Costuming

DTAC Recap

I had lots of fun at DTAC yesterday!

I drove down with yesterday morning and met up with everyone there. I parked my car at the Kipling subway station and we took the subway downtown. It’s way cheaper than parking downtown, and way less stressful. Well, usually less stressful. 😛 More on that later.

The con was really fun! It’s really mainly a LobbyCon, where most people just hang out in the hallways and don’t pay admission. Admission is only charged if you want to get into the Dealer’s Room or into the panel rooms. If you just want to hang out and have fun with fellow cosplayers, there’s no admission enforcement.
We got to meet up with Dr. Holocaust again, which is always really fun. He’s such a nice guy evil supervillain.

We met up with Mark from ConBravo! and got our half of the joint Con-G/ConBravo! printed flyers. They look really snazzy, and I’ll have to scan one in later to show everyone.
We gave out lots of those! I don’t have exact numbers, but “lots”. At least a few hundred, anyway, plus the ones that the ConBravo! peeps gave out. Plus we still have loads leftover to put at The Dragon and whatever.

paid admission to enter the Dealer’s Room and give flyers to the dealers there and talk to them about being dealers at Con-G 2010. In terms of benefiting Con-G, it was worth the $10 to get in, but in terms of being allowed into the Dealer’s Room adding to my con experience it wasn’t worth the $10. 😛

While we were there, though, we picked up volumes 1-16 of the Fullmetal Alchemist manga that will be the second half of Con-G’s donation to the Guelph Public Library.

After the con was fun too. had to leave early, but I went out to The Old Spaghetti Factory for dinner with Draco, Tom, Other Caitlin, Aesees, some guy I forget (sorry, dude!), and Mark.
Dinner and the company was awesome! Leftovers for lunch today FTW.

After dinner was kind of a mess.
We went back to Union Station ~8ish and hung out chatting for a while. Draco was originally going to take the subway back to Kipling with me (since I’d have to carry all the Con-G stuff) and then I’d drop him off at his place and then go home.
Mark offered to give us a ride to Kipling, and Other Caitlin and some other guy (a different other guy 😛 ) a ride to one of the GO stations. He set out with Aesees to pick up his car (her car was closer, she’d drive him to his car and he’d come back for us) at 8:25 and told us to meet him outside in about 10 minutes.
Toronto being what it is, about 15 minutes later Other Caitlin, Draco and I went outside to look for him. In a span of a bout 2 minutes, not only did we not find him, but we were accosted 3 people who just needed “a few dollars for the bus home”, including a guy who yelled and swore at us. Great. As we went back inside, we saw that guy being talked to by security.
We went back into Union to wait, but of course none of the people left there had Mark’s cell number. It was getting later and later, with periodical sweeps outside to see if Mark had arrived. The guys did the sweeps after that, since they at least tend to only get accosted for money.

By 9:30 we were getting really worried. We wanted to leave (taking the subway/GO respectively as originally planned) but we didn’t know what had happened to Mark, and didn’t want to just leave him hanging if he did eventually show up. I had texted and Christian for Mark’s number. Christian replied that he didn’t have it.
We planned to do one more sweep, then the subway people would leave, and then the GO people would leave at 9:45 when their train arrived. Tom would hang out for about a half hour after that (if it came to it) to keep and eye out for Mark and let him know what was happening.
On our final sweep before enacting that plan, Mark arrived. By that time it wouldn’t actually save any time for the GO people, so they stayed to catch the train at Union and Draco and I went with Mark.
We both got his cell number.
Apparently what had happened was a huge cab cluterfuck when they got Aesees’ car and had t wait 10 minutes so they could pull out of the parking lot without getting smashed by a cab. The Mark got his car, and was promptly pulled over the the police because his right blinker was out. He got talked to for a while, but I don’t think he got a ticket, just a warning. That’s why he was so ridiculously late.

We drove around for a while looking for Draco’s place, since no one had a firm idea of how to get there from Union by car. We saw a big fire (?) on Dundas that had 5 fire trucks and 2 police cars. We didn’t actually see a fire or anything, though, but I heard on the radio this morning that there had been a big fire on Dundas last night.
replied about this time with Mark’s cell number, lol. ^_~
After Draco was dropped off, Mark took me to the Kipling station a little while after 10, and I went home, arriving by 11pm. 😛

It was still fun, but I wasn’t planning on the extra adventures. ^_~ I’ll post photos later when I get the chance.

Weekend Fun!

After the craziness of work on Friday, I had a great weekend of fun.

We all went to see the Arrogant Worms on Friday at the River Run Centre. This is the concert that was supposed to be in June, but the whole stage flooded and it was postponed until now.
It was awesome! I’d never seen them in person before, and the whole thing was really funny. They played some new songs from their latest album, and some old favourites. Trevor had a new shirt!
I think I’ll have to pick up their newest, Torpid. I almost bought it at the concert, but the line was large and I’d rather buy it online for $10. Really, what would I do with a physical CD after ripping it onto my computer? I’d rather have the music already in .mp3 format.
I have a couple photos of the concert here.

I wanted to get autographs, but no one wanted to stay so we left instead. :p

There was a guy who was on before the Worms that played the guitar in a really cool way. Anyone remember his name? I wish it was been written down somewhere, ’cause I can’t remember it at all. I wanted to look him up. :p Jay Calder opened for the Arrogant Worms. Check out his stuff, it’s pretty cool what he can do with a guitar!

We had a little get-together to send Teri off to NZ.

WE WILL MISS YOU, TERI!!!

