Sydney Supanova 2014

I'm back again yayy :D

So today's post shall be about *drumroll* ...Sydney Supanova!


Supanova in Sydney was held on June 13-16 and after not being there for two years...I can say I wasn't entirely disappointed :D

First of all, SO much more organised than QLD Supanovas, even with the massive token and Stan Lee lines, I was not hindered once. A few times we struggled to get through crowds, but that was purely from density.

Day 1 - Friday

I made a last minute decision to do a closet cosplay of Elsa from the YouTube Video "How it Should Have Ended - Frozen"
Basically the plot of this video, is that instead of locking her away in her room, Elsa's parents sent her to Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, and she became an X-Men member.

Costume: The video only showed Elsa from the torso up so I had to use my imagination for the rest. I already had the dress and boots in my wardrobe so I attached the cloak and painted Elsa's shoe design on the boots with paint. The boots were suede so acrylic paint worked wonders (plus I already had it so yay for no cost). I then made two X clasps for the cloak with craft foam then pinned to the dress.

I spent the day with a few of my Sydney-sider friends and soon grew to regret my shoe choice. I then remembered why I never wore these boots because of how uncomfortable they are. Walking around this day developed 2cm long blisters on each of the bottoms of my feet and ruined me for the rest of the weekend. Despite being in pain, I continued to enjoy the day and luckily grabbed myself a DC Bombshells Black Canary for my collection before they sold out.

I came to the con wanting to meet Jon Heder and Ming-Na Wen but alas when I learnt of the 4 hour queue for photo and autograph tokens, I gave them a miss. Didn't really ruin my weekend though, as I purely came to Sydney to see my friends I haven't seen in years.

Finished the day with a photoshoot with Lark Visuals which I'll hopefully be seeing the photos from soon :)


Day 2 - Saturday

On Saturday I finally got to show off my months of labour: Elsa.
Aside from the obvious foot pain from the previous day, I had an awesome time hanging out with my friend Danica from Newcastle (Pink Pixie Cosplay). I am so happy with how this costume came out (considering the amount of work involved and I still didn't go 100% accurate) and definitely want to wear her again, hopefully to a photoshoot because I wasn't lucky enough to get one done this time.

Costume: The base dress for this costume is Kwik Sew 1356 and I just altered the top to give it a sweetheart neckline. Each of the sequins were handcut from large round sequins which totalled about $50 at $3 a bag. Each round sequin created two rectangle ones. These were all then glued onto the dress with Gem Bond which took a total of about a month to fully complete. My undershirt is actually a leotard design to save it riding up or moving under the dress. The sleeve details are glitter glue.
I had actually created Elsa's ice shoes however within five seconds of wearing them, my feet were in severe pain so I opted for plain blue heels. I decided not to create an accurate train after finding this gorgeous ice design fabric at Spotlight around Christmas time.
My wig was designed by the lovely lady in the photo with me and how to make the snowflake accessories is in a previous blog post.

I had such an awesome time just walking around and enjoying the con with Danica and conversing with other Frozen cosplayers (yes there were a few but not as many as GC Supanova).


Day 3 - Sunday

There is always one costume you're working on the night before, and this is it: Moonstar.
I finished this costume at 12:30am on Friday morning...then woke up at 6am to get to the airport.

Costume: This was supposed to be my easy costume but turned out to be time-consuming in itself. The base bodysuit and black wig were used in previous costumes so I had them lying around. The yellow X of the bodysuit took roughly two days to get right which involved taking the suit on and off countless times to make sure the fabric was not bunching ontop of the black (I hate you stretch fabric). The hair wraps are fake leather trim which I got from Spotlight and have a textured print on the top. The headband is actually a soft headband with the fake leather glued to the front half. I decided on this method purely for comfort on the day. The pouch was also from a previous costume (Fiora Cavazza: Assassin's Creed) which was perfect for carrying all my belongings in (didn't have the bra option that day). The bow was made from wood by my amazing partner and painted with acrylic and conveniently came apart into three pieces for luggage :)
A detail that isn't very noticeable, is the earrings. They are green circles of foam glued to clip-in earrings (as I couldn't get an appropriate base with normal earrings) and one has a feather attached. I soon came to regret choosing clip-on earrings as my ear was swollen the next day.

