Contacts Review: Freshlook Colors: Violet

Hello!

Today I just wanted to do a review of some contacts that I use for my Raven cosplay.  Whenever I buy contacts I always look for reviews online first. I'm sure I'm not the only person who does that, so I thought I'd write a review on these incase anyone else is thinking of getting them.

I have really dark eyes so finding contacts that show up on them can be challenging, hence why I always read reviews before making a purchase.  When I went to get my eye exam I already knew I wanted purple lenses, so I told my eye doctor and they let me try on some FreshLook Colors in Violet.  I was really skeptical at first.  I didn't think these would show up on my eyes that well at all, but they turned out to be pretty great! 

The base curve of these lenses is 8.6 and the diameter is 14.5. These are sold by the box.  You get six lenses per box and each lens lasts about two weeks after it's been opened.  I prefer this packaging method to colored or special fx lenses that are sold in pairs and last one to twelve months. I only wear my lenses for events like conventions and photoshoots which are spread out throughout the year. Being able to toss them after two weeks and just open a new pair before an event is easier for me.  Plus if I drop one down the drain or something it's not the end of the world.

I bought mine directly from my eye doctor and I encourage you to do the same.  Most likely you'll be able to try on a trial pair at their office and since these are about $40 a box that's probably for the best incase you don't like them as much as I do. 

These are not my first pair of purple lenses, I've tried three other purple lenses before I found these and these are my favorite.

Compared to all the lenses that I've tried these are the most comfortable.  I can wear these for four to seven hours before I need to take them out, and that's mostly because I worry about keeping them in too long, not because they start to bother me. 

As far as the color goes, these are not bright or in your face.  On me they're pretty noticeable in any lighting situation, but that's partially because they're not what people expect to see.  I have medium-dark skin, so anything not brown is going to make people raise an eyebrow.  I've worn these out shopping a few times and people definitely look twice.  In the pictures below you can see them in a couple different lighting situations.  I don't ever use flash, so that's just outdoor and indoor light.





These lenses photograph really well.  I wore them in my Raven photoshoot with A Beautiful Habit Photography.  As you can see below they look great. We were outside, but I'm pretty sure these will photograph well indoors too.

Photographer: Jim Bochenek Cosplayer: Onyx Sky Cosplay

That's all for today!  As always get an eye exam before buying contacts online or in a store. Have a great day!

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.

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

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!

Maintinance Monday: Raven's Wig Part 2

Happy Monday everyone!

Here are some progress pictures of my Raven from Teen Titans wig.  Since last week I've only worked on it again this morning for about forty minutes, so I don't have much progress to show.  I did learn a lot while I was doing it though and I plan to spend thirty minutes to an hour working on it every night this week. I need to finish it so I can order my wig for Sailor Moon(my next project) and work on that.  I don't want to work on two wigs at once.

The hardest part about doing this was not dropping the wig fibers before I got them through the mesh.  For the last couple that I managed to get through, I taped one end of the fibers to help me keep track of them and then pulled them through with the needle.  That seems to help, but it also makes it take longer and wastes tape, so I'll probably find another method to help me.  The more I work on this though the easier it'll probably become or so I've learned happens with most things.

 After trying to use the ventilating needle and failing for about fifteen minutes, I ended up pulling out a self-threading needle and I found that worked a lot better for me.  I'll try using the ventilating needle again, but for this first part that's close to the hairline I'm going to stick with the self-threading needle.  You can see both side by side below.  It's probably just because I'm used to holding a regular needle and I need to practice more with the ventilating needle.

I'll post more progress pictures on Wednesday for dun dun dun dun! : WIP Wednesday!

Maintinance Monday: Adding a widows peak to Raven's wig

Hello everyone!

In the spirit of Maintenance Monday  I spent a little time working on adding a widows peak to my Raven wig.  I'm basically using FireWolf826's Tutorial here: Click me! and Epic Cosplay tutorial here: Click me! since I'm using their Eros wig.

Step One

 

The first thing I did was put my wig upside down on my wig head and stitch some tulle in. Yay, super easy!  Please ignore the zombie face...we used it for a Halloween decoration(yay!).

Step Two

 

The next thing I did was figure out how big I wanted my widows peak to be.  To do that I cut out a couple triangles out of paper and pinned them to the wig and tried them on.  It took three tries before I found one I was happy with.

Step Two - In action

 

Here you can see me trying it on. On a side note, I did not realize when I got dressed this morning how perfect my shirt was for today. 

Step Three

 

Now that I have a triangle that I'm happy with,
I'm leaving the paper pinned to make sure that I actually put the fibers into the tulle in that shape.
I also colored on the tulle in some alcohol based markers to kind of give me a guide. It's not easy to see, but if the paper slips off or anything it'll be something...

To be continued!

Coming Soon: Maintinance Mondays

Hello!

This is just a quick announcement that starting next week, July 28th every Monday I will do a "Maintenance Monday" post.  Maintenance Monday posts will surprise, surprise be about costume maintenance.  In other words: fixing stuff that got broken at a con and making something better that I had to rush or found a better way to do, etc. They'll be posts about making the costumes I already have better.

Here's a preview of what I'll be writing about next week.

I just got this in the mail yesterday.  These are ventilating needles and the holder. You can use these to add a custom hairline to a lace front wig, or in my case a semi-lace front wig.  This week I'm going to add the widows peak to my Raven cosplay wig. I used Epic Cosplay's Eros wig for that costume.

I bought a white wig for the first one and dyed it with ink and then added a widows peak the easy way, by sewing wefts into the right shape(triangle-ish).  I chose to do that because it was faster than the ventilating method, but didn't turn out well...  Someone with more experience with wigs could have probably pulled it off, but not me.  I ended up not liking the color on the first wig anyway so I bought a new one in Royal Purple and I just never added the widows peak.  So this Maintenance Monday I'll be posting some pictures and I'll write about how that's going. Once it's done I'll post both wigs side by side and hopefully we'll see some improvement in my wig handling skills.

See you again soon!

Once upon a time...

Welcome to the blog of Onyx Sky Cosplay! As the blog name would suggest I'm a cosplayer and this is the first post of my cosplay blog.  You may call me Onyx or Sky for short.  This blog will be used to document my works in progress, finished costumes, tutorials, features of other cosplayers, convention reviews, product reviews etc.  Basically all things cosplay related.

About Onyx Sky
I've been cosplaying for about 2 years.  My fist costume was Storm from Ultimate X-Men.  My original alias was Sky-Cactus, which I used as a name on deviantART and have since changed to OnyxSky-Cosplay. I mostly like to cosplay superheroes right now, but I also love anime and manga.  I've been sewing for about a year now. I'm also still very new to prop and armor building, though that doesn't stop me from taking on difficult projects(I love to challenge myself).

When I'm not cosplaying I'm usually writing, reading or watching something. Some of my favorite titles are X-Men, Teen Titans and Sailor Moon. I also have a sister who cosplays, though she does not post about it online, so you may see some of her work posted here.  We have some group costumes planned for the future.

 Nice to meet you! Feel free to ask me questions.  If you need help or want more details on anything I post here feel free to e-mail me at OnyxSkyCosplay@gmail.com and I'll try to reply.

You can also find me at:
deviantART
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