Luna P!

So, I actually attended my first convention recently.  It was originally going to be this really cool thing, I was getting my picture taken with Firefly actors, Rachel and Cari were going to go with me and maybe even dress up as Sailor Scouts with me, even though neither one of them really had strong feelings about Sailor Moon.

And then the Firefly actors cancelled. (Jewel Staite and Sean Maher, if you were wondering. Kaylee and Simon. Man, that would have been such a great picture.) So, I guess maybe I see James Marsters? Spike from Buffy? That's cool. Nope. He cancels. Leaves me with Jason David Frank, the original Green Ranger, which I suppose is something, but nothing to write home about. And then it turns out that that day is Cari's wedding anniversary. And Rachel doesn't have the money for it. And admission tickets are absolutely nonrefundable. (I know, I tried. Repeatedly.) Soooooo.... looks like I'm gonna solo it. I figure I'll enter the costume contest at least, I have all these fancy costumes after all.

I decided to go with Sailor Pluto. She was my first major costume that I finished, and I'm pretty proud of that staff after all.

So the thing is, I believe I've mentioned this before, I can't stand the thought of carrying a regular purse while cosplaying. It would just be so jarring, take you right out of the coolness of the costume. If you remember I have plans to turn a Toad plushie into a bag for Princess Peach, and I always intended to do a Luna P bag for Pluto. I know technically Luna P belongs to Chibi Moon, but she gets it from Pluto, so it works!

So, it's like three days before the con, I have exactly one evening to get this done, no more. The rest of my time is full. There's definitely no time for shopping for supplies, so I make up my mind that I'm going to dig through my stockpile of fabric and craft supplies, and if I can come up with the stuff to make a Luna P bag, I'll make it. If not, I'll just take my phone wallet case like I would for a concert, it's at least smaller and less obtrusive.

So, originally I had intended to actually sew a ball shaped back with maybe some kind of drawstring at the top or something like that, so that it would actually look like the "real" Luna P. I figured that might be a little complicated, and awkward to store stuff in, but I didn't really have a better plan until I found this:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B018ODZ4FU/?coliid=I1KA5RW96VMVN4&colid=WVV2QWR3H1GZ&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

Which is just darling, but like $40. Although I will admit, I did briefly consider buying it, if I could have gotten it here before the con.  However, it did make me realize I could easily do a flat circle bag like this and it would be much easier and much better for carrying things inside.

So I get into my big plastic tubs of fabric scraps, and by an amazing miracle, I come up with two cut off pant legs from a pair of black cotton (twill maybe? I'm not sure.) pants. I have a whole stockpile of cut off pant legs, I never can just throw those out when I cut off a pair of pants into shorts. Hilariously enough, I don't even have the shorts that were made from these pants, I have no idea what happened to them. I suppose it's not really relevant. So I dig out my biggest pot lid that will fit on the widest part of the pant leg and we are off and running.

I think it's like a 9"-10" pot lid? I'm not positive on that, I didn't measure it. Probably less that 12" but not by much?

So I trace and cut out two circles in black, and four from a chunk of canvas I have left over from corset making. I wanted to line it in canvas for strength, and also to make some pockets in the inside.

Heh, the canvas circles look like tortillas.

I measured the circumference of the tortillas, it was 36", so I divided that in half and cut out two strips each of the black and the canvas (with a little extra for seam allowance) one for the top of the circle and one for the bottom. I cut out four triangles for the ears, and one really long strip for the shoulder strap. I wanted the bottom and top halves of the circle to be separate to create a seam on each side for the shoulder strap to be sewn into.

Obviously I ironed the hell out of everything, being stuffed in a plastic tub with a bunch of other fabric for years makes some amazing wrinkles.

Next came the face. I was going to just applique it on using scraps of fabric from old projects, I had plenty of that, mostly from my Princess Peach dress. My process for the face really wasn't complicated, I mostly just freehanded the shapes, the eyes were two half circles, the nose is an oval, the mouth was a rounded triangle that I cut the little curves at the top once I had the size right. A close observer will notice I'm missing a rather important detail of this MOON cat face that it took me an embarrassingly long time to notice.

