Pages for my two new cosplays are up now. Check them out here:

There aren’t many shots for the blue dress yet, so we are setting up an outdoor shoot as soon as the temperature drops! It’s very hot here right now!

Thanks to everyone taking the newest poll. It’s helping me decide what I might want to start sewing up next for the fall since my want to do list is too long.

NanDesuKan is now a tentative plan. Maybe I’ll be seeing some of you there! <3

AX has ended and I’m happy to say it was the best Anime Expo I’ve attended. The new additions to the Nokia Center really add to the convention experience. It was wonderful to see the live performances from the hotel window and to experience them outside. The hotel was just a short walk and was a pleasure to stay at. Food was so easy to find for a change and not having to deal with shuttles was awesome!

I took 4 costumes to the convention, but ended up wearing mostly just one. It wasn’t anything flashy but it was great to be comfortable for a change XD Photos should be up shortly.

A number of weeks back the staff of cosplay.com contacted me about judging a hall cosplay contest. I was very flattered and gladly accepted. It was my first experience in the judge’s seat and it was great. There were so many excellent costumes. I can’t even express how impressed I am with the dedication and obvious love for the hobby that the entrants had. It was incredibly humbling to see the level of quality and to hear about the time some of the people spent on their projects. I learned a lot from it all and had a awesome time. I left inspired and in awe of so many. Even though we only had 4 judges awards and 3 over all awards we easily could have given out 10+ more. There were so many masquerade winning quality costumes entered and we only had 7 prizes to give (and 48 entries!) so it was tough.

Congrats to the winners yet again. Your costumes were amazing on the exterior and interior and really set a high bar for all of us in the hobby!

Yet another thing that made this AX awesome was meeting Danny Choo, big-time blogger (among other accomplishments) and the man behind Otacool 2! I had some time in between judging entries and the awards, so I ran over to the ESPN Sports bar in LA Live just in time to see the DC/fakku meet start. It was so exciting! Danny was so kind to introduce me to the crowd (I felt so honored) and took some photos with me as well. I’m sad I had to leave so early, but it really made my convention!

More pictures up on my flickr here

I also want to say it was very nice to meet some of you who follow my cosplays. I met some great new people and hope we can keep up with each other in the future~

I can’t wait for next AX. I hope others had as great of a time as I did. It really was a highlight of the year for me and I’m sad it’s over!

Both my Yue Ying and Saber Lily costume have been added to the site!

Progress shots have also been added to the Work in Progress section here~

Fanime has ended and I’m sad to have to say goodbye to friends I won’t see for a long time. That’s the worst part about conventions. It’s so much fun, but it’s so short.

I didn’t bring my armor for Saber Lily because I just wasn’t satisfied with it, but Anime Expo is July 1-4th, so I can always give it a go there. I did fix up the dress so I could wear it without the armor, but it’s all so last minute and the dress is too big on me ^_;; I’ll be taking it in before the next convention.

I picked up a copy of Ejen’s book “Cosplay in America” and got to see my page in it! I have a quote in there as well. He chose my comment about friends being the best part of cosplay, and this Fanime really ended up reaffirming that for me yet again. I spent a lot of time in the hotel room finishing up my Yue Ying costume and didn’t cosplay that much this year, but despite that, I had maybe the best Fanime to date. Thanks to new friends and old ones as well, it’s going to be a hard convention to top. We had a killer time just hanging out and goofing around, so I can only hope AX is as enjoyable.

I’ll be adding costume pages for the new costumes as pictures come out. In the mean time, here’s a preview of Fanime cosplay:

I’ll be gone Friday to Monday at Fanime Con (http://www.fanime.com/) and I’m working around the clock to get stuff done for it. I’m excited since it’s my favorite convention of the year. Many of my friends show up to this one, so I’m ready for awesome pizza and good times with them.

If you will be there, come say hi if you see me! Hopefully I will have Saber Lily and Yue Ying done. They still need so much done on them and I’m rushing even though I don’t want to do that :< All my armor is made, but the props are still in the works as are the fabric parts. I need more than 24 hours in a day right about now...

In other news, Ejen Chuang, author of Cosplay in America (http://www.cosplayinamerica.com/) has let me know I’m in the book! I get to see it on Friday, so hopefully I will have something to post for it soon. I’m anxious to see it! He’s photographed so many people over the last year all over the US, so I’m happy to see this book come to fruition, as are a lot of people. He obviously dedicated himself to his project and it’s nice to see it make it to print. Not every project has a success story to follow it, so it’s wonderful to see this one has. I’ve been watching his youtube videos and site updates for what seems like ages, and it was neat to see all that goes into publishing. It’s a lot of work.

All of the preview stuff he has posted for it has been excellent, so I have high hopes. I’m going to be helping to promote the book with flyers throughout Fanime, so if you want more info on where to buy it (he’ll be in the Artist Alley there) you are welcome to come ask me for directions to his booth. Just tell him I sent you

I would like to know if I should open up my journal posts here on the front page to comments, so please answer the poll if you have free time and comment your opinion.

