cosplay tutorial

Spooky Aesthetics: Cruella de Vil

By The Collectress

 

Happy Halloween month, everyone! As is tradition, I want to share some tips and tricks for a quick and easy DIY Halloween costume to wow your friends and family at your Halloween party!

I decided this year to go a little more devilish, and to portray who I think is the most evil of all Disney villains: Cruella de Vil.

Cruella terrifies me because 1) she wants to kill puppies, a trait that only belongs to truly evil people and 2) she likely has histrionic personality disorder which leads her to be callous and unfeeling towards pretty much the entirety of humanity.

So naturally she was my first choice for a villain to cosplay.

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Spooky Aesthetics: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

By The Collectress

Happy Spooktober, everyone! As has become my tradition over the past few years, I’m going to share some tips and tricks for a quick and easy DIY Halloween costume to make your friends and neighbors jealous!

This year, it’s Buffy, the most kickass of all the kickasses to ever grace our television screens. Now, Buffy had seven seasons and a lot of looks, but I chose to focus on the episode “Bargaining: Part II” also known as “Buffy digs her way out of a grave and still kicks ass.” 

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Cosplay How-To: Wonder Woman Armor

While I typically find myself drawn to characters from the Marvel Universe, there are the occasional few from DC that capture my attention—and none more so than Wonder Woman. Diana Prince has graced comics since 1941, was immortalized by Lynda Carter from 1975 to 1979, and continues to be a fan favorite. She’s even getting her own film (finally) starring Gal Gadot.

I’ll be cosplaying the Amazonian princess at WonderCon 2016, and have created each piece of armor from scratch. Want to make your own bulletproof bracelets? Here’s my how-to for an easy Wonder Woman costume.

First things first, decide which version of her costume you want to replicate. I chose her newest outfit.

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Cosplay How-To: Captain America Purse

A few months ago, the overlords and I embarked on a fantastic adventure into the world of Avengers cosplay. We debuted our outfits at Wondercon, with much success. We thought of it as a trial run, however, for an upcoming photoshoot with a dear friend. There were a few things we had to tweak and adapt for each costume prior to the photoshoot (such as fixing the widow’s bites for the Collectress’s Black Widow cosplay, and adjusting my Loki helm), but the Collectiva Diva only had one request: a Captain America purse to go with her geek chic cosplay.

Purchasing a purse was out of the question, due to high prices. So I took the project on myself, and had a great time crafting this for Diva. You can follow this short tutorial to make your own superhero bag.

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Materials:

  • Fabric of your choice
  • Cap’s Shield Iron-on
  • Thread to match your fabric
  • Fusible interfacing
  • A kitchen towel or something similar
  • An iron
  • A sewing machine
  • Pins
  • Tape Measure
  • Scissors
  • Your imagination!
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Cosplay How-To: Widow’s Bites

If you follow The Collective (@nerdwrldprblms) or my own acct (@dearcollectress) on Twitter, you’ve probably seen my increasing number of tweets about the Diva’s and my Avengers cosplay, which we first did for WonderCon. 

The Collectiva Diva and I have fallen  in love with cosplay (OK so maybe I was already in love and I gripped Diva tight and pulled her into the rabbit hole with me), but as struggling bloggers and writers with full-time jobs in the academic world, it’s hard to find the time (and money) to make a costume. Most of you can probably relate. So I decided that I would make my costume as inexpensive and DIY as possible, so I could share my knowledge with the cosplayers on a budget.

When I went to WonderCon, I had my Widow’s Bites made as per Kit Quinn’s tutorial on YouTube, but I quickly discovered a flaw in that design–when the bandolier bullets aren’t securely fastened to something, they come undone and fall off your wrist! So before I put the catsuit on again, I made some adjustments to the bracelets, and they are now perfectly secure and more comfortable!

Here’s a short tutorial on how I made my Widow’s Bites (pictured below.)

Update: there is now a tutorial for Widow’s Bites 2.0. 

blog pic

What You’ll Need:

  • Plastic bandolier bullet belt (available here on Amazon)
  • Flat (matte) black spray paint
  • 2-inch wide black elastic
  • Velcro strips
  • Super glue (or hot glue if you prefer it)
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