#cosplay tips

[covidsafecosplay]

"Con crud" doesn't have to be inevitable! Mask up to help protect yourself and fellow con-goers from preventable infections!

Free DIY Mask Pattern Masterlist | Staying COVID-safe in Cosplay

[simonsezsorry]

Thank you to all the awesome people who I got to meet and take photos with at Fan Expo Cleveland, and of course to everyone who supported me in the Fan Expo 2026 Cosplay Craftsmanship Competition!! I'm thrilled to have received the Sustainability Award!!

I'll be providing my build book below so you can see how I made my entire cosplay for just $52 and from nothing but locally-thrifted and pre-owned or second-hand materials! No online-shopping required! ;)

Feel free to ask any cosplay questions in the comments! :D

(I apologize if anything is too difficult to read. I made this in procreate since I currently don't have a word processor that can place images and have paragraphs snap to individual pages, whoops... If anything is unclear, pls ask in the comments!)

[silhouette-cosplay]

I can never overstress the importance of a mockup for your costume!

Also called a toile, this is the first draft and sometimes pattern for your garment! It’s especially important if your costume has abnormal seam placement or you don’t fit neatly into commercial pattern sizing (and let’s face it, most people don’t!) Making a mockup can save you so many headaches later: you can check the fit of your pieces, make rounds of adjustments, and not worry about messing up your nice and sometimes expensive final materials.

A mockup should also use material that emulates the hand, drape, and thickness of your final material. For example: on my Black Widow bodysuit, I used a super cheap stretch knit, because my final fabrics were all stretch neoprenes. For my Astarion breastplate, the final was going to be veg tan leather, so I mocked up in craft foam (I have also used felt as a leather mockup material!)

Mockups can be lengthy processes; I often end up doing 2-3 rounds of fitting and alterations before I’m happy with the final pieces. It’s frustrating at times to work through the fitting challenges, but ultimately I have always regretted the times I didn’t do a mockup, and I know my final costume will be better for having taken the time and care!

[888xiicos]

How to Paint Rubber Shoe Soles

Are you a cosplayer? Are you painfully stubborn and tired of every video and tutorial out there about painting shoes telling you not to paint the rubber soles? Me too! So I did it anyway.

Here's a full break down of how I did it complete with suggested materials and pictures!

Apologies to those that use screen readers, Tumblr is NOT letting me add alt text on desktop, so I would greatly appreciate anyone who wants to add an image description in a reblog. I'll try to write one up and add it to the end of this post later, but you are free to beat me to it!

[mikhalson]

Yay now several posts about EVA foam! For everyone who (as me) never used this material: it's easier than you think if you don't craft regularly, and harder than you think if you do lol

First part of Thorin braces! Part 2

1. First, I measured everything according to Mir's arms. It turned out really important for the whole outfit: an inch bigger or smaller can ruin the final look, I swear. So, I drew the patterns by hand

2. I cut the bases out of hard 5 mm eva. Then, I cut the patterns out with a box cutter and transferred to 2 mm eva with a regular pen. I fixed paper patterns in places with sewing pins, it works super great.

3. I cut patterns out with the same box cutter really carefully, so not to cut too much, bc I'd have to fix it later. The most difficult part for me was holding the knife at 90° to the table to get even edges. Well, I really messed this mission up, but luckily, it didn't make the result much worse phew

4. This thin eva has a glue base, so it was super easy to glue pattern on the base. I also sanded the edges with sanding paper. You can also use a dremel, but this craft was easy enough to go with just sanding paper.

5. I used a heat gun to warm it all up, rolled the parts with my hands, and held that way until they cooled down again. I also used liquid nails with water to fix some ectra cuts I made on the pattern.

I ran out of place for pictures! Thanks for reading!

[squeakadeeks]

some information about how I shape my cosplays!!!

[fabrickind]

Sewing hack:

You know how like 80% of sewing is actually ironing? This is how I make it less terrible:

Get a table, desk, Kallax, or similar. Throw a tabletop ironing board on top of it. Place it somewhere near your sewing machine table (next to in an L shape, behind, whatever works for your setup). The key is that you can reach it while still seated at your sewing station. If you don't have space for a permanent table, get a regular folding ironing board that can fold to the correct height. This setup works best with a swivel chair.

Put an iron on this table. Make sure you plug it in and turn it on when you are seated at your sewing station (and turn it off and unplug it when you are finished sewing)

When you need to press a seam, simply turn yourself to the side without getting up and press it. Easy.

I find that if I don't have a setup like this, I simply will not get up to press my seams. If I can reach the iron and have it waiting for me, though, I can work "pressing seams" into my regular sewing workflow in a way that isn't terrible for my brain and doesn't add a ton of extra steps (getting up, making sure the iron is on and set up, pressing the seam, walking back to the sewing machine...) and it reduces the amount of ironing in sewing from about 80% to about 50%

Hope it helps someone else to do it this way!