Hogwarts Satellite Campus

Welcome back everyone! As I noted before my nearly month-long absence, the entire month of September I would be taking off from prop commissions in anticipation of my Harry Potter weekend coming up in the first weekend of October. Well, I've been doing just that! A few posts ago, I gave you all a primer on magical creatures, which I've been expanding my menagerie and now have several  more creatures indigenous to the Harry Potter universe, but also have a number of creatures outside of it. I plan to continue building my collection even after the party is over because I really like magical critters.

But you've already heard about all of them so today I wanted to take a quick second and show off all of the other fun things I've been making to slowly transform my house into Hogwarts. Now I haven't mortared all of the walls with stone, but we do have each of the four house common rooms represented.

The Gryffindor commmon room will of course have a painting of the Fat Lady on its door. The painting isn't finished yet but I have every confidence that she will guard the room well. Gryffindor common room will also house our hall of relics, where most of the magical objects we've come to know and love will be on display. We'll get back to those later.

Hufflepuff common room will be accessed through a stack of barrels. for those of you who are not members of the house, the key to getting into the common room is by tapping your wand on the correct barrel in the proper rhythm. Don't screw it up or you'll get a face full of vinegar!
As this is in our master bedroom, there will not be as much extraneous stuff here, but I am planning to hang a picture of our house founder in the room, as it is at Hogwarts.

Ravenclaw tower is sporting its blue and bronze banners and is entererd by answering a riddle from the bronze door knocker gracing the door. Hope you're clever enough to get in. Though it isn't yet finished, there will be a bronze bust of Rowena Ravenclaw with her diadem.

As Ravenclaw common room is in a tower, it seemed appropriate to have the Owlery located there as well, and as a nod to the astronomy tower, the cieling will be filled with stars.

Slytherin common room can be accessed through a large grey curtain painted to resemble stone. Sadly we don't have a basement because it would be great to have it there, but we'll make due.

Given that the potions master has consistently been the head of house, the apothecary will be located there. Also (as you can see by the stuff on the floor) this is usually my craft room so I have all of my supplies there. As such, we've modded it into the Dark Arts (& Crafts) Center!

Along with changing the actual living space for the event, I of course have been hard at work making a bunch of props of magical relics!

First up we have a Remembrall which glows red when you forget something. Good luck remembering whatever it is that you've forgotten.

We also have the Goblet of Fire, in case we need to choose any capable witches and wizards to be our champions.

Don't waste away looking into the Mirror of Erised. It may show you your deepest desires, but it does not show the truth, or what will come to pass.

We have two new books to add to the magical library: Hogwarts, A History and The Moster Book of Monsters. If I get around to it, Magical Me will also be added to out collection. And although it's kind of hard to tell from the photo, the bits that look like they're glowing do actually light up (including the moon).

Naturally we need to have the sorting hat around, especially because there will be a bunch of group activities we need to be sorted for. He was quite grumpy when I asked for his picture...

Here you can see the (nearly) full collection of horcruxes. I plan to add a little portrait of Harry to complete the bunch.

And of course the one Hogwarts founder's treasure that was not corrupted by Voldemort, the Sword of Gryffindor. So shiny. So chrome.

And last, but certainly not least, we have some flying keys for the chamber that protects the Philosopher's Stone. They may have their wings but we haven't charmed them to fly just yet. We'll have a few other items for that room, including a wizard chess set, some Devil's Snare, a collection of potions bottles, the Philosopher's Stone itself, and a permanently unconscious troll. And of course the Mirror of Erised will be kept there as well.

I am thoroughly looking forward to this event, and will most certainly be sharing more photos from the weekend with all of you. Cheers!

Selfie!Con

Hey everyone!
Just got back from an awesome weekend at Matsuricon! As usual I'm not great at remembering to have people get photos of me in cosplay, but I did happen to constantly get selfies with people so yay for that!
 

Friday

I went down in Sothe, since I haven't worn him in a long time, and a friend of mine who does every version of Sothe ever was coming! So we decided to do PoR & RD Sothes together and it was glorious!

We went to the FE photoshoot and the person running the shoot didn't know who we were so we almost didn't get a Tellius series shot. Oops. But we did have a third, and made a Green-Haired Trifecta with Stefan!

After the shoot it was time to put my dance shoes and my fancy pants on because the wonderful Trickssi was running the formal ball and doing lessons beforehand, and I was not about to miss out on any of that.

So my fellow Sothe and I stopped being the same person and transformed into these winners!

God bless her for taking selfies with me otherwise I'd have no photos of my own cosplays from this weekend XD

Despite the lack of useful equipment prvided by the con for the lessons, we still had a lot of fun and learned to waltz, rumba, tango, swing, and salsa! I got some practice as a follow, which is always nice, and got to dance with some awesome folks. There was even a guy who asked for extra swing lessons afterwards when he learned that I was semi-competent at that one, so when we were at the actual ball he would come over every time a swing number came up and learn some new moves! Sadly I am not nearly as good a teacher as Trickssi so it was an interesting challenge, but we had a lot of fun! Also, my feet wanted to die.

After the formal I managed to meet up with my Wolf Pack at last since everyone was finally there by that point. We hung out for a while but everyone was tired so we we're up as late as we could have been.

Saturday

My only actual plans on Saturday were to go to the Destiny shoot in the afternoon, but I knew I didn't want to be in the Speaker all day so I went over in the morning in Oliver.

