Showing posts with label footwear. Show all posts
Showing posts with label footwear. Show all posts

August 8, 2017

Hotaru's tengu geta update!

Yo!

I have been silent about my finished Hotaru cosplay for a while now, sorry about that. I do plan on debuting him eventually and the truth is that I was actually considering to wear him for Närcon earlier, but I changed my mind at the last second. ^^"

You might remember that I made a pair of tengu geta for him earlier and back then I didn't try to walk or balance in them, hence why I wasn't sure how they'd handle that part. So yeah, some time after I had taken home the finished shoes I did some experimenting in my apartment (with a really slippery floor I might add, hence no actual walking, just standing/balancing) and came to some conclusions.
Originally I was thinking that I might need to resize the hanao (aka the thongs) because of them maybe being too long, but after some testing and measuring it turned out that the problem is not the length but how loosely I had tied them in place! I compared my self-made hanao with those found on some of my imported Japanese geta and the length is the same, approximately 30 cm long. 

Tengu geta before any modifications.
Same as above, but from a different angle.
Standing with the tengu geta in their original setup was wonky at best; it basically felt like the hanao didn't support –nor hold on to– my feet enough and it was impossible to lift my feet without fearing that it would just slip out of the geta. So yeah, I really didn't need to do much testing before it was clear that something needed to be done or I'd be faceplanting all over the place while wearing this costume... :D

I undid all the knots keeping the hanao in place, at the back of the shoes, and then just pulled everything as tight as I possibly could and retied it all. At first I was thinking that "this shit is gonna be so tight that I can't even get my feet in!" but after some wiggling it works and it actually feels sooooooo much safer – how safe walking on tengu geta now can feel, that is. :)) It's not the most comfortable but at least it doesn't feel like my feet will slide out as soon as I lift them from the ground!

Also, I want to mention –in case it wasn't obvious from the photos– that these Killer Platforms from Hell™ are not made in an authentic way, just for cosplay purposes. Same thing goes for how I've tied everything in place, it's all just a lot of spontaneous knots here and there that seems to do their job.

Hanao to the left tightened, to the right unmodified.
Same as above but from a different angle. Notice the arch!
Another thing that I noticed was that those plastic pieces that I cut out and glued to the bottom, in hopes of protecting the 'teeth' of the geta from wear, and to make them less slippery to wear for example indoors, was that they actually fucked up the balance! The little plastic protections made it really hard to balance on these shoes (possibly partly because of the uneven, bumpy texture) and it was a suicide attempt to even try to take a step because the plastic would "flop at the edges" by any kind of surface contact/movement – it just felt incredibly risky, aka gave exactly the opposite effect of what I wanted.
Good thing I had only fastened them with hot glue and so it was easy to just rip them off, which I did.

Geta to the left modified (incl. removed plastic sole), to the
right still in original condition.
Once I had fixed up both shoes I tried standing on them again, of course holding onto the nearby table because my apartment's floor is like a fucking ice-skating rink, lol. The difference the tightened hanao and the removal of the plastic sole did is HUGE!! Like seriously, I feel like I could actually even learn to walk in these. :'D Maybe.
I'll still probably reserve these monster shoes for photos/photoshoots only because I don't want to wear them out by normal con walking and without the plastic the 'teeth' will take damage really fast, especially if I walk on any ordinary outdoors road (aka where there will be small stones etc).

Pssst! As you might notice, all of the actual in progress photos are taken with flash. This is simply because I was modifying these fuckers in the middle of the night that's when we all get the cosplay motivation, isn't it and thus the natural light was way too crappy to do me any good and I had to resort to using flash.

Improved tengu geta!
Now I just need to do a cosplay test for Hotaru because, truthfully – I have not even tried on all the parts of this costume together. :'D I don't know yet when that will happen but I promise that it will happen. I really love Samurai Deeper Kyo and Hotaru is just one of the many characters that I want to cosplay from this awesome shounen manga. SDK is love!

Thanks for reading!
~ Shiro Samurai out.

November 27, 2016

The making of Hotaru's tengu geta!

