Your Maryann cosplay is absolutely fantastic, and I gotta know - did you make the mask yourself or do you have a specialist that done the work because it looks amazing! Also is the dress something you custom made? It all works so well together. I am sure other folk are filling your inbox up with the same questions!
Sure, I might as well do a little bit of a writeup (warning, features unflattering images that are not obscured by a black and white filter)
I have assembled the mask myself using a base and a sort of a material starter kit which I found on etsy. (starter kit is also on amazon and it even comes with a little instructional video). The trick is to pull the 4 way stretch minky fabric taught over the mask and then glue from the inside. Then cutting the fabric at the openings, pulling it through and gluing from the inside.
A lot of experimentation was done from then on. I used mainly low-temp hotglue and various forms of doublesided tape.
Presented without any particular order:
"follow me" eyes: I kind of winged these using the foam from the starter kit. I sized them so they are about the shape of the eye opening but about twice as big (at least 1cm of extra eye area behind the eye opening in each direction, so that the pupil can follow properly. The pupil is just black 2mm foam that i used to stick in place with double sided tape.
they came out.. way too good. the way they track is almost uncanny. Def the proudest part of the build for me.
Also.. i may have sourced some reflective foil for the whites of the eyes. Might jumpscare people who take any flash photography, heh.
I used black felt for eyeliner, eyebrows, nose and freckles, which i glued in place using double sided tape. It seems to hold really well. The mask is obviously more of a delicate work of art that might not survive a lot of abuse.
Used this little tutorial to correctly size and attach the head liner (from the parts kit) to the mask. I then made a sort of foam half-helmet which i then lined with mesh.
Did everything by feel, using mainly low-temp hotglue. Works perfectly fine (gluing mesh fabric was like pulling teeth tho, so I reinforced it with some hand stitching. Did i mention my stitching game is gross?).
For the hair I found a black 50€ wig from a local adult store which ended up working pretty well!
I hand sewn the ears using felt, mesh and fabric. They came out pretty good all things considering. Everything is held together with safety pins at the moment (so i can maybe interchange some stuff in the future).
In short, lots of improvising and working by feel.
First of, a black balaclava seems to work best as it really makes the face stand out. By contrast, a white one makes her seem like she has a double chin. Considered making a whole bevor out of minky fabric, but further research is required in that area.
The Dress: from victorianchoice.com, namely this one. Polyester satin. Shiny! I did attempt to steam the wrinkles out but unfortunately they are quite stubborn.
There are rumors that there might be some shapewear underneath. I will neither confirm or deny. However, I've heard this corset works pretty well. Especially if you stuff the bust with something. Among other things. Moving on...
Gloves: 7€ over the elbow halloween costume gloves, with 100€ genuine leather lady driving gloves over that. Fancy. Spent a lot of time searching for longer leather gloves, but sadly, it turns out its quite a scarce item in the middle of summer.
The Brooch: It's, well, sort of home made! From bits available at a local arts and crafts store. The glass part started off transparent. I primed it with tamiya primer and painted it with a glossy acrylic paint. After that, a fine coat of AK gloss varnish and it looked perf. (yeah i sometimes do scale modeling, how could you tell.) However, I soon discovered that hot glue does not work on glass and metal that well, so i had to glue the glass bit to the shiny silver bit with.. two part epoxy glue. Good news, it held! Bad news, my room smelled like cancer for days. Surely that did wonders for my health.
The collar is still a WIP but it involves velvet tape, some white frills and some stitching. Still figuring out what works best with this. I think i might use a wider velvet tape (3cm as opposed to 2cm wide) to hold everything in place better down there. As well as perhaps trying to make everything work with velcro. Trying to tie velvet tape into a bow tie every single time I put everything together is... annoying, to say the least.
The glasses: Bought these ages ago. They are perfect. No notes.
Thats more or less it! This whole project took me about a month or two. I learned a lot of new exciting things!
theartofmadeline
germansingergirl
andulkaphoto
discoholicmusic
turnnoffyourmind
janainaart
areudirty
romaincrisis
