room already..) but the con was very very nice anyway. Lots of nice cosplay costumes and friendly people. I took quite some photos so if you remember being photographed by shikai!Ukitake, yukata!Okita or Ichito (aka white long-haired eyepatch guy) give me a shout and I'll see if I have a photo of you! If you don't know what those characters I cosplayed look like you can have a look at my earlier Desucon cosplay plans blog post. I have photos of Okami cosplayers, Hakuouki cosplayers, Bleach cosplayers, Sengoku Basara cosplayers, InuYasha cosplayers, Digimon cosplayers and some few more like some hobbits from Lord of the Rings (names escape me gah!), Mitsurugi from Soul Calibur and Gakupo from Vocaloid. So if you cosplayed something from these series there's a big possibility I have a photo of you~ I have some photos too of characters I didn't recognize but I thought the costumes were really nice/interesting.

Oh, and of course if anyone has photos of my cosplays I'd really like to have them! My email can be found under the "contact me" text to the left. Thank you ~

Hmm, what more to say.. one thing's for sure.. Desucon was probably my most derp!lungs con ever.. dafuq. Weird it fucked so much now when it has been over one and a half year... *shrugs* Oh well. I think I ended up lololo-can't-almost-breathe 5 times.. 2 of them when going to sleep and the others when walking either to the con or back from the con damn ascents. Not cool... and ironically enough I think all bad breathing derps happened when I was cosplaying Okita or Ukitake.. OTL
lololo someone took a photo when I was recovering and I ended up getting a random chest pain just when the photo was taken.. so needless to say a random person probably got a very in-character Okita photo of me. ._. derp

I'm now suffering this after-con lag hahah (yyyh want more Desucon!) and I'm so friggin' tired right now, I hardly slept in the train back home and ahgjfsgfs. I got home a few hours ago and need to start packing again for another con, this time Uppcon in Uppsala next weekend. I'm leaving 13th June so need to pack my stuff again... but I need a bigger suitcase because I will be staying at my dad's place for some few weeks after the con.

And last but not least:
Thank you everyone for a wonderful Desucon experience! <3

yukata!Okita preview ~

As I recently wrote in the earlier blog post I got Okita done in time for Desucon and I promised some preview photos.. so here they are ~

Bleh mirror photo..

So this is what I'll be wearing on Sunday. We will have a mini Hakuouki cosplay group with me, Jäärä, Zkitsune and Ri-chan. I'm so excited! Although you guys have to deal with lolrepsderp Okita. XD

Okita's yukata finished!

So I woke up early today to finish sewing Okita's yukata. After lots of ffffffuuuuuu moments, rage and more rage I managed to get it done. I hate lining forevermore with a passion, it will always fuck up somewhere and then everything fucks up and it's slippery and pain in the ass to sew and just GRAH KILL IT WITH FIREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

I didn't take many progress photos because I focused on getting it done as fast as possible. Today is my last day to get all Desucon cosplays done because I will be leaving tomorrow early. Here you have the few photos I actually took:

Sides had just been sewn together

Lining sewn to the same point as earlier photo

Something just ate my arm!!

Ah, it was just the okumi panel being pulled rightside out...

Oops

Finished

I'm not too happy about it because the lining is too short and creates random folds and bumps at random places... ugh. Oh well, it's still usable so it will have to do for now.

Soon I will upload some Okita preview photos, stay tuned ~

Okita's yukata parts cut out + Ichito obi

Mom helped me cut out the pieces for my Okita cosplay.. but... she made a measurement mistake and we ended up with a knee-length kimono instead of an ankle-length. OTL Mom told me she had earlier been thinking "I'm surprised we haven't done any cutting mistakes yet", you shouldn't have thought that. lol Oh well, I will have to add extra pieces to the front and back panels to get the full length and that means I'll have to make an extra seam where there should be none; I have no other choice because this particular fabric was a leftover piece from the store and only 2,8 meters long and yeah, no extra fabric available and no time either. If I had wanted the body of the yukata to be 'whole' after that error we would have had to put seams in the upper part of the sleeves instead. Eeew. I'd rather have those seams a bit under my butt on the yukata itself than on both sleeves...
Oh, and I have to line this thing too because the fabric is a bit thin and to help it fall better and well, to make it a bit warmer because Okita only has one layer.. but I'll probably wear something under just in case.

Most of the parts cut out

I got lazy so I didn't start sewing it.. I'll do it tomorrow because I have no school.

Some time later I figured I could at least sew Ichito's obi so I'd be one step closer to goal. So first I cut out two long pieces (150 cm each) of that fabric I took inside earlier. I sewed them together at one end and zigzaged around and then I folded it in the middle and ironed to create a middle fold. Then I started folding in the sides all the way. Also folded in the ends.

After I had ironed everything ready

Sewing it closed

Finished obi

Very easy to do, didn't take much more than maybe 15 minutes~

Finally fabric for Okita's yukata!

