NogStitch Cosplay and Props for Beginners

We are new to Cosplay and want to share our journey with you, we test materials and share our knowledge on how we create each piece. We love to hear your feedback and are happy to answer any questions you want to ask . Follow for follow! :)

[nogstitchcosplay]

Clover payday 2 mask

So started a mini WIP on Clover's mask from the game Payday2.

This is the clay base which i will cast and create a mould.

Reference pictures:-

Materials used:-

Clay- white air dry clay

water

sculpting tool

plain base mask

This was actually a lot easier than i had anticipated, just apply water and smooooth as much as you can. (A FULL "HOW TO" will follow when finished)

[gameraboy]

Splash Heroes by Jaroslav Wieczorkiewicz

[vexwantstobattle]

Uh… want

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WE LOVE THIS! need a new calender for 2015 get this :)

[nogstitchcosplay]

Game of thrones make-up test

Here is a quick and cheap make-up example of Nogs' Daenerys Targarian cosplay. Details of the wig and make-up used are all in the description below. 

Products used :-

Maybelline NewYork Babyskin primer

Benefit stay dont stray eye primer

Estee Lauder double wear foundation - in Cool bone 1C1 

Benefit Smokin' eyes kit

Borjois cream blush - in nude velvet

Maybelline Illegal Length Fibre Extensions Mascara

Sleek MakeUp Luminaire Highlighting Concealer

Collection Lasting Perfection Ultimate Wear Powder

Natural collection lipgloss- clear

Cover face in babyskin primer(or only cover areas that require cover e.g nose and chin).

Apply foundation lightly with a good flat foundation brush, pat face with tips of fingers to ensure no lines appear in the foundation

apply benefit eye primer to your lids and undereyes

lightly sweap the pale pink colour eye shadow from the smokin eyes kit onto your lids, slighty sweeping the brush up towards your brow bone

apply eye liner to your top lid, only going halfway to open eyes and extend length, then using the black powder from the smokin eyes kit, apply a thin line underneath the eyelashes at the bottom of your eye NOT ON THE WATERLINE, and apply mascara

use the highlighting concealer on the height of your cheekbones and under your eyebrows

apply the blush in small circular motions to the apple of your cheeks and the cover face in loose powder

apply a thin layer of gloss to the centre of your lips and walla

Wig was purchased from Arda wigs

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League of legends cosplay

Here are a few pictures of NOG as Annie and Rio (gorgeous Nephew) as Kennen from the game league of legends. (costumes created by us) worn at Preston comicon 2014

Nog with nephew ^^

Nog with holly from red dwarf^

Nog (better costume view ^

Kennen progress shots

If you guys require any questions on how we created any of these costumes feel free to ask in the ask box :) 

[nogstitchcosplay]

IRELIA AND KENNEN progress shots

As most of you know we are currently making Nightblade Irelia along side Deadly Kennen for my nephew. We will be wearing these costumes at Preston Comicon in the UK at the end of the month (Eeee!). Here are a few progress shots of Kennen's shuriken and Irelia's Mantle of Decorum. 

Materials - 1m foam board, craft knife, pins, Sharpie pen

Adz drawing the patterns

Putting the patterns onto foam board TIP- Use pins to keep the pattern in place and get a more accurate design. The holes will be unnoticeable in the final piece!

The finished shapes before sanding and adding of detail. 

Oh hi! 

- Nog x

[nogstitchcosplay]

Sneaky Peaky - Sewn Chaos Orianna, League of Legends

Sneaky peak at Em's 'Want to Cosplay' list time!

Ori's been one of Em's favourite champs for a long time, and Sewn Chaos is one of her fave skins. So when she started wanting to cosplay, this was one of the first ideas thrown out.

We haven't done much to act on this one yet, but wanted to post up some sketches I did a while back to help us picture the skin better:

(Closer look here [x])

I used a combination of the official Splash art and LoLKing model viewer as reference. I haven't taken into account how we'll actually -make- any of this yet, just simply getting an easy-to-digest turn around of the skin to better plan things out with :)

After sketching it out I feel this will be a beast of a challenge. Not only is there a lot of patched together fabrics to contend with, Ori's skirt twirls around her in-game. Though we don't necessarily have to have a twirling skirt for the outfit, if we can manage it it'll be awesome XD

More Irelia stuff coming soon btw. Time's ticking...

- Adz

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Irelia inspiration pictures

This irelia cosplay has been quite challenging as we have worked of numerous pictures to complete this. There were a few little bits about the nightblade in game model that we didn't think looked quite right so we used a few other inspiration pictures to help us decide what we wanted. 

splash art from league of legends

art by churail

art by kymeth

[nogstitchcosplay]

DAS air dry clay review

DAS- AIR DRY CLAY

This clay comes in two different versions, the white version which dries a grey/off white colour and the terracotta version which dries a slightly darker shade of the original colour. 