I made a different mistake here, however, I used fabric glue to attach the face pieces before sewing, and the stuff I used ended up soaking through and looking all blotchy, which I wasn't happy about, but I left it for the moment hoping it would clear up as it dried. I basically just satin stitched around the edges of each piece, and for it being basically the first time I've ever appliqued I think I did okay.

I stitched the ears in place, and took a piece of the bottom hem of the pants since it was already a tube, stitched it a little narrower and attached that for the antenna. I left the end open, since I was not yet sure how I was doing the little bobble at the end of the antenna.

So after that I took two of the tortillas, folded and stitched down the top third or so, and on one of them I added a strip of elastic across one of them, sewn down in several places for things like pens and chapstick. After that I sewed those to the full tortillas. I then stitched down the middle of the tortilla just across the folded portion to make some pockets. Once those were attached to each other I sewed them to the black tortillas.

This picture was taken after the bag was fully assembled, but you can see what I mean.

This bag is definitely not as pretty on the inside as it is on the outside. As you can see, I also made liberal use of my serger, both the canvas and the black fabric loved to fray.

At this point, I sewed the ears together and set them aside, I added a layer of pink satin so that they'd be pink on one side, I serged the top and bottom pieces to their canvas linings, and got the strap ready to go.  For the strap I just folded the edges into the middle and then folded the whole thing in half, like a giant strip of bias tape, and then just ran it through the sewing machine down both long sides and serged the ends.

The next step was getting the zipper installed in the top piece. I didn't mention this previously, but do you remember that sweet biker jacket Stu's mom got me for Christmas? The one I had to add cuffs to the waist and sleeves so it would be long enough for me? Well, the shirt that I got from the thrift store to do that with had this sweet rhinestone zipper on it that of course I couldn't throw away, it was an amazing zipper. So I cut it out and saved it. And this was the perfect project for it. What better use of unnecessary rhinestones than a Sailor Moon bag?

So here's how it went. I took the top strip of fabric and I made a long lengthwise cut down the middle the same length of the zipper, with two small cuts at each end, like this:

This allowed me to fold the long flaps under, serge the edges, and stitch them down. Obviously this left those short cut ends raw and fraying. So I smeared those ends with fray check and then folded a small piece of ribbon over the end and stitched it down. Installing the zipper was as simple as lining it up with the nice neat rectangular hole I'd just made, and stitching it down. Easy peasy. I'd never had such an easy time installing a zipper, I should do them all like this! If only that were possible.

Again, this is after assembly, but you can see what it looks like.

At this point I carefully lined up the top and bottom strips with the tortillas, making sure everything was straight and carefully lining up the seams on the sides. Once I had them lined up I was able to insert the ends of my shoulder strap into the seam and sew it down. Everything was pinned all to hell here, I stabbed myself brutally and repeatedly trying to handle this and manipulate it so I didn't sew anything that shouldn't be sewn.

Very VERY carefully, I worked my way around the edges sewing them down, making sure I had opened the zipper beforehand so there would be an opening to turn it right side out, otherwise I'd seal the thing shut since the zipper pull was on the other side.

Once that was done, I was basically finished, aside from a few finishing details. I turned it right side out and started trimming away loose threads, and only now did I notice that I had managed to forget to put the crescent moon on LUNA P. IT'S NOT LIKE HER NAME MEANS MOON OR ANYTHING. WHY WOULD THAT TRIGGER ANY THOUGHTS OF MOONS?

I was so annoyed.  Luckily I still have that gold puffy fabric paint from Princess Peach's dress, so I just used that and drew a crescent on there. At Stu's suggestion I put a straw in the antenna to make it stand up better, although it still has issues, I need to mess with it. I then realized the face was still going to be blotchy, so I took the fabric paint medium I bought forever ago and made some fabric paint in those colors and basically just painted over to cover the blotchyness. It helped immensely, although I think I may do a second coat, I think it could be even better.

