SimplyAlexei Cosplay

It's pretty clear that basically all of my hand made cosplays hold a special place in my heart, but Ariel is quite dear to me because she's always been the Disney princess that I most identified with, and because she was my first "fuck it" cosplay. By that I mean that every cosplay before her was so calculated to make sure that my size wasn't a detriment to it's canon accuracy. Accuracy was so, so important to me and it felt wrong to adjust this to my body, thus I avoided certain characters for years because their canon design wasn't plus size friendly. This cosplay, however, was soon after my breakup with probably the most Toxic person I'd ever let get close to me, and so much of that relationship was her telling me what I could and could not cosplay based on what she wanted to cosplay. I'd already thrown Rose Quartz and Sailor Neptune into my repertoire because someone else had said I couldn't do them, and suddenly I realized that I was doing...

  Photographer: T.B. Photography Aerith Gainsborough is a cosplay and character near and dear to my heart. I first played Final Fantasy VII when I was 8 years old and was so traumatized by the end of disk one that I couldn't finish the game until I was 13. Aerith was also the first cosplay I ever competed in and was altered/sewn completely by hand because I didn't have a sewing machine until a few years later. Most importantly, this was the cosplay through which I met Silas, whom I traded a Yuna wig for an Aerith staff~ The base of the costume itself was this $60 set I found on Ebay. I bought it knowing that it would need a fair bit of work but with hand sewing I wanted to have a solid silhouette to start with. The first thing I did was add a darker pink trim to the dress, which was composed of an unlined, slightly transparent light pink cotton. The next portion was the jacket, which was way too long in both sleeves and hem. I took both up a few inches, adding white stitching t...

  I did more measuring to make this pearl wig than I've done in any other cosplay! Seriously, usually I just kind of slap stuff together and hope it works, but this was being made for a friend to go with my Rose Quartz Debut and I wanted it to be perfect. I only wish that I'd documented making the cosplay itself as well, because it was my first time truly working with stretchy material and I hated every second of overly stretched fabric because I had the tension too high. I also made a Peridot wig and bodysuit for the same convention that I similarly did not document because I'm a messy lump~ But on to what I DID document! I started out with 2" thick foam that I cut two 4"/7.5" rectangles out of. I traced the approximate curve I wanted for the back of Pearl's hair. I then cut off the extra foam and used the remaining piece to trace out the same curve on the other block, cutting out the same shape then gluing the two pieces together. From there I traced an...