LBCC 2016!

Omg so many cons, so much work, everything's been so hectic, it's been like an entire month since LBCC and i'm just getting around to this -_- I'll add punctuality to the list of things to work on. but now i have snazzy pix to add! so whatevs ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This was my first round at Long Beach Comic Con, and it was such a fun experience, I wish it was longer! Got to see a ton of snazzy cosplayers, awesome new artists and writers, met Evil Ted Smith whose tutorials are the only reason I managed a breastplate, and got to do another super fun group cosplay.

Seriously, these group cosplays keep me in check, cuz when other people are involved, i feel like i can't let them down, so i actually get my ass in gear.

Ok, so it started out on sat morning bright and early trying to get our badges (which took an hour+), then checked out the convention floor a bit before heading over to the DC photo meet up, appropriately held on Batman Day.

Christina and I with Evil Ted

We had decided exactly 2 weeks before to get on this whole deal, and two weeks is decidedly little time to work on a cosplay, justsayin. So i feel like i'll work on aspects of mine a but more and lots of it didn't fit, but it came together enough for my happiness, and we all looked pretty good!

sunday
a whole lotta Blackmilk Clothing in one picture

Sugarpill eyeshadows, UD All Nighter Foundation

Anyhow, literally the only thing i cared about that day was the Firefly panel with Nathan Fillion, which 100% didn't happen as over 600 people were in line in front of us and the room was already at capacity, so while heartbroken, this gave us the chance to do the DC meet up, and there were so many of us! it was actually quite impressive.

All of these rad watermarked works of photographic art are by the fantastic @davidthestrange and you should 100% check out his website HERE.



My friend Christina (Exteenaw Cosplay) sewed this amazing Batgirl cosplay together AND made her cowl entirely from scratch, using craft foam and plastidip.



Momo created this awesome Huntress cosplay largely out of craft foam and various other items (like painted googly eyes and LEDs) and it turned out so amazing! She wasn't thrilled with the tape, but that just goes to show that really if you can image it, you can do it, even with tape.



Casey rocked this super sexy Black Canary she put together, so apparently I missed the whole Gotham universe plan... whoops. But dayam dat booty tho!

And my Wonder Woman was iffy at best, but I followed tutorials by EvilTedSmith who is actually one of the most impressive human beings, watched Gladzy Kei's quick Wonder Woman tutorial, and got some really great tips from Otaku and Fit to get the whole thing together. Definitely some super helpful people out there, so all around you can definitely build it if you put the effort in; it is just A LOT of effort. I honestly don't know how so many of these people accomplish so much.

I'm really looking forward to building more, now that foam isn't such a scary inaccessible thing to me anymore, and may start a cosplay Facebook page, as I'm working on some cool things with some rad people in the next few weeks! But just like wanting to get these posts up more consistently quicker, i doubt the facebook page will happen anytime soon.

goofballs

NERD CON/ANIME CALIFORNIA

SO. MANY. CONS.

I don't even know what my life is anymore, but i'm rolling with it. Two Cons in two weekends made lindsay a very tired girl, and that was only part of how crazy this summer was. Which is why it's taken me an age (read: 2 months) to get posts up. And with a couple more coming up, shit's getting real. But I digress.

But let's start with NerdCon!
My snazzy friend hit me up about this nerdy fashion group looking for models for a show, so i promptly followed all the designers and popped my name in and wound up in a couple fashion shows!

I am by no means a model, but at most of these things they're usually looking for normal nerdy girls who like to wear fun stuff show off some cool designs, and the awesome benefit of doing this is getting in to the con for FREE. well, as it turns out, free happens to be my favorite price for conventions. And since i'm not paying to get in, that means more free money to spend on stuff!
Right? Right. Well, actually i should be responsible. But hey pretty things!

Basically between the two of us we recruited more friends to model, so we wound up with an awesome group of five hotties modeling for 3 different designers- Girl with One Eye, Elhoffer Design, and 1138 Clothing. My friend Alex and I previously got to model for 1138 Clothing at this super odd event called RegalCon in Mission Viejo just a week or two before NerdCon, so our feet were a little wet before going to this much larger event (complete with a runway!) and felt pretty good about it.

I modeled for GWOE (complete with a nifty eye patch) which was a ton of fun–I love her dresses, the Lolita style is so cute and fun, and I've been eyeballing her stuff for a while now so it was great to kind of test run a dress. I'm a big fan of Dr. Who also, so getting to wear a Tardis-themed dress was extra rad. Kimberly (the designer) is such a sweetheart and just a peach to work with, which always makes for a nicer experience, so i couldn't have been happier.