So, for the bobble, I wasn't sure what to do. I was planning to go to Joann's with Cari the next day for a different upcoming cosplay (that you will be updated on soon) so I thought maybe I'd buy a pom pom or something. But then I thought, No! I haven't bought a single thing for this whole damn bag, I want it to stay that way. I want this to be the bag that didn't cost me anything I hadn't already spent.  So instead I stuffed a small wad of tissue in the end of the straw and then just globbed on a massive amount of gold puffy paint. And it worked perfectly. The puffy paint has shape so it was still round and it didn't weigh the antenna down too much.

And the result:

She's so damn cute I want to use her for my daily purse. I love how it turned out. And I'm super proud of the fact that I managed to not spend a single extra penny on this bag. And I've made up my mind that whatever alterations or tweaks I may make to it, that's the rule for this bag. No shopping. Use what I have. I'm so thrifty!

She worked wonderfully too. I'd made her wide enough that I could easily fit my phone, sunglasses, portable charger, a water bottle and several other small things in there. I don't have any pictures of me holding it in costume, I set her down for the few pictures I have.

I had a great time at the con, even though I was on my own. I had a little trouble actually getting into the con, for some reason when we pulled up to the building and it was time for me to go in, I had a sudden crushing wave of anxiety, I was positive I was going to look ridiculous and I wanted to just go home. I came very very close to having Stu take me home so I could change into normal clothes and come back. But after a few deep breaths I knew I'd be annoyed with myself if I did that. I think the hard part was that I was going alone. I really wish I'd had someone with me. But once I got in there and saw other people dressed up I felt much better. It took me a bit to calm down, I was shaking and sweating for a bit, but luckily they were serving drinks, so I got myself a nice cold hard cider and just chilled for a second. Then I went shopping.

I explored the center, had my picture taken like a thousand times, visited the celebrity area, saw Jason David Frank, Thomas Ian Nicholas (Rookie of the Year), and Charisma Carpenter (Cordelia, Buffy the Vampire Slayer). I went to Brent Spiner (Data, Star Trek the Next Generation) and John De Lancie's (Q, Star Trek the Next Generation, Discord, MLP) panel, and then watched the Nerd Off panel to extend the sitting time. I tell you what, I regretted those boots like nobody's business. I knew it would be bad, but I severely underestimated how bad. I will not repeat that experience. If I take Pluto to another con I'm going to have some nice comfy flat boots for walking around, and the heels will be only for the costume contest. Which I didn't win, by the way, but I didn't really expect to. It was only my first con, and I'm still very much an amateur. But I enjoyed myself, even though I was alone. I'm glad I went, and I'm glad I went dressed up.

There's me, right after the con wearing my sweet new Wonder Woman tank top I bought there, completely wiped out, but happy.

Sailor Pluto!

God, this has been a hell of a project.  So, continuing on with the staff.

I knew I wanted to coat it in some good solid glue type stuff to protect it, all signs pointed to gesso being the best option, but also kind of expensive. Luckily, I found a recipe for homemade gesso. Well, I say homemade, mostly it just told me to mix regular joint compound and Elmer's glue all until I liked the consistency and go. I described this in my last post. So that's what I did.

White goo! So I smeared it all over the staff, let it dry, and then sanded the hell out of it, and then did it all again. And again.

 It was a lot of sanding. And it ended up all white and smooth and pretty.

I also needed to make some changes to the heart for the head, the garnet orb wasn't fitting correctly, it didn't look right and I couldn't figure out why. I eventually realized it was because the orb is supposed to go directly where the two sides meet at the bottom point, not inside the heart.  So I had to cut a section out of my heart.

It was a little terrifying cutting into my heart like that. Seeing a cross section of the inside was kind of cool though. I used the hacksaw to cut and then my dremel to round out the cuts to neatly fit the orb.

I then gesso'd and sanded my hearts as well.

While my various layers of gesso were drying I went ahead and made my paper clay that I planned to use to make the cone at the top of the staff that the heart rests on, and for other little details on the staff. If you look in the above picture where the orb is in the heart, you might be able to see that I added some paper clay to the ends to mold perfectly around the orb so that it actually fit perfectly. It worked pretty well. If you're wondering, the recipe for the clay came from here:  http://dahlhartlane.blogspot.com/2011/10/how-to-make-paper-clay.html

As you can see, it has a pretty rough texture. I made a cone out of toilet paper rolls to be the size and shape I wanted and then covered it in the clay. I had intended to use the paper clay for the little bits along the outside of the heart just below the gold balls, but it was too sticky and difficult to work with, so I actually ended up making those out of Sculpey, interestingly enough, the leftover Sculpey I bought to make my earrings for this costume.  That worked way better.