Used for:-

Creating molds

Creating detail on props and armour

Making figures etc

Crafting

Pros:-

-The clay was quite manageable to  mold, we used this clay to mold the horns for our maleficent helmet . It takes a little warming up, but just use your hands to "awaken" the fibers and it becomes much easier to form. 

-It had a very faint odor compared to other clays used in the past and was very easy to wash off both skin and clothing

- the clay did not dye hands or clothing

- can be painted and sanded

- very limited cracking

Cons:-

- The clay we used was the white one and it took a few days to dry completely (we had very thick horns). My experience is that the terracotta one dries slightly quicker. WARNING do not try and paint, cover or sand the clay until it is completely dry, this will cause devastating cracks and breakages. 

- The clay fell out of its shape slightly due to the length of drying

- the packaging, although says re-sealable is not great and the left over clay becomes hard and unusable pretty quickly. 

***tips***

when covering the clay with paper machete, first cover with cling film as this allows the clay to be taken out of the mold with ease.

Dry in a cool dark room for optimal results

lay down cling film onto your molding surface as this prevents any unwanted "sticking" to surfaces. 

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Budget Cosplay wig review

Wigs can be hard to come by that are:

a. cheap

b. wearable

c. good quality

So we have decided to put up a few reviews of wigs we have come across that fit into all three of these categories.

1- Annie from league of legends wig

Store - Guoyataotao

This wig was fantastic! it stayed on well all day, kept it shape and was surprisingly cool on me head. It was easy to re-style as Annie's hair is slightly different to the style it came in (few sweeps here and there and a little snip of the fringe and it was fine), and it was the PERFECT colouring for what we wanted. I found the price very reasonable and the range of different colours means that i could use many of them for other cosplays, the only downfall was that it took over a month to arrive so get as early as possible!!. You can get the wig from this link in rose red. 

2. Irelia from league of legends

Store- MK fashion

This wig is a medium quality wig, it is very good for styling on a cool setting and is very good value for money. The wig fell very nicely around the face however i found it slightly thin at the back so may require extensions or clip in you are wanting a very thick head of hair. The hair was very soft and i found brushing and styling was very easy. The shop also sells a range of other wigs and clip ins and at a very reasonable price. *Wig comes with wig cap you can find this wig here on this Link.

3. Gamora from Guardians of the galaxy

Store-Star2073910

This wig is of good quality and looked fantastic on! , however the actual colour was much too bright for Gamora and therefore we would not recommend using it for this cosplay. The wig itself came in lovely packaging for a very good price and you can buy directly from this link. The curls stay in incredibly well and I even used my curling irons on the wig on the coolest setting just to re-vamp. Be wary of using very hot styling irons on this wig though! *wig came with wig cap.

4. Katarina from league of legends

Store- Lily Yang

This wig was worn by one of my friends for her Katarina cosplay earlier in the year. It looked fantastic on her and the "bangs" at the front made it perfect for Katarina. The length was great and the quality was medium as it was  a little bit brittle but still looked fantastic!. The wig stayed on perfect and the wig line was undetectable. This was by far the best value for money wig at only £6. You can get this wig in a range of colours on this link.

[nogstitchcosplay]

Maleficent mark 1#

This is a picture of our first ever fully made cosplay :)

Character- Maleficent

Model- Eminog (first half of Nogstitch)

Photograph- Jon Martin 

Creators- Nogstitch cosplay

We have decided to re-make the horns as these were only for practice (first ever time using modeling clay- review to follow)

The photograph was taken at MCM Manchester comicon in UK

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Annie cosplay

Quick throw back to the time Nog cosplayed as Annie from league of legends. oh how far we have come since then!! (2 years ago manchester comicon UK)

Dem freckles

Lost my mini Tibbers eyes :( 

[nogstitchcosplay]

Progress on Irelia blades

AND SO IT BEGINS... (Video to come, but for now just pictures)

Equipment used:

3 large sheets of foam board (About A2 size)

2 stanley knives

Smaller craft knives for finer detail

Sand paper - Soft and medium grit

Pencil

Black sharpie pen

60 cm Ruler

Cutting board (Safety first :P)

Stencil (Created by Adz, we can upload the stencil later if you guys would like to use it)

Pins (Keep the stencil in place)

Elbow grease! 

We began by pinning the stencil to our foam board and tracing around it (We fit 5 blades snugly on 2 sheets of foam board). We cut the main shape out with the Stanley Knives and the finer circular parts with the craft knives. Now it is important to note (I found out the hard way), try not to hold the craft knife like you would a pen. My cuts turned out angular which, although may be useful for some things, will need cleaning up for us before angling the blades later. Hold your knife straight down, almost as though like cutting a birthday cake ;) (Mmm ...cake). In this case, the cake is most definitely not a lie!. 

