Tag: #shatterstar

Leaps and bounds

#design, Comic books, Convention, Cosplay, Crafting, Education, Learning, Sewing

The cosplay is coming along swimmingly, at least as far as props and accessories go. I have the grey boots I bought painted with a layer of black (I’ll probably add at least one more layer), then I got the headband for the Magik cosplay made.

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I did it myself, with a little instruction from a friend. The sword is also well underway, with just a little more to go. It’s going to take some geometry and stuff…you know, the stuff you learned in school that you thought you’d never need? Yeah, all that. Maybe if they taught kids these days that it can be used for cosplay, they’d be more interested in math. Forget Common Core–teach Cosplay Core.

My husband’s Shatterstar sword prop is done (finished that last week)… 13654169_1089736687785176_64311181774611607_n

…so now I can finish the sleeves on his costume. After I make my pleather shrug, that is. And the Spandex stuff. Have to do those pieces first, because that’s not stuff I can do by hand as we travel to Dragon Con.

Well, back to it. Can’t take too long of a break or I’ll break my momentum.

Marching on

Comic books, Cosplay, Crafting, Geek, Novel, Sewing, Television

Now that I’ve given myself a break from cosplay sewing for a couple of weeks, I’m finally back in a sewing state of mind. I started on my husband’s pants for his Shatterstar cosplay the other day and am slowly making progress. (When I start sewing early in the morning, sometimes I don’t have the energy to sew for too long at a time…so I get done what I can, then remember that I haven’t had my Adderall and go back into the bedroom to mess around on the computer & take my meds.)

Once I get back into the swing of things, I know my pace will pick up. It will help that it’s the in-between season where most of the fall/spring shows are off air & most of the summer ones haven’t started up yet. Not that I’m a TV addict per se, but it’s nice to have time in the evenings to spend with my husband. A little bonding, something we can’t really do when I’m sewing because I get so focused that he ends up sitting on the floor playing games on his tablet.

With these newest cosplays, we’re going to try making some foam armor and props. It should be interesting, because neither of us has worked with the EVA foam before. Don’t know what EVA foam is? It’s basically those foam floor mats that look like puzzle pieces. Pretty cheap, but you can do a lot with them. We saw several panels on the subject while at Phoenix Comicon and my husband has been watching tutorials online to learn how to work with it. It seems simple enough, but I’m sure we’ll have a large learning curve to start with.

Now that the book “experiment” is over, I don’t feel as obsessed with checking my numbers every hour or so. It’s both a relief and a disappointment. A relief that it’s over, disappointment because I kinda liked seeing so many copies of my book being picked up, even if it was for free. Oh, well.

Lost momentum

Comic books, Cosplay, Crafting, Fandom, Geek

I’ve been trying to figure out why I can’t seem to get anything done in the mornings before work (which used to be my most productive time of day), and then it hit me: without cosplays to work on nonstop, I’ve lost steam.

With so many mornings of gogogogogo in preparation for Phoenix Comicon, my brain doesn’t know what to do with nothing to do. Well, I guess I don’t have nothing to do. I could write, draw, read, color in my coloring books…so there are things that can keep my mind occupied–I just don’t have the drive to do any of them. My inspiration on my new novel has evaporated, so until that comes back to me I’m a little at a loss there.

Once we get some fabric for my husband’s coat and pants for his next cosplay, I can get back to spending all my free time in the craft room frantically cutting, pinning, and sewing.

Well, maybe not frantically. I have three months, give or take a week or so, and I got the Naruto cosplays finished in a month. So one could theorize that I have some breathing room here. I’ve already used the pattern for my husband’s pants once, so I know how everything goes together; I just have to do some mockup work to get the color blocking I’ll need to do. That’s going to be the interesting part of making these–his costume has some cool color blocking, and mine will have a lot of modifications to the designs of the patterns I’ve purchased for it.

The good news is that I found several pairs of boots that might work for my cosplay, so that’s one less thing to worry about. I think those boots are pretty much the only things (aside from my husband’s boots as well) that we won’t have to make from scratch. This should be fun.

Now if I could just find something to do until we get that fabric….