forgotten_aria | Entries tagged with costumes

My gym is having theme nights (as part of the fright night lights for the CrossFit open. I'm boycotting the games because of their transphobic change to the athlete gender category rules, but my gym has nothing to do with those rule changes,so I am participating with the gym only activities.)

Last week was 80s, this week was superheroes. The catch is I have to be able to do a workout in the costume, so I threw together a season 1 CW Arrow costume. Basically I made fake arrows with the printer (with lots of error prints) and a quiver and sewed a hood. I also bought some fake leather, but I didn't end up wearing the jacket for mobility and heat reasons. The pants were amazing though. They made it through thrusters with no issues!

I felt a little silly with my choice, since Steven Amell (the actor who played the Arrow) can do Salmon ladder, handstand pushups, etc. while delivering dialog and I can't even do a jumping chest to bar. I'm still pretty happy with how it came out and got lots of compliments while lurking in the dark. I had to take the quiver off because I didn't quite get the straps right.

( photo )

After my test, I had trouble getting restarted on my costuming, so made a necklace for a Blitzø costume, telling myself that I would switch back to the few things left on Alastor, but I've been running with it. I designed some horns. I'm having trouble gluing the TPU, so I've decided to test out some flexible PLA and see if that glues better to make the horns less dangerous to other people (in normal PLA, they are quite stabby.)

I was just going to closet cosplay the rest of the costume, but then I decided I needed a high collar shirt and that my old trench coat doesn't fit quite right.

To tell the true, in a lot of ways I resonate better with Blitzø, especially with ( spoilers )

I do want to wear Alastor for the party, and technically it is wearable as is. I really want to upgrade the wig, however, and moving the red cuff to the new pants would make it more comfortable. The wig is just daunting, since I've never really succeeded at wig-craft. I teased the Catra wig, which came out wearable, but not quite what I was hoping for.

I do find great joy in making. I hope I get a chance to wear my costumes more often. I don't know when I'll feel comfortable going to a con, though.

I've decided that wearing anything from the hella-verse is not acceptable for the TKD halloween party, so I think I'll wear GLaDOS this year, even if I have to not wear the mask most of the time.

I also love printing with my .2 for finish quality, but it means my prints are super slow.

I did as much as I'm going to on my Season 4 Catra costume (from the She-Ra reboot.) ( as much as I remember as being notable about making it. And some photos. )

Just felt like making a post. Nothing really to report. Taekwondo, CrossFit, Lyra, and Cyr are chugging along at my super slow pace. I make enough progress to know I'm not hopeless, but when I watch a video about cyr that's some person complaining that they almost gave up because it took them 12 whole days to learn waltz, it's my pace of learning does get a bit frustrating (It's been 10 weeks, but I haven't gotten past 4 steps.) I'm also slow to gain the strength I need to advance in lyra and CrossFit, but again, I'm slowly gaining it.

I really want to finish my Nightshroud costume from last year, I want to make a Phantom of the Paradise mask, and I have a greyscale workout costume planned for CrossFit. I've been very unmotivated, however, to get working on any of those. I'll finish Sylvie sometime too, but that's a much harder task.

I'm also really letting my music slip. I was already struggling because I was in that "I'm not good enough people want to play with me, so I don't find motivation to practice, so I don't get better" loop that was being a little bit budged by my yearly gig that stopped because of Covid. I got my handpan out today and it was such bliss to play. I don't know why I don't play music as just part of my routine.

I miss people a lot, but I'm not ready for parties yet and in general not really reaching out for social interactions. I do have some online interactions, which is good. I saw my family for the first time since the pandemic began. We tested before hand and didn't mask in the cottage, but we all masked in stores. No one else on the cape really did, though. It was nice the family was on the same page.

I did a random act of kindness by delivering a harp from the Cape to Waltham. It was kind of fun to have had the van to be able to do that.

I totally love cyr, even though I suck at it. It really is everything I thought it would be. I can't wait to learn the basic moves so I can keep it going. I'm hoping the Sunday Esh classes will come back so I can get some lessons. It's been super nice to have the basement space, even if I sometimes almost crash into things. The flooring I got for the driveway got too soft in the heat. I'm hoping that I'll almost have my waltz about the window where the vinyl on the driveway won't be too hot or too cold. I hope I can get good enough (performance level) to justify buying a street wheel.

Consuming a lot of media. Kitties are still cute, fluffy, and grey.

Sorry if I repeat myself, I forget how much I posted here, but I wanted to summarize this years costume efforts.

This year I wanted to make a costume, even though my only chance of wearing it was at CrossFit (and I was pretty sure that wouldn't work out and it didn't.) So part of the goal was to pick something I could move in. I wasn't too excited about anything, but liked Sylvie from Loki enough and it looked like something I could move it. Once I started making it I realized it was clear that I wouldn't be able to do a whole lot without risking scraping to stretching the fake leather. I was also hitting a bunch of stumbling blocks (which I did talk about already.)

