This cosplay started in a weird kind of way. One of my friend, Noah, was doing a group of pokemon gijinka cosplays for Otakuthon 2018 and invited me to join in. Since I already had a "big masquerade cosplay" planned out I said sure but let's keep it simple. I couldn't afford two "big" cosplays that year and it was kind of last minute. So Noah designed me a Glaceon gijinka out of one of my old suits that was originally a.. pajama. Yes, you read that right. Oh and I made it about 10y ago so I definitely didn't fit in it anymore. Noah also took in consideration the wigs I had home and we decided to include my old Sesshomaru wig in the design (that I've been restyling year after year but that just won't die since it's from Arda wigs)
So here's the original design that Noah send me.
Picture is super cute and super motivating. So I get to work on it. My skirt gets shortened because I have to widen the hips and thus ends up cutting a few inches off the waist and a new waist band is added. Then I redo the whole top since.. well it sucked. I happened to have enough fabric left from the original P.j. I had made years ago except the sleeves ended up a bit short, so I traded the fur for some pleated trim like for the skirt. I also made a matching under skirt with the pleats attached to that, so I can switch it out between various skirts depending on how I feel. I used my Oodana corset underneath to keep everything nice and flat so the belt would stay put.
Working on the belt was a bit of a challenge since I had never made any appliques so I had to figure out how that works with the help of Darkarnival Bulter. Managed to get it done and I was really happy with the design.
After that I worked on the petticoat because even though I do have a few already on hand, the ones I had weren't puffy enough nor the right color. Clearly a red petticoat wouldn't work under this so I bought everything needed to make a white one, and added a top polka-dotted layer on top. This thing makes me feel so cute!
Then I made the ears, super easy since it was just some foam cut and shaped with some fur glue on top. The hardest part when It came to that was to figure out how I'd add it to the wig. On Noah's design there was a fluffy headband, which I did do at first, but realized that it was pretty ugly since the wig is in Silver and the fur is white. So I scraped that.
In the end I straight up sewed the ears to the wig like I normally do to all of my furry type accessories. Once that was done I tried to work on the makeup design and wig styling so it would fit me as a person and still hint at the Pokemon without being full blown furry mode with ice crystals in my face.
In the end, I tried to wear it 3 times. Once at Otakuthon on sunday, but I still wasn't happy with it and I couldn't wear the corset for a second time in a row (It needed to get fixed). at that time I hadn't done the petticoat or designed a wig and makeup to go with it. A second time to participate in a small scale cosplay contest hosted by a shop nearby. That day I had a meltdown because I found my cosplay so ugly and couldn't get my wig right and the colors didn't match and my makeup was crap etc. So the third time was the right one. I had actually finished it to my liking even though I'd probably still change some stuff if I had to re-wear it, like adding jewels and beads. I even managed to grab a prize at the masquerade for best finished in the journeyman category! Thank you Darkarnival Butler for always pushing me!! Now I can finally say I'm an Artisan!
So here's the final result. I'll have some more pictures eventually once the photographer is done going through all of them.
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