I´m back!

Has it really been a year? Why yes, it has!

I´m sorry to have left my blog quite unattended.....but I wasn´t feeling motivated towards keeping up a blog at all, not even my personal one. I´ve kinda drifted away from lolita fashion since, but I´m still cosplaying strongly! My first year teaching has also been quite wonderful and successful, in my opinion! (I´ve still got one moth left; God, how I´m gonna miss my kids!)

Anyhow, here´s a bit of a preview of the things I´ve been up to in this past year. I promise that I´ll get more into detail about each cosplay soon!

(As always, special thanks to the two photographers in my life, who are also awsome friends: Jonathan and Flor. Though this pic was taken by my wonderful friend Nane. <3)

Expomanga Sunday Cosplay: Ikkitousen

Hello everyone! Long time no see! I promise that now that the rush for the exams and the cons are both over, I´ll be updating this blog with more cosplay stuff, from tutorials to just random pics of my cosplays and other people´s cosplays.

I´m going to start this out of order, because I want to dedicate a slightly larger post to my Saturday cosplay, and I still need to look up nice pictures (I ended up epic failing at taking pictures at the con....luckily I got lots taken).

On Sunday (The 13th?) I was initially planning to cosplay Youko from the 12 Kingdoms anime and novels. I´ve always wanted to do that cosplay, and have spend a pretty penny buying jade beads and such to make nice accesories.

I wanted to do this version.

Unfortunately, we had a heat wave this past weekend, and it´s only now that the tempreatures are edging back (in fact, we´re going to have a cold snap this weekend....crazy weather). As you can see, Youko wear 3 top layers and 2 bottom layers.....which is not compatible with 30ºC+ weather.

In a last-minute change, I was forced to speed-sew something much much cooler which would allow me to wander around the con without fainting (or getting many pictures taken, really).

I teamed up with my friend S and we cosplayed from Ikkitousen. It´s a manga also known as "Battle Vixens". The name says it all, right? I cosplayed this girl:

Her name is Choun Shiryuu.

And here is the one picture I´ve managed to get taken of me.

Not bad, not bad. Must learn to raise my leg higher. The wig is white, but.....I don´t own any grey ones. Most of the figures tend to favor whiter hair anyhow.

I plan on taking a few more soon; ones that properly show off the skirt´s pleating. It turned out really nice, in my opinion.

Hauls: Minitaladro (Minidrill)

Hello everyone! Long time no see! I just wanted to share today what I bought yesterday to help me with my future prop-making projects for cosplay.

I have no idea what it´s called in English, though--feel free to tell me! It´s like a mini-drill, oly it has a lot of different attachments which can be used for a lot of things--from sanding to drilling to shaping, apparently. I´ve never had anything like this, but I can definitely see its multiple future uses!!

I won´t be using it for my Goddess Harp, since I´ll be constructing that out of softer materials, but I can see how it´ll really help me out with detailing in pieces (such as Lady Sun´s Hula Hoops!).

This is one of those things that I´m really glad I found on sale for a decent price.

Expect pictures of the Goddess Harp construction soon--I´ve been away from cosplay awhile due to studies, but I hope to be back soon.....

Mulan Photos

So, it came to my attention (yesterday no less!) that I haven´t shared pictures of some of my less recent cosplays.

Specifically, of my Mulan cosplay. I made it for a Disney Princess group that got together in May 2011. I kept on putting off showing the pictures because, well--I have no good pictures of the outfit (only ones from after hours of sweating and wandering around and stuff all day, pretty much). But I´ll share the few I do have. Since I plan on fixing a few things of this cosplay, there´s a rather large chance of my re-wearing it and therefore getting nice pictures of it. Hopefully. If not, there´s always my garden, which has a pond--yay for Mulan-staring-at-pond pictures? I need to buy myself a tripod. Preferrably one of those monkey ones that bend and twist around anything so you can get interesting pictures.

My one and only professional picture of the cosplay.

Our whole Disney group (technically, it was a Kilala Princess group, but it evolved)

Jasmine was one of the group organizers; she´s insanely nice. We (Anastasia and I) helped her sew her outfit.

My makeup was SO messed up by the end of the day.

Sadly, it blurred. We have no idea why. : /

Mulan is mad. Anastasia is evil. ´Nuff said.

The whole outfit was made out of Mikado silk (yes, that´s why it´s somewhat shiny) and chinese brocade. The only non-silk or brocade item in the whole outfit is the central pink belt, because I was looking for a nice solid pink color that was close to the one from the Mulan images, and that was the closest I found.

The silk was OK to sew, but the brocade was horrible. Slippery-slidy and it kept on having lose threads. I was forced to  do zigzagged and folded over seams to make it work.

Version 2.0 will have a more corsetted blue part; as it was I went with a traditional folding patterns and then added a zipper. Thank god the sash was tied tightly; it really pulled the outfit together, hahaha.

My favorite part of this cosplay? The flower haircomb (which I ordered specially online) and the sword. I also wanted to get a Mushu, but those are insanely hard to find now, apparently. People at the Disney store said I´d have to wait for a Mulan movie re-release to get one. *irritated* And Ebay is no help at all (60USD plus shipping for an 6inch plushie? As if!).

Mulan has always been my favorite Disney princess, so it was a pleasure to "be her" for a day.

To all of you Mulan haters who say she isn´t a "real" princess: Disney says she is. There you have it, the almighty creator has decreed her status. Deal.

Photograph mention

My photographer got mentioned on a Marvel fanpage! : 3 So exciting!

Check it out here:

Maaaaaarvel!!

Lady Thor: second round of photos

Here goes the second round of photos of Lady Thor with the same credit going to Eylin da Cyel:

Skrull version of the Avengers

And lastly, a "street snap" that got taken of us at the Con:

How to be a Happy Cosplayer

I found this (translated into Spanish) on one of my friend´s blogs. They, in turn, found it on Deviantart, here.

It is a really interesting illustrated list of what a cosplayer needs to keep in mind in order to be happy. I especially agree with the one that explains "Life vs. Cosplay"....especially since I had to make that very same choice for this last Con in December: study for my teaching exams, which might determine my future and get me a job....or sew two cosplays for the con. I chose the former, and am very happy about it. In the end, I did get time to complete one of the two cosplays, which isn´t that bad, and still satisfied my cosplay craving.

Do you agree or disagree with any or all of the listed "have to"s?