Hello buddies ~

I'm a bit crazy for attempting this, I confess. But as a sort-of-perfectionist when it comes to my own cosplay making I decided that this would at the very least be a wildly interesting challenge to go through, both in making and in wearing the finished product, which, in this case, is a pair of tengu geta! You see, Hotaru is always seen in the manga wearing these 10 cm high Japanese wooden geta shoes – except that his signature footwear only has one ha (teeth) to stand on – yikes!
Needless to say this is gonna be one hell of a trial to actually figure out how to walk with these beasts! I'm gonna need to prepare myself for some serious balance training, huff puff.

Sooooo... are you interested in following my adventures in making some serious suicide shoes? If yes, read ahead and remember build and wear these at your own risk. Hohohoho ~
Warning: this is gonna be a long post. 

Hotaru reference.
When I first thought about cosplaying Hotaru, for several years ago, I was thinking about just making ordinary geta (aka those with two teeth) and painting them red and call it close enough. I was afraid of making tengu geta because of the hazards they'd come with once you slip them into your feet, hahah.
But then at Närcon 2015 I saw a guy cosplaying Hotaru and, once I asked to take a photo of him, I saw him pull out his tengu geta and change into them! :O He was wearing some kind of comfy-looking sneakers or such as walk-around-the-con shoes. I remember that he had to lean on his two friends to get the shoes on (I guess these two were always around him, just in case he'd trip or something) and once he was done he could actually stand with them on without having anyone pressed next to him! Seeing him standing on those crazy shoes without any support made me think "if he can do it, so can I!" and yeah, I did ask him later if it was hard to walk in those skyscrapers and he said that it's actually not that hard to walk in them... but standing still is a whole different story. *badumtssh*

How can he jump around, fight and run with those on??
But yeah, these things ain't easy to move around in; you're constantly worried about tripping over something, losing your balance, falling over someone, getting accidentally bumped in crowds or entering an area with uneven/bumpy ground etc. You really can't move around freely because you have to be 110% aware of your surroundings at all times... or else you'll be effectively face-planting.
I'll be sure to always bring with me a second pair of shoes whenever I bring my Hotaru cosplay to a con because hey, I will need comfier shoes and something that's a bit less risky to move around in. Having "tengu-legs" all day doesn't sound like the most sober idea I'd ever have – these are likely best suited for photoshoot occasions or for the mildly crazy ones out there.

I apologize for the crummy cellphone-quality on most of the photos ahead; I didn't have my SLR camera with me in school during this project.

Okay so, I started this project on early March 2016. Because I'm cheap and stuff I did this during school on my woodwork class... or well, it's not actually called that but woodwork is what a big majority of the students are doing during class so, err, yeah. The class is actually called "redesign" and "furniture renovation". We work in a garage that belongs to the school and there we have a lot of power tools, paints, sand paper and whatever you might need – including free wood. 
I knew that I needed to use some kind of wood that could take my whole body weight and would be durable yet preferably not too heavy or else wearing my shoes would be like walking with anchors strapped to my ankles, lol. I checked first through the "trash box", aka where all the scrap wood pieces were but I didn't find anything suitable in there. I then went to check the actual wood storage and found a thick plank that seemed suitable. I went to ask my teacher and he said that "you should be able to jump with shoes out of that" and so I assumed it was okay to use. xD Problem was that I couldn't find another plank of the same wood, width and thickness so yeah, I had to go with something else. I searched around for quite a while before I laid my eyes on some scrapped wooden bed legs – they had just the right thickness and seemed very sturdy! I went to ask my teacher if said legs belonged to anyone else's project but he said that I could take them, hell yeah!

Got my wood!
For those wondering what woods these are the plank is Scots pine, aka European redwood. Note though that it was painted in some white paint before I took it, hence the pale color. The former bed legs are made out of beech. I reserve the right for any misinformation since I'm just stating what my teacher told me; I'm not a wood expert and I don't know if he is either. 
The Swedish names, for those curious, is 'furu' (the plank) and 'bok' (the legs).

Even though it's officially mentioned that Hotaru's tengu geta only have 10 cm long teeth I decided to screw that and made mine 15 cm instead. Normally I'd always go for accuracy but I honestly thought that 10 cm looked stupidly short and I always thought that his geta looked taller than that in the manga anyway, lol. I'll probably regret this choice once I have to walk in them...

Aaaaand back to the project!
After I had found the pieces that I needed and marked where I needed to cut I went and said hello to the new love of my life... err... the circular saw. I had never used one before and, hot damn, is it a handy asset to have when working with wood! It just takes a few seconds and bam, you're done!

