Advice to beginners 

5. Second Hand Stores , Charity Shops are your best friends

UP CYCLE YOUR WAY TO COSPLAY - Thankyou to Kim A

I know things are tight money wise for a lot of people nowadays, heck even I find it super hard to afford it sometimes what with only working part time. But I have a couple of ways that people can cosplay on a tight budget and still get great results. Both of these ways I use a lot and i will illustrate both with pictures of what i made with them.

The first is to upcycle something old. Obviously depending on what character you want to cosplay depends on what you’ll need. When i wanted to cosplay Jill Valentine in a tactical uniform i had pondered the use of a real tactical vest, but as so very often happens i was hit with bills that i had to pay leaving my cosplay budget pretty weak. So my answer to this was to upcycle. I went to my local charity shop and i bought a zip up body warmer that was black. This only cost me £3, it looked something like this (unfortunately I couldn’t find
any before pictures).

I bought some luggage straps from the local camping shop and then i began to mod. I took the long zip out of it cut it down so it sat just under my chest (I wanted a small half tactical vest for my design) then i re stitched all the edges and then i sewed the straps running all the way around the jacket back to front so that the clips were in the center at the front, leaving a slight gap so my tee was visible. I sewed a couple of loops out of the straps and attached those so that i could clip my walkie and my badge on. I sewed a small square of leatherette (which didnt cost more than £1) to the back and then i had a decal made from eBay which was only a couple of pounds
and attached to the back and then i had a very cool looking tactical vest for under £10 which is really cheap considering the alternative, and i got a really good response to this costume, one person even said that I was the best resident evil cosplayer they’d seen which made me smile at the time. The rest of the costume was also from upcycling old things, i used an old black tee and sewed some patches the shoulders, a pair of black combats, and a beret all from charity shops, things i had or was given a long time ago. The whole costume cost like under £20 minus the boots, which i couldnt get in a charity shop they cost me £9.99.

Another example of where i have upcycled old clothing into a costume is in the form of my Ryofu Housen cosplay. Again i went to the charity shops and bought a red blazer and a pink plain skirt. Then with the jacket i changed the buttons and painted the collar part black that needed to be. With the skirt all i did was paint the red lines on with fabric paint and there you have it! I had another great cosplay for less than £10.

This is a great way to make cosplay items for a fraction of the price. But I know that you are not always going to be able to find the item of clothing that is needed to modify into your cosplay, which is why I use my second method of upcycling a lot. BEDDING! Charity shops have a lot of great bedding that sells for really cheap and this can be used to make your costume. Its not just for costumes though, i have used this method to make casual clothes that i wear on a daily basis.

An example of this upcycling is one of my very latest cosplays that i wore to the MCM expo in London thats just gone. My Poke ringmaster Penelope cosplay. One lovely girl even came up to me and my sister at the expo and asked us where we got the fabric to make the costumes and we told her the same thing then, BEDDING!

The dress and the waistcoat were both made from bedding, the dress i just belted and the waistcoat i put colourful buttons on it and painted the pokeballs on the tails and even with buying the plain black top hat and polestyrene balls to make the pokeballs this whole costume also cost less than £10 to make. Even the pikachu on the top hat is upcycled from an old one that was bought from a charity shop. So with this costume it was just a little imagination designing a character and making the cosplay from the bedding. You could get the bedding and make it into the character of your choice from the well known anime, manga etc that you wanna cosplay from. Or like me in this example i found the bedding first and then designed the cosplay around it, which was also fun to do.

all of the costumes above are all ones that i have made by buying old bedding or using old bedding that i already had and making into cosplays.

What i am trying to get at in all this is that even people on a tight budget can create something amazing from something old and no one is none the wiser. Everyone out there has an old tee, or dress, or some old bedding, old hats and old accessories that they can take and with a bit of creativity and work can turn them into cosplay related items! I do it all the time and if you cant afford to buy fabric off the roll its a great way to make what you need on the cheap. I hope people will consider it and give it a try if they are on a budget. I love to see it when all cosplayers come together. I hope this might help some people out there and I hope people have fun trying this.

6. Don't forget about the minor details that make your cosplay so special.

     A great article from Lady Fancypants on creating Mad Moxxi !!