Mom had promised earlier that we would visit neighbor town Kemi's fabric store on Friday or Saturday so today after she had finished work we went there.. in hope we'd find a suitable fabric for Souji Okita's yukata. I had earlier checked all three fabric stores in my town (well, there's four actually but I didn't bother to check the fourth because they only have curtain fabric etc) and none of them had what I wanted. That particular pale violet is so hard to find... always too dark.
So when we got to that fabric store we went around, checked all fabrics and it started to look dark... until I passed one of these metallic stands with like three baskets with random last meters of fabric from sold-out bolts. I believe. I saw that behind some darker fabrics there was something that looked like it could work. I pulled it out from the basket and mom started to 'finger measure' approximately how many meters it was. She measured it to about 2,5 meters and for a moment we thought if it would be enough.. think so. But then came the other problem: it isn't so thick and probably won't fall as prettily as my other kimonos and I might have to line it... even though yukatas are always unlined originally.
Oh well, I figured it would probably be the best find I could manage in this short time frame (under one week to make the yukata + Ichito cosplay) so we bought it. It cost around 12 € and was actually closer to 2,8 meters. Yay.

Fabric and... red... drink..

Before we went home mom got a sudden "Let's go to Kemi's Lidl before we go home!" whim when it appeared in front of us and I was all "lol, okay sure". We normally pretty much never go to Lidl nowadays.. used to go quite a bit many years ago though.
When we were walking by that milk and juice part of the store I looked up and almost stopped. I saw this very red blood orange juice that screamed ochimizu to me... so I looked at mom and went "mom I need that juice for a cosplay. I need to put it in my glass bottle and take it to the con... yes, the con next weekend..". She probably thought for a second "the fuck" even though I had already mentioned looking for some kind of red liquid for a costume... oh well, she said I could use it as my 'train drink' too so she bought it. Rasetsu-time in the train trololo... ~ For a moment I loved Lidl. x'D

When a decanter makes you ridiculously happy...

Some time ago I was searching all the corners of the internet for a glass bottle, with a glass cork, that would have a resemblance to ochimizu, as seen in the Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan anime. I checked eBay, Tradera, random googling and everything I found was either widely different from what I wanted and if the bottle itself happened to have the right shape then the cork was waaaaay off... and if both were okay it was always over 25 cm in height and thus a no-no... and I didn't want anything bigger than 20 cm at most, preferably around 15 cm. So after searching several days for a close enough decanter I admitted to myself it indeed was a pain in the ass to find a good one and that this search would take me quite some time... but then I stumbled upon one auction at Huuto.net that made me go omfgyayafghdafghd! It qualified for all my requirements; it was cheap, it was small, it had a glass cork and both the cork and the bottle had a close enough resemblance omg so lucky in general to what I was looking for... so my feelings were like this:

Luckily I had a good friend who could buy it for me and then Jäärä delivered it to me before Chibicon, yays~

Aaah, pretty little thing that I thought I'd never be so happy to own.

Now I'm just wondering.. I need some red liquid to keep in it when I'm cosplaying Souji Okita at Desucon in Lahti. I will use it as a prop.

Bright liquid is bright.

So yeah, I need to find something that looks like that... and it's a bonus if it's edible. Yay for carrying around ochimizu... but I'll have to resist the urge to drink it at the con... resist the urge to drink it... lol

Anyone have any ideas what I could use? ^_^ (I should be able to buy it in Finland/Sweden)

Desucon cosplay plans!

Alrighty. Here comes my cosplay plans for Desucon in Lahti, Finland, 8-10 June 2012!

Friday 

Character: Jushiro Ukitake

Series: Bleach

It seems our Finnish Bleach group decided Friday to be our group's "main day" so I'll bring my signature cosplay, Ukitake, then. He is my favorite character from Bleach! I will do the default captain version complete with shikai swords.

Saturday

Character: Ichito

Series: Asaki, Yumemishi

Oh sweet Jesus. This will be one of the most obscure cosplay choices I'll ever do... but I don't care because I drool buckets over his design, period. I don't care that he's a cursed psychopathic immortal missunderstood forever alone spirit... he is awesome.

Sunday

Character: Souji Okita

Series: Hakuouki

Ah, Okita. One of my favorite shinsengumis, if not my favorite. I decided to do this version for now because it's a chill "Sunday cosplay" and yeah, Ichito will be quite some work... and I'm a procrastinator. *slaps face*

New anime obsession...

Ahaha, gosh... so today I started watching the Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan anime... and I'm hooked! I've been watching episode 1 to 9 pretty much without pauses and AHRGSHHAGDJADGS must cosplay Souji Okita! He is just too awesome! Ugh I feel bad for him, I have a feeling he'll die of his illness... Hajime Saitou I will probably also cosplay, he is cool... oh boy, my cosplay list sure keeps on growing man...

But yeah, truth be told I've known and been interested in Hakuōki for a while already, but it was only until some few days ago when I got really really interested. See, I happened to hear that the game had been released in America for PSP recently and so of course I had to order it when it now was available outside Japan and I can understand the plot. lol (I've been planning to get it anyway)
Then I watched the anime because I was so curious and it seemed pretty... and now I'm sfihufgufihuihuuh I love animes like this! It's awesome it is based on historical persons, shinsengumi etc. I like that kind of stuff.

Now I need to decide who to cosplay first, Okita or Saitou? I guess it'll be Saitou because he is easier but I love Okita more... oh well, I get more time to do Okita just right, and besides I'll think I'll go with the more complicated game version of him because he has that beautiful golden ring patterning on his kimono's left side in the game, it's absent in the anime.

UOOORGH, I already find myself looking for wigs for Saitou and references and whatnot... lol the life of a cosplayer, my wallet probably hates me. XD