Too bad I can't steal it without anyone noticing....
Pieces cut.
Next up was some rigorous sanding, except on the 'tooth' parts since those are already smooth and all thanks to being a recycled leg piece from a bed. Save time, effort and nature, wohoo! I sanded the body pieces of the shoes until they were smooth like a duck's butt and then I sanded some more. All the previous white paint that was on them came off.

Everything sanded and the placement for the 'teeth' are marked.
Now came a brainstorming session with my teacher about how to proceed and if it would even be possible to walk with these things strapped to my feet. He googled 'tengu geta' and pointed out how other examples had a slanted shape on the underside, likely to provide stabilization and support for the 'tooth'. Don't quote me on that though, it's just a guess.

Example photo from Google.
Now I can say that I've seen tengu geta without those triangular slanted shapes on the underside (mainly homemade pairs) but I'm fairly certain having them makes these monsters easier to walk on. I thought long and hard if I should add them or not; not adding them would be more character accurate but adding them would likely lessen the risk of me faceplanting everywhere and so, the question stood, should I go for accuracy or for convenience and safety? Which one weighed more?
It was a really hard decision to make but I decided on adding them in the end, mainly because I really don't have the best balance to begin with and I don't want to kiss the floor at cons, unintentionally. 
Off I go to find something usable in the scrap wood box!

DO DO DO DOOOOOOOH ~
Another bed leg to the rescue! :'DD No but really, this one had one side already in a slanted shape that had been glued on – a perfect starting point for an occasionally lazy cosplayer like me, lol. Thank you beds for sacrificing yourselves for a good cause. 
I had really good luck because each of these scrap legs were 18 cm long (the leg part, not counting the fastener top) and my geta needed two 9 cm long pieces per underside, bingo! So of course I decided to just cut one in half and use the more slanted half for the front half and the less slanted for the back half. I hope my explanations are not too bad. What I was less lucky with was that these pieces are not as wide as my geta's main body but yeah, I thought I could deal with it because it's not a ridiculously noticeable difference and, well, it won't be seen all that much anyway; I just want something to support the 'teeth' and balance out the weight a little, without having to put a shitlot of time into making it.

At first I had thought that I'd just saw off the piece that I wanted but then one of the assistant teachers looked at the bed leg and saw that the glue fastening had started giving way; he said we could likely just split them open with a knife in the seam and a couple hits with a hammer – said and done!

Slanted pieces separated. One is glued.
As you can see on the photo above one of the pieces cracked because it didn't come off cleanly. Luckily it didn't break in two, so we just glued it and put some pressure clamps on. The knife pictured is the one we used, in case anyone wonders.

Next up I moved to work on the main body again. I decided that I wanted the teeth platforms to have some extra support to hold on to so I decided to make a groove in the underside of the shoe's body to sink them into. It was really important that the groove was as close to the tooth's width as possible so that it would be snug and not wobble around. Every millimeter was important and I had to be really really careful. But instead of carving out the grooves by hand (which would be quite some work and take time) I had a genius flash and turned my gaze to the circular saw, once again.

I'm a clever little shit!
I basically adjusted the circular saw so that it wouldn't go all the way down and then I did a lot of sawing in lines back and forth, millimeter by millimeter, until I got a nice groove formed. Fast and efficient!
When I was done with that I took a chisel and smoothed out the roughness caused by the sawing.

One groove done.
Shoe to the left is smoothed, shoe to the right is raw.
Next I took one of those metallic compasses (?) and marked out the holes and the center of them on the teeth, mainly so that it would be easier for the drill to locate them. I used a 51 mm hole saw on a drill to do the holes, it's pictured on the photo below together with the compass.

Holes made more pronounced, in preparation for sawing.
Holes cut out with the hole saw.
The hole saw got really warm while in use, to the point it actually burned the wood and reeked of smoke hence why the holes look blackish on the edges. It started to smell burnt, it was kinda scary. :S The drill even shut itself down to cool down when I was half-way done, oops. I need to mention though that beech is an amazing wood, it doesn't crack nor splinter at all!