After I drove her to the airport on Saturday, everyone dispersed to go do their own Saturday thing.
Josh and I went shopping for Hallowe’en supplies. About half way into a trip to WalMart, I got a call from , who had lost her purse. I went to the Greyhound station (since she had it when she bought her ticket home, but not when she arrived there) and got her purse. Then we drove it to KW for her.
Then we went home and crashed on the couch for a few hours. Tiiiired.

On Sunday, after scouring the entire city for green fleece and finding nothing (Seriously? It shouldn’t be that hard to find green fleece, but Fabricland is closed on Sundays), and I raised my own fleece stash. Sorry, Teri, it only got a little messed up!
Then it was off to her place where we worked out a pattern for some Kon Con PJs (that would be pajamas shaped like Kon for wearing at cons, of course!) using some boring grey fleece that I had about a million metres of. I think we have a great pattern now, but we’re first trying it out on some nice rust colour to make Fox PJs first. If all goes well, then we’ll move on to Kon and have snuggly cool PJs! *little dance*

Random Musings

I went to the dentist this morning! I haven’t been in a while, since I hadn’t bothered to find one in Guelph yet. Now I have a good one, based on a recommendation from Josh’s aunt and uncle. Nice guy; did a thorough job.
My teeth and jaw kinda hurt now due to the cleaning, but they still have that dentist-clean feeling even though I ate lunch. ^_^

I need better categories for my blog. I just haven’t had time to think up any good ones. 😛

I’m trying to decide what to wear to work for Hallowe’en and/or what to wear for Trick or Eat.
I’m thinking either my (new, improved) faun costume or a generic vampire or something. Exciting.
Apparently Josh’s work is having a Smurf theme. Haha! His team is twisting it around a bit and making horror Smurfs.

I want to make some pajamas/kigurumi of Kon.

If I got them done on time I could wear them for Hallowe’en! Maybe I could wear them to give out candy in the Guelph Santa Claus Parade! Con-G is trying to be in the parade… but we can’t get a hold of the guy who’s supposed to be in charge of it. We’ve emailed and left phone messages. Boo-urns! We’re not sure if we’re calling the right number, though. The published number is just voicemail with a message about a seniors tour on it. o_0

Note that many posts are now public, and thus your comments are also public. Muahahaha!

Steampunk Scooter

I am currently in the grip of a particularly strong urge to buy a scooter and steampunk it up.

I already wanted a scooter.

I can just picture how awesome it would be to putter around town on something like that. And then pulling into the gas station? Awesome!
Or… electric! More awesome, less cool/authentic sounding.

My bicycle sucks. Maybe I’ll try steampunking that up a bit first, since I already own it. ^_~

D*C Costume Update

So my pattern finally arrived last evening around 5:30. UPS can bite me.

I cut out the pattern pieces, then went over to Lindsay’s new apartment with Teri to help her clean it up a bit more before she moved in.

Got home around 9:30.

I serged all the edges of the pieces, and managed to get the whole front half of the dress put together before I went to bed. I may re-do one of the seams, but I’ll see how the back turns out first.
Tonight I have more time, so I should be able to finish the back, install the zipper, put the two sides together and add the insignia and rank braid.
Then I shall do a little happy dance!

If I still have any time after that before sleep, I’ll try to make the antennae and switch the costume from Human to Andorian. At this point, I’m thinking dollar store deely boppers + hot glue + acrylic paint.

Nerd Alert! Shields up!

Apparently, I didn’t have enough costuming to get done by/in May, because now I’ve got it into my head to make a costume for the new Star Trek movie, in addition to the three partially completed ones I’m working on for Anime North (one is for Josh). Because I’ll take any excuse to dress up! ^_~

I’ve always planned on doing a Star Trek costume at some point, and I want to be an Andorian. I already have all the supplies to paint myself blue, so why not, eh?

My ST uniform(s) will be Sciences blue, and that works fine with a TNG or DS9 style uniform, but the TOS ones are a lighter (Andorian skin colour matching) blue, and they are all blue, instead of being black with coloured accents. My question is, would it be too much blue, and would it lose the effectiveness that a red or gold costume would have? Kinda like this.

Costume Help Please? (or Curse my Gemini Nature)

I saw a post about making wings on cosplay.com this morning, and it made me remember I hadn’t even decided what type of wings to make for my Smirnoff Fairy costume.

Wing Styles ideas:
– Dragonfly-style
– The Simplistic style
– A kind that’s supported by “ribs” on the inside instead of around the outside
– The extra fancy style supported on the outside), that look awesome, but would probably make my head explode just trying to shape the wire.

Depending on the style and what it entails, I’d like to make them out of cellophane, ’cause I already have some, and it’s the clear/iridescent kind, so I think that would work well for a snowy, frosty fairy. Or an iridescent clear vinyl, but I don’t already have some. That would definitely be much sturdier, though, if I could find some somewhere.

No matter what kind I make, they’re going to use an “under the corset” harness style, because the backpack style, even with clear bra straps, doesn’t look so good with strapless tops (plus, they can shift around a lot more).

Also, can someone perhaps tell me the name of this type of fabric/material? I’ve seen it before, and it’s a crinkly cellophaney-type deal, but not true cellophane; it’s more pf a fabric-backed cellophane or something. I forget exactly, but I’d love to get my hands on some, and my Google-Fu is lacking when I don’t even know the name or a proper description. :/
The last time I was around someone who was actually using it, I was about 6 years old, and it was my friend’s Rainbow Brite Hallowe’en costume that her mom made. but the whole thing was made out of that stuff, and it held up to wearing by a 6/7 year old (I got to wear it the next year, woo).
Some kind of crinkle lamé, perhaps?