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!

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.

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!