Next I marked out the placements for the hanao, aka the thongs. I then fetched some rope of the thickness I'd want to use and picked out some leftover fabric from school; the fabric is actually a former couch cover pillow thingy and thus it was perfect for my project because I wouldn't need to buy any cotton filling for the hanao!
I drilled the holes and realized that the fabric rope I first had set my eyes on sadly won't be durable enough. Luckily a trip to a mixed store afterwards provided me with a white synthetic rope that was cheap, had a nice thickness, a lot of meters and was durable too!

I noticed at some point that, for some reason, the holes on the ha weren't on the same spot, even though they should have been – good thing for me was that I had saved a reserve bed leg, just in case, and now it came to use. I shortened it to the right length, drilled the hole in it and then I had a much more identical second "tooth"! It also fit better into the groove when I did a test-run, aka the new one didn't wobble around as much.

Summer vacation came and went and I didn't progress on these shoes for months because duh, no school. :'D The project continued again on 30th August and the first thing I did was to refresh my memory of what I had been planning for these shoes. I remembered where I had left off and continued by gluing each tooth to the main body of the shoes. I used normal wood glue and pressure clamps.

Tengu geta glued and put to dry.
I left the glue to dry for a couple days, aka until my next lesson. The next time I came to work on my shoes the glue had dried completely and I took them out of the pressure clamps. But upon taking off the clamps I noticed that one of them had pressed an ugly mark onto the main body of one of the shoes; I didn't notice before but one of the pressing "plates" on the clamp, that you screw onto your item to hold it in place, had an uneven surface. Luckily it was not a big deal because I would have to go through and use filler to even out cracks and shit anyway.
But before I started with the whole filler mission I decided to make each tooth extra sturdy and thus I went ahead and drilled some screws into them – don't want to take any risks with the glue failing me after some time of use! Okay so I basically just marked out the spots for each screw (two per geta), drilled the holes, used a thicker drill to "carve" out space for the screw head and lastly I, of course, drilled the screws into the geta. I placed the holes about 2 cm into the body from each side. Each screw was about 4-5 cm long.

Screws drilled in place.
Notice the pressure marks from the clamp as well.
After the screws were drilled in I found some wood filler that I thought I could test. I didn't quite like how it behaved (I think it might have been semi-dry because the person who used it before me didn't close it properly after use) and so I gave up on it and went with normal filler instead. I carefully went through the whole shoes to even out any cracks, splinters and unevenness. Once that was done my class had ended and I left my tengu geta to dry upright on a shelf.

The wood filler that I tried using. It sucked. :(
During next class my shoes had dried and I continued by sanding down the excess filler until I got my geta as smooth as possible. After that I wiped them dry of the sanding/filler dust with a towel and then I went to purchase some spray primer, because it's a lot faster and easier than using ordinary primer in paint form.

Before priming my project I took a good look at the current progress. I remembered the existence of those slanted pieces that I made out of the bed legs and messed around with them, to try to simulate if they would actually do as much of a difference in balance and sturdiness as I had thought. I got more and more sceptical because after doing some simulations it seemed like they didn't actually do much at all to increase the safety of me standing on these murder shoes; I started to think that maybe they don't give the desired effect because it's not from the same block of wood as the main body. So yeah, after some thinking I decided to forgo these slanted pieces (after all the work I put into them) because they didn't really seem to do as much of a difference as I had hoped and yeah, if they don't do their work then I'd rather be more accurate to the character and go without.

Comparison with one shoe with the slants and the other without.
So yeah, I left the "stability pieces" out of my project and continued with priming my shoes. I let them dry and added another coating. The drying time took long enough that my class ended before I could get to start with the actual painting job.

Primed geta.
Next time was painting time! I had previously decided on using the same metallic red vax paste that I used for painting Hotaru's sword a while ago. I wanted them to match and the color (and the vax paint itself) is awesome and super quick to use! So yeah, this paint is really chunky and you apply it by using a soft piece of fabric or a sponge – I use a torn piece of an old bed sheet. I spent a lot of hours painting my shoes, did two layers and was very careful to avoid as much "color-stealing fingerprints" as possible because yeah, I need to seal this thing after it has dried or it will continue to smudge off ever so slowly when I touch it. :D It got kinda hard in the end to not accidentally touch some spot when you were painting another – the only area that didn't matter was the actual part of the shoe that will touch the ground when I wear these.

