HOW IT WAS MADE: Ariel (2016/2017)

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 the same thing to myself: telling myself I couldn't cosplay a character for no reason other than what someone else might think. So, I said fuck it, and I made a version of the character that I would feel comfortable in~

The first order of business was obviously the shell bra. Luckily, I already had pretty much everything I needed. I grabbed a beat up old bra, some extra craft foam, and some purple fabric-ish accent sheet and got to work.

The craft foam I had on hand was going to be used to make the actual shell shape more dimensional, but the foam itself was black, so I used the purple accent sheets to cover it up, then covered that with a sheer, sparkly purple ribbon that I found on sale at Joann's. From there I also covered the bra in purple then glued the smaller shell piece over the top.

To make is shiny and pretty I added faux pearls and purple sequins in between the raised foam, then covered the entire shell with several layers of modge podge to give the entire thing a hardened, shiny look. It worked well enough and I was able to knock on the hardened material with my knuckles and get a satisfying thunking sound~  I also added a clear, halter style strap to help keep the whole thing from sliding down. 

For the tail, I did a lot of research of what kind of walking tails people had made at the time. I wanted something that I could move around in but still had that very distinct mermaid tail shape. I found a style that really worked for what I wanted and went about recreating it with a Lycra base and chiffon-ish fins. I left tracks in the fins to insert a flexible aluminum wire that helps maintain the triangular shape and that I could lift to actually walk around in.

I'm not usually too critical on my body, but I'm not normally a fan of leaving my upper arms exposed thanks to years of my mother commenting on my skin texture (thanks, Keratosis Pilaris), so to create a semblance of covering I decided to make a net shawl to add to the look. It took many many hours of manually tying the net together only to discover afterward that there was a much easier and faster way I could have done it, but by then I'd already finished it, oops~ Lesson learned, next time check google first!

And with that came the first iteration of Ariel. I wore her to a small local con in late 2016, where I competed, didn't place, but had a fabulous time just hanging out with friends and taking silly photos~

In between the two main outings for my Mermaid Ariel I even made and wore several iterations of her other outfits. I've considered making her dress from Return to the Sea, but that's mostly on the backburner for now.

I did wear Mermaid Ariel for one more outing during one of our annual cosplay beach days after upgrading her tail. I added a few extra layers of a teal green fabric around the fins and took out the aluminum wire to be replaced with a mini hoop cage. I also added a small clasp underneath the new side fins that let me pull the bottom up a touch to make walking easier without having to pull the fins all the way up and expose my feet. This gave me greater mobility and allowed me to move around without breaking the illusion of the tail.

Ariel has since moved on to a new owner, but making and wearing her really gave me a mental boost with my cosplay. I learned to be less rigid and have more fun with what I was making. 

I also learned problem solving for things I never thought about before that would help me with future cosplays as well. plus, swimming around in a tail is a lot of fun, 10/10 would recommend~

-Alexei