He's simple and comfy so it was a nice choice for the morning. I'm pretty sure only one person recognized me outside of my group of friends, but I'm totally fine with that since I know it's not a super widely-known game.

Once it hit early afternoon it was time to change into the Speaker and head to the Destiny shoot. The shoot was awesome, and sadly I don't have any photos to share at the moment because I didn't take any.... and let's be honest they all would have been terrible because I can't see anything directly in front of me when I'm in the Speaker. I do, however have another selfie with Genki that is the only documentation I possess that I actually wore him at all.

The shoot was great though, even though there were only a few of us. I got to make friends with Foundry 13 and Otherworld Cosplay, who were there as a titan and off-duty warlock, respectively. All three of us are planning on doing more Destiny cosplay, particularly with D2 coming out in a little over a week, and I'm hoping I get a chance to play with them at some point because they were both super chill and fun to hang out with. I know I definitely want to make my own warlock at some point, and if I have as much fun playing D2 as I did the original, I know I'm going to maintain that interest. And besides, the designs are so awesome it definitely tickles my creative juices too.
Another bonus was that we had one of the staff photographers running the shoot, so we should have some really nice photos and they should be up on Matsuri's website! I'll be sure to clue you guys in when I see those.

I bummed around the convention for a while longer in the Speaker, hoping there would be a few other people who wanted photos, which there were... along with a lot of questions about what the heck I was doing when the Cabal took over XD

Finally I had enough of being blind and having to walk like a princess, and changed into Penny. Unfortunately the Destiny & RWBY shoots were back to back so I didn't make it, but I did run into an adorable Velvet on my way back over to the con floor.

I spent the rest of the night hanging out and laughing my ass off with my wolf pack, AROOOO!

Sunday

Sunday was my usual waking up way too early because my body doesn't understand what it means to sleep pat 6am, so I loaded up my car, ate some free breakfast, put on some yellow shorts, and wandered over to the con center as Banjo & Kazooie.

The con center was a ghost town at that point so I just chilled and played pokemon for a while, but I ran into a few folks I knew before long and everyone seemed to be back together a lot earlier than I was expecting. We wandered around for a while, I found an artist with a full set of Team CFVY buttons (ok, my friend found them first but whatever) and bought some gorgeous Persona 5 prints from an artist I already have some prints from. Then, it was time for Mikey to go home to his boys. After the not-too-long-but-plenty-long-enough drive, there was much rejoicing, and many snuggles.

And that was that! I didn't really take many photos, although there were plenty of great cosplayers about.

And as most of you know at this point, my next big event is my Harry Potter weekend at the beginning of October, so I'll be making a ton of stuff for that. I may or may not be posting super regularly here this month, but I will definitely be taking photos of all the stuff I'm creating and will be sure to share.
Until next time <3

A Roll in the Hayseed

Hey folks! Quick post today since I finished a commission I've been working on and I wanted to show it off!

First off, I was tasked with another Overwatch thing, and of course the other outstanding commission I have is more Overwatch. What is my life?

A longtime customer requested the Haysee Junkrat mask. Which at some point I may also be making his weapon for it, but we'll see about that.

The main ingredients for this project were:
-Dark brown faux leather vinyl
-Raffia ribbon in brown & tan
-Craft foam
-Some other random junk

I started by building the mask itself, unsing the vinyl. It velcros down the back for easy wearing and removal.

For the mouth, I cut another piece of vinyl in a smile-shape, then hot glued all of the raffia ribbon to it. Once the glue cooled I stitched it to the mask. For the ribbon above the eyes, I actually made two slits in the vinyl and threaded the ribbon through, hot gluing it into place on the back. I did that for all of the other ribbon that's attached as well, which you can see here (apologies for the blur).

For the goggle-eye parts, I started with a PVC piece for the smaller one, and a length of cardboard mailing tube for the larger one. For the orange lenses, I used tranparent colored plastic folders... specifically these ones. They didn't look very orange with just one layer, so I doubled it up for each lens. The rest of the shaping on the eye pieces are all done in craft foam.

I attached them after painting them to avoid getting paint on the vinyl. I used my trusty E-6000 to do the job. 

As you can kind of see in this photo, I added the scorched/still smoldering details to the top of the mask. I used a black sharpie for the black, and smudged it with my finger along the bottom edge to get a slight gradation to it, and blend the color into the brown of the vinyl. Then the smoldering tips I simply painted with orange acryllic.

The last step was to add the lights to the eyes, which I used a set of moon lights, coiled around the inside of the goggle lenses. the wire was then stitched to the inside of the vinyl in several places, and velcro was added to the battery pack so it could be attached and easily removed to change the batteries.

And that's that! Another finished product and another (hopefully) happy customer!

Last thing today is an exciting announcement! Apparently my blog is popular enough, perhaps due to its being featured on Feedspot.com's top 75 Cosplay Blog List, but I've started getting affiliate offers that might help me generate some extra money! And let's be honest, I could really use the additional income. So my first official affiliate is Sclera Lenses!

They're an online contact lens store with a huge selection of colored lenses, including special designs, UV-reactive lenses, and, obviously, sclera leanses. You should definitely check them out because they are already very reasonably priced and they have a summer sale going on right now and you can get 15% off using the code SUM15 (and please use the link provided to help support Mikey Does Cosplay!)

Any time you want to find them in the future (since you probably don't want to have to come back to this page), just scroll down to the bottom of my home page and look for my affiliate banners!