Line em Up & Knock em Down

So if you were around last week, you saw the multitude of projects I have to complete by the end of the month, and I've actually been doing pretty well with all of them. The 3 smaller (or rather, less elaborate) pieces are totally finished and the rest are well under way, except of course for my own personal projects but that almost exclusively involves sewing so I'm not too worried. So, let's take a look at the ones that are already done and sent off!

First up is Goku's power pole carrier. This is obviously the simplest of the projects I've been working on as it's just a long tube with a rope. I did however, sand & paint the tube, plug the end with liquid plastic so it'd actually hold the power pole, and deftly tied the ropes together ;-)
I'm hoping to get photos of the full cosplay back from the guy I made it for, which I will definitely share if that happens.

Next up is Sakura's Bloom Festal, which I realize now looks exactly the same as all of the other Hoshidan shrine wands, so this could be used for a few different characters. I also finally purchased and started Fates, so if any of you want to be subjected to my in(s)ane comments and screenshots of my playthrough, you can look @mikeythelaguz on twitter under #mikeyplays. I don't know why you'd want to do that but hey, to each their own.
For the Bloom Festal, I actually made the shides (the zig-zag dangly things) in the traditional way, and they are actually paper (though not technically "traditional" japanese paper but whatever). Those are real mirrors in the top too, which is why it blends in so perfectly to the wall color in the one photo, and is reflecting my ceiling in the other.

And last up of the finished projects we have Klaus von German Name from Blood Battalion. I made the bracer/gauntlet thing, along with the red fingers on the glove, as well as his little cross-shaped knuckles. These were fun to put together, even though I am not at all familiar with this series. I also hope I can find the folks I made them for as Colossal next month.

And now for the works still in progress. We have Bloodborne blunderbuss 2.0. I'm linking how this one is turning out, I think it will look just as good if not better than the first one I made. Also, the barrel on this one is actually octagonal instead of hexagonal like the first one. Oops.

Then we have Auron's katana, which is in the middle of the agonizing process of gooping spackling paste over the beveled foam edges and then sanding it sooth, and then gooping more into the divots and rinse, repeat until I have a nice surface. And of course the bevel on this thing is so wide it's going to take me a long freaking time to finish this when I have to wait a day in between gooping.

Last up is the Fujin Yumi from FE: Fates, which is the newest addition to my queue for Colossal. I decided to make it out of wood because it's so long and so skinny that if it were all craft foam I know it would break pretty quickly and that would be very sad. I am also using a board that is about 1" thick so it takes longer to jigsaw through. Consequently this is as far as I could get yesterday since I drained both of my jigsaw batteries on this thing. Oi.
I also have the fun task of trying to figure out how to hide a battery pack somewhere in this thing so that I can use EL wire for the bowstring. It'll look friggin sweet but it'll also be a pain in the ass to engineer.

And that's all she wrote. Stay tuned for more progess on these awesome weapons in the coming weeks!

Oddmall Recovery//Back to the Grindstone

This is a thing, right?

So my extended hiatus was primarily due to having Oddmall this past weekend, one of my biggest vending events of the year! It went swimmingly, aside from having more crap than usual and therefore taking longer to set up than anticipated. But I made more money than I have at any single event in my tenure so that was exciting!

Here you see my convention partner (mom) with our lovely setup! I had all of my usual items including MtG life counters; buttons steampunk airships, weapons and jewelry; ties & bow ties; along with a new venture using the same fabric: headbands! It was an idea I got while teaching sewing lessons; we made a few there and I realized we could just as easily make them reversible, and I could use all of the leftover fabric from my ties, as there's always odd shapes leftover that are hard to use for anything sizable. Additional ventures include some Luna Lovegood inspired lion hats (which were much admired but not purchased), continued forays into the world of crocheting adorable little characters, which I focused on cute magnanimous ones over the specific characters I usually do. Though I did make an entire team RWBY which sold all together, and someone actually bought the little Aang I had too. But most popular were the Soot Sprites, Calcifers, and most of all the BB-8s. 

I also finally have a much more legitimate sign that I didn't just do a 4th grade-style pencil rubbing on the front of my life counter carrying case... It even has some pretty tartan on it! 

And of course for an event like this, there's still plenty of costuming going on! As usual for my vending events, I went steampunk, with a little flair of Star Wars this time around. And my neighbors were awesome, and the guy decided to come back as the guy from Clockwork Orange on Sunday.

So now that all of that's over with and I can go back to focusing on the whole cosplay thing, here's what I've got going on.

First and foremost, I finished both of the items you saw in progress last time (you know, 3 weeks ago when I actually posted something last).

Both items are now with their respective owners and I'm moving on to the 15 new things I need to have done before Colossalcon. Oh boy. Here's the list:

Auron's katana (FFX)

Klaus' Gauntlet & Knuckles (Blood Blockade)

Goku's Power PoleCarrier (Dragonball)

Another Blunderbuss (Bloodborne)

Sakura's Bloom Festal (FE:fates)

Oh yeah, and if by some miracle I get all of this done early, I have someone who want's Takumi's Bow...

Not to mention the Team Avatar that I'm going to be doing with Jordan and a group of cousins, for which I still need to make Book 3 Aang and Zuko. Thank god Aang's outfit is just a pair of pants with some fabric draped over his shoulders... and Zuko's involves a lot of fancy little details... FML

So, this is what you can expect from me this coming month... and if you're not hearing from me, I'm probably stuck underneath a pile of worbla, so maybe send help.

I've run out of creative titles for WIP wednesday

Look, progress on commissions!

First up is a ram skull from... I think its from a show called The Guild? Honestly I don't really know this one, but that staff is pretty cool and I'm making the skull on top!

Next up is Lazward's shoulder shield thing!

Last up is my first finished project, gloves from Henchman 21!

That's all for this week, stay tuned to see more progress!!