Thank God... And Leafa pics!

I had a mini heart attack when trying to get into blogger on the fabulous new computer I'm sitting in front of now. I could for the love of god not remember my password OR which email I was using for this account. But eventually I got in, as you might have guessed already.
    That aside though, Frostbite happened last weekend, and I must say I really had a really good time, and I really liked the fact that the con had an age limit, the atmosphere was generally a little more mature for obvious reasons, but the entire con vibe was still there. Oh and they served alcohol at the afterparty. That was sweet.
     I did take some pics of all the other awesome congoers, however, I'll do a post containing those later, along with a more detailed description of my overall con weekend. This post is all about the costume I debuted, Leafa from Sword Art Online! If you know the character well, or compare my costume to a reference pic of her, you might notice a lack of a hair decoration and some bracelets. And the answer to why those are missing is simple, I was slacking and didn't have time to finish them in time, but I wanted to debut her so badly I decided to go without those details. But now, on to some pictures~

All the pictures are taken by Hansku. We took them on Sunday in the afternoon, so we weren't all that motivated to get some really epic pictures, hence the lack of them. But these three turned out nice with some editing slapped on (especially the stair one, god that was a dark pic). I really look forward to getting some pics of this costume in summer though, it just suits her character theme so much better :3

And just in lack of other things, have a collage of progress pics. I made the corset boning out of those things that you can't open once you pull them shut and I can't for the love of god remember what they're called. Just look at the last pic and you'll get what I mean. But they worked wonders, definately a thing to try out if you're looking for a cheap boning alternative! I read somewhere that they should really not be used in actual, lace up corsets as they might snap and hurt you. But for costuming and fashion corsets they should be fine~

So, I think that will be it for this post, I will return with some more Frostbite stuff later, so until then, goodbye~

/Amanda

Oh. Oooooooh.

I made a promise in early July about some more Gisen pictures... Let's just not talk about that and look at the bright side of things, I'm making a blog post again! I have not abandoned my blog yet, I swear. I was about to do so, but changed my mind last minute.( If you still wanna see more Gisen pics tho... *click* )
   With a new year comes new challenges and new costumes to make, and I swear I shall not be as lazy as I was in 2013 where hardly anything was produced. Not compared to 2012 at least. SO, now you're all excited about my plans for 2014 right? I haven't planned shit. There it is, I said it. I do have one costume in progress for Desucon Frostbite a month away though, I am making Leafa from Sword Art Online;

I actually hadn't watched this series earlier, but I really enjoyed it, especially the first half of the series. Ironically Leafa is exclusive to the second half but oh well, I was in love with her design even before I started watching the series, and I liked her character when I actually knew the plot of the anime, so I figured I'd give it a go. And I'm not regretting it either, so far I have made the jacket, top, skirt part, shorts, stockings and gloves and it has been relatively smooth sailing all the way. I'm definately looking forward to the end result. I am currently waiting for the wig to arrive, and once it does I might make a blogpost concerning that and the pieces I have already made of this cosplay. 

    So that's all I've planned for my 2014 so far. I must admit it feels a bit boring not to have any fantastic plans for the year, but at the same time I know there will pop up characters I wanna cosplay, so no need to panic really. Hope you all had an awesome 2013 and will have an even more awesome 2014 btw! Until next time, bye~

/Amanda

Samurai Girls~

Yo, I'm back with some more pictures for you to be impressed by. Just face it, they are pretty fabulous. And I have my awesome cosplay group mates Hansku and Jäärä to partially thank for that haha. And ofc, Poke who took the pictures. So, now that I've gotten all the credits out of the way I'll get on to the pictures; 

Sorry for the wrapping on the handle, it started undoing itself before the shoot ;__;

I really love some of the pics we got, and some are kind of meh. But that's a photoshoot for ya, can't have too many perfect pics now can we haha. It would have been awesome with a longer shoot as well, but the weather was against us and we had to rush inside as it started raining. But someday I sure as hell am gonna get more pics of my precious Gisen :3

   And I figure I could put up some info on the costume as well while I'm blogging and all. As usual the cosplay is all made by me, everything from the prop to the wig styling (which btw is kind of two colored, I liiiiiightly dyed some parts, like the roots, of it grey as I don't like completely white wigs. Gave a neat subtile effect in my opinion). And needless to say, the prop is one of my fave features of this costume. I hardly ever make cosplays with props, so this was a nice change of pace, and the insane detailed pattern on it was, believe it or not, fun to make. It took its time though, one side took about 4 hrs, a bit more. There are also other elements of the cosplay I really like, the gloves for an example deserve an extra look at. They turned out pretty cool in my opinion, especially the left one, which had a slightly more interesting design

   With all that said, I hope to wear this costume again, maybe tweak it a little, there is always room for improvement, but I really like it, it's a fun design and Gisen is one hell of a badass. Over and out.

/Amanda

And now it's over

It's not like this post is soooo late, it's only almost like, a month since Desu. I hope you did detect my sarcasm there. But however, now I actually am getting off my lazy ass writing this post. Ain't I great? 

   I started my Desujourney on Friday. Me and my boyfriend got into his car when he got off work and slowly but surely we made our way to Lahti and found the hotel we were staying at. We did get there at like 8, which in my lazy opinion was too late to start putting on a cosplay and dragging my ass to Sibeliustalo, so we just chilled out in the hotel and had some food. I actually ate fairly regularly, that's a con first. And actual food too, not just sandwiches and shit. Achievement unlocked. 

