撮影会：女王ナカジェリーヌ29世

Hey there!
As promised here's my short entry on my long-anticipated Nakajerine shoot with Laura a.k.a MissKrone.
I've done this costume back in 2008, but it's still one of my favourite costumes, so I've been really looking forward to this shoot. I've already worn this costume twice to conventions, but never had a real photo shoot in a suitable setting. After all, Nakajerine is a queen, so you can't just simply go into the woods to take some pictures XD

Luckily, Laura lives in the most awesome apartment house ever. Seriously, that hallway is just plain epic. We've used it as a setting before for our Rozen Maiden and our Lolita shoot. The hallway has a beautiful chandelier (!!) and large, beautiful mirrors. It's a bit narrow, but she made it look like Nakajerine's throne room ♪ヾ(*>ω<)ﾉ It's been a long and winding road to this shoot. Since two years I've been dying to have some pretty pictures taken of it, but it wasn't until this July that I finally asked Laura to do a shoot with me - only to realize then, when I was at her place that I've forgotten essential parts of my costume at home (=ω=；) So I was really, really happy when we finally had the shoot in August and now that I've seen all the finished pictures I can finally retire this costume with a feeling of deep satisfaction. Thank you, Laura!
















Not to forget my absolute favourite:

My home is my castle by ~y-o-s-s-i on deviantART
(embedded from dA for higher resolution and prettier colours - is it just me or does Photobucket really do strange things to reddish colours?)

All pictures were taken and edited by Laura di Martino (MissKrone)
Full gallery at Animexx

Two weeks ago, we also had another long-anticipated shoot: My sister's and my Terra e costumes.

Again, with the incredibly talented Laura. Here's a preview until I have all the pictures:

EDIT Here's her aweome gallery: Terra


My next entry will be either on this photo shoot or AniMaCo at the end of this month. Until then I'll finally get around to write some papers for uni. I've been a very, very good procrastinator these days... orz

イベントレポ：ＣＯＮＮＩＣＨＩ，コスサミ

This is an image-heavy report on three wonderful days in September ♥

This year was the first time I got to go to Connichi with my sister Melli, so I was reeeaaaally looking forward to it.
Her friend Sarah (whom we own 1000 favours for ... everything on that weekend) was also coming with us, which was great because we were pretty much freaking out about the World Cosplay Summit preliminaries in which we were going to enter, but she supported us a lot... and kept us sane XDD

Because Melli is pretty busy at work, I did most of the sewing... 4 costumes in two months. Not funny.
Melli helped me a lot, though. She was in charge of our props and she did all the things I hate about sewing: Cutting, hemming, trimming... XD
Still, the costumes and the preparations for our WCS skit kept us both pretty stressed. It wasn't until Friday morning (8 ours before we got on our train) that I finished the last hem on her Jomy costume @__@

	Friday Rao & Oki (Ôkami) Rao is a costume I sewed almost a year ago. Oki was done this March, but never worn to a convention. I still have a lot of regrets about Rao (colour, fabric ...), but at least I managed to redo her necklace. Oki was a pain in the ass because of all the patterns on his clothes, but I still like the outcome. My sister did his mask and his sword and I think they look wonderful. Hopefully we'll get to do a photo shoot with our full Ôkami group soon! Unfortunately, my sister forgot her bracers at the hotel and we didn't take any pictures together orz ↓1st picture by Zora-Warrior, 2nd picture taken by me on a photoshoot earlier this year
	Saturday Jomy Marquis Shin & Soldier Blue (Terra e) Pleather. I hate it. But oooh, how I love our capes ♥ Terra e is a wonderful yet terribly underrated series we watched last year. I instantly fell in love with the costume design and -ignoring our genetic crossplay incompatibility- decided that we would do this together. I knew that Melli'd have preferred to do Tony instead of Jomy, but I refused to sew a costume with a colour combination as hideous as his... It was my first time using pleather and it was... horrible. I couldn't find any golden or silver pleather, so I spraypainted the off-white pleather I had used for the waistcoats... Attaching the golden and silver ornaments to the vests took me ages to finish and I'm not really happy with the outcome, but they look quite okay on the pictures... Which reminds me of the tiny photo shoot we had with Maddi (Thank you!). Oh, the homolust XDD
	Sunday - WCS (o_O) Souseiseki & Suiseiseki (Rozen Maiden) These were our costumes for the German WCS preliminaries. I've been wanting to do Rozen Maiden ever since I first started cosplay, but I also wanted my sister to be Souseiseki (siblings cosplay FTW!). So when we decided to enter WCS, it was an easy choice. I always thought these costumes would be fairly easy to sew... but I was WRONG. The vests and Suiseiseki's sleeves gave a hard time, but apart from Souseiseki's cape I'm really pleased with the outcome. ↓1st and 2nd picture taken by Krone on a photo shoot this week (full coverage will follow), 3rd picture taken by Kai Wernze

