I've always been one to put a lot of effort into my halloween costumes so I thought planning a couple of cosplay costumes would be cake for me. I have costume assembly experience afterall. Well, turns out I was way wrong. It costs a lot of money first of all, and seconly, you don't want to go too terribly cheap because chances are someone else at the con will have the same costume and have done it way better. So there's an element of competition involved. This is my first time actually attempting to cosplay so I'm sure I won't hold a candle to anyone else there.



For Selphie Tilmitt costume I need:
Yellow jumper dress - You'd think there would be a million of these floating around. But it's yellow every other type of dress you can think of and jumper in every color except for yellow. So this will have to be custom made. I've sent a request to a custom seamstress so we'll see how that pans out otherwise I may be stuck having to make it myself and that will be disastrous.

Brown boots - It's winter so this one isn't too hard, but boots are fucking expensive (unless they suck complete ass) and not only do I need brown boots for Selphie, but I need green boots for Saria. TWO pairs of overpriced flat plain ugly ass boots. There are tutorials on how to wrap boots to pretty much change their color but oh my god, the results these people are jumping up and down about look awful.

Blue ribbon - Sounds easy. I'm sure with my luck though I'll find ribbon in every color except blue. Haven't looked yet though.

Silver necklace with "some" sort of pendant or charm - This one is just lovely. In all the pictures of Selphie I have studied closely I cannot for the life of me tell what the fuck is on her necklace. Every picture looks different, every screen shot, every fanart drawing, every action figure. And not surprising, no other hardcore Selphie fan or cosplayer can tell what the fuck it is either. So, to keep with tradition of Selphie's unknown necklace charm, I'll be choosing randomly whatever the hell is most convenient and detail nitpickers can suck it.

Oversized giant nunchucks or "nunchaku" - This one has me a bit flustered. I can't see walking in there without these but A-Kon's weapons policy is really strict. I have done arts and crafts enough so ideas for how to make these safe and by the rules came pretty naturally. It's the chain connecting the 'chucks that's boggling my mind right now. Even something light and fur covered like pipe cleaners have those little wire pointed tips and could potentially harm someone by scratching them. It can't be metal OR any sort of hard plastic. If I go too light it's going to break the first time I drop them or snag them or pull too hard on each end. So this is going to take some real thought but I'm determined. I swear though if I go to great lengths to make sure these things follow the rules and I get told to ditch them at the door anyway I'm going to poke someone in the damn eye.


For Saria costume I need:
Sleeveless green short dress - Accurately speaking, Saria is wearing a sleeveless tunic like top and shorts but that's two pieces too many in my opinion. I think a dress of the same look would be just as identical and even cuter. AND I think this is something I could thrift for as this would be a million times simpler a dress than Selphie's. There really isn't any detail and the split on the front of the collar can be done with scissors.

Long sleeved dark green turtleneck - A good possible thrift find as well. It doesn't absolutely have to be a turtleneck either, just something with a really high prude neckline that's tight and form fitting.

Green Belt/Headband - I may find these in a thrift store as well seeing as green belts and headbands are sitting on the tacky fashion shelf these days. I HOPE I can find them both in green, but brown would probably work just fine as well.

Green boots - See my complaint above for the boots thing. Green boots are a hell of a lot harder to find but I DID find a couple of pairs on ebay. Last time I bought shoes on ebay they broke in about three days (Thanks hong kong!) so I don't know if I'll be buying footwear on ebay anymore. I'm in a huge city with a lot of options though so I'm not gonna rule this piece out yet.

Green wig - This will probably be the biggest pain in my ass piece of all. There are green wigs galore, but I've dealt with wigs before. They make them look absolutely beautiful in pictures but when you get them, you have a knotted ball of synthetic hair that's misshapen from the packaging and a list of rules that basically tell you you're fucked as far as fixing it. "No hot or warm iron styling, no warm or hot water washing, no gels hairsprays or creams, etc etc etc" So how do you get the damn things to look as good as the pictures? I'm really scared of this piece because wigs are not cheap (even the cheap ones aren't cheap) and if I get one and it's fucked, I can't afford to replace it.. thus.. Saria costume will be ruined IMO.

Ocarina - I ordered an ocarina but it's an ocarina of time and every die hard Zelda fan knows that's a Link/Zelda thing. Saria owned the fairy ocarina and passed it on to Link. Any ocarina is better than nothing though and this one comes with a song book so whether it ends up being a great prop or not, I'm getting a freakin ocarina I can learn to play! How kewl is that? I'm excited about this. It is NOT a weapon in any way shape or form and it's smooth and rounded but if I'm not mistaken, it's blown ceramic. I have no idea if this will be considered among the no-no's for A-kon props. It really shouldn't be and if it is, then they are insane and way too picky.

Fairy - To the fairy fountain to jar us a fairy! Oh if it were only that easy. Saria is a kokiri and all kokiris have fairies (except for Link until Navi the most annoying fairy in the world is appointed to him by the Deku tree). So I've been mulling this one over for a while and I have some pretty damn good ideas. So good, I must write them now. I won't know how I'll be making the wings until I have a chance to skim the arts and crafts isles at some stores, but I've been thinking about how authentic I could get the core or body of the fairy to look. Kokiris' fairies are basically balls of light with wings. Something round, puffy, and sparkly would probably work just fine but why not add some sort of small battery powered LED light? There's tons of tiny things that light up out there, and probably a way to hollow out something orb shaped. If I can pull off an actual glowing/lit up kokiri fairy and then pin it to my shoulder I will be simply beaming, no pun intended. I'm excited to see if I can pull this off.

Elf ears - I already have a pair but they are way too long. I'm gonna try and find a pair that are a bit shorter but if all else fails the ones I have will suffice.

As I get these costumes rolling I will try to post some pictures of my progress. I'm going arts/crafts shopping tomorrow and if my luck holds out, I may have prop pictures up soon.

ALSO, Karl's business trip to Japan is rolling up soon. I still don't even have a passport and I need to go get another birth certificate before I can even apply for one. According to the interwebs, passport applications are being taken care of rather quickly at the moment seeing as it's the winter season so if I want mine on time I really need to get on the ball. I'm still doubtful the trip will even happen though so I think that's why I keep putting it off. Better safe than sorry I suppose. I should just go get the damn thing and then whatever happens happens. At least then I'm prepared right? I would be terribly disappointed to have to miss out on it over something this small. It would also help if we didn't only have one car and Karl didn't work during the times businesses are open. It requires taking long lunch breaks or time off for us to even get anything daily living requires done. I sometimes wonder how anyone with an 8-5 job does things. You go to work when everything opens and you get off when they close. And if you go to these places on your lunch break, you've just lost your time to eat. What a bunch of bullshit. And keeping the car is not much use anyway as I can barely stand to drive in this Alb traffic. It scares the hell out of me and I have to pep talk myself to get out there and do it.


ALSO, jam session happened this last weekend and I destroyed my thumb playing bass and strumming wrong. After a break the guys started playing again and I decided to record them on video. There were several clips but I put one on youtube which you can see here. The whole beginning of the jam is cut a different clip so forgive how it starts up right in the middle of the song. It's Karl on drums, Brice on bass, Max on lead guitar, and Woody on harmonica.

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