A small Abunai! 2011 report.

I know- I am horribly late. But I still like to write some about the event, because for me, cosplay-wise, a lot has happened.
Abunai! was helt from friday the 26th of august, till the 28th. Which was, for me, the weekend from the first week of my new schoolyear. They couldn't have planned it better. :B

It all started the schoolyear before! I'm not the only geek at my school. I know of at least two others in my year that are into cosplay as well and they've become pretty good friends of mine. One of the two participates in the Cosplay Competition pretty much every year and for this year, she was one or two people short. So she asked me. It was gonna be a Lucky Star act, and even though I've never seen the show, I said yes because it sounded like a whole lot of fun to me. She also asked me to help with the uniforms. We had to make six summer uniforms, and she wanted to make them all herself, so she was at least sure that they were all exactly the same.
This, I can tell you, was HORROR. The unspoken rule seems to be that you can't be a proper cosplayer if you aren't a horrible procastinator, and we, ofcourse, followed that rule. It is a sad thing that we don't have pics of this.
It was a good learning experience for me, though. One thing I learned, is that pleated skirts aren't as easy as they look and pleating and ironing them goes with a LOT of pins and needles.

Thanks to all the cosplay act work, I barely had time left to work on my own cosplays. I had planned to do the Masked Croissant and Shego for this event, but in the end I only had time left to finish Shego. About an hour before I had to go pack my stuff and by skipping two of my schooldays. Then again, I think more experienced cosplayers will now go "Deal with it." on me.
Then it was time to go! I traveled with two friends of mine, with which I also shared a hotel room. The luxury of a hotel room is unbelievable. <3
Friday was, for us, mostly orientationday. What was there to do, who were present, where was everything (the building was a maze, I tell you), etc, etc. And since I only has two cosplays- Shego and the Lucky Star one, I spent friday in my casual clothing. That day, I ran into the two most awesome cosplays I've seen on Dutch cosplay ground. Danbo (or Cardbo), a character from the manga Yotsuba&! and a Sesame Street monster of which I only know it's made of awesome and says a lot of "Yipyipyipyip!"! Ofcourse, I asked both of them if they wanted to take a picture with me. :B
If I come across something awesome, I can get totally overexcited- a little like a kid in a candystore. I like to believe it's one of my charms. But it's also the reason that I posed almost the same on both pictures. xD
Back in the hotel and after a good cup of tea with some delicious cake, we went to our room and I decided that I was gonna do what I still wanted to do for years- take a picture of yourself while brushing your teeth. Don't ask me why, I just always had that craving, somehow. Which resulted in the following picture:

From left to right: Sab, me and Liza

Then, after a good night's sleep, there was saturday. The day of the Cosplay compo. I had to be there around 10 with the six skirts I had made and bumped on a huge line at the door. I explained one of the gophers I had to be indoors early because I had to be there for the acts, but he told me, "Doesn't matter, just get in line.". The damn bastard didn't even check if I had a day- or weekendticket (the line was for people with a dayticket)! After about half an hour, it seemed the guy was just a complete douche and uninformed and I could get inside. After which we had to wait more than an hour before we could start rehearsing the acts. Ofcourse. At least gave us enough time to change. 

In the act, I had to fill in the role of Misao Kusakabe. I still hadn't had the time to watch the series, so I knew pretty much NOTHING about this character. But I got told, "You two are character-wise pretty much alike. Just be yourself. C: " And thus I did. 

One of the things that Abunai is well-known for are the technick fails with the Cosplay- and AMV contests. And this year wasn't anything different. Though despite that, the act went really good and was pretty amusing, according to the people we asked. The whole thing was recorded, but the vid isn't online yet. I'll put a link here when it is, ofcourse! What I CAN give you, is a pic of us on stage. (I'm all on the left- aren't you proud of me? =w= )

Here's a group pic, btw! 

On the left is our brilliant Gaga Pudding- we gave Lady Gaga a role in our huble little act as well!

I decided to spend the rest of the day in my cosplay, it already being around 3 PM and being too lazy to dress back into my casual clothes. Plus the cosplay was comfortable. I was pretty tired from all the act fuzz, which resulted in some pretty dull pictures, of which I'll share the most awesome with you: 

While my friends were waiting for me, they got me a bottle with juice to drink, because I was EXHAUSTED. I seemed pretty happy with it, and for some reason placed it on my head. (my wig made my head pretty flat on top) This had to go on picture, according to one of them, and thus I striked a pose. I am a really wise Misao. *nods* 

And thus came sunday. This was the day I'd walk around in my Shego cosplay. I already got in my cosplay at the hotel (the looks at breakfast from the other guests were priceless), but I'm still a bit of a makeup noob, so took my makeup gear with me and asked a dear friend of mine to do it for me, because I know of her that she likes to do that kind of stuff. She made me look really evil! <3 

I got recognised a LOT. My Misao cosplay wasn't all that recognisable- at least not without the rest of my Lucky Star cast. So I wasn't used to all that fuzz yet. It was really nice and funny to hear everyone whisper about you behind your back (in a positive way), and a (for me) surprisingly big amount of people wanted a pic of me. Only Sab was left that day to spend time with me, and I'm happy she thought of it as amusing, having to stop EVERY time because someone walked up to me for a picture! 