   So, Saturday was the first actual con day for me. We got up, got ready and I got into brand new, undebuted Gisen Yagyu cosplay. And man I felt fabulous. And I also felt like my tits and ass were showing waaaay too much, but whatever, I captured the spirit of the show damn good in that miniskirt haha. 

Attractive hotel room pic there. I don't even think I had put my wig on properly in that pic. Or well judging by the looks of it, no I hadn't. Nothing is more sexy than a wig almost falling off your head. I had a monster of a prop for this costume as well, which you will get to see in later pics.

   We got to the con and just hung out a little. Since my boyfriend never had been to a con before he did hardly know where to look haha. I get why though, I don't think there are many events as colorful and as filled with all kinds of people as cons. We checked out the Artist Alley and the Dealers Room, took pictures and so on. You congoers know the drill, no need to explain it. We also went to watch the Euro Cosplay preliminaries of Finland, and do I even need to say all the contestants were awesome? I also had a photoshoot with some fellow Hyakka Ryoran Samurai Girl cosplayers, Hansku as Jyubei and Jäärä as Sen-hime. I am still waiting for these pictures (damnit Hansku I want them, send 'em to meeee. Hahaha) but I took the liberty of borrowing the ones Hansku posted on her blog (and no, it's not my panties that show in the pic below, it's part of my tights, sorry to disappoint you);

All pics were taken by Poke. I really like the last one, looks awesome. But yeah, when I get the rest of the pics I might make another post with those if I like many of them. However, I did have Janne (that's boyfriends name, I just realized I didn't mention that earlier, oops) take some pics with my camera, so I do have some solo shots of this cosplay as well;

(And I'm sorry, the wrapping on the katana handle started sliding around, I should have made it tighter, so the part closest to the blade if fucking disorted....)

Just a couple of close ups, as I said, you'll get to see more when I get more pics. But that sums up my Saturday. We went back to the hotel room, I changed, then we grabbed something to eat at the nearest Hesburger and went back to the hotel again where Janne almost instantly fell asleep (I exhausted the poor thing with all my running around at the con haha) and I stayed up drinking wine, celebrating my birthday by myself....

... which leads me to Sunday, which also was my birthday. The long awaited age of 18 has finally reached me as well. But enough of that. I got up, got dressed as Tomoyo from Clannad and we got moving again. We were both kinda tired although we did get fairly much sleep, so we didn't do much, we went to see the skit competition which was a new feature of Desucon and then we watched some anime in the Anime Room and took some pictures of other cosplayers and some of me. I wanted some nice summer Tomoyo pics but in teh end I was really tired and didn't have enough motivation for a longer shoot. So I ended up with like 2 okay pics haha;

A highlight of my day was meeting a fellow Clannad fan who was really happy to see someone cosplaying from the series. It made me really happy to see how excited she was to see my cosplay, moments like that really make me like cosplaying more :3

   But as previously stated, we were tired and wanted to get home at a reasonable time, so we started moving towards Vaasa really early since there was no more panels or something that captured my interest.

   Overall I had fun, the only drawback was how tired I was at Sunday. Seriously, am I getting old or something? I shouldn't be exhausted after ONE con day haha. Oh well it was a nice con, Desu never disappoints. And now as a final touch to this post, some hall pictures of random and less random cosplayers who also were at Desu;

All pics were taken by boyfriend because I'm too lazy to operate my camera. But that's it for this post, I shall be back sometime, hopefully with some awesome Gisen pics, but bye for now~

/Amanda

Desu Desu Desu

Guess where I'm going this weekend? Not that hard considering the title, right. Desucon of course! And now I shall reveal my awesome cosplay plans for this annual convention of Lahti. I probably should have made this post like, at least a week prior to the con, but procrastination happened (oops, never heard that one before). Anyways, behold these costume plans of mine;


Friday:

Rei Miyamoto (Highschool of the Dead) 

I'm not 100% sure of this one tho, I'll have to wait and see what time I get

to Lahti on Friday, if I get there fairly late I won't put any cosplay on for that day

Saturday:

Gisen Yagyu (Hyakka Ryoran Samurai Girls)

This cosplay will be worn for the first time on Desu, so stay tuned for its awesomeness!

Sunday:

Tomoyo Sakagami (Clannad)

I hope to get some nice summer pics of this one, I still don't have any outdoor pictures of her since I've only worn her to Desucon Frostbite, which as the name implies is a winter con. And this is the summer uniform version after all :3

I guess that's it for my plans for this convention. I hope to see lots of people there, both people I know from before and people I haven't met before. Who of you are going? And what costumes will you wear? :D

/Amanda

Pandora Hearts

Woah, I'm going from posting once every 6 months to posting every few days, go me! But I did after all promise to post some pictures from our recent Pandora Hearts photoshoot, and well, here they are, enjoy!

Haha I felt like a bit of a douchebag editing that picture with only Oz in it, as it originally did contain both Oz and Gil. Sorry for editing you out Hansku haha, just felt like having a solo pic. So everyone can adore me in all my glory of course! or it could just my compilation of cosplays I've made, you'll never know.


And finally, some credits for the people appearing in the pictures and the person operating the camera:

I cosplayed Oz
Hansku cosplayed Gilbert
Ilse took all the pictures

Thank you both, it was a fun photoshoot :D


And with that this post has reached its end, bye for now~

/Amanda