Well, my Kiyone costume was quite successful. My Gaga orbit… not so much. Between the heat and the time constraints and the stress, the costume fell apart. I was so crushed, but I’ve shelved it for another day. It will get done for next year’s con season. Anyway, back to Kiyone. I don’t have an amazingly clear photo on here of the guns, but Theresa and I took dollar store toy guns, shaped them with cardboard and covered them with Bondo body filler and acrylic paint. They were amazing. My wig was a bitch. I couldn’t afford a nice blue wig, so I went to the local costume shop and bought the cheapest, longest blonde wig that I could (24in for $9) and bought a tube of blue acrylic paint and dyed it myself. It took a lot of trial and error to get the wig remotely close to the color I wanted. I had to thin out the hair and trim it slightly because of the dying process. ugh… The costume was fairly simple, the vest was a modified simplicity pattern that I used blocking techniques for the chest stripes and applique for the black curves. The skirt and leggings were recycled from my Meryl Stryfe costume and the gloves and headband were made out of the t-shirt I used on my Mario costume and leftover yellow scraps. The black undershirt was drafted by me and I made it completely on my “new” serger (new to me anyway). Then I drafted a collar to attach to the undershirt and the red “tie” is red scraps stuffed with stuffing. The blue triangles on our shoulders were crafted by me out of sculpty.

I loved this costume. It was fairly comfortable. And as disappointed as I was over my Gaga costume, I was very happy that this one worked out. Most of the pictures above were found, so if I took your picture and you want credit please let me knpw.

Here is another costume I’ve done recently, Meryl Stryfe from Trigun. My bff Theresa suggested early last year that we do this cosplay on the fact that I’m short and she’s tall. *sigh* I will admit our height difference worked out very nice for this. Anyway, when she suggested it, I had not seen Trigun, but I agreed to do it mainly because I picked the last two duos we cosplayed as-Mario and Luigi and Professor Trelawney and Professor Snape. So, I went on to watch the show and I really loved it. I think I started watching it around the time I was working on the Slowpoke costume or shortly after I finished it.

We went to two conventions as the duo, Tokyo in Tulsa 2009 and Izumicon 2009. Meryl was also one of the three costumes I took to A-Kon this year however it was the only one I brought that wasn’t worn by me or anyone else in our group. Theresa and I had a lot of fun as these two. Her costume evolved over the two cons. The first one we went to, she just had the pants, suspenders and shirt and by the second convention she had made the over coat. I carried around donut holes during both cons looking for a Vash. We found two at Izumicon, but not TnT.

I had some funny instances happen because of these costumes. At TnT, we went all 3 days as the girls. One of the nights we ate at a restaurant at the hotel it was held at. When we paid for the meal the waitress saw my photo on my debit card and thought it was Theresa because I had curly brown hair in the photo and short black wig on in real life. She was quite adamant that my card was Theresa’s but we had to explain that I was wearing a wig. And at Izumicon, we got tired of wearing the costumes and the attention we were getting by the 3rd day of the con that we went in regular clothes. Theresa really didn’t look different but I did and I also wore glasses that day, so the people that kept stalking us didn’t recognize either of us. It was kind of weird, like our normal clothes were disguises.

Anyway, I put a lot of small details into my Meryl costume. I found some amazing dangling gold earrings on accident at Big Lots for $3 that were perfect and that is where the costume began. I decided to do Meryl in black and white as opposed to blue and white for several reasons, mainly because her costume in the anime is black and white. I had seen some people do blue and white online, but that was more manga-ish and I hadn’t read the manga. Also, typically black and white fabric is cheaper and fabric stores usually carry more black and white in each type of fabric than the other colors. I know this because I used to work at Hancock’s and was working there at the time I was making this costume. I quit in August because I moved to Norman to go to OU.

I already had black leggings, so all I had to do was make the cape, skirt and shirt. I drafted the pattern for everything. I even made the ribbon details out of spare black fabric (which I still had and used when I did my Iron Mouse costume this year). I bought buttons to put decoratively on the sleeves. The skirt and shirt turned out really well and I didn’t have any problems until I did the cape. The cape was made in two separate pieces, the front and back piece. And right now as I look back at what I did, I just thought about what I could have done to make it easier to construct. But it’s to late for that now… oh well, it still turned out alright. I made the back piece a large rectangle that was white on one side and black on the other. I took the top corners and gathered them and proceed to gather the on the front piece. I remember the first time I did this it looked horrible and I think I broke a few needles, but the second attempt worked out just fine.

All that was left to do was find a wig and boots. I had the hardest time finding these two and I also had a set amount that I was willing to spend, so when I did find something that worked it cost more than I was willing to spend. I eventually found a short black male wig for $14 at a local costume shop and I resorted to making boot covers because I could not find white ankle boots anywhere. I also had trouble finding guns I liked. I ended up buying a bag of cheap little neon colored water guns at Target and painting them black and gray.

This is getting really long, but I really love this costume and it was a lot of fun to wear. And if I didn’t have a costume to wear I’d probably pull this one out first to re-wear.