I think the most memorable non-shoot moment of that day was in the dealerroom, when a 1.90 meter long Red Scout came walking up to me asking me "Can I hug you? You were always my favourite character. <3 ". On which I gave him a hug, replying (in character) "Ohh, but baby, I'm everyone's favourite character~" 

A friend of my Kim is a pretty big Kigo (KimxShego) fan and she asked us for a small shoot. We were happy to participate. And thus, next, I shall share with you some of them pictures! Also including some other pics of me that were made that day, btw. 

I like this one- It's Kim, Lizz and me discussing some pose possibilities. I think it's one of the few pics of me from that day out of character. 

And then I walked into Superbig! I thought she rocked my socks, and she thought I was awesome, so ofcourse we had to go on picture together! 

Here's one from the shoot. There aren't many moments Shego is caught off-guard.  Go Kimmie, grab that chance!

And the pic that showed me the biggest flaw in my costume: my crotch. B)  I still  like it, though!

If you wanna see more pics, also from Abunai! itself, you can visit Lizz's site, or give her gallery a visit! 

So far my weekend report. I loved it. Spending time with friends again, new experiences, everything. <3 

And to close this post off, a pic of my most geekish part of my Abunai! dealerroom haul! 

Why I decided to cosplay Shego and styling her wig

It's been a while! And I'm TERRIBLY sorry. And the worst part is- I don't have a proper excuse at all. After my last blogpost, I didn't do anything but work on my cosplays (and boy, was I on deadlines! D: ). The other cosplay I had planned for Abunai! 2011 was Shego, the sarcastic villain from Disney's Kim Possible. Shego has a certain charm about her to me. She's evil, yes, and she'd fight Kim till her last breath. But at the same time, she's smart, loyal and caring. I like this contrast in her, though I never know the exact reason why I'm drawn to a certain character.
I just know that when a friend of mine said she'd always wanted to cosplay Kim, I grabbed the opportunity with both hands!
Too bad my camera died halfway the cosplay process, and I can't find the pics back that I had made of her costume... So I'm gonna give you as much as possible.

In this post, I'm gonna show you how I styled her wig. If you've styled wigs before, you're probably gonna curse me- but as I already said once, I'm still only learning!

I started with a long, black, wavy wig without bangs and a side-split (which was on the right side, lucky me!) that I bought from a friend of mine once. The first thing I did was cut the small pluck of hair that hangs loose from the rest on her forehead. It was kinda scary, cutting in wigs, because I hadn't done it before, but all went well. After I attacked that pluck with hairspray so it would stay in place, I started to divide her hair, parting it in horizontal layers. I decided that, to create the "bigger" effect, I wanted to "flick up" her hair in the middle so it would stand out wider. I divided her hair in a high layer, on top of her head which I rolled up and kept in place with curler pins. The rest I divided in a middle- and a lower layer. The middle layer I split in three and rolled those up as well, and I braided the lower/neck layer, since I wasn't gonna do anything with that part of the wig anyway.





This is what it looked like from the top and back. Looking back on it, I think it's kinda hilarious. :')
You can also see the braid on the right picture. What you can also see, is that I (tried to) split the hair  on the braidlines. Made it way easier, logically.

After that, I took the hairsausages apart one by one. When I took the first one apart, I found out that the amount of hair was too big to comb up all at once, so I had to split it in half again and then comb it up. As seen on your left.
It looks pretty bad like this, and it was. :') It'll get less though.
Combing it up proved to be pretty hard. But then again, a kanekalon wig reacts a whole lot different on what you do with it than real hair!



Here's what it looked like when I was done with the middle-lower half. It looks horrible, I know, and it would probably send shivers down a professional cosplayer's spine, but still. :') I used a lot of hairspray along the way to keep it up like this.
After this, I started combing up the middle-upper half. And instead of combing on top of the selections of hair, I combed it up on the lower side. Again, using a lot of hairspray along the way. 

Done with this, I let the middle-upper half hang down on the lower half, and it formed a really weird bobble. With help from some water to unharden the hairspray where needed, I evened it out a little. Because I had combed up the lower half of the middle-upper part, the hair on top wasn't all strangled. You could still see I flicked up the hair midback, though...



Done with this, I finally took the knot on top out and tried to divide the hair evenly over the rest, making the combing up less visible. Using a lot of hairspray again to keep it all in place, I tried to hide the strangled-up parts as good as possible. I succeeded a little.

Here's how it finally looked like:

Thanks to the extra light on the middle picture, it looks a lot worse than it actually looked in reallife. 

Most people are probably gonna say this is no way to treat a wig, but this is what sounded most logical to me back then (and now still) and it worked. The hair stood out bigger, but not unnaturally big. It was just perfect, really. And that it maybe looked a little messy didn't matter all that much, seeing as Shego's hair is wavy from itself. Next time I wanna do something like this, I think I'm gonna try to find another way to make the hair look bigger. C: 

Well, there! A Shego wig! I'm proud of it. It looks incredibly Scene-style without the actual cosplay, but look what it does when I'm all dressed up! 

Can you believe that's the same wig? Well, I certainly can't! Also  look at my Kim. Isn't she pretty? <3 

More pictures can be found on Lizz's site, or in the file with all the pictures Melissa shot that event. 

For next time, I'll try to find the pics back that I DID make while working on this cosplay. They have to be somewhere, right? D: 

Making this cosplay certainly was an interesting process, because I had to work with Lycra, so I do think it'll be interesting to share. C: 

And that'll be all for today. I'll try to kick up the next blog posts a little faster! x3