Welcome to "The Velvet Room", which is -much to some people's disappontment, I suppose- not a night club, but the title of my new blog, which I named after the infamous Velvet Room in the Persona videogame series.
Wait- "New blog"?
Yes. And no.
I created this blog a few days ago, and this is my first post in it. However, you'll have noticed that this blog already contains a good share of posts. This is because I've migrated all cosplay related posts from my old blog at Livejournal to this place.
Why bother?
I've been wanting to start a new cosplay-only blog for some time now. First; I thought of simply setting all my personal posts in my old journal to "private", so only the cosplay posts would remain public. Livejournal has changed a lot since I first started my blog there (7 years ago...?) and some of the new functions drive me nuts. On the other hand, Livejournal is so terribly out-fashioned in terms of interface and usabilty that I went looking for some other place ... and ended up with blogger, because it's add-free and easy to use - while still allowing the user a lot of creative freedom.
So, this blog is...?
A cosplay blog, in which I'll post my con and photoshoot reports. WIP posts are mostly to be seen at my tumblr, but I might post them here, as well.
And now?
On to the actual post: My con report for Leipzig Bookfair!
The con
As every year, my sister Melli and I attended Leipzig Bookfair (March 15th~18th), and like almost every year, we only found time to actually be there on Saturday. Which has its pros and cons. On the pro side, you'll meet a lot of people, on the con side, you'll meet more than you ever wanted. Read: It's really crowded and noisy in the main halls and people are literally tripping over each other. This, of course is mainly because Leipzig Bookfair isn't really a convention, but a ... book fair, duh. Therefore, most people attending it are bibliophiles, who have nothing to do with manga/anime, let alone cosplay. For years, though, the fair has attracted many, many cosplayers, because it's considerably cheap and hosts a couple of masquerades. So nowadays, some poeple actually come to see the costumes.
This year wasn't as full as last year (at least that's how I percieved it), but still very, very crowded.
We did, however, get to take some really nice pictures. We had discovered an almost deserted area in one of the smaller halls last year and went there again. The lighting there was perfect and the setting very fitting for our costumes.
The costumes
We've been planning to cosplay the Velvet Room sisters Margaret and Elizabeth for some time now and were very happy to find that Titschipoo, Nina and Videros were already planning a group for Leipzig Bookfair. Our joy even grew when Videros dropped his original plan to cosplay Izanagi and joined (and completed) our Velvet Room group as Theodore.
Luckily enough, we all live in Berlin and could go on fabric quests together, because we wanted our group to be well-coordinated. We even bought our wigs at the same store, as well as our contacts.
Both my sister's Elizabeth costume and my Margaret costume were sewn by me, but I had help from Titschipoo, who helped me with the appliquéd circles on Elizabeth's dress.
In the end, our group consisted of
Nina as Aegis
Titschipoo as Metis
Konzertjunky as Mitsuru
Videros as Theodore
Patapata as Elizabeth
Myself as Margaret
Please have a look at their galleries, they're incredibly talented cosplayers!
 | Margaret (Persona 4) The most difficult part about sewing it was to find nice fabric and I ended up using quilted lining. I like the result, but, well, wearing a fully wadded and lined costume on a warm and sunny day certainly wasn't the brightest idea. The next problem I faced was the pattern, as Margaret's costume is something between a coat and a dress and I've never sewn anything like it before. Once I figured everything out, it went rather smoothly, though. The big buttons are actually wooden weels for model making which I painted and attached to the coat with velcro, so I could easily take them off for washing and ironing. Here are some WIPs from my tumblr: 1 2 3 ↓Pictures in the 1st row taken by me and my sister (2nd picture) ↓↓Pictures in the 2nd row taken by MissKrone |
The pictures
As I said, we took some really nice pictures, but sadly I didn't get to take even a single shot of Nina's and Titschipoo's most epic Aegis and Metis costumes. Nor could I take a picture of our group.
That didn't stop me from taking a lot of solo shots, though. Nor from asking my sister or Maddi to take some of me. This is my favourite:
You can also see all the pictures I took at Leipzig Bookfair in my gallery at Animexx (German, no registration needed.): Blue Velvet
So this is it for now, I hope you enjoyed it.