Painting in progress.
Once the shoes had dried I returned to seal them with a clear gloss varnish. When I was done spraying them I carefully put the shoes upright to dry on a shelf in the garage; I should have realized that this was not the safest space to put them on because the shelf itself is vintage, narrow and wobbly – I remember thinking before I left that I'll move them to a safer place once I could touch them on the next lesson. But of course, once the next time came about I of course forgot about that tiny little detail. So yeah, when I came to check on the varnish I noticed that the paint still left fingerprints and thus a second coating was needed. I opened the drawer under the shelf (the shelf was separate and on top of the drawer, fyi) to look for my varnish can, which was not there, and then I closed the drawer without thinking and – BAM! Of course the impact from closing the drawer (it doesn't go in smoothly) made the whole shelf shake and my shoes fell down. One shoe survived without taking any damage but the other one hit one of its front edges against a wooden chair and the tip of the edge got worn down and lost its point. Fuck my life. :)) I was really annoyed with myself because I could so easily have avoided this unnecessary and stupid mishap (I even reminded myself before I left last time >_>) and now I had to partially redo the painting job. Its during this kind of times, when you ruin things for yourself when you're almost done, that you want to highfive yourself in the face... with a frying pan.
So yeah, I had to backtrack, try to repair the edge and then repaint the area surrounding the damage and then go back to seal the whole shit again. Oh well, I needed to do a second coat of varnish anyway but yeah, fucking up the the nice edge really sucked donkey balls. I could so easily just have moved them away before closing the damn box.

Once I was done with the painting it was time to actually make the shoes wearable, aka create the hanao. What I did was that I took the previously mentioned synthetic rope and the couch cover fabric thingy that I took from school. I don't know the proper name for the piece but it's fabric with cotton layers/filling added to it, to make it extra soft and thick. So yeah, I had cut out some strips of the fabric and of the rope that would become the hanao. I just simply handsewed the fabric onto the rope, like the photo below shows. The fabric was folded in half and the edges were folded in too. It's important that the rope stays inside the fabric during all times because if it accidentally goes out then it's gonna be a bitch to reinsert once the "fabric tube" is closed.

Sewing the hanao.
This is not any accurate way to do it and no, I did actually not zigzag the edges because I had no sewing machine available; luckily the fabric doesn't seem to fray too easily. What I did though was that I folded in the edges before sewing them closed – should keep them from unravelling too much.
Once I was done with sewing I tied these thongs to my shoes. I didn't do any proper tying because I have no idea how the Japanese actually do it so yeah, just did a lot of basic knots over and over again until I ran out of rope.

Now what was left was to, preferably, find some sort of textured and durable rubber that I could attach to the bottom of the shoes to make them safer to walk on, especially indoors. I've realized from an earlier convention experience that wearing wooden shoes indoors with a plastic floor is like being on an ice-skating rink – in other words, a combo that will lead to injuries. Tengu geta has a higher percentage to lead to injuries anyway lol, who am I fooling?
Okay, so my first thought was to buy one of those car rubber mats and cut out pieces of it and hot glue them on. My second idea was to buy some really cheap second-hand shoes and cut out the bottom and use that but yeah, when I went scouting for suitable shoes it turned out to be harder than I thought. The thing is that I preferably wanted something transparent and so, one day when I passed by Ikea, I suddenly remembered that I had scrap pieces of a colorless anti-slip plastic cover thingy lying around somewhere; I'm sorry but I don't know the proper name for it. ^^" It's a thin transparent rubbery plastic film on a roll with nubs on it. I originally used it to put some inside my cupboard boxes so that all my cooking tools, spice boxes etc would stay in place; also used it for protection and for ease of cleaning. The reason I remembered its existence when I was close to Ikea is because that's where I bought it, for your information.

Before gluing it on.
So I just cut out some fitting pieces and hot glued them on. Of course I put the textured side outwards. I don't know what my hot glue was doing but it didn't seem to want to heat up properly (might be that the electricity is restricted in the garage, idk) and so I fear that these won't hold for very long. Oh well, in case that happens they're super easy to just glue back on at home.

Glued in place and started to trim the corners.
After I had glued the transparent sheets onto the shoes I trimmed the corners and whatever else that was a bit too big. Now to hope that the glue holds... Good thing though is that I have a fair amount left of the plastic thingy so even if I would somehow lose these original ones at a con or something I can easily replace them.

