Lava's Blog

Just recently getting back into cosplaying. Working on Mercy right now, started a month before the next con I'm going to. Wish me luck! Lol. A bit about me: I'm 24, pansexual, cis female, live in Minneapolis, have a BS in Chemistry, and love to play games and sing. I also play roller derby with the North Star Roller Derby league in Minneapolis! I'm Torrential Pain, on the Violent Femmes team!

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Okay but I stopped using tumblr for like two years and I come back to post more cosplay stuff and the UI is just as terrible as it was two years ago.

Like, what the fuck, tumblr. Get your shit together.

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And finally, the full cosplay! The wings were heavy, but it wasn’t too bad for short periods of time. I participated in the masquerade and won the award for best recreation!! I’m so happy and amazed and pleased. I put so much hard work into the cosplay, barely finished on time, and had a blast at the con. It was so much fun. I have quite a few notes for myself to edit and improve my cosplay for the future, too. But for now, a break from working so goddamn hard. 

Again, I’d like to thank my dad for helping me by printing and milling parts for my cosplay and giving me his expert opinion on construction and Pizoobie for the wing and staff files. 

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Mercy WIP master post

Neck stuff and boots

Breast plate and leg armor

Wig styling

Wig and outfit test

Back piece, leg armor, and breast plate work

Halo, arms, and gloves

Wings

Hip feathers and back piece

Staff part 1

Staff part 2

Breastplate details and armor test

Putting it all together

Setbacks & workspace

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Pattern for the hip feathers out of paper, then made and shaped them out of worbla. Glued cardboard to the back for stability. I used velcro to connect it to the breast plate. 

I decided to use the spine to support the wings, so made that pvc arrangement and glued it to the back piece (which you can see I made bigger than my last WIP of it). I ended up using straight connectors instead of 45 degree ones since I think it looked better overall. After shaping the back piece with cardboard, I covered it with a couple layers of worbla, made the diamond out of pink foam and covered it with worbla too, then bondoed and painted the whole thing. Sorry, no more wip shots of it since I was pressed for time and forgot. I made the back spine out of aluminum foil that I glued into a small piece of pvc and covered in worbla. For the odd lacing up the back I painted black craft foam silver and glued it onto the spine. I used buckles and straps to connect the breastplate to the spine and velcro to connect the shoulders. 

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Milled the wings out of pink insulation foam on a ShapeOko router. Unfortunately the router wasn’t big enough to do the entire thing in one go, so it had to be cut in half and then glued together. My dad did all of the milling and the pattern for the wings came from Pizoobie (thank you so much!!). Feathers were traced out on paper, then cut from plexiglass, spray painted with frosted glass spray paint, then fluorescent yellow spray paint. A hardboard core strengthened the wings and a pvc pipe was heated and smushed flat to attach the wings to the back piece. The wings were covered in epoxy after being milled and glued together (twice to ensure that they were covered entirely: spray paint melts the pink foam). Gorilla glue was used to glue the wings together and holes were drilled in the plexiglass so the glue could expand into them and lock them into place so they wouldn’t be pulled out (same thing with the pvc). Finally, the cracks were filled with bondo, sanded, and painted over. 

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Halo base was worbla, then pink insulation foam to get the shape of it. Epoxy to harden it and protect the foam, then primed and spray painted (no pic of it spray painted). Dip dyed yellow fabric to get the gradient on the arms, then glued white vinyl onto the sleeves and painted them with fabric paint. The symbol was printed out and attached with contact cement. Gloves were satin opera gloves I cut down and glued painted vinyl onto the knuckles. For grip, I added dots of puff paint onto the fingers and lines of it onto the palms. Worked real well.

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Casual Toothless cosplay I threw together last-minute for this year’s Anime Detour (already had the sweater. I’m not a god). Just threw on a black wig and some face paint and voila! Toothless! It was a surprising hit. Guess everyone loves a classic.

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Styling the wig! It turned out pretty good IMO, but the hair is a little chunkier than I had hoped. But for the first time actually really styling a wig, I think it turned out pretty okay. The base wig was the Jeannie wig from Arda in Champagne, because they were out of Titanium Blonde.

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Couple pics of my finished Azula cosplay and a bonus Sunday cosplay of College!Azula. Unfortunately, couldn’t find any better shots of my regular Azula cosplay.

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anyways, I’m in love with newt scamander (who’s autistic and bisexual btw)

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What’s your source for that? During the movie I was wondering if he was autistic but I can’t find anything from JK or the actor who plays him confirming or denying it. 

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Finished! For a first attempt, I’m rather pleased with it. I put too much hair in the widow’s peak though so it’s really thick on top and looks slightly weird, so I may redo the wig in the future. The side things look thin and weird since I had just wet them, so they’ll look better once they dry, and I initially made them too fat so there’s some shorter hair bobby pinned to the side of the wig. Took me two days, probably about 12 hours total to do. 

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So this is going to be my Azula wig. Holy hell I hate ventilating. The first two pics are the wig straight out of the box. Third is with the hair combed back and the side bang things isolated out. Fourth and fifth are WIPS of the ventilation. Fourth is after about four hours of work (probably three of actual work with an hour of dicking around in there) and fifth is after about two and a half more hours. Plus, the hair I’m sewing in is slightly shinier than the wig hair, but idk if it comes across in the picture. Hopefully it’s not too noticeable. Hopefully I can get this shit done before Detour this weekend. 

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I promise I’m not dead. I just haven’t done a lot of cosplay stuff lately. 

I actually got this a while ago but never posted a picture. So here’s one. Yeah I bought it. I figured it would be cheaper in the long run and look a hell of a lot better than I could ever do myself (focusing on college takes time away from sewing) and I love Azula so much that I want to feel good about my cosplay. Only one I’ve ever bought (so far at least, not planning on buying any others as of now). 

I am altering and styling the wig though, which is a BITCH. More on that in my next post.

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Photos from last fall’s Attack on Titan photoshoot with Elspeth from Sky View Photography at the Mill City Ruins! Super pleased with how they turned out. 

Model: Me Photos: Sky View Photography

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More photos from my Daenerys shoot with Sky View Photography. 

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Ouran jacket arrived today! ALso my wig, but I didn’t want to fuck with it and put it on, so you don’t get a picture of that one. Going to be doing the Hitachiin twins with a friend! I also don’t remember which one I am.

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MIkasa Ackerman cosplay from Metacon this year! The red brick thing I’m posing on is a fountain that was thankfully off, or I wouldn’t have gotten to climb on it. 

Full album