Sakabatou + Kenshin make-up test

Today I got a sakabatou sword from one of my best friends. She had planned to use it for her own Kenshin cosplay originally but the sword is pretty... damaged/derp/I don't even... so she wants a new one and when I told her I will cosplay Kenshin this year and have everything else ready except the sword, well, I got it. xD It doesn't have the same tsuba and stuff like Kenshin's sword but it is reverse bladed so it's okay. I've been trying to figure out if there is any way to fix the many errors it has but I'm drawing blanks. It seems to be constructed very weirdly (read: not like your usual katana) and it also seems there is no way of taking it apart to reassemble it and check where the faults are. *shrugs* Oh well, it looks decent half-way out of the sheath but if I draw it I will have to check so that it doesn't go major herpaderp.

le sword ~

Oh, and because I now have everything I need for Kenshin I decided to try on the wig for the first time and do some kind of quick make-up test. Also did the scar but I didn't make it looks as deep as that scar test a few days ago; I didn't have patience enough to make it awesome just to take some test photos. I'll do the scar better for the con of course. This was also for experience... I must say it felt a little bit different having Rigid Collodion on your face compared to having it on your forearm. I was more aware of that it was there because I noticed I couldn't smile too much and such or I'd risk screwing up my scar. Good to know before the con. Guess I'm gonna be a pretty serious Kenshin..

I'm not sure if I suit him though.. it was hard to do happy/cute Kenshin-like expressions, I kept looking like I was about to kill someone maybe I should just settle for Hitokiri Battousai LOL and when I tried to look happy I looked way too derp. When I tried to look cool I ended up doing expressions Sanosuke would do rather than Kenshin, dafuq man. OTL

Oh well, here's my first try!  

I was lazy doing the base make-up.. mostly just focused on eyeliner and the scar.

Eye close-up

Scar close-up

My wig doesn't have a thick ponytail currently. I think I might add some volume to it later.. I don't really have time to do it right now (and I need to save money haha... ha...) so this cosplay will be upgraded sometime after its debut.

Also before I put the cosplay on I noticed I had nothing at hand that I could use to make my eyebrows orange. But then I remembered that back when I started cosplaying and did Ichigo Kurosaki from Bleach, who also has orange hair in about the same shade, that I didn't color my eyebrows either lol well back then I didn't even know you could do that and it looked surprisingly okay. I'm not sure if I should still opt to color them though... any opinions?

Oh, and before I say goodbye for today I must share with you this..

... BONUS PHOTO!

KAORU-DONO NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

That's all for today.

Stay tuned for a possible Kenshin preview photoshoot during the coming weekend!

A quick Falkner test + making shoes

Today when I woke up I decided to do a quick Falkner cosplay try-on with everything I had finished, aka everything except the shoes. I didn't really get any good photos but here's one which isn't too dorky, wonderful wig eye censor:

Oh, and I also tried to do something vaguely resembling Falkner's Gym Leader battle pose.. thing.. you know when you battle a trainer on the newer Pokémon games their game sprite will do something. I'm so good at explaining. lol

Falkner battle sprites

Me being a dork xD
(and now I noticed le twin gave me wrong pose directions. lol)

Much later on the evening/night I decided to brainstorm ideas to make Falkner's shoes. First I focused on his red ball things he has around his ankles. Mom had bought some.. err.. I think they're called paper mache balls in English ("vaddkulor" in Swedish and "massapallot" in Finnish) when she got home.

Paper mache balls

I decided to start painting them red. I used fabric paint.. it worked without problems. I just held the ball with my fingers and painted around it.. after a while I noticed my fingers were red and messy so I took the closest sharp-and-thin object I could get my hands on: mini scissors. I just shoved the scissors into the hole in the middle of the paper mache ball and voilá, no red fingers anymore and a good way to keep the ball from rolling around on the newspapers while drying.

When the balls dried I tried to come up with what shoes to use for Falkner. I didn't find the black ones I originally had planned to use.. but then I noticed mom's black crocs. "Maybe if I could cover up the holes they would suffice." I thought and with mom's help we tried using some black fabric for shoe covers. It failed, I couldn't wrap my head around how to get it to look neat. Plan B was mom's idea: black pantyhose. Mom basically took the shoe and shoved it inside one of the pantyhose legs. She then gave it to me and told me to cut off the excess length and seal it. All I could think was

Then mom found some black socks.. and stretched them over the crocs... and now it actually didn't look half bad. Well, they looked better than my Plan B (C?) at least which involved just not giving a crap and using my black slightly shiny-ish fuzzy ("soft hairy"? I don't know xD) slippers as-is....... yeah. I decided to go with the sock version.

After the paper mache balls had dried I took the paintbrush I had used while painting and used the other end of it to make the hole in the ball bigger and so that it went through the whole ball and not just half-way like default. After that I took some black elastic (maybe 1 cm wide), zigzaged the ends and put it through the hole it was rather annoying and time consuming and then just sewed the ends together. Now I had these:

Jingle bells, jingle bells,

Jingle all the way-- err, no.

Then I just took another strip of elastic and glued it to the back of the ball and BOOM le Fazer Falkner shoes were done! The shoes are not the best ever but they work me thinks.

With this my Falkner cosplay is now ready for debut at Skecon. Now if only I could be ready myself.. I have still left to pack everything and solve what I will sleep on during the con.. sleeping bag or what...? I have no idea, I can't take anything bulky like a normal mattress. First time ever during a con when I will sleep cheap floor lodging style (aka on the floor of a school most commonly) instead of a hotel or at some family member's/friend's place.. We'll see how this goes... interesting...