We cut out 2 pieces at first to ensure we were doing it correctly

And then created another 2 pieces for the top part of the sword:-

(The whole thing is huge btw, stands about my height o.o)

After laying it out, we decided that it would be best to make the sword thicker by creating another 4 pieces. This would look better and help when creating the finer details of the sword edges. which Adz mapped out below by first drawing out the edge with a sharpie pen and cutting on a slant.

(This was Adz' first try on doing these types of edges and it still looked amazing)

To do this I start cutting into the foam and angle the blade as I slice through. I make sure that the blade isn't cutting too far into my template lines or underneath the blade.This knife was -just- long enough to carve through in one go from edge to sharpie lines, but if yours isn't just try to eyeball the cut. Don't be scared, you can get away with a couple mistakes! It's clean up-able! :D

- Adz

After the edges were roughed out, we used sandpaper to smooth the detail and make a more smooth polished look.

The end results aren't perfect - There are a couple nicks and notches from the cutting process, but we feel like they'll add some character to the blade when they're done. Irelia's blade won't be pristine after all that battle after all!

Our next step will be to glue the blades together, clean up any rough spots, and start to cover them ready for the expanding foam!

- Nog xx

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Irelia - Prop planning

Planning time!

Trying to get our act together for Irelia :DDD  Exciting! This is me trying to get as much good reference of the props as I can get. Started out on LolKing and studying the in-game model - Print Screen is your friend here! The more angles you can see your prop from the better your understanding of the object is (This only held true for me of the blades, the headpiece still has me baffles haha)

Once I have a bunch of reference, I take to my pad and start trying to map out the structure in pieces, keeping in mind how I'll want to piece it together. This is something you can think up as you're examining your references.

Using Irelia's blades as an example, they're obviously going to be 4 separate blades. However, my initial idea has them being made of two pieces - The blade (labelled A) and the long mount/grips (labelled B). We've decided on trying our hand with expanding foam for the grips this time around, though the two piece idea is still viable if we turn out to suck at carving foam! The blades themselves will be created using foam board.

Irelia's blades are all "floaty" and are held together by magic in the game, so to gain this effect we're thinking of securing the ball and grips together using a clear plastic.

More updates as we progress :D  Hopefully this is useful to someone!

- Adz

[cosplayblog]

Nebula from Guardians of the Galaxy

Cosplayer: Karin Olava [TM | DA | TW | FB]

Photographers:

Håvard Staub Nyhus (#1)

Danarki [WW | TW | FB | IN] (#2)

[nogstitchcosplay]

just look at this fantastic Nebula cosplay o.o we don't usually post cosplay photographs but this deserved a re-post :) the detail on her make-up is just perfect!

nogstitch*

[nogstitchcosplay]

5 essential tips for Planning and preparing your first cosplay

Making a cosplay can be as hard or as easy as you want it to be, myself and Adam tend to go for the trickier ones for a challenge , but if you are uncomfortable with being adventurous then stick to a relatively easy one to start with.

1. What are your strengths?

Are you a dab hand with a sewing machine? Do you have any experience with prop making? What materials are you familiar with already? These are the questions you will have to ask yourself before you start your making.

2. Get a decent picture of the character you want to cosplay!

I am lucky as Adam is a fantastic drawer so he tends to draw out the complicated bits which allows us to gain a full picture of what we want exactly!. If you are doing a character from league of legends there are 3D models available on the LOLking site which are amazing to use as reference. e.g below is maleficent concept art work by Adam Steel.

3. Practice with your materials first!!

As a new cosplayer you will not have the experience of the knowledge of the different materials and gizmos and gadgets available, and believe me there are BAZILLIONS!!!. You can gain advice from other cosplayers via blogs and you tube (I spend at least 2 hours a day watching cosplay videos o.o) but at the need of the day it is what YOU feel comfortable using. Every one is different and practice does in fact make perfect. We are currently testing materials for a staff for our world of warcraft series and in doing so we have made a tiney tiny replica out of different materials to test the strength, durability and manageability. Although this is time consuming I really believe this is essential when creating co splays you are unsure about. And remember glue gun is your new best friend :)

4. Refer back to your drawings and reference materials!! Keep a picture of your character next to you at all times to enable you to keep on track! I work by eye whereas Adam works by mind so it is essential for me to have a picture close by the check back with.

5. Be patient!!. I am THEEEE worst person at being patient, I want it done NOW and I hate waiting for things to dry etc. but drying times are imperative and you must be patient with materials to ensure that you get the strength and durability you need within your armour or props.

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So we decided to make a tiny tiny version of the mage staff . this is a drawing by adz and it is of me as a mage. However we decided that the staff is more fitting to a warlock so we are going to play around with the overall design and finish :)

little bit messy but its phase 1 :)

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next cosplay venture :) 1 is nighblade Irelia cosplay , progress to come :)

nog*