Stitches and Kisses

"It ain't yours til you bleed on it" Amanda's/wifihunters cosplay blog ヽ(´▽｀ )ノ ♥

[wifihunters]

my gurl…. my wife…….. she comes together……

when i did a human-ish design of her over a year ago i didn’t expect to ever completely make it OR for it to so far look so much like the concept. so now im obligated to get it finished in time 😑

[wifihunters]

cosplay season bay-beyyyyy

[pincushionfingers]

me, barely recovered from sticking my hands 500 times sewing and lining two jackets, feet bleeding three days later: what if.... cainhurst knight set......

[pincushionfingers]

not waking up the sick good hoonter to get the pics off her camera, but some shots we grabbed of our weapons at katsucon! 

shoutout to Geralt Hanging Off Pier, hope the tiny scissors helped 😂

[pincushionfingers]

hey! I’m still not dead, but my fingers are bc of this thing! Since a couple people already asked on instagram and twitter, and I haven’t shown it here: this is my rakuyo for katsucon and how I made it!

The blade is: 

window blinds. the sliding door variety. bc the old tenant destroyed ours.

a thin steel rod

one (1) birthday bag

eva foam (thin)

GLUE

The hilt is:

a wooden dowel

the steel rod, cont. 

aluminum tape

more eva foam (thin and thick variety)

14g steel wire

three pvc connectors, two duplicates, one opposite

suffering

and this is how i put it together!

Each blade has a sandwich of blinds--the dagger side having a cutout for the inlay. 

the largest risk was the blade ‘rotating’ on the rod, and i was afraid hot glue wasn’t going to cut it, so when the ‘live’ edge was sealed, i poured an unholy amount of wood glue into the pocket and let it sit under boxes for a few days. 

I also just took a heat gun and helped push any bumps of glue flat inside. 

The dowel I used for the hilt I just dremmeled a little groove down the side of for the steel rod to sit in. I taped over the two of them with aluminum tape, but there was a little wobble, so a mending plate got clamped over them to make sure nothing would move on the longer blade (the short one was fine)

Then it was just.... detailing with eva foam. I bulked things up with hot glue andlittle strips of it, then taped over it to give a solid base over big parts like the hilt. 

I gave my lifeblood and a pair of eyebrow scissors + razor to cut out all the little details over ~40 hours. Cried a little. Then contact cemented them in place and cried more as I sat on the porch in the cold to do it. 

The spindley hilt guard pieces are the 14g wire rammed into tiny drilled holes and contact cemented in place. I just hot glued strips of foam on them until they looked vaguely right. 

On the smaller blade I cut out a plastic-y birthday bag into the design bc foam wasn’t going to hold its shape after being that chopped up. 

After that I just covered any foam with coats of wood glue, then painted with chrome rustoleum paint. Because I wanted to transform the whole thing based on whatever I was doing and also it being easier to carry through crowds as one piece, I made it.... three pieces!

The dagger has the ‘screw’ side of the connectors, the saber and extra hilt have the ‘bolt’ ends of the duplicates, so either of them can attach and make it transformed/not. I’ll just keep the extra hilt in my bag. 

But that was it! The materials were pretty basic, though some tools might not be. Mostly it was a ton of razoring out swirls. Everything is strong enough to not wobble and withstand the cats flinging it around a couple times. Also lady Meowia approved! 

[pincushionfingers]

Long time no post, but progress for lady maria this katsu 💙

[pincushionfingers]

and the (dopey) pics of us ♥ 

[pincushionfingers]

So this is the cloak I worked super hard to make for my girlfriend in honor of her cosplaying my warden--I didn’t get to finish entirely like i wanted, but the people who spoke to us about it were incredibly sweet ♥ 

I collected, cleaned, oiled, sealed, drilled, and individually sewed every shell with gold thread with some help fighting off seagulls from rachele and my mother. I still plan on adding more later, but there are over two hundred shells and about 400 beads, as well as wire links so far. Which is pretty small in comparison to the upside of 600 scales rachele wove for the armor.

there’s a few progress shots and details under the cut!

