Phoenix Comicon 2015

Howdy!

This past weekend was Phoenix Comicon 2015!  This is one of my favorite conventions.  I love it because it's huge, there's way too much to do and see, plus there are a billion amazing cosplayers there!

I always go to this con with my sister JadeGrass Cosplay.  Thursday the first day of the con was a slow day. JadeGrass couldn't come until after work, so I went solo for most of the day.

I kind of just wandered the halls looking at all the beautiful costumes for a little while.  I also went to two writing panels, which were super helpful and fun.  Phoenix Comicon always has a great turnout of authors(comics and novels) and they make good use out of it by having a lot of writing panels over the course of the weekend.  I love listening to authors talk about their craft and the industry. I think it's invaluable.


Friday was coslay day number one.  I wore my Raven costume and JadeGrass wore her Miss Martian costume.  I was really happy to see a lot of Teen Titans and a lot of Robin cosplayers at this con!  Long live the Teen Titans!!! Raven was definitely the most popular, but we did see two Beast Boys,a couple Terra's and a few StarFire's.

Friday was also super exciting because JadeGrass and I got to meetup with ThermoCosplay and a bunch of other awesome cosplayers from Heroes and villains of tomorrow!  It was super fun seeing everyone and taking pictures with them.  I don't really have any friends who cosplay besides JadeGrass, so I'm really happy I got to hangout with some other cosplayers! 

Saturday I wore my Jinx costume and was amazed that my hair stayed up all day!  I debuted this costume at Emerald City Comicon in March, but the wig did not look very nice by the end of the day, so I was stunned that it stayed up from 10am Saturday morning to eight p.m. when I got back to my hotel room! Holy smokes! That G2B hair spray and spiking gel are freaking amazing! I would never put that stuff in my real hair after seeing how glue-like it is, but for cosplay wigs I have a new friend! Holy freaking cow that stuff is strong!


Saturday JadeGrass and I did a panel called "Cartoons that got Canceled".  We weren't expecting a huge turnout.  It was Saturday evening and we figured a) people are getting tired, b)some people might be starting to get in line to see the masqerade and c) there must be cooler panels happening at the same time, but we were pleasantly surprised that we packed the house!  People had to be asked to leave because there were no seats available!

This was our second panel, we relied heavily on video clips and trvia because we wanted it to be fun for the audience.  At the end we had a special challenge if someone could sing the Static Shock theme song word for word(google was allowed to be used), we'd give them a special prize.  I honestly didn't think anyone would do it, but some boys agreed to and man was it hilarious! You can find the video on JadeGrass Cosplays facebook page.

Overall PCC was super fun and I can't wait until next year! If you know the name of any of the cosplayers I posted pictures of, please let me know! Shoot me an e-mail at OnyxSkyCosplay@gmail.com or message me on one of my social media sites so I can credit them!

Thanks everyone who said hi and liked my costumes.  I really appreciate it and I'm glad to see so many people still love Teen Titans! 

Walking to get Pizza with ThermoCosplay(Surge)

JadeGrass Cosplay waiting for our panel to start.

Work in Progress: StarFire & BlackFire

The results from last week.

Hi everyone!

Unfortunately my Sailor Moon sewing is taking over most of my free time.  So all I've been able to work on for StarFire and BlackFire is the hand gems.

This weekend I tested some different dye methods with the epoxy resin because as I stated in my last post, the blue and yellow resin dye would not mix!  So to make green I decided to experiment a little and I found two new ways to get fun colors with resin that work!

 

 Alcholol Based Markers

I was on youtube looking for dye methods and I saw this video where the lovely cosplayer uses sharpie!  I didn't have any green sharpies laying around, but I did have some green Chromatix markers I bought on sale that were drying out anyway.  I had a hard time getting ink to come out while squeezing with pliers so I added a bit of water to the tube.  Next time I will try a little rubbing alcohol instead to see if there's a difference.

 To the left is a picture of the resin without dye.  It's just clear.  I use EasyCast Epoxy Resin.  I buy mine at Michaels Arts&Crafts with a coupon. You can also buy it on Amazon and there are other, similar products you can use.  It's a simple 1:1 ratio of resin and hardener.  It's very easy to use.