I just sculpted them while looking at reference pictures. I put the cone in the oven with the sculpey because it goes in at a pretty low heat and I was quickly running out of time on this project, I couldn't afford to wait two days for it to dry. I then managed to completely forget about these things and left them in the oven for like an hour. Luckily due to the low heat nothing worse than a little discoloration happened.

Haha, oops. Since I planned to paint everything though I wasn't too concerned.  So then lots more sanding and dremeling happened. It took some effort to get that cone smooth and then get the grooves carved out in it, but I did it. I also had to cut grooves for the key pieces to fit in the side of the staff, which was way more difficult than I anticipated so the grooves weren't as deep as I planned, but I got them deep enough to work.

The cone is a little lumpy but I'm not entirely unhappy with it. It just got hot glued to the top segment of the staff and then I cut a thick craft foam circle to fit inside the top to cover it. I glued it to the top of the wooden segment inside the cone and then all around the edges to get it secure and make a nice platform where the head of the staff was going to rest.

For these I basically dug the grooves with my dremel, and then filled them with glue and wedged the key pieces in there, making very very sure to line them up straight with each other.

I had thought I would use my dremel to dig small grooves at the top and bottom of each Styrofoam ball, but I ended up not doing that, I liked the way it looked and I was tired of working with the dremel.

I finally attached the head, I basically just hot glued the shit out of it. I went with hot glue for all the attachments just because of how quick it sets. I didn't attach the gold balls yet because I still needed to paint the staff. I knew I'd have to repaint the garnet orb, but it just worked better to have that in already.

Finally on to painting! First was priming. I loved this primer, it went on so smooth and nice, made everything look good. And I could sand it when it was dry, although I didn't really need to. By the time all my coats of primer were dry it was getting dark out so I had to relocate to the garage to do the silver paint.

I did two coats of the silver, it was just one of those metallic silver paints. Didn't have any issues here either. Spray painting is usually pretty straightforward and easy.

Finally I got to put it all together! Painted the garnet orb, glued on the gold balls. It all came together so neatly. I love the way it came out. (Don't you love the contrast of the first attempt at the staff just leaning there all curved by the pretty straight staff?) I  mean, I can still see flaws and some day I think I'd like to redo this when I have better tools, but for what I was working with I'm pretty pleased.

This was the last step, the wig for my costume. I wanted to combine the two wigs I bought to make one really thick wig. I almost didn't do this, but I got the staff done Friday night and had all day Saturday before the Halloween party to kill, so I went for it. It was tangly and tedious but I got it done. 

Oh, another random accessory I threw in since I had some extra time, I made a little chain key belt! It doesn't look anything like the one Sailor Pluto actually wears, but it gets the idea across and I did  make it with my little Sailor Moon pendants that I have, so they all fit the theme at least. Just a fun little bonus. If I ever take this to a convention I'll make a more accurate one.

The End Result:

Dude, I look pretty hot. Everything came together beautifully and I was so happy about it. I did learn some things I'd like to alter, the snaps in the crotch of my leotard are the biggest pains in the ass in the world and I need to change that, they come undone super easy but are damn near impossible to snap. And I think I should just sew the skirt on, I hated worrying about the snaps coming undone all night. I had to take the boots off towards the end of the party because heels like that kill my feet, but that's was expected. All in all it came together really well. And I won the costume contest. Got me a new shot glass. :D  My staff took a little abuse at the party, it has some dings and scratches, and one of my friends accidentally knocked the small heart off the top, which is an easy fix. I actually had fixed it, but the staff fell over this morning and the heart fell off again along with two of the gold balls. :P  Still easy fixes. I think I'm going to take my super fine sandpaper to the staff to smooth out the little dings, repaint the silver, and then coat the whole thing in polycrylic just to protect it. I didn't have time to do that for the party, but I think it needs to be done. I'd like to do some detailing and weathering with some black paint anyways. So I'm still gonna touch up the staff a bit just for my own entertainment. But all in all it was a success.  I'm so freaking proud of this costume.