We’ll improve her with some more time and rested hands, but we were both very proud! 

[pincushionfingers]

katsucon 2019 more like our 25 y/o selves dress as medieval teens and apparently ended up on tiktok a lot despite not knowing how it worked (todo is me, mido is the cute wife @beyondtheeluvian )

[photocaptor]

Dragon Age photoshoot, part 1 part 1 / part 2

Please feel free to tag yourself, and I’ll update the post to include credit for you. Thanks!

Inquisitor Adaar: @pincushionfingers Grey Warden slamming a healing potion: @neptunes-booty Grey Warden chugging a lyrium potion: @beespr0ut Carver Hawke: @elefluff

Katsucon 2017

*Photo edits are by mod pizza, not potato/photocaptor…(´。＿。｀) Sorry that they’re not as good as his.*

[pincushionfingers]

ahhhh thank you! ♥

[pincushionfingers]

the tooled-leather-looking details on your inquisitor armor? how?? it's so beautiful???

I think this is for the shoulder bits, if so, great news, its actually the cheapest pleather! the darker parts are a last year mispick off ebay and the lighter bits I stole from my girlfriend’s warden fabric. They were both under $6 a yard (mine was 3.99) 

the studs are the bent backs off ink tags from my workplace

the cross pattern is 1/16 inch seams across the whole back (pain and suffering) and a few of them are actual darts to shape it. The edge was rolled over a piece of ugly yarn to bulk it up (this is actually how i always do it to make pleather look better).

 it worked super nice and i was really happy with it! ♥ ;u;

[pincushionfingers]

omg saw you in the hall, wanted to ask what those horns were made of and how they were attached?

hi! they’re 9 insulation foam sheets (1.5 inch thick) stacked and spiraled from scraps i had from old projects. I just glued them with wood glue, then cut with a knife/sandpaper/dremmel. They were sealed with more wood glue, painted, and attached with white velcro and some wire (and tears). 

this is how they looked in progress! 

i didn’t get the spirals perfect when stacking and left some gaps, but i planned to cover the horns in part with craft foam anyway to get the ~ornate metal~ look, so i didn’t worry about the holes, only getting it to sit on my head.

i also wanted arishok-big horns, plus a spiral to them the curved horns don’t have in game, so i left them a touch fat to account for dremmeling in the spirals.

craft foam hot glued to cover the errors and also just for decoration

then i just sealed  with wood glue (2 coats on anything ‘metal’) and painted them using the same gold for my armor, then acrylics! 

I have no pictures of the attachment, but it was white velcro from walmart, one side on the horn, one glued to a corresponding piece of pleather sewn into the wig. the wig was purposefully cheap so I could shift the hair out of the way. 

edit: NOTE to glue the horn to the velcro the surface that fits against your head must be sealed. Firmly. otherwise the sealant and your outside layer of foam is just going to rip right off, so even if it’s not showing, seal! it!

the horns sagged still, so i jammed some of my wire from chainmail (14 gauge steel) with one end in either horn and the rest across my head like a headband under the wig.

they don’t sit perfect, so I braided a few strands around the base to hide it, but really no one noticed. I attached some chains to make it shinier and also to give a last resort support if the weight was hit/pulled back at the con, but it never happened! yay! 

honestly they were very light and comfortable for their size, half the weight was the sealant!

 it was a very tedious method for the insulation foam, but i had the material and this entire cosplay was mostly using up things from past ones. It was very cheap as well even if I hadn’t had the foam–the 10ft sheet was $9 at home depot and i used a minimal bit of it.

Carving it rather than a wire armature with spray foam also let me measure better and get them closer to the same spiral, so would recommend for when you want to be both a showboat but symmetrical.   

[pincushionfingers]

didn’t get many, but pics of adaar the gf was willing to take/took without me knowing (and one featuring her ♥) 

bonus, our faithful party member:

[wifihunters]

my pride my joy my soul i sold to get those to stay on

[pincushionfingers]

yELLS

[pincushionfingers]

no longer the Worst™ armor with paint!

[pincushionfingers]

the Worst Armor™ pre-primer