A Cosplayer is Born... and Moxxi Part 1 - Spats!

Hello world! I decided to finally get this blog thing going for a few reasons: first, overall I am terribly charming and witty, and the world just must know what I'm thinking (ha ha); second (and more importantly) I finally decided to make the leap and create my first cosplay! No, this isn't going to be just a cosplay blog, but as I have been working through this process - researching, learning, creating - I tried so hard to find accounts of what those before me did, and there isn't much out there in the way of tutorials applicable to the costumes I was creating for my husband and I. MANY people have played Moxxi and Dr. Zed before, but explaining how they did what they did didn't seem to be a priority - I figured, why don't I share!

The first step, of course, was research, so I went in game(s) and took pictures (of my TV) of Zed and Moxxi in every location they appear, and from literally EVERY angle I could imagine. For the record, that wasn't good enough and I've been back a few times since to get a little angle here or a little detail there. I started to gather fabric and notions in about February - plenty of time before con to get everything together - but of course, I kept procrastinating, and every time I set out to get something done, I would wind up discovering there was some little thing I was missing and put it off to another day.

While I can't promise a complete tutorial of every little step, I can definitely explain the steps I followed, where I got the bits, pieces, and fabrics I found, and what I had to do to get them all together (if there's anyone out there reading, and you have questions, feel free to ask!). If it's not clear yet, I tend to be more than I little verbose, so there may be more talky talky than needed, but if you stick with me, I'll give you the steps I followed to make these "masterpieces." Warning: you will need some basic sewing skills AND a sewing machine to make these costumes, but the last time I did any major sewing was eight years ago, and the last time I made a garment was in the ninth grade, a total of thirteen years ago, a sloppy pair of shorts - so there may be hope for you yet!
The first piece I actually got around to making was Moxxi's spats (boot covers). In order to figure out HOW to make them, I searched the internets like a boss, and came across THIS lovely tutorial from Festive Attyre for making your own pattern and using it to sew a pair of spats!
Materials necessary, ALL found at my local Fabricland:
-White Fabric (preferably stiff, I used light denim)
-White Thread
-0.5" Yellow Double Fold Bias Tape (I accidentally grabbed single fold. Don't.)
-Matching Yellow Thread
-A seperable white zipper of adequate length (determined based on the length of the spat you want)
-Eight large black buttons

The basics, put on a pair of sacrificial stockings over the shoe you plan to cover, and duct tape where you want the spat to cover. Once you have your duct tape spat built, use a sharpie to draw a line the front and back of the leg, as straight and accurate as possible (using a friend or conscript if you don't feel you can do it yourself). I also added a line down the inside of my spat where I planned on putting the zipper (though I ended up putting the zipper on the outside based on how the item came together). These pieces of duct tape stuck to stocking become the stencil for your pattern! I traced mine on to cardboard, then traced the cardboard stencils on to the fabric - boom! A spat was ready to be born! Don't forget to leave a seam allowance on the edges that will be sewn together, I usually stick with 5/8" or so. Because bias tape will be applied to the outer edge, you don't need to leave any extra allowance on the top or bottom, unless you want a little extra space to ensure the fit, just remember to cut it down to exactly where you want your spat to fit before putting the trim on.

I pinned the pieces together, and sewed up the front and back. It was at this point that I determined how long my zipper needed to be by measuring the length of the pieces I needed to attach. Applying the bias tape was a pain with the single fold, but with double fold, it would be simple. Pin the bias tape around the edges, and sew it in place. Take care on the curves, fold as necessary to get the tape to conform to the shape of the toe. I ended up putting it around the entire edge, and then attaching the zipper underneath the bias tape on the outside of the spats. 
Once the bias was on, it was button time! I tried to match the spacing as closely and evenly as possible, though the buttons were a bit small. Finally, I sewed a wee bit of black elastic on to the bottom of the spat to stretch under the shoe and keep the bottom edge of the spat in place.

aaand voila! Spats! The fun part - cell shading and adding blood spatter - will come later ;) The only things I would change are: the buttons, I ended up making the rest of the buttons out of polymer clay, and intend to make matching ones for the spats before my next wear and I would most certainly use double fold bias tape, no matter how far I needed to search for it! Stay tuned for more!

This was only part one of twelve and was just designing the Spats!!