All day I was with my Sydney friends again and fellow Queenslander Isobel (The Artful Dodger).

left to right: Isobel (The Artful Dodger), Dan (Something Wicked Cosplay), Gen (Mad Maven), Jarrah (Sunday Cosplay), Justin (Justin Acharacter), and me (Bloom Cosplay).

Gotta say, SO much fun hanging out with these guys, they really made my Supanova. We did several shoots throughout the day, and some filming with Deerstalker Pictures. Quite possibly the most exciting parts of my day was when people would ask me for a photo by my character name. To you four people who knew who I was cosplaying as, YOU ROCK! :D


Well I think that covers everything, but before I go, a public thankyou to Justin (Justin Acharacter) for giving me a place to stay for the weekend. If it weren't for you, I wouldn't have been at Supanova.


Keep on sewing,
Bloom xoxo

How to: Elsa's hair accessories

Welcome back blog readers :)

Today I'm going to share with you how I made the snowflake shaped hair accessories for my Elsa costume.

 So to start off with, I headed down to my local craft store and searched for an hour with no luck of anything that was snowflake shaped...not the right time of year I guess.
So I found these stick on gems in the scrapbooking section and hair clips with the jewellery supplies.

I didn't really like the little dots around it so I trimmed the plastic attached to the stickers like so...

Then badabing badaboom, all it took was a little bit of hot glue on the back to attach it to the hair clips...

And tadaaaaa there there are :D

Bare in mind this isn't my Elsa wig, just a spare white one I had lying around to show off the clips :P

All up, all four clips that I made cost me $8.00...which is ALOT less than what people are charging online for them

I know they don't look exactly like snowflakes...but being poor I couldn't afford the time or money to buy some online, but pretty happy with the result.

Hope you enjoyed my step-by-step guide.

Keep on sewing,

Bloom xoxo

Detangling your wig

Yay for getting back to cosplay related things :D

Today I'm going to share with you, the magical product that is now helping me detangle my wigs!

Now obviously you don't have to use this brand (this was left behind by a tradie so yay free), from what other cosplayers have said, as long as it's silicone spray, it should do the trick.
If you're a bit sceptical like me, spray on a small section at the bottom of the wig to make sure it won't damage it :)

Before this, I was buying all sorts of wig conditioning sprays online and they just didn't seem to get knots out at all.

So basically all I did, was get a wide tooth comb and begin combing the wig. Once you hit a knot, remove the comb and give the wig a quick spray with the silicone. Then continue to comb out the knot. I couldn't believe how easy it made the job :D
Obviously I'm not an expert at wigs, nor do I know much about them at all, but I love to share things I discover :D


Keep on sewing,
Bloom xoxo

Weight of the World

Hey everyone out there in blog land, it's me again :)

So last weekend was Gold Coast Supanova, my least favourite con, but I still had a decent time :)
No I'm not being a drama queen, it's my least favourite because of the sheer stupidity of the venue. You have to show your wristband when you walk in the building, then again when you walk in the inner part (where the stalls and celebs are) and not only that, but there is one main entrance to the inner and one main exit. I remember a couple of years ago, I stepped one metre outside the exit to register for the cosplay comp and they tried to tell me I had to go back to the other end of the building to reenter when I tried. So basically I went over the head of the volunteers and spoke to security..she let me in :)

Then there's the parking and public transport situation. Sure it will be great when the Light Rail is operating from June...but that didn't help us this weekend. My friend and I had to drive around for half an hour to find a park because the venue parking was full and there is NOWHERE to park on the Gold Coast within walking distance on a weekend. I mean come on, it's a tourist area near the beach..the parks are GONE.

Anyway,
Met a few people that knew me from my Page which was such an ego boost for me ^.^ So exciting meeting a 'fan', especially for the first time.
Saw my friends from Sydney which was great, and hopefully I'll be able to see them again in June if I can make it to Sydney's Supanova.