Before I go, Bonus Pic! You can kind of see my red contacts in this one. :)

Prop making can be FUN. But not for me.

So, I've been working on the staff, naturally. There's been a few... shall we say... hang ups along the way.

So I showed you all the cut out pieces. I was able to successfully drill holes all the way through my wooden balls for the metal bolts to connect everything, that wasn't too bad.

This was my work space and tools. Yes, that is a clamp attached to a bar stool with a kettlebell to weigh it down. A bit ghetto, but it totally worked. The glass of water was there because I learned a lot about friction and the heat it generates here, and I needed to be able to cool the drill bit and to keep my sawdust from being lit on fire. I definitely made some smoke doing this.

So I drilled the wooden balls. After that I needed to cut down the metal bolts I was using, they were pretty long and I didn't want to have to drill holes quite that deep. I tried my dremel first with a cutting attachment, with the bolt secured in the clamp. It worked, but it was difficult to control. So next I went to my hacksaw.

This little guy. He's just a mini saw, but I figured he'd be big enough for my purposes. (That's what she said!)  It was very difficult cutting the bolts with this, but easier to control than the dremel. But then halfway through the third or fourth bolt the blade on my saw broke. It was just the one that came with it in my tool kit, and I'd bought more some time ago so I'd have extras. I replaced the blade, and holy smooth easy cutting through solid metal, Batman! Apparently the blade that came on my saw was a shitty, shitty terrible blade, and when I replaced it with my decent ones, it just melted right through those bolts. It was wonderful. I got everything cut pretty easily. 

Next, I went on to drill my holes in the wooden segments. Figured it couldn't be much harder than drilling the wooden balls had been. (That's what she... said?) But I was wrong. (Foreshadowing! Dun dun duuuuuunnnnnn!)

I realized almost immediately something was different. I was drilling and drilling and drilling and almost nothing was happening. One quick google search later I come to realize the dowels I bought were OAK. Which is apparently an INTENSE HARDWOOD that usually requires INTENSE TOOLS and SPECIAL DRILL BITS to drill. Well that's good to know. So those were useless to me.

So the next day I went to the craft store and bought some new wooden dowels made out of some kind of generic garbage wood I'm sure, I couldn't find out what but it didn't feel like oak. This meant of course that I had to cut the pieces apart myself since my step dad had done the others for me on his table saw and I didn't want to take the time to take these over there again. Luckily I had a hacksaw with a spiffy new blade on it. So I marked it out, clamped the dowels down and cut them my own damn self. It wasn't too hard, which reassured me that this wood was much softer. (Awww, that's what she said. :(  )  I had a few somewhat crooked cuts before I got the hang of it, but it wasn't too bad. And I was able to straighten those out with my dremel and a sanding bit. I then proceeded to drill the holes for the metal bolts in each segment. It all took me most of a day, what with having to recharge the cordless drill occasionally.

I have since developed a strong hatred for cordless tools. Having to stop to charge a battery is just the worst thing ever.

Look at those pieces starting to connect! It was fun to get a better visual for how it would look all put together.  My joy was short lived however.

The next day, I began to assemble the pieces. Basically I'd dump a bunch of wood glue in the hole, put the metal bolt in, squish glue everywhere, and then slide the next piece over the bolt, with it's corresponding hole also filled with wood glue. Glue would just squish everywhere again, effectively covering both sides of the connecting pieces as well as the metal bolt. I went through so many paper towels cleaning up excess glue. I eventually got my proportions down so I didn't squish quite so much. I ended up having to give up on the idea of having it screw apart in segments for transporting because I needed a bigger drill bit to install the hardware for it, and I didn't have one, I'd been using the biggest one my brother had for his drill for the bigger posts for the joints anyways, and I didn't want to go buy a new drill bit. So I just glued the posts in without the extra screwing hardware.

