Random Cosplay Tips #2

More random tips! Yay!

• If you have a super long wig, make sure you bring a (wide-toothed) comb to brush out the tangles at a con. (It's super effective!)
• Pick an outfit that will "compliment" the con you are gong to. What I mean by this is, if you are going to a con in the middle of the winter, you should dress accordingly. Pick an outfit that will allow you to do so.
• If you don't like the idea of putting wigs in bags (or you just can't because they are so long and you have so many of them), buy an over the door shoe rack and hang your wigs on that.
• Use garment bags to transport your cosplay different places.
• If you can find something specific, go to a thrift store. If you cannot find exactly what you are looking, you won't be spending full price to alter something. Thrift stores can save you tons of time and money.
• Make sure you buy a good quality wig!

Random Cosplay Tips #1

So, sometimes I find these random cosplay tips that have the potential to be randomly helpful and I make a mental note of them. But I can only hold so many random mental notes at once. If I have too many mental notes to remember, I'm basically going to dump them into a post titled "Random Cosplay Tips #_." And this is going to be the first one.

• If you need to order things online (which happens a lot in cosplay) but you do not have a credit card, buy yourself one of those prepaid visa gift card things (I know, good description). 
• 99¢ patterns. Don't waste your money on overly priced patterns. If you aren't confiden tin your own pattern-making, wait until there is a 99¢ pattern sale at Joann's.
• Speaking of patterns, if you do make your own, LABEL YOUR PATTERN PIECES! It really sucks if you can't tell what which piece is which and you want to re-use a pattern. :(
• For cons, get a portable wig stand so that you don't have to with "bag head" (or worse) all over again.

That's about it for now! I know that this was short but I hope this post was a help! MadDog out!

New Cosplay! Princess Zelda (from Twilight Princess)

"New cosplay? What? But you haven't finished like, anything--at all." True true internet, true true. The thing is, I am in Marching Band. "You are such a dork." Yes, yes I am. I dress up as fictional characters and I'm the band (and I love it). Well for me, band camp has started and I will basically not be able to do anything at all ever again. Okay, that was a complete lie. Let me say that a different way. I have marching band three times a week for three hours a practice with the addition of football games and competitions now on top of my usual schedule. Right now, I am pretty much working on summer homework all day everyday, going to marching band, getting home late, and passing out. Then school's going to start and my life will be even busier. That being said, I love to make cosplay. Any chance I get, I will work on cosplay. Any chance may mean only be ten minutes here and there so I can't promise anything will get done quickly but it will get done. I will also take pictures of significant progress on things every few days or so and I can say that I will have another big Alois and/or Seras and/or Devit update before my school year starts. (I'll also post little random things, kind of like I'm doing right now, when I'm dying of homework overload or whatever.) Now, before you get too upset, I have bought a lot of new fabric for outfits and I have had a lot of time to plot new cosplays when I see my friends.

Which brings me to the actual post. One thing that we've decided on recently is to do a Legend of Zelda group cosplay. I will be dressing up as Princess Zelda and two of my friends will be going as Link and (imp) Midna. We've decided to do this for this thing at our school called Senior Dress-up Day (which is on Halloween or around Halloween). We decided long ago (as little freshmen), that when we got to be seniors we were going to basically blow everyone away with awesome costumes. Now, I'm not a senior yet but I will be in a little over a year and that's how long we're giving ourselves to work on this project. (We really want to look awesome.) So, I will basically be in search of perfect fabrics and things from here until October 31, 2014. That means sporadic Zelda posts for a long while but hopefully a really awesome finished project you can look forward to seeing. (Along with tutorials on random things like, how to make armor as Zelda has the shoulder armor things going on.) I'm really excited for Zelda and I thought I'd give you an update about everything that was going on in MadDog land (so that's what this post is). Hope that this was informative for you as readers of this blog (even if you didn't "enjoy" it because it was mostly just information about future stuff). MadDog out! :)