PollDaddy lets you leave a remark, and I will be checking it to see what people have to say about it.

Plenty of bloggers let others comment on their posts, but others don’t because they view their page as solely the words and opinions of themselves. I see the wisdom in both, and I’m torn between the two. Let me know what you think. Would it be good to be able to respond to my updates here, or is it better not to have the conversations on this page? If you are a blogger yourself, you opinion on it is very much wanted!

A Little Cosplay Progress:

My Saber Lily wig styling is done! I just need to make the bow for it. This wig is even more back-heavy than the bun on my Saber wig was. Hurray for toupee clips! (I highly recommend putting them at the front of the wig cap to keep everything in place. For people with the issue of having wigs that creep back on their heads, toupee clips are a good solution and you can buy them at many beauty stores)

So FanimeCon is approaching very fast, and it’s crunch time for construction. The last couple of weeks I’ve spent all my free time sewing, painting, and sanding and I’m starting to have something to show for it finally. (It takes a while for things to get to a stage worth posting progress pictures for.)

It’s right around finals for me as well, so I haven’t been free to blog or post some of what I’ve been up to save for some tweets, so if you follow me on my twitter, that’s were I post pictures as I get a chance.

If you don’t have/don’t like twitter (I understand…I use to think it was useless until I discovered it was great for people who don’t use AIM/chat much like me) you can just check out the photos that I’m tweeting here. More should be popping up soon, and with more frequency, so for those of you who like work in progress (I like them myself- I learn from seeing other’s WIPs all the time) you can see them there without dealing with tweets.

Now, if you have questions about what’s up there, you will have to tweet them to me to get a response right now. I’m neglecting everything until after finals, even email. Twitter is about the only thing I’m still checking because it’s easy. I’m more than happy to answer questions about the WIPs, just don’t be mad if I don’t get back to your email in a timely manner ^__;; Too much stuff right now!

So after all that preface, here’s some shots of Caliburn being roughed out!

This was so much fun to do. It’s my favorite thing about making this costume so far. The sword is made of balsa. The first shot is the hand guard being roughed out of a block of wood I’ve cut to shape with the scroll saw and then filed down more. The second shot it of the sword once epoxied and puttied together. I’ve since then added details to it with an air drying clay. There is some cracking on the clay due to shrink, so once I have it patched up and ready to paint I’ll post another picture to twitter.

I just got my replacement wig (first wig did not have enough fiber even after wefting to get a nice looking ponytail out of it) so I’m trying something different and I’ll be posting post-styling photos of that and the progress on the armor and dress as I can <3

Yue Ying progress shots are on the way as well. This is all I have photographed at the moment, but I’ve made a lot of progress on it. The fabric parts of the costume are almost all complete.

Several hours of hand painting & still more to do!

As of April 15th, Otacool2 is out in japan! I just got my order email from Jlist saying it’s going to be shipped. I should have it in a week or so, and when I get it, I’ll post more info about it (maybe make a youtube video discussing it, too.)

Funny enough, this means I inadvertently ended up on Kotaku today. Never thought I’d be on there for something, but it’s cool to see myself on another well known site. The Otacool business is awesome Here a link to the short article.

This japanese article from AkibaBlog has some great page previews, so check it out if you want to see some of the book interior.

Interested in getting it now? Here is where you can get a copy:

Buy OTACOOL 2

Despite the date, my update isn’t a joke! I’m sorry for not having anything thought up to post here for April 1st. It just so happens the interview I did with Ninjovee for her blog Tangerine Tango is up today too. I’m excited to see it up so quickly, and it was a lot of fun to be interviewed by her.

Don’t you just love the citrus color layout? I really like the look of her blog. Very inviting!

★Here is the interview!★

I’ve read her blog prior to her asking if I’d like to answer some questions, and really appreciated the request! Please take a look! While at first glance you might think it’s a blog about figures and anime fandom, but she’s got articles in there that might surprise you. She really writes about stuff from a thoughtful perspective, not just canned comments or regurgitated opinion (not that it’s not okay sometimes to be matter of fact, but…) It’s refreshing to read a blog about ‘otaku’ subjects that has real personal opinion behind it! Blogs like hers are the kind that are the most engaging to read. It makes me think that I don’t use my blog here enough to express the way I feel about issues, so I’m inspired to branch out a bit and be more candid or have more content in my updates from time to time.

I had a tweet from my friend Nessa that I should check out this link and saw I’m on the revised cover of Otacool 2! Needless to say I’m really happy about it! It’s actually hard to sum up my excitement about it in a blog post right now.

Out of all the years I’ve been having fun with this hobby, nothing quite like this has ever happened, so I’m sort of in shock over the decision to include me on the front of the book. I’m elated, but still shocked. Really I’m just so thankful, I can’t even begin to go into it…

If one thing does make me sad about it, however, it’s that I took Danny Choo’s slot. He mentioned getting a lot of heat for being on the cover of the book in his article here. Considering the fact that without his site’s promotion of the publication many of us wouldn’t have even known to enter, it’s a little bit of a buzzkill.