I then realized that I had really loved playing Gloomhaven and in particular my Nightshroud character. There is very few Gloomhaven costumes out there, so I decided to switch. I had a lot of fun, including getting to play with my dragonfly glaze and some other cool paints I hadn't gotten a chance to use yet, and really loved the progress I made, but again, it was evident what I was making was not going to be something I could workout in. So I switched again to GLaDOS with the idea that I would paint a shirt for the breast plate and then have a mask that I could take on and off easily. This was also the costume I didn't know I needed and I should have done long ago. GLaDOS is my gaming computer background, she's my cell phone case image, portal sounds are in my mp3 collection and for a while I even had them as my computer error noises. I also filmed making the head and will eventually post it on youtube as a how-to. I wasn't 100% happy with the foam chest piece, but it's good enough and only took me a day to make.

I do hope to finish the Nightshroud before the end of the year. There's not much more work left in him, unless I do the second sword. But I really love the foam carving part of costume making. The bridge I need to make might take precedent.

I hope to finish Sylvie eventually, especially if I can figure out the stumbling blocks. My mom got to wear the horns to answer the door for trick or treaters. The horns are also the same ones worn as Loki in the "Agent of Asgard" comic series which handled his gender fluidity and self-love arc much much better that the series did, so I might do an AoA costume at some point too.

I don't mind that I switched so much, since this year it was ALL about the process and almost nothing about the final product, though it felt good to finish something.

Oh, and I bought two pieces of green clothing and added zipper stops to it for a Loki Dark World cage costume (which I posted about here as well.) I also played with his black suit. I don't think I can quite pull that off as Loki, but I look very good in the black suit, enough that I got some boys dress shoes in case I ever have a chance to wear a black suit somewhere.

I think I will plan to make an all Lycra (not that I'm good at sewing Lycra) Chun Li for working out in next year. I've always wanted a good version of her original costume and I've always felt comfortable wearing her. If it's stretchy, then I don't have to worry about busting a seam while moving.

( pictures of the stuff I made this year, some of them are WIP (works in progress) )

The dress form wasn't as helpful as I would like. I have a lot more fat in the front than it does. I might try padding it out to be more like my shape.

The Sylvie costume is snagged on all paths forward. How the hood should attach to the cloak, how the neck should attach to the stretchy shirt, how to do the connection of the embossing to the sleeve and the scaling for the rest of the breast plate has been truly annoying. I am really enjoying making stuff again, but it's definitely been enough of a bumpy road that I am feeling like I need more "wins."

It doesn't help that I realized that I SHOULD be making a gloomhaven Nightshroud costume. I think I could even do it with mostly things ordered on line. It's taking a lot of will power to not switch horses in the middle. (Two reasons for this, I tend to underestimate projects and the craft room is a tornado of Sylvie.)

I did let myself get distracted by making Loki's Dark World Cell "anguish" look. It was actually important, because the only thing I had to "do" was add the zipper tops, which I didn't realize are on Sylvie's costume too. So now I have the materials and knowledge to do that part when I get to the straps.

I'm pretty pleased with the look, given the effort and given that I am not tall, thin, or male.
Here are some test photos I took. I will want to take more once I dye my hair black for the costumes at a later date. There is some minimal make up. A paling foundation, a touch more eyebrow and a little bit of nose, jaw, and cheek contouring.
( Loki )

I broke down and ordered a dress form. I was reluctant because of the price and how much space it would take up. The price is extra high because I'm over 46" in bust and hip (smaller ones tend to be <$100,) but I found one for $140.

I just hope I keep making costumes long enough to warrant the purchase. I also have to rethink my music craft room.

It's annoying that my attic is not safe storage space because of how hot it gets.

Maybe in a few years I'll try to go to some cons so I have more places to wear what I make. I SO want to fix up the Zayra costume and wear it again. I'm very proud of it and I think I look awesome in it. Having an excuse to do the last finishing touches on art nouveau Chun Li would be great too. (It has another 4 days or so of work left to be done on it.)

I was lamenting that I felt like I didn't have as strong fandom as I used to have. I still love some media and will even spend a lot of time looking at behind the scenes in a "this is very cool, I want to learn more" (and have more,) but I didn't remember recently having that strong heart-tie to any media.

Then I picked a costume I wanted to do for CrossFit's Halloween based on it's movablity and perceived easiness (turns out it isn't easy, but that's a whole other issue.) Something about having to be so detailed focused created the heart-tie. The weird thing is I know how I felt before I started the research and I was definitely in the "I am enjoying this, but it's not that awesome" category, so I know it's been created by the detail focus.

I find this really interesting to think that maybe I wasn't my obsession with things as a kid that allowed me to focus enough to make art and costumes, but that it was making the art and costumes that made me so obsessed.

Or maybe it's a association thing. Maybe my mind knows that if I'm working on a costume I must be obsessed, so it will obsess me.

I'm not sure I can tell the difference.

Yesterday I knocked out my Eleanor Abernathy costume, minus some wig styling and attaching stuffed cats. I find this amusing, given that the whole costume construction took less time than what I think is remaining to do in my Art Nouveau Chun Li that I did last year. I'm going to continue to work in Barbarian Zayra, but I unless the armor goes very quickly, I don't think it will be done this year.

Quite amazing just the difference in hours costumes can take.