GWOE group selfie pre-runway walk day 1

The lady running the event, Rigel Griffith, is an absolute doll and such a pleasure to be around, but she also created Orion's Originals, a really cool nerdy collection (she's pretty seriously talented and creative), so the whole event was really smooth and it was great to be involved with. This was a two-day event, with the second day going even better than the first, as I had a better idea of how counting works, so was just overall less nervous about the whole event.

the whole modeling crew day 2, photo by Doug Stidham

NerdCon was a really interesting convention, small but super charming with a ton of stuff to look at, and a lot of events to participate in! there was a Super Smash Brawl competition with actual people acting it out, Karaoke with Loki, bounce houses, archery, and LARPing all over the place so it was more than just buying stuff and seeing panels. Apparently there were 9000 people there over the course of the weekend, which is even more impressive. Definitely something I would be down attend again.

GWOE official group shot day 1

This is the point where since all us friends were together, we decided to do our group cosplay for LBCC, so had exactly 3 weeks to get our lives in order, which is a surprisingly small amount of time. Especially since the next weekend was Anime California and we needed that week to prepare, so let's move on to that.

Anime California took place on the other side of the Long Beach convention center, so had a super odd layout to begin with, but we got in for free again for agreeing to do a fashion show (yaaas). There were two shows actually, a lingerie/rave wear themed show friday night, and a more 'Sayonara Summer' themed one sunday morning, but it seemed like the themes were fairly ignored and designers just did what they wanted. Christina, Casey, and I were actually backup, so we had no idea what we were getting into or what to prepare for, so we mostly hung out waiting to be assigned to a designer or told to leave.






We eventually wound up modeling for Majesti Designs friday in a show that went til about 1230am, and also got an email from a designer in sunday's show at that time, implying we'd been chosen for her, so we knew we'd be back for that as well. Our first show with Majesti was so different from anything we'd experienced–we didn't get to see the room beforehand or where we'd be walking, it was an actual room with table we were navigating instead of a runway, and it was really dim for a show, so it was tough to see the marks to hit. And also, we didn't know beforehand what we were wearing, so the fits were definitely a bit off. Since it was more of a 'lingerie' theme, it was a bit more revealing than we were used to also.

whole Majesti group

Sunday's designer was A Red Thread, by a 

lovely lady who specializes in goth-lolita wear, and unfortunately since we were backups, nothing fit us that well, so i'm not sure we showed off the clothes the way they were meant
to be seen, but we met some really fun people and had an entertaining time. This one was much more intense than the one before, as not only did we see the runway, but we did a full walkthrough with music and timing so we knew exactly what to do and when.

whole AnimeCali Sunday show crew

It was a completely different experience in this group than with Rigel in the Nerd Chic show at NerdCon, much less organized and we had some pretty negative experiences overall, but hey, we got in for free so no real complaints. What was sad was that it was a surprisingly expensive convention, so i could only get a day pass for Derek on saturday, where we rocked our revised Ban and Lust cosplays.
This was pretty serious business.

Derek looking supa fly with his gorgeous glitter beard and handmade weapon. so handsome.

I colored and glittered derek's beard, wore purple contacts (first experience with contacts so that was something special), and with all that on top of our actual outfits we were so done by the end of the day. Having never worn contacts before, I had a hell of a time getting them in, and when i could finally take them out i was near tears as my nails are super long, and i basically had to stab my eyes with my nails to get the damn things out. But holy shit they looked good. These were our first really worked on cosplays where we actually made an effort to make stuff, whereas our first ones (steampunk ariel and eric) were more bought stuff put together, i really only made his red sash and decorated his hat. So making Lust's claws out of Insta Mold and stitching red shit all over gloves, as well as tailoring them to accommodate both the claws and restroom trips was an experience. Derek also got some good practice in stitching his rivets onto his clothes, as well as making a weapon. so all in all, not too shabby.

Derek, Christina, and I also got to do something a little different, and were all lip-synching in this super nifty cosplay video by Nerd Reactor which was surprisingly fun! You can check out Derek's snazzy dancing skills in it as well, so go check it out here, I highly recommend it.

There were definitely pros and cons to Anime California, but tbh i didn't get a huge 'anime' vibe from it; there were very few exhibitors, and the layout was a bit difficult to follow, so this might have been one of those things where if we weren't in for free we may not have gone in at all, since there were so many fun people outside of the convention center. Getting a chance to try out some fun cosplay is always a good time, and we've met some really fun characters as a result, so again i can't complain too much about the situation though it wasn't ideal.

AX 2 0 1 6!

So i know it's been s few weeks and i'm just now getting to this, but largely cuz Anime Expo was basically overwhelming, i've been crazy busy with other cosplays (and pokemon go let'sbereal), and I still haven't seen or gotten back most of the group cosplay pix, so I was really holding off. But anyway, might as well just get into it.