To see how much resin I would need I poured water into my mold and then back into the cup, marked it with a marker and dumped it into cup #2, refilled to that point and re-added the water I placed in cup #2 and marked it again.

 To try all three methods, I divided the resin mixture into three smaller plastic cups.

In the photo to the left you can see the cups and the marker I used for the first dye test. The color is Grass 2.  It ended up being very light as you'll see in some pictures further down.  I should have added more ink.  I only added about 2 drops and as I said above, the tube was dry so I added a bit of water. Overall the ink did mix really well with the resin and I will use this method again.  I'd like to try it with Sharpies and Copics.

 Food Coloring

I wasn't sure I would like the results of this method, but I actually like the color better than the marker method!  It's perfect for StarFire! As you can see in the photo to the right I only used about one drop for three small gems.

This is just regular food coloring you can buy at the grocery store.  I will definitely be playing more with it and try other colors, but that's a post for another day.

Castin'Craft Resin Dye

To the left is red and blue Castin'Craft resin dye which is made to work with resin and also purchased at Michaels Arts&Crafts.  I needed purple gems for Breasa's BlackFire costume so I mixed red and blue dye to make purple as those two colors will actually mix vs. blue and yellow which will not for some weird reason.

Overall I do love the purple gems I got with this method.  I won't lie, I want to play more with the other methods to see what other purples I can get, but this worked well too.  I think I did one big drop of red and two drops of blue.

Results

This is a picture of them all before they've hardened/cured.

As you can see above they all turned out really well and thankfully transparent.  I was worried after seeing a few other people's results with random dye methods that they would turn out opaque, but they're beautiful!  They're sitting on gold foil scrapbook paper right now, but I have seen people use nail polish on the back of resin gems and I'd like to try that method first.  I like how the foil looks, I used it on my Raven belt, but I want to try something different.

Work In Progress: StarFire

Today for Work In Progress Wednesday I decided to start casting the gems for my StarFire and Breasa's Black Fire costumes.  Once I started gathering my materials though I realized I no longer had the little paint trays I used to cast my hand gems for Raven which meant I couldn't do any of the smaller gems.  I also only had one big mold to use for the neck armor so in the end I only managed to start one gem today.  I need to go buy a new paint tray this weekend.

 

This is my work area!  The cardboard is where I do a lot of spray painting.  A lot of people use epoxy resin inside, but I'm very clumsy and I have a curious cat so it's better for me to do it outside. If you want your gems to harden outside too make sure you keep them covered.  Otherwise you may end up with gems that have dirt or bugs stuck to the bottom of them...ew.

 As always when working with chemicals make sure to use proper safety procedures.  Whenever I spray paint, cast stuff in resin, sand props or do anything with chemicals in general I wear a mask, goggles, gloves and clothes I don't care about.  To some people that might be over the top, but it's better safe than sorry.  Gloves, masks and goggles are cheap you can buy all three things at the dollar store and a better mask for sanding will only run you up $10-20 at Home Depot or Amazon.  There's really no excuse not to be safe.

Epoxy resin is pretty easy to use so I didn't take pictures during the process.  There are already plenty of great tutorials out there like here: NyuNyu Cosplay: Casting Resin Gems.  The only problem I had is that I intended to mix my blue and yellow dye to make a green gem for StarFire and the dyes did not want to mix so I got an ugly brown...I ended up adding red which would mix fine with the blue and got a weird purple color that I hope will work for BlackFire.  I'll know in a day or two...If not no big deal I'm going to order green dye so I'll try again when I get the small molds.

That's all for today, hopefully next week I'll have something more exciting to show you.

Work in Progress: StarFire

Hello everyone!

I decided to postpone WIP Wednesday and do my WIP post today because I have way more exciting things to show you today than I did yesterday.  Early this afternoon I received my fabric for StarFire, BlackFire(my sister, who has requested to be called Breasa is making) and my Sailor Moon group's costumes.