As I assembled the pieces though, I began to realize that not one of these holes was drilled straight. And most of them didn't line up with each other. I mean, in retrospect this isn't surprising. I'm only human, with my imperfect unsteady hand, the chances that I could drill a bunch of perfectly centered absolutely straight holes are basically zero. If I'd had a drill press maybe I could have pulled it off, but I did not. As the pieces went together I just felt this horrible sick feeling when I realized how drunkenly crooked this thing was going to look. I almost quit halfway through, but I finished assembling just to see how it would turn out, all the while coming up with a plan B in my head. This was the result:

Look at that nasty, drunken curvy piece of crap. It's like it's not even trying!

 Wildly off center.

Trying for a goddamn 45 degree angle there? What was this?

I just... How drunk was I while drilling? (Zero. The answer is zero drunk. I have no excuse.)

And upon further inspection after the glue had set, it's not even a sturdy hold, the whole thing bends and warps even further than this if you leave it standing. It's own weight warps it! UUUUUUHHHG.  I HATE IT SO MUCH.

There was no way I could use it. Stu and Rachel (my roommate) tried so hard to convince me that it didn't look as bad as I thought, and maybe it didn't, maybe I'm just sunk into that creative place where all you can see is the flaws in your project, but all I knew is I couldn't live with this. I probably could have improved it with some sanding and gesso and more sanding, but at this point I didn't even want to look at this thing, much less put more effort into it. So I ditched it. I had another plan.

Luckily, plan B was an inexpensive and fairly simple one, and even more luckily, I had enough leftover pieces from the first one that I could return to stores to get enough money back that I wouldn't have to spend anymore to restart. Nothing could give me back my time and effort though... Sigh....

So this time, I bought the same wooden dowel, and a big bag of 1.8" styrofoam balls. Using my dremel I hollowed out the balls, making a hole big enough for the dowel to pass through, and just slid the balls into position, after I had measured and marked out every segment of the staff on the new dowels.

 I had to trim them down a bit to get the right length, and I had to do one join in the middle since I couldn't get just one dowel that was long enough, but by drilling very carefully I was able to make that one join pretty near perfect.

Look at that beautiful son of a bitch. It's ever so slightly off center, but that's easily fixed with some gesso and sanding. It was also a little crooked, but apparently they were crooked in opposite ways because I was able to twist them to make them align and stand up straight. You can't see it here, but I actually took a small piece of cardstock covered in wood glue and stuck it in between the two segments on one side just to make sure it was perfectly straight. Then once the glue was dry I just trimmed and sanded the extra cardstock away so it's totally invisible. I also drilled one more wooden ball for the one that's on the base of the staff, I knew styrofoam would be completely unacceptable for that one, the weight resting there would crush it. Luckily I had extras. And I was just using the pieces of metal bolts I had cut off earlier for support, they worked perfectly.

Look how lovely and straight it is! I just brushed wood glue over the places where the balls went and then slid them in place. Worked like a charm. I then coated the styrofoam balls in a thick layer of mod podge which has made them significantly stronger. The next step is coating them in gesso to smooth them. Well, when I say gesso, I mean what is essentially homemade gesso, a combination of joint compound and white glue that serves the same purpose as gesso and is a million times cheaper. 

I have also put a few more layers of papier mache on the hearts for the head, and I've painted the smaller balls that go in various places, as well as the actual garnet orb.

Those are just terrible pictures, my apologies. But you get the idea. I have also done away with the idea of trying to make the orb light up. I bought some dollar store LED candles with that thought in mind, but I cannot come up with a way to make the candles invisible while also being replaceable for when the battery runs out. So due to the time crunch, I'm not worrying about that. Maybe some other time if I redo this.

It was almost offensive to me how much easier this was. This version took me a quarter of the time and a tenth of the effort of the other terrible one. I should have just done this from the beginning. It would have been much cheaper too. Well, a little cheaper, I wouldn't have needed so many metal bolts, but those were like a buck each. The price difference wasn't really that much. Mostly it's the lost time and effort that I'm unhappy about. I have a Halloween party this Saturday and I have my doubts about whether Sailor Pluto is actually gonna have her Time Key Staff in time.  Man I wish I could really stop time...