Gloveless Saitou test

As you might know I finished my shirt for Saitou yesterday and.. err.. I got home early (because the only class I had, psychology, well, the teacher was away.. so I went to school for nothing and I couldn't do my plan B geography leftover task either because school's internet hung itself all the time.. so I just got fed up and went home, derp) and decided to quickly try on what I had ready for Bakumatsu Renka Shinsengumi's Saitou.. basically everything except the glove. lol

So, here's my share of derp for now ~ (sorry mirror photos..)

Excuse my lazyness which led to no make-up, except on the eyes and eyebrows, obviously.

That feeling when YOU ARE TOO !!MURSU!! PERKELE to tie a proper musubi.. OTL XD
(aka the ends escape under the obi while they should be slightly visible)

Rather herp but only full-body pic that I managed to take which wasn't terribly blurred..

Obligatory face photo...

SILLY POSE PICTURE! >8D

And then I went to take some photos outside. Notice how the wig is actually blue-black. It is mostly black but has some specks of blue blended in; I didn't want to have a jet-black wig, I thought this looked nicer on me while still being a good color for the character.

I probably won't have time to do a 100% completed cosplay preview (read: proper make-up, shoes and glove) before the con so this will have to do for now. Hopefully I'll have a photoshoot of this costume under or after Tracon. I CAN'T WAIT AGDHJSAGJHFDS TRACOOOOOONNNN ~

BRS (no, not Black Rock Shooter...) Saitou WIP test

So a few minutes ago I decided to put on what I already had ready for my Bakumatsu Renka Shinsengumi Saitou cosplay, aka mainly the kimono, kaku obi and wig. The kimono and obi are genuine vintage pieces from my wafuku collection.
The shirt is just my random Finland/wolf shirt backwards. lol I didn't put on any make-up except some eyeliner because 1) I'm too fuckin' lazy xD 2) it was boiling hot.

These are all mirror photos.

I have no clue what's with that face..

Full-body..

PHOTOBOMB!!1 by le twin

The wig needs some trimming and possibly spiking. Gonna fix that as soon as possible.
I also need to go to town and buy some purple-gray fabric for his sleeveless shirt because mom apparently didn't have any purple fabric in the attic that would have been good enough... actually, she hardly had any purple fabric at all. Dafuq.
Oh, and need to make the glove.

In which I happily wore a "skirt" + Närcon closing in!

Sweet Jesus.. tomorrow evening me and my twin will start our journey down to Närcon. 20 hours of bus and train awaits us to get to the southern part of Sweden.. aka Linköping. We haven't even started to pack our stuff aghkfsgk!

Today on the morning my mom and twin went to town and because I woke up late I didn't go with them. I stayed home, hung the laundry to dry outside and then decided to do a Kondou WIP because I have everything ready, except the wig. I wanted to test my vintage brown hakama with the kimono to see if I preferred to do the anime version (dark brown hakama) or game version (dark blue hakama) after all.

Anime version of Kondou
(NOTE: I will wear the shinsengumi haori instead of his black haori)

I tried on the brown hakama first (because I already know what my kendo hakama feels like when worn. lol) and immediately declared that "Fuck yeah, brown it is!". It felt chill to not have to lift the kimono's hem into the obi like I do when I wear umanori (split-legged) hakama with full-length kimonos. For the first time in my life I friggin' loved wearing what technically was a skirt. BADAMTSSH, BLASPHEMY!
So yeah, here's some quick wigless!Kondou photos for you.. because I'm too lazy to censor my face. lol And I'm too lazy to put on tabi too.. even though Kondou doesn't even wear socks. lol Not to mention I totally forgot my swords...

Oh well, back to the other thing I needed to inform. Houston, we have a problem.
I might be more or less forced to change my Närcon cosplay plans last minute. I can't tell until tomorrow and then it'll probably going to be too stressy for me to write a blog post about whatever I finally decided to do. So the thing is, I might not get my Kondou wig on time. It was posted on Saturday and as we all know the post doesn't move on weekends and well, I'm leaving Tuesday evening and post delivery takes (at least according to the post of Finland's site) with 1st class mail one day. So if it goes out on Monday I might get it on Tuesday before I leave, if I'm lucky and the post doesn't slack. But it's gonna be very last minute as I said.. and with my crappy luck it's probably gonna be here on Wednesday when I'm already in Linköping. :'DDDD Hohohohoho.. not.

Well well, in case I don't get the wig on time (and don't have time to report it before I have to leave) I will write my Plan B here, just in case. If I don't get my wig in time for Kondou he will be postponed for debut at Tracon in Finland instead, if I can go there which I have planned and really really want. To Närcon I will then be Hajime Saitou on both Thursday and Friday instead. And now I'll go back hoping I'll get the wig before I leave, however puny the odds might feel right now, because hey - here's hoping because I want to cosplay Kondou.

Cosplay stuff in the mail yesterday.. but not mine.

This update is pretty... I don't know...
The kimono and glasses I ordered for my twin's Sannan cosplay (Hakuouki) arrived yesterday (yes, both of them at the same time) and well, I felt a need to test them to see that everything was alright so I could leave positive feedback in eBay/Tradera and so. And well, I had the house for myself most of the morning so I did a super quick test to see what I would look like as Sannan... and no I'm not going to actually cosplay him. xD I just grabbed my Byakuya wig and my white under kimono from my Bleach shihakusho and put on the green vintage kimono and round glasses and voilá.

Weird smile...

 Ignore the lack of make-up and that I look a bit tired... because I was.

Mom came like 9 on the morning and went "CLEAN THE WHOLE HOUSE WHILE WE ARE AWAY, K?" dsfhahsfdaf.

Tried to look serious... it doesn't work during morning time...

 Yeah. I still don't knooooooooowwwww.