After the delivery came I go straight to work.  I'm now trying to finish six costumes before Comic Media Expo, so let the panicking begin!  We've got all five original scouts now!  Can you say AWESOME! I'm really excited about these costumes.  Sailor Moon was my favorite show as a kid, I was obsessed.  It really inspired me.  I wouldn't be the same person without that show, so doing these costumes is a dream come true.

StarFire Progress

My morning started with watching Teen Titans.  I popped the disc into my computer and used the episode titled "Betrothed" to get 70+ reference images of StarFire and BlackFire. I used those and started sketching some ideas for the basic bracer shape based on seeing her arm in different poses. I still need to do the same thing with "Sisters" where we first meet BlackFire, but my sister is using my DVD.

 Next I pulled out some newspaper and went to town.  I used a ruler and measure my arm and made a guesstimated mock-up.  Then I cut it out, taped where the bracer connects with masking tape and made adjustments.  The first two were okay, but I got it right on the third time.  Best part of all is that Breasa can use the same one, so I don't have to draft another pattern!

Yay messy desk!

The image to the left is me trying pattern #2 on. We're still figuring the rest out.  I'll probably do a full mock-up soon.  We're probably going to use batting, felt or craft foam to give it that armor stability shape.  Breasa wants to use batting, but we're ganna have to test it out.  I feel like that'll be kind of lumpy 0_0.  We don't have our armor fabric yet.  SpandexWorld was out of stock in what we wanted.  So I'll be ordering it in the morning. 

After messing around with the armor I decided to draft the skirt pattern.  To do that I used a maxi skirt I just bought! That made my life way easier.  I knew the skirt fit about how StarFire's needed to be, so I traced it, straightened it out with a ruler and viola!  Instant pattern in five minutes.

Next I cut it out of some leftover fabric from a shirt I never finished making and sewed the sides together.  Voila! Instant StarFire skirt(almost!). I still have some work to do and we're going to add elastic.  Either way it was a quick mock-up and I feel pretty good about how this project is starting.

To the left is the finished pattern.  I used newspaper again like with the armor for the pattern.  Newspaper is kind of a cosplayers best friend.  It has so many functions.  I keep a ton of it around for paper mache, pattern making and for laying down under messy projects.  I don't read the newspaper, but my mom does so I ask her to save hers for me.  I definitely recommend newspaper collecting.

 

Trying on the skirt.  Excuse my funky tights, I never get to wear them and they're so cute.

And here is the back view.

 See you next time!

Maintinance Monday: Raven's Wig Part 3

Hello everyone!

It's Monday again!  I'll start by apologizing for not posting on Wednesday.  The progress was barely visible despite working on the wig for a couple hours, so I didn't feel like making an additional post about the wig.  I've also just been busy with work :P.  This upcoming Wednesday and on, I will be posting a Work-in-Progress Wednesday post, but I won't be posting about the wig.  I'll have plenty of other material.

To the right(obviously) is a picture of the progress thus far.  I did work on it every night since I started for thirty minutes to an hour, but there is still a lack of progress to show for it.  I'm starting to get the hang of it though and I think progress will move faster.

I found that doing one wig fiber at a time was faster than me doing two or three. I also think it's easier to start at the point and work backwards, but that's just what's working right now.  We'll have to see how things progress.... I may not post about the wig again for a little while though.  I'll keep working on it daily, but I have other things to fix too, like Storm's cape could be a little better, the wig needs to be restyled.  I also need to redo the invisible zipper on my Raven leotard now that I have a proper invisible zipper foot.  So hopefully things will get a little more interesting around here.

Coming soon....

I just ordered fabric from Spandex World to start the costumes for my Sailor Moon group and for StarFire from Teen Titans.  It should get here Thursday, so expect lots of WIP posts and pictures.  I need to finish these by early October for Comic & Media Expo and maybe some Halloween events. 

Five costumes in a couple weeks, while working nearly full time...I must be crazy T_T.  I've never really made a costume for anyone else before(I've only made a few for myself...)...I'm a little scared, but if anything I'll probably grow a lot from this experience.

See you next time!