Finished tengu geta for Hotaru.
With that done my tengu geta are finished for now! I might still need to resize the hanao because I fear I might have made them a bit too long but yeah, I can't tell yet if that's gonna be a problem or not since I haven't tried wearing these monster shoes yet. But oh well, in any case I'm happy to finally be done with these shoes because it means that my SDK Hotaru cosplay is now complete!

Thanks for reading! Feel free to comment if you have any questions etc ~
Shiro Samurai out.

November 19, 2016

Cheshire Cat cosplay shoes

Hello my friends!

You've probably by now seen that I reviewed my Cheshire Cat cosplay costume from a game called 100 Sleeping Princes & The Kingdom of Dreams, also known as Yume Oukoku to Nemureru 100 nin no Ouji-sama in Japanese. Yeah, long name is long. Thing is that I didn't get any shoes with the costume and so I decided to make some myself... or well, modify from existing shoes.
The hard part was to find suitable shoes that I could use as a base. I had to plow through all second-hand stores in both Tornio and Kemi on several occasions (under a half year period) before I had a lucky strike at a second-hand store in Kemi called Viikkotori. I found a pair of suede boots in a lilac-tinted brown color and, although they were a size smaller than what I'd normally wear, they were still wearable (much to my surprise) and not as uncomfortable as I would have expected! I have quite small feet to begin with, for being a guy at least (EU size 40), but luckily that works to my advantage in this kind of cosplays when I have to look for women's shoes because men's shoes just don't have the kind of heel that the costume requires, lol.

Here's the shoes before any modifications.
I think they cost 5 € and were in surprisingly good shape – no obvious signs of wear and tear. I especially wanted suede boots because suede looks softer than leather and that's how I imagine Cheshire Cat's shoes. It was so hard to find fitting shoes and I'm still surprised that I even found these boots because they are as close to perfect as I could possibly have gotten. Thanks luck.

Cheshire Cat reference.
My original idea was to use worbla to cover the heel to make it have a more "metallic" look to it but yeah, the more I started thinking the less it felt like a good idea and the more it felt like me just wanting to avoid painting suede because I had no idea if one could even paint it successfully. I'm not sure if said boots are made of fake or real suede (there were no labels/tags to help) but before I started painting them I did a fabric check on an inconspicuous spot to see if the fabric paint I had would work or not. I've heard that if it's real suede it would soak right in and barely tint the material, but if it sticks then it's faux suede. So yeah, I did a paint test on the upper part of the heel's inside and the paint seemed to stick just fine I was relieved!

Painting time ~
I started to paint all the golden parts. Fun fact: I had lost my main set of paint brushes so I only, of course, found the smallest detail brush ever and had to make do with it; it took forever and was tedious af. I did two layers to get better coverage and avoid the "brush stroke" effect that a single coating did. On some parts I took artistic liberties because, as far as I know, there's not any other official image of Cheshire Cat that would show his shoes from a different angle and thus I can't know how those swirls look on the other side.
The paint I'm using is a water-based universal paint with a metallic effect, for your information. It's hobby paint in a small plastic bottle, by a German brand called Efco.

After I was done with all the painting I needed to make those little cute silver cat head decorations that he has on his shoes. Good thing I had some leftover polymer clay lying around since the days I made Ibuki's little amulet thingy – now I finally got some use for it!
One little problem though that showed up was that I have no own oven and the only one there is in this building is the one in the common kitchen. The problem is that said oven hasn't been working properly (or at all) for a long time now and I certainly don't trust it after a few previous bad experiences. So yeah, I asked my good friend Sacchan if I could come over during a weekend and borrow their oven – green lights!

Polymer clay cat decorations in the making.
I was a bit worried that the polymer clay might have hardened over the years but luckily it was still workable after some kneading. I made two flat cat faces, a couple centimeters long each. It took me a while to get them as identical as possible but I didn't strive for perfection this time because that would have taken way longer than I had patience for, lol.

I used that little tool to punch the eye holes. Efficient!
This is taken after I had baked the clay, btw.
We had some ridiculous issues with baking them because the description says about 30 minutes in 110 °C but that didn't do jackshit to our creations (Sacchan also made an accessory for one of her cosplays). Then again, the oven doesn't close completely so that might have played a part too. We had to keep them in the oven a lot longer but luckily, at some point, they actually hardened and changed color.