This was the first con we went to where we got full 4-day passes (wow) and we couldn't even hang for all 4 days. like holy shit, there were SO MANY people and SO MANY things to do. we went to only one panel, and that was seriously the calmest aspect of the weekend, but overall everything was way too long of lines, or completely full, so we mostly walked around.

Almost all of the cons we've been to have been at the LA Convention Center, so we feel like we know the lay of the land pretty well at this point, but i will say this seemed to be one of the more disorganized cons. No one who worked there had any information, it took us almost an hour to even find where to pick up our badges, paths to get form one end to the other were constantly blocked with no notice because apparently if there's a line no one can go near it. but there also weren't any ropes or anything marking lines, so it was kind of crazy. And my friend was DJing Friday night for a 21+ event that we wanted to go to, but it was held in such a small location, we stood in line for an hour before we decided it wasn't going to happen- they were at capacity within 30 mins of the event starting. So definitely they could have used some better planing.
But overall, what an experience!

So, Day 1:

Boyfriend and I cosplayed as Sins- he as Ban, the Fox sin of Greed from Seven Deadly Sins (a super great Netflix original anime) and I went as Lust from Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood (cuz who even cares about the regular version *emo hair flip*). We'd been working on these outfits for a while, and while they mostly came together, my shoes were WAY too painful, it was hot as balls for what we were wearing, and my wig was a mess very quickly. So we planned to regroup and fix everything by the next day, as there were meetups for our chosen animes on Sunday, but that didn't really happen.... We walked around the main hall most of the day, with tons of people taking pix of boyfriend and his mega-sweet cosplaly, we met up with my friend who was cosplaying the Great Fairy from Zelda, and mostly just walked around doing pictures (I was boyfriend's bag bitch) and looking at all the goodies and booths. We didn't even make it to the artist alley. But we took a breather, went and changed and had dinner with our friends before coming back to try to go to my other friend's DJ gig, but that definitely didn't work out. So then wound up drinking our sorrows and sore feet away across the street, vowing the next day would work out better.

For my Lust, I used InstaMold (off Amazon) to create the claws, bought opera-length gloves and a regular length to make the claws work, sewed on/hot glued all the red strips, made the circles, velcro-d a corset to this dress, got this rad ouroborus temp tattoo from BadWolf Cosplay on Etsy, and worked on the wig a bit. also got purple contacts, so i'll redo this cosplay at another time to really make it look good.

Derek's Ban jacket was by Black Milk, pants from Amazon, and wig from EpicCosplay wigs. I styled his wig, and he stitched all the buttons on the pants and jacket. His tattoo was also from some Japanese site, but placement of it with the jacket it rubbed off a lot :(

Day 2:
We did not get our shit together. No cosplays, didn't leave the house til 2, basically completely bailed on everything, and were walking around like hungover zombies who defintiely didn't drink enough for this shit. We made it through the artist alley (which was literally hell--i think it was hotter in there than outside) just to hit up one booth i wanted to catch in particular, and mostly hung out with my friend while people clamored to take pix of her. We called it a day semi-early intending to really get our cosplays together, but mostly just collapsed at home.

Day 3:
Started off promising. we got up and started getting ready, intending to make our outfits Top Notch, but it went rapidly downhill as it turns out we don't really know how to use Ben Nye scar shit or liquid latex, i got frustrated/angry trying to put scars on boyfriend, decided contacts weren't going to work with all that shit on my fingers, so eventually threw our hands up, gave up, and decided to nail our cosplays for monday. Fuck all that noise. Our friends came over and we had an epic cosplay night of getting our lives together for our red group cosplay the next day. Lots of alcohol was consumed and it was a success.

progress shot of bf

Day 4:

I like to think we nailed this one. We got up early since it was the short day at the con, got ready, looked fab, had a starbucks trip, the boy forgot his pass so went back for that, and then we were on our way! this group thing looked rad and i can't wait to see the rest of the pix we took as they're not all up online yet, but overall we had a fantastic time and looked amazing. I would love to do another group cosplay, just cuz it was awesome having an army of us looking so damn cool.

I painted both of our jackets (boyfriend's came out way better), bought two adorable pins from Hot Topic, found these rad rose patches from JoAnn, got this yellow tartan set from Deandri, both wigs from EpicCosplay but I styled the long-ass one for me, and the pièce de résistance- these fucking rad temp tattoos from Seventh Skin on Etsy. I feel like Etsy finds were pretty much the MVPs of our cosplays. These were so much fun to put together and we put a ton of work into distressing the jean material. I could barely walk after this second round of heels, but it was totally worth it. I only have pix from Gil Photography right now, but will add as I see them. 

Will def do Anime Expo in the future, cuz I had so much fun despite how intense it was. Next up is Nerd Con in Escondido then Anime California, followed by LBCC and Comikaze. Whew, it's going to be a lot hahaha, i hope I'm up for it.... ;)

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