Zip-Lock Bag Storage

Many people have actually asked me how to store cosplays because they don't for example, have enough closet space. (And let's be honest, once you make one, the pile on your floor will just get bigger.) Well, stop your searching because I have an answer! :D Zip-lock bags. I have found that the easiest way to store cosplays is by taking a big freezer bag, folding your cosplay up so that it will fit into the bag, fitting it into the bag, and then closing it and chucking it in a bin (that you then proceed to shove under your bed or something). Also, if you take the ten extra seconds that you need to label the bag, finding it again becomes a lot easier. (Like, a lot--especially for those of you make different outfits for the same character.) Yes, this means that you will have to iron your cosplay when you take it out again to wear but that is a small price to pay as ironing your cosplay makes you look better anyway.
At the moment, I cannot help you all with storing weapons and other huge props as I really don't do that. If any of you were to walk into my room right now, you would assume that I was a weird flamboyant assassin or something. (And you'd have to be careful as well because some of my weapons are real. This is me talking to random friends all the time: "Put those hook swords down right now before you slice your arm off. And don't you think about picking up that katana! No, not that one, that one--the other one!!!" Facepalm. Why do I even try?) My advice for weapons and just props in general is to find a corner for them or if you have the luxury of not having only one room, find a place that people don't go when they come over and stockpile props there. (If you have a tiny prop and it will fit, just put it in the bag with your main outfit.)
Moving on! You can generally put wigs in bags too unless they are ridiculously styled. If you have for example, a Yu-Gi-Oh wig, you are probably just going to have to  put it with your stockpile of props if you don't want it destroyed.
For makeup specific to a certain character, you can just put that in the bag too. Same with smaller pairs of shoes. If you are dealing with huge thigh-high boots or something, store them wherever you put your normal shoes. (That's what works best for me.) I hope this post was helpful and I shall leave you with a few examples of bag labels. MadDog out! :D

Name of character
Series, franchise, etc.
Outfit
Extra

Riza Hawkeye
Fullmetal Alchemist (Brotherhood)
Military uniform

Beast Boy
Teen Titans
Body suit
Green body paint

Madoka Kaname
Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Magical girl outfit

Other Everyday Geeky-Ness

So, this is also going to be a thing. As much as I like everyday cosplay, believe it or not there are times you need to just wear casual clothes or you need to actually get dressed up for something. I however, am now introducing this new section on showing you the awesome things you can do to be a dork even through these bizarre times of actually having a social life. ^U^ Kay? To start this off, I'm just going to show you something you can do with your nails (because if characters have interesting nails you can always imitate them and paint your nails the way that they do). To
start out, I'm just going to say, I was just going to paint my nails the exact way Homura Akemi's (Puella Magi Madoka Magica) are, but I was out of the purple I needed so I decided to do something a little different. I painted my nails in generally the usual way I paint them (black with some sort of sparkles and a different color ring finger) but this time, I taped off a diamond on my middle finger while I was painting it. That way, it was a small reference to Homura and I could still show my inner geeky-ness on the outside. Hope you enjoyed this post! MadDog out!

PS--Sorry they are a little sloppy. I was painting them while eating lunch.

Oh, and by the way, I've decided to do this because you all seemed to like some of my random projects aka the two pairs of Fullmetal Alchemist Themed shoes I made. If you don't know what I'm talking about, click below to see.

Click Here to See my Fullmetal Flats
Click Here to See Fullmetal Converse

Alois Trancy Cosplay Part Three: Jacket (In Progress)

For those of you that have been waiting for an Alois update, here you are! I know, I know... That was a horrific wait and I'm very, very sorry but I'm still not quite done. Sorry. I did work for six hours yesterday though so I wanted to show you all what I have done.
To start off, this is where I was before my work yesterday:

I know, pretty pathetic. In my defense, I had to rip out tons of stitches cause I sewed the wrong pieces together and this fabric really is just a pain in the butt to sew. It has also died my ironing board purple. :(

I basically ended up sewing all those strips on the floor into the thing above. Below is what it looks like on me so far. Please don't mind all of the crap on the mirror (my family hardly uses this bathroom so it's not really that clean). My summary of this project so far, I hate sewing this fabric but it looks really good. The 99 cent pattern I got at Joann's is really working for this cosplay and giving it the nice flare at the bottom that I thought would be a problem. Off topic: now you all know what I look like after six hours of sewing. I call it the, "I don't give a crap," look. Note the messy hair, nail polish on one hand but not the other, and men's Jurassic Park t-shirt. To completely match this look however, you must strive for the look of happy annoyance and utter not-caring also known as the, "I don't give a crap smile." Moving on, to finish this jacket, I need to a) attach the collar and sleeves, and then b) sew all of the lining into it. Should be fun. (Ha! Hurts so good.) That's about it! Hope you all enjoyed this bizarre post. MadDog out!

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