When I got home I went ahead and painted them with silver spray paint and hung them to dry in the shower. It didn't occur to me then but I noticed afterwards that even long after the paint should have been completely dry the cat heads felt... sticky. Not sticky in a non-dry way but sticky in a more greasy way. At first I was confused but then I did some research (should have done it before, oops) and came to the conclusion that one should avoid painting/sealing polymer clays with petroleum-based paints. Pretty much all spray paints I've ever used are alkyd-based and not water-based so, yeah. :| I read something that it might over time damage/dissolve/soften/whatnot the clay (depending on brand) but oh well, it's done already and it's not like it would be much work to replace these cat charms afterwards, if needed. I'll see how long they hold and remake them if necessary.
Spray painted and hung to dry.
After some time the charms had, surprisingly, dried enough to not feel greasy anymore. I didn't think they would but seems like at least Cernit brand polymer clay does...

Now the only thing left was to attach the kitty charms to the shoes. Hot glue might have been an option but I much rather wanted to sew them on, especially since the eye holes allowed for it. I dug out my old leftover fishing line and used it as sewing thread – it's amazing because it's super strong and transparent, which means that the "thread" is close to invisible!

Finished Cheshire Cat cosplay boots!
That's all for this post! ^_^

November 1, 2013

Chibicon 2013 cosplay plans + A wild Ibuki appears!

 Hi everyone!

Yes, I'm totally going to Chibicon in Oulu, Finland, held 9th November. How could I not when it's only about 100 kilometers away?

Oh well, first things first. For some time ago I bought an Ibuki cosplay from my friend Sebastian. I had planned to cosplay Ibuki at some point anyway but yeah, so much cosplays to do and so little time.. and money. xD So when I found out he was selling his Ibuki costume I jumped at the chance! I just had to order a wig and so I did back at late September. I ordered contact lenses as well but more about that later. The wig I ordered from China and it had been sailing around the globe for a little over one month and boy did I get worried that I wouldn't get it on time for Chibicon. I swear just when I started thinking "I probably won't get it in time.." well, guess what? It showed up!

With the wig in my hands I figured it's safe to announce my Chibicon cosplay plans now. I guess it's not a surprise for anyone anymore that it will be..

Ryunosuke Ibuki from Hakuouki
I'm not sure if I will have a sword with me or not.. my swords are still broken so unless I can borrow one from Jäätynyt Enkeli or so then I'm out of luck. Oh well, it's not like he used his sword in the anime much at all so...

Uhm also, today I did a quick Ibuki try-on or what to call it, basically just checking that the cosplay fits me and such. It's all okay except that I'm missing that little violet ornament he has hanging from that blue string. I'll eventually make it later, don't really have time now and I don't want to open/waste my package of clay on such a small piece.

Well well, now time for a few pictures!
Excuse the shitty lighting and that I'm wearing zero cosplay make-up, save for slight eyeliner and darkening of eyebrows. I just couldn't be bothered. It happens. Pretty often.

Photographer is Hasakitsuki
 Also have a more close-up'ish mirrror self-photo..


You might have noticed that I'm wearing waraji. Yes, I finally got me some.. or more like, Hasakitsuki's awesome mom made them, whopee! ~

And just because I feel like sharing the woven goodness, have some waraji pictures!



They are pretty fabulous if I do say so myself. Sure, after walking/standing around for a while the soles of my feet had gotten waraji weave prints carved on them and it wasn't painless. xD Oh well, it's not too bad and come on, as the Finns say - "cosplay ilman tuskaa on teeskentelyä". It translates to something like "cosplay without pain is pretending". It's true amirite? :-DD
I'm just not all that keen on walking outside with these in November.. I'm gonna freeze.. and curse perkele if there's snow in Oulu...

Oh oh oh, and one thing! One thing!
When I put the wig on I noticed it was a bit too long at the sides and bangs so guess what? Yeah, that.

Wig cutting if you hadn't figured. Ibufag
I'm outta here for now. Chibicon summary post next and Ibuki contact lens review coming up soon enough as well. Hopefully also an Ibuki & Kosuzu photoshoot!

Until then, see ya!