Phoenix Comicon Fan Fest

Hello world!

At the beginning of this month I went to Phoenix Comicon's Fan Fest! Yay!  It was super fun!  I was only able to go on Friday and Saturday, but I think that was more than enough con this weekend for me since Comic & Media Expo was just this past October.  I cosplayed as Storm on Friday.  On Saturday I wore my new Wonder Woman costume to go with my sister's new Miss Martian costume, yay DC Comics!


One thing loved about this con was how it wasn't super crowded.  I expected it to be as bad as Phoenix Comicon was on Saturday last year(waiting like fifteen minutes to get in some doors in the morning and not being able to move in some areas of the con without bumping into people), but nope!  The vendor hall was so big that there was plenty of space to walk around leisurely and even take pictures without getting in the way of traffic.

The exhibitors and artists that showed up also brought a lot of cool stuff!  I managed to snag some StarFire and Raven earrings from one booth.  They're not super my style and I don't usually wear much jewelry, but since I doubt I will ever see Raven and StarFire earrings again I have no regrets!  I also got a pair of Kitty Pryde one's since the guy gave me a good deal!

My favorite thing about this con was how many awesome cosplayers I saw!  So many awesome costumes!!!  I found a Robin from Witch Hunter Robin, one of my favorite anime series.  I haven't seen anyone cosplay as her in forever so I was very excited to see her!  On Friday when I wore my Storm costume I also saw an group of girls dressed as other X-Men characters and literally jumped up and down when I saw them and ran over to take a photo with them.  Unfortunately my phone was stuffed in my bag so unless I find the photo online I don't have a copy.  That was my absolute favorite moment of the con.  They were so nice and their costumes were so cute!  I hope I can find that photo later!

Panelwise I went to Four and a half panels. I should have went to more, but shopping was calling to me... On Friday my friend and I went to "It Will Be the End of Us All" which was pretty fun.  Basically four panelist debated whether Vampires, Zombies, Werewolves or Aliens would be the end of humanity as we know it with audience help.  That was fairly entertaining and the panelist did a good job keeping the audience engaged.  After that I went to "Geeky Pictionary" which was awesome!  MS Paint meets finger painting and nerdy topics...yeah.  Our team didn't win, but it was still fun trying to decipher odd stick figures with a group of strangers.  If they have this panel at Phoenix Comicon this year I will definitely go again. 

On Saturday One of the first panels I went to was "Are you smarter than a Stormtrooper".  It was a pretty funny panel and I thought it was very well organized.  I forget the moderators name, but I think she did a fabulous job keeping things in order.  It's easy for interactive panels, especially games to get out of hand, but she kept everything together.  She really did a good job engaging the audience and the contestants.  The Stormtroopers were also very humorous in their feigned lack of Star Wars knowledge, making the panel enjoyable even for someone like me who's knowledge of StarWars is fairly limited(I have yet to watch all the movies all the way through...I only went because Breasa wanted to).

The next panel we went to was "Choose your own Zombie Survival" which was okay.  I think the panelist did a good job, they were definitely very prepared and I love interactive panels.  The only thing I didn't like was that it was too easy to disagree with the point value system as to whether or not you'd survive.  I think a zombie apocalypse is too situational for this kind of game, but if you can ignore that it was a fun panel and I think they did an excellent job.

The last panel/half a panel I was able to see was "PUGS Multiplayer" and oh my gosh!  I never went to it at Comicon, because I just thought it would be nerdy trivia, but NO!  It was AMAZING.  Basically this panel is just people debating very silly topics like "Who's better with a whip? Catwoman or Indiana Jones?".  I'm sure you can imagine how funny this was.  I had to leave before it was over, but I will definitely be going to this panel at Phoenix Comicon this year!

Alright!  Well that's it for now.  I have some exciting news(well it's exciting for me anyway) later this month and I'll do one more post to recap the year/possibly post some WIP stuff from Wonder Woman that I'm too lazy/doubt anyone is interested in right now. 

See-you later!

P.S. If anyone knows the cosplayers posted here let me know so I can tag them!