When we saw the competition at WCS we were quite demotivated, all of these costumes were made of pure win!! They all had wings, LEDs, huge dresses, lots of detail... Yet, (for some reason we still need to figure out) we actually won 3rd place. WOOT!
It seems like there were a lot of people who really enjoyed our skit, which is almost embarrassing, because a lot of things actually went terribly wrong on Sunday... For instance: One of the ballons we needed for our skit (filled with helium) flew away o__O So we had to improvise. Luckily, our hotel provided us with some small ballons... And ... well... just watch it yourselves:
(Nevermind the first 30 seconds, we had some preparations to do first XD)




10000000x thanks to Rinoa for uploading this!!

AAAnd because some things might have gone lost on the small Youtube screen have some EPIC stage-photo-summary:






Yes, plot... What plot? XDD Plots are overrated >_>
Anyways, we were reaaallly surprised (if not shocked) when they announced our names! We had to be backstage the whole time so we didn't get to watch any of the other groups' skits, but costume-wise most of them were... epic!! *___*
Congratulations to Brigitte and Desiree, who won the competition with their heart-warming Kamikaze Kaitô Jeanne performance! ♥

To sum up my Connichi 2009 experience:

+ cosplaying with my sister ♥ ♥
+ meeting Anni, Kumo, Soffel & Maddi ♥
+ 3rd place!!!!11oneeleven!
+ awesome cosplays *_*
+ drama-free WCS (I think?)
+ nice weather

- crowded
- pricey dealer's room
- people leaving their garbage behind at the park
- no Eva and Pü ....
- hardly took any pictures

衣装作り中

Hey folks.
People are threatening me to write a WIP-post. I won't give away any names. I guess they'll know I'm talking about them anyway.

May your dreams be haunted by a quilty conscience!

So Connichi 2009, one of the biggest conventions in Germany, is coming up in two weeks and this
time I not only plan to finally do a couple of cosplays I've been dying to do for ages, but
also I get to do them together with my sister.
I'm absolutely excited about that but on the downside that also means that I have to sew double
the amount of costumes. My sister helps me whenever she's got time to spare, but seeing she is pretty busy at work most of the sewing is done by me.
So I'm pretty busy right now and don't really have the time to write WIP reports, but at the same time it feels great to sew again after months of abstinence from my beloved

sewing machine.

Anyways, these are the costumes we are working on:


First, Rozen Maiden. I know it's a bit strange to dress up as a doll when you're 180cm (5'9)
tall, but we absolutely wanted to cosplay twins or at least siblings and we both love
Suiseiseki and Souseiseki. Their cute costume desings are another plus ♥


Suiseiseki is almost finished as you can see. I just need to style the wig and sew her kerchief
(the one on the picture is just a stand-in). The skirt is a full circle skirt with 2 layers and
made of cotton velveteen. It weighs about 5kg (11lb)... Wearing this'll be a nice workout @_____@
I'm not 100% happy with this costume but as I am runnig out of time I guess there's nothing I
can do about that now...
I'm also working on her watering can right now. Well, actually, Melli is.


Of course we also got us color contacts. It's our first time wearing these and I don't really
like how they feel in my eyes but I guess I can put up with that.


Melli, who needs to practice her smile in her yet unfinished Souseiseki costume.
Boy, I hate that cape but it looks quite okay with the collar on. (Yes, the collars are
detachable).


My first time cutting a wig. The back looks hideous, but hopefully I can do something about that.


Souseiseki's shears. Our grandpa sawed the main body out of wood panels and now my sister is
adding some detail with paper clay.



Our second project: Terra e (Toward the Terra). We watched the TV show last year and... and... cried a lot ;o;
It's a wonderful, yet underrated show. You should definitely watch it if you haven't yet!
Anyways, I adore Blue's costume　design. He has a cape, head-phone-thingies and white hair,
everything I've always wanted to cosplay in one character. It took me some time to convince my
sister to do Jomy/Shin, but now she seems to be happy with our decision.
We've just started working on these the day before yesterday, so there's not much progress yet.
I'm not quite sure if I'll make it in two weeks, but I'll try >_>


We bought some cheap pants and turtle neck collar shirts (because
I'm lazy
it's cheaper than sewing them),
so all there's need to be done are the vest, cape, the boot covers, gloves and head phones.
Shin's vest is almost finished. It's made out of pleather, which was easier to sew than I expected.
The gloves in the pictures are just stand-ins.


I haven't done anything on Blue's costume yet. But Feder graciously lent me her wig, so have this wig test shot.
I still need to work on my glare.

That's it for now. Bob's calling. Bob's my sewing machine!