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Blizzcon!

That’s right! We have FINALLY finished all of our costumes, and today is full of packing and doing laundry and getting the house in order before we leave on Wednesday. We will post a few pictures from our photoshoot the day of, so that even if you aren’t at Blizzcon, you can still see our pictures! We’ll also be participating in the costume contest, and will be wearing costumes on the second day. If you are going to be at Blizzcon, and see two witch doctors walking around, come up and say hi! Get a picture with us! We love meeting new people!

I wanted to put up a quick post on things that we’re doing to get ready for Blizzcon, and if you have any suggestions, feel free to comment!

Firstly, we’ve put on our costumes, walked around in them, made sure everything worked with everything else. I mentioned that in my last post, but it’s important!

Today, we also practiced packing everything into the car- if you don’t have a lot of large pieces, you don’t have to do this, but we have a huge shield, two large masks, etc, that need to fit into the back of my car (luckily I have fold down seats). It took a little while to figure it all out, but it’s important to make sure before the day that you’re trying to put everything in! If you’re flying, same thing- make sure all of your pieces fit into your suitcases without problems.

I made a ton of lists, too, of what we need to pack, what we’ve already packed into the box, what needs to go into our cosplay emergency kit, and what medicine we might need to bring- pepto bismol, tylenol, etc.

After everything is packed, we’re going to check and double check that we haven’t left anything out or behind, and then it’s all going to be sitting neatly in the garage until Wednesday, since I’m not so comfortable with driving around with all that in my car until Wednesday.

You may also want to make sure that you have your Blizzcon tickets printed out, your reservation confirmations printed, and try to prepare for bad weather- I’m probably going to be freezing, since it’s going to be on the cooler side, but nothing I can do about that. I’m more worried about it raining, though, since it’s going to rain in Anaheim for the week all the way up until Friday, when it’s supposed to be only cloudy. Really, really hoping it doesn’t rain. There isn’t an umbrella big enough to cover Mario’s horns.

Anyway, I could list a lot more, but somebody has already done that on the Blizzcon forums, so check that out.

Oh, and if you’re cosplaying, don’t forget to come to the cosplay meetup on Thursday, and the photoshoot on Friday! I can’t wait to see everyone there!

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A bunch of useful Youtube tutorials

I am quite obsessed with Youtube, and I have actually learned everything I know about makeup from the gurus on there. For my makeup tutorials that I want to do, I’m going to try to not do any that have already been covered by people far more talented than I! So, here are several of my favorite (and most useful) costume/cosplay makeup tutorials that are currently out there in Youtube land:

(This is Kandee Johnson, I’m not going to post all of the videos that she made that have to do with costumes, but this is her most recent. Her other ones include Maleficent, Oompa Loompa, Tinkerbell, Poison Ivy, Cleopatra, Barbie, Jessica Rabbit, Edward Scissorhands, Queen of Hearts, Snow White, Na’vi (Avatar), Michael Jackson (I swear it’s spot on.), Captain Jack Sparrow, Jem… Okay, there are a lot more than I thought. Go check out her channel!)

That’s all I’ll link for now, but seriously, check out all of these people’s Youtube channels, and they’re all still uploading tons of videos for Halloween.

Coming up in the next few days, hopefully- a Marie Antionette makeup tutorial.. pretty much just because I got the costume for Halloween (Though I’m not going to be Marie Antionette- I’m going to be Princess Poppycock! And yes, I didn’t make my costume, but I honestly didn’t feel like dealing with an entire new costume as soon as I got back from Blizzcon- which would give me two days, max. No thank you, sir.

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Cosplay Makeup tutorials!

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately, and I decided I wanted to do some cosplay makeup tutorials on here. Step by step, complete with pictures and a product list (mostly drugstore makeup, so that everyone can afford it, but for the more expensive items I’ll list similar products as well) so that anyone can pull off a perfect face for whatever cosplay they’re doing.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I’ll do one of body painting- though I already have some videos up here– so that I can explain a bit more in depth the steps. I’ll gladly take requests for certain character looks!

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Things to do before going to a convention in Cosplay

This weekend, Mario and I had a photoshoot for our costumes for Blizzcon, mostly because I wanted to put together business cards for the convention, but more importantly because we needed to do a trial run. It’s always important to put on everything for your costume, including body paint, tattoos, makeup, wig, whatever is going to be in the final product, at least a few weeks before the convention that you’re going to. That way, if it’s an elaborate costume with lots of pieces, you’ll know how long it’ll take you to get ready, and even if it’s not, it’s good to practice walking around, being in character, posing, and seeing how the costume moves. Then if you’re going to run into any malfunctions with the costume, it will happen in your trial run, instead of while you’re at the convention or on stage for a masquerade, and you’ll have plenty of time to fix it.