So, I was feeling pretty confident in my Catwoman costume because it was comfy, black (so presumably slimming), and showed off my boobs quite nicely.

Then there was the disaster of my Wonder Woman costume. Hours and hours of work was put into that costume over more than a month, so much money was spent on Worbla to make the armour right, and for what...the frumpy mess it turned out to be. The day of the con, my shoe armour came apart so that had to be left at home, towards the end my chest piece broke so that signalled the end of my day early, and I ran out of Worbla to attempt to make the belt more detailed.
Basically it came out as something that wasn't worth the money I spent on it.

You see pictures of Worbla armour all over the world that looks SPECTACULAR, but no matter how hard I tried, or what methods I used...I just couldn't make it happen.

It wasn't until I saw these photos of Supanova that I realised...I seriously need to do something about my weight. (Please don't think I'm being bitchy) I see pictures of costumes that just look shocking and like they were made by a blind man...but when the girl in them is skinny and gorgeous, she still manages to work it.
My costumes, no matter the effort or skill involved, always seem to come out ill-fitting and frumpy these days.

I made an agreement with myself to not even think about convention costumes for November until I lose 5 kilos...but I don't even think that's enough. It's not even my daily life that gets me down. Normally I don't really care how I look and I can always find something to wear that hides it all. But not costumes, not the one thing in my life that I enjoy doing. This seems to be the only place where I notice the size I have become and I hate it.
I wish I could just get a gym membership so I can get out of the house and just work out without a watch to know how long I've been going. But I can't. This unemployment situation is killing me and I just want my life back. I HATE staying at home every day because every cent I have goes towards bills. I just want to work and get my income back so I can change my life...but that shot to my self-esteem is stopping me from changing myself.

Well I'm sure there's more I could say here but it's now 1am and I should probably get some sleep so I can wake up fresh to do nothing tomorrow.
Sigh, I just wish I could get out of this rut and post about happy things and cosplay progress...but it doesn't seem to be happening at the moment.

Ah well, here's some more pics from the weekend to sign off with.

Keep on sewing,
Bloom xoxo

I'm all alone, there's no one here besiiiiide me

So after six weeks, still no news on the job front.
To begin with, I loved having the time off to do things with my life...but now that my money has dried up, I just want a job...not only for the income but also to resolve boredom.

Everyone around me who was unemployed seems to be getting jobs, but I can't even seem to get an interview...or even more that one rejection letter from the, at least, 30 jobs I've applied for.

*sigh*

Well on the semi-plus side, Supanova is coming up this weekend.
I spose that's a plus for some...for me it involves spending money I don't have, frantically finishing costumes that I've looked at so much that I hate them, and standing around awkwardly as I see fellow cosplayers that I know, but don't really want to go up to them because I think they won't remember or recognise me.

I've made a punishment for myself though, my next main convention to plan for is Brisbane Supanova in November and I've told myself I am not allowed to start or even plan my cosplays for this convention until I lose at least 5 kilos. Recently I've started to see how my costumes look good on my mannequin but awful on me, this is because of my weight gain over the past couple of years.
I've been looking back on my past cosplays, such as Babydoll, and I hate the way I look now. My biggest issue is I'm too lazy to do anything about it. Starting next week after this con is over, I will attempt to change my life. Obviously I can't afford a gym membership so I'm gunna do my best to keep motivated with the Wii and XBox Kinect.
The hardest part to keep dedicated to at the moment is my food intake. My main problem at the moment is the fact that my mum and I made soooooo much food for my birthday party...that was barely touched because half the people that said they were coming, didn't :(

Then that brings me to my next point, the fact that I hate having birthday parties. I've never exactly been popular, ever in my life, but at least my closest friends bothered to come. I was told a couple of months ago that I had to do something for my birthday because "you only turn 22 once", even though I've never had a good experience with heaps of people wanting to celebrate my birthday with me (bare in mind a few of my friends live in another state and my closest friends always show up) but it's the fact that you invite so many people each time in hopes that you'll finally have that big party that you've always wanted...but in the end, you end up being disappointed with the attendance and the amount of money you wasted on food and supplies that weren't needed (which also isn't what you want to be doing when you don't have an income)

This, is the cake my partner decorated for me.