Comic & Media Expo 2014 & Halloween

This is a bit late. but I thought I'd write about Comic & Media Expo 2014(October 17th - 19th) & Halloween.  There are also now some photos of Raven in my gallery.  We'll be taking more soon, but for now I have two nice ones.

Let's start with Comic & Media Expo. This was their first year and I think it went pretty well!  I had a lot of fun and I am really excited about next year!

One of the things I really enjoyed about this con was how small it was.  Most of the smaller cons I've been to in the past weren't that exciting, but this con was different. I don't know why, but I just really enjoyed the small con feel. It was great not having to run to every panel worrying about getting a good seat because none of the panels I went to were crowded.  I was really impressed with how hard they tried to provide good programming for such a small con.  I also liked their celebrity guest choices.  Riddle's Messy Wardrobe was there, as was Dante Basco!  Can you say fan girl mode???

It was also a treat to cosplay with my friends.  As mentioned in a previous post, one of my friends dressed up as Bumblebee from Teen Titans and Breasa(my sister) dressed up as BalckFire. Getting to be StarFire with a BlackFire(Friday) and Raven with a Bumblebee(Saturday) was awesome! It made me really happy that they love me enough to cosplay from one of my favorite fandoms. Costumes take a lot of time and money so I really appreciate them doing that with my Titan obsession in mind;  it was really sweet of them.  Breasa also just thought BlackFire and StarFire together would be an awesome sister's cosplay and I agree.  It was ^_^.  We're planning another shoot before the end of this month to get pictures of them since I got 2 pictures of StarFire and neither are post worthy.

Speaking of cosplaying with friends, on Halloween I was lucky enough to convince my friends to hangout as Teen Titans.  My neice dressed up as Terra, R. went as Bumblebee, Breasa(my sister) went as BlackFire and I wore my Raven costume.  It was probably the best Halloween I've had since trick or treating when I was a kid. 

We made a really funny Teen Titans CMV(Well, we think it's funny), took some great pictures of our costumes and went to Chipotle for dinner.  It really reminded me why I cosplay: to have fun!  I was starting to think about why I spend so much money on costumes vs. any other hobby and I realized on Halloween that it was nigts like that, that make the whole thing worth it.  We had so much fun running around in the dark dressed as superheroes and goofing off.  I don't think words can describe it adequatly so just look forward to the video.  I'll be posting it on youtube by the end of this month.

Halloween also ended with the promise of a possible X-Men cosplay group with the same ladies.  I'm really excited about that.  I just can't decide if I should try to remake Pixie with moving wings or do the Storm original design 2.0 that I was planning.  Tough choices.

Most of the photos posted here were taken by our cowgirl Monica who you can see above arresting BlackFire.  We couldn't get her a Teen Titans costume in time, so she did us a huge favor by filming the video we'll be posting and taking photos with her phone.  She has agreed to join the insanity and probably cosplay with us for our next group project.

Vacation!!!!

I've been super bad about posting this month so far, but October should be better.  I've just been busy with the Sailor Moon group stuff and work.  Tomorrow I'm going on vacation for five days so there will be no progress this week.  When I get back I'll be posting a lot of StarFire progress because I want to finish that by October 11th!

For now here's what I have done on her arm bracers.  I just have to to finish the invisible zippers and add the gems.  Originally I was going to sew the vinyl around batting, but that made them look too plushie like.  So then I tried to sew with just heavyweight interfacing and had the same problem.  In the end I just hot-glued it around craft foam.  Not sure why I had to make it so complicated in the first place.

Below is some stuff I plan to post about when I get back.  I'm taking my Raven wig with me to work on in the hotel, so hopefully that'll be done soon.  A friend put half an hour of work on it for me last week since I've been neglecting it.

I'll end this with some exciting news! A friend is going to Bumble Bee with Breasa and I at Comic Media Expo!  Can you say Teen Titans group?!!

See you soon!

Upcoming posts

• Green contacts review
• More StarFire WIP(Top, Skirt, Belt, Boots)
• Mold Making
• Raven makeup test & finished wig
• Teen Titan Photos

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.