Continue reading →

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How to make horns for Cosplay

Horns are a pain in the butt.  You have only a few good options when you need them for your cosplay. You can buy real horns…. but that’s pricey, or you can make your own but that can be messy….. or is it!!

Quick background on this project. I needed a set of 4 horns for a shield. These needed to be over 12 inches long and pretty thin. I got lucky on this and had a form I could use, but these could easily be done free hand as well.

Materials:Expanding foam and wire mesh, that is all you will need.

Total cost $9.00 on the mesh (enough for 2 big horns)
$4.99 on the foam (still haven’t used it all up)
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Cost per horn…. about $4.00 dollars for me. Price will vary a bit but this is much much cheeper then other methods and the end product is strong and able to take some abuse.

How to do it:
Start with a general idea of how you want this horn to look
Is it wide at the bottom?
Long and Narrow?
Short and thin?

I used a form from another horn I had

I split the mesh in half lengthwise and used it to wrap the horn.

Once its wrapped and you’re happy with the over all look, I recommend a few dobs of hotglue to help it hold its shape. The mesh is very bendable but it will always have a bit of spring to it.

Horn copy is almost done,
You should be asking your self “Where is the spray foam” or at least wondering why you purchased it at this point. This wire form is a great way get the look of a horn but is not very tough.  I have seen many tutorials out there where people start to cover the horn at this point with paper mache or even fiberglass.

Time to fill the form with the spray foam, I left the end open so I could get the nozzle of the spray foam down in to it to help fill the horn.  There are also a few small holes cut in the mesh just to make sure I can get the whole thing filled.

I have also mounted them on a wooden dowel because that’s how my costume needs them :)

I failed to take any good pictures of the process of filling them with foam, but its not really something you should need help with.  Put the can together, stick the straw in to the horn, and fill full of foam.  If some squirts out of the mesh that’s fine. You can wipe it off once you’re done filling it full.

Here are all 4 of the horns I did drying.  The foam will take 8 hours to cure to full strength and will expand through the mesh and look a bit like an alien egg…. or something..

Next day and the foam is dry. Using a sharp knife, cut away the extra foam and don’t worry about being very gentle, the mesh will keep you from cutting too deep and ruining your hard work.

Total weight of the 4 horns and dowel is under 2 pounds.

Prep your horn with a good sanding of 80-120 grit sand paper and finish with your method of choosing.  Paper mache will work very well to help keep it light.

Hope this helps and best of luck with all your cosplay work!

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What we’re working on

You may have noticed that our posts have been very few and far between lately. Mario has the next two weeks off work, and pretty much every spare moment we have has gone towards finishing our Blizzcon costumes before October 1st so that we can do a photoshoot and get business cards printed out in time.

What are we wearing to Blizzcon? Well, for the first day, Mario will be the male witchdoctor from Diablo 3 concept art, and I will be the female witchdoctor. Now, we don’t want to put out pictures of finished pieces or the finished costume before Blizzcon- we don’t mind people seeing what we’re doing, but we don’t want to get rid of that ‘wow’ factor that you’ll get with seeing the completed costumes/pieces for the first time. So, here are some pictures up close of some of the pieces that are finished, and some that we’re working on:

(These are, from the left: male witchdoctor wig (is up into a bun for storage), female witchdoctor wig, Kalecgos wig and Tyrigosa wig.)And for good measure, a few pieces of our Tyri and Kalecgos costumes (which we don’t mind showing finished progress of)

Both our Kalecgos and Tyri costumes are about 90% done, male and female witchdoctors at about 85%.

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Shoulder Armor Part 2

Ok, we left off with the shaping and carving of the armor.

This picture has them side by side where you can notice a few minor flaws in the shape between them. When you create any two items its almost impossible to get them the exact same and be mirror images for each shoulder.  I have never had any one tell me the shoulders I first created for my Tier 8 priest set were off, but they had huge differences between them.

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Tyrigosa wig styling tutorial

Just yesterday I finally finished my Tyrigosa wig. Woo! So I thought I’d show you how I made it!

This is the lady I’m cosplaying, so her hair is what I’m going for:

I decided not to make the pigtails so much longer than the hair itself, I may cut the back of the wig so that it’s a little shorter than the pigtails but over all I’m pretty happy with the length I’ve got. Continue reading →

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Shoulder Armor tutorial Part:1

Costume shoulder armor tends to a stumbling point for many  people. It seems scary and over the top for anyone to attempt to make.  The following method was created from both a need for low cost and high durability.

We start off with an idea of what we want to make. In this case it’s a commission for a World of Warcraft armor set.  Priest Tier 10 Sanctified Crimson Acolyte’s Regalia.

I started out by finding good source reference for the shoulder.  I used WoW Model Viewer to get the best photos I could.  For some of you, you may be working off a single image and that’s ok too. Continue reading →