The top tier is a vanilla cake with vanilla icing, topped with mini m&m's and surrounded with white choc kit kats.
The bottom tier is a chocolate cake with chocolate icing, topped with malteasers and surrounded with milk choc kit kats.
This cake alone cost roughly $70 to put together, and the amount of people that came was enough to eat only the top tier...leaving the whole bottom for my partner and I to eat ourselves.



Don't get me wrong, I'm thankful to the people that came along to help me celebrate and I'm not having a go at the people that didn't...this is just a post about how I wish my life was different sometimes.



Then there's my cosplay friends. I honestly can't remember what happened there. I have a select few, mainly in Sydney, that I love to cosplay alongside and hang out with at conventions...but I used to have so many more friends in the cosplay community. I've tried making new friends but it doesn't seem to be working out :(
I see newcomers to cosplay making friends with everyone and interacting heavily on fb...but I just can't seem to get that.
Also, didn't help that I didn't have broadband for over a year so it made me extremely anti-social considering there isn't many conventions for my to go to and hang out with these people from other states.


Think that's enough whinging for today...will make another post next week with pics from Supanova :) will be taking my camera in my Catwoman backpack and taking piccies this year!


Keep on sewing,
Bloom xoxo

Here comes the depression

WARNING! WHINEY BLOG POST AHEAD, PROCEED WITH CAUTION

Well here it is, the unemployment depression has finally kicked in. Took almost a month but its here. 

Basically I've been applying for jobs nonstop since I was terminated and NOTHING, I haven't even gotten to the interview stage. I can't believe how much this has affected my confidence in every aspect of my life.

Personal: Being unemployed for so long with no glimmer of hope has made me feel useless and putting unfair pressure on my partner to pay all the bills when my savings dries up is killing me. Basically all I feel like doing most of the time is sit around the house. 

Financial: Sure I have a bit in savings, but forget about spending that on costume materials or fun things, I've got to save it for the $600 of bills coming in every fortnight. 

Cosplay: There is a local convention coming up and I'm almost finding myself recycling parts of old costumes just to finish the new ones I'm working on which I've never had to do before. The added pressure of being halfway through costumes and not being able to buy anything isn't helping, especially when I make a big mistake and can't fix it. Lets not even mention the fact that I haven't got my convention tickets yet either. 

It just makes me wonder if employers realise they are fucking someone's life up by firing them? Especially when they don't have a reason to do so. Or at least not one they're sharing.  Also knowing that said employee uprooted their life and moved an hour north for that job only days before. 

I just wish that I could find a job and get out of this funk I've fallen into.

Hitting a bump in the road

So as my Facebook friends know, I was let go from my job this week. 

No I didn't do anything wrong, management just didn't like me because I was being trained up to take their job which they didn't like...and I was in probation so they didn't need to have a reason to get rid of me. 

The day it happened I did what any person would do, I cried, went home to my parents house and talked it out with them. Applied for 20 jobs, hoping I get an interview for at least one, and then moved on. 

My partner can afford the bills on his own for now, so at least we're safe for a month. 

After just moving into a new house and starting to pay bills like a real adult, this was NOT the situation I wanted to be in at all. 

I sulked around the house for a day and since then, I've felt like leaving that place was the best thing that could have happened to me. 

I've been continuing to set up the house, cooking every meal, baking treats, doing multitudes of washing, stripped back and repainted the desk for my sewing room...and I've been the happiest I've been in AGES. 

Going straight from one shit employer to another didn't help the happiness factor so this break is just what I needed.

I've had time to get over my sickness, get everything done that I needed to, and I can get started on my costumes for this year while still applying for jobs everyday. 

I know this chipper mood won't last when my money disappears, but I figure, why not enjoy it while it lasts :)