Saturday, January 9, 2010

Progress

Okay I have made a bit of progress on just about every costume, now if I just had every day off between now and the con my costumes would be amazing, but since I don't have that much spare time this will be short.
Sailor V has seen the most progress, I worked on the broach and the mask.  Just put a simple coat of poly on the broach, when it arrived it had some minor I wouldn't call them scratches but minor imperfections in the surface.  It looked like they had tried to use a buffer or something on it to make it shiny.  Anyway a coat of poly got it a lot shinier so I figure it'll get another one or two so it will look more like a jewel and less like a piece of plastic.







That's before, and this next one is after.



The next one is the masks before we really got going on them, I had already mulitated mine.



The next is my mask about half sanded, and the last is how they look before we quit last night.  They will need a coat of plastic primer and then a coat of sandable primer before we continue.





As for Sailor V's shoes, those were a trial.  I had three pair to choose from.  The first pair I bought for my cousin's wedding last year and although the right color, they don't have a strap around the ankle and they are about half a size to big which would make dancing in them rather uncomfortable.  I bought the white pair for the Artemis variant of my Sailor V costume and really like the way they feel and they look like hers, problem was I couldn't get them in blue so I found another place that sold a pair very similar to them, or so I thought.  They ended up being to dark and the toe WAY to long.  The fabric in my hand in the picture is a swatch of the skirt fabric, just fyi. 



So, verdict?  The white pair.  Looks like I'll buy another and figure out exactly how to paint/dye them. :( more work.  And I hoped this would be the easy part of the costume!




As for Kusanagi, she got the least amount of love, but I can at least show off the jacket as I wore it the other week and have a picture, now its not the most flattering of me but the jacket does look awesome.



The next one is of Seras, well her boots.  I was kinda afraid her stockings would go see though in a flash so we played around with the camera trying to get them to do that and thankfully they ended up being solid.



And here I ninja'd Pip's hat for a few.



Now I do have some progress on Hawkeye, who I will explain at another time, I'm kinda running later then I hoped today.  But this is a swatch of the latex I will be using for that costume.  I just can't decide .30mm or .40mm? 



But I had to post this one, we took Lucky out in the snow yesterday and he had a big time. 



More of my progress pictures can be found on my Flickr, I just posted the ones I felt most relivant to what I was talking about.  Hopefully I will update in a day or two, I'm off to Pip's place to work on other pieces, work on that tango >.< (we did make some progress on that yesterday tg) and to buy some other pieces!

Friday, January 8, 2010

New year, new look.

As if you can't tell I've updated the look of the blog, for the better I hope.  I'm not 100% in love with it... something about the galaxy at the top doesn't quite work for me but until I get the time to photoshop something it will have to do. 
So lets see, Kusanagi's shoes arrived.  I love them, they are a bit higher then I hoped but I'll survive.  Great part is I'll be able to re-use them for Seras which makes me happy.  I was pretty sure I would be able to do that but I wasn't certain.  Sailor V has had no progress, I think tomorrow I'll work on her mask as Pip is to come over and play with the SLR because guess what?  We got snow. Notice my enthusiasm.  I get 4 whole days off.  Read that FOUR!  I got four days off all last month put together and I get four in a row this week.  Pardon me while I squeal.  Now if I had fabric I could really get something accomplished, well okay I do, I have Kusanagi's fabric but I'm not sold on it... Anyway got off topic there.  Plan on working on her mask, seeing if we can't get it smoothed out and cut out so I can paint it when the weather gets warmer because 4 degrees really isn't conducive to painting.  Course we need to work on his Tuxedo Mask mask so I hope we can get somewhere.  That and we really, really, need to get going on our tango. 
Since we're going as Tuxedo Mask and Codename Sailor V we got the idea that it would be fun to tango at the rave, we saw a couple do it another year and it was neat how everyone reacted... till he dropped her.  But as luck would have it they are planning on doing a formal this year, they said no miniskirts but I think him being in a tux should make up for the lack of length on my skirt.  Anyway I have the cd with the song ordered, its shipping from Hong Kong, hopefully it will arrive in a few days.  But here it is on youtube, which is how I ran across it.



Been talking to a couple people about the Hellsing patches, hopefully one of them will be able to make what I want and have it look the way I want.  I ended up photoshopping the image for one person, it turned out a little smaller then what I wanted but she has cs3 and said she could adapt anything if she needed it now that I gave her a clear image.  I swear I used 2.5" by 3" but it doesn't look it.


Well I have a necklace to finish for another costume so I need to get back to work and quit editing on this thing >.< Hopefully I'll have an update tomorrow, if nothing else I'll be doing a massive upload to my Flickr for all the pictures on the SLR

Monday, January 4, 2010

Sooo Cold

I am so freaking cold, the high today isn't supposed to make it above freezing nor is it for the next basically week.  /cry.  I am so not meant for this weather.  I want my sunny and 70 degrees please!  But more costume updates, and I'll give you the low down on the camera.
I'll break it down by costume because I've made a lot of progress on some and not so much on others.  Let's start with Seras.  I bought a belt for her Friday?  Maybe it was saturday?  Either way one more thing to check off.  Also ordered 5 yards of yellow stretch twill for her outfit, along with a yard of red.  I wanted a half hard since the only red is on her arm, but I couldn't get anything less then that.  I wanted to order some white stretch twill too but they only had off white so I decided to wait till her thigh highs came in to see if they were artic white or more off white.  Of course I have a feeling it won't match, just cause that's my luck.  And speaking of thigh highs I ordered those last week so they should be arriving hopefully sometime this week.  I ordered her wig last week as well, so she's coming together quite quickly.  Only thing that is causing me some issue are her patches.  I'm currently in contact with a couple of people who may be able to make them for me but you would think these things would be easier to find then what they are!  Sailor V hasn't seen much progress though, I bought a masquerade mask that I'm think of using as a base for her because the one I bought is just HUGE.  I mean hers is big, but this thing looks retarded on me.  I think I'm going to start sanding on it this weekend, hopefully dad can find his dremmel so I can expand the eye holes.  And as for Kusanagi, I ordered the light purple thigh highs at the same time I ordered Seras's and I finally ordered her boots last week, according to amazon I should see them Wednesday.  So, not much real progress anywhere but I'm getting there, not as quick as I'd like but... I would much rather have them all done and be tweaking on them. 
I am going to have dad do some reasearch on the Wild Geese, since Pip is the leader of them and see if they have any special patches for Pip's costume.  Hopefully he will have some success only because I would find that more interesting then just me throwing random patches on it.  Of course we are going to put a G.I. Joe patch on it, just for shits and giggles.
Now as for the SLR



Yes that is me modeling the new camera.  We already have over 100 pictures on it, mainly us playing with different ISO settings and with the flash, etc.  And don't ask me why I'm holding my hand like that, I think I was trying to get the strap around my arm or something... unno.  Now as for actual functionality, its fun even though we're still figuring it out.  And I think its going to be able to do everything we need for sometime.  I mean when you can take a picture of a fan going at high speed and its not blurry or anything, but perfectly clear.  Oh yea ^_^