when i unpacked – kelldar.com

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14 October 2005

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a day at the races, Blog

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when i unpacked

when i unpacked

man! I slept like a log last night!
I also cleaned my room, yay. Finally unpacked from Dragoncon! Haha.

My back needs popping…

when i had to remind myself to be kind

when it was a good day

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“What was your first _______ costume?” And fo

“What was your first _______ costume?”

And for today’s prompt I’m doing my first Padme costume! And of course it’s my 2002 version of the lake dress. I feel like I’m constantly posting the same like 2 or 3 pics of this from dragoncon 2002, so I thought I’d find one I don’t think I’ve ever posted, this one with this Anakin cosplayer. It’s also one of the few film photos from that con I’ve re-scanned in modern times so it looks WAY better than all of my old 2002 scans. One day I need to get my photos out and just rescan all of them.

“What was your first _____ costume?”

Today I’m doing the prompt of my first dream costume! And for this I’m going with kingdom come Wonder Woman from 2007.

I feel like a “dream costume” is a costume you realllly want to make but don’t have the expertise/time/materials at the moment. And I don’t have a lot of those over my costuming career - especially in my early years, I’d just jump in and figure it out the hard parts later 😹

But there was one I couldn’t figure out and kinda thought I might never do and that was kingdom come Wonder Woman. I wanted to do it for years but that helmet stymied me. When my now-husband went on our first date we discussed dream costumes and I brought this one up - he was like “oh we can totally make that.” 😍

So we did! For dragoncon 2007. It’s still one of my all time fav costumes. I’ve had plans for years for a clean-up/upgrade but just haven’t gotten around to it, but I realllly want to get it done do we can shoot it on the white backdrop. Maybe this year?

“What was your first _______ costume?” One of

“What was your first _______ costume?”

One of the prompts I got for the series was “first body paint” so I definitely have to do that one because I still think it’s hilarious.

So for Dragoncon 2002, I wanted to be one of the characters from my online comic, SunDowner. I wanted to do Ocha because I thought it would be fun to paint myself green. Having never done that before, I got on the cosplay.com forums to look for tips on body paint. Somebody on there suggested Mehron for the face (check, I can get that at my local theater supply store), and liquid latex on the body (cool, I’ll go order that right now).

So the jar of liquid latex arrived and I had to quickly scrape off the very scandalous pictures on the label before my parents saw 😹 I can’t even tell you if I practiced much if at all with it — I probably just did a swatch test on my inside arm to make sure I didn’t have a reaction and off I went to Dragoncon.

Putting it all on at Dragoncon wasn’t a big to-do... except that I couldn’t get it to completely dry. I finally got my neck and upper arms dry enough that it wouldn’t get on my costume, but my hands WOULD. NOT. DRY. So I left the room with them still tacky. If you notice in the photo, I’m holding my hands at a strange angle - it’s because I had to keep my fingers spread apart, otherwise they’d stick together. @lindenash had to carry scissors in her pocket to cut my fingers apart in case I accidentally let them touch.

But besides that, I was overall pretty happy with the end result. I wore it around for a while then went to change. And that’s when I discovered how liquid latex clings to body hair. I’d followed tips from that cos.com thread and put on lotion first but that did not help. I stood in the shower for probably an hour slowly scrubbing and crying because it hurt so bad trying to get it off my arms!

(Also please no one has to give me tips on how to do it properly. I know now, plus I am never doing this again so it’s a moot point!)

To add insult to injury, the jar of liquid latex spilled in suitcase on the way home. Never again.

“What was your first ______ costume?” Y’all

“What was your first ______ costume?”

Y’all gave me some good prompts for this series and one that really made me think was “first costume made 100% by me”

I tried to figure out the best way to approach this one - couldn’t buy any parts except wigs or shoes and for those pieces I had to at least modified them in some way, no help from grandma/parents/Chase, but how deep do I go there, because Chase cuts hooping for me and is an extra set of hands when I dye and holds wigs for me when I can’t find my wig head, where do I draw the line on what constitutes as a percentage of helping make a costume? 😹

So I decided I was making it too complicated and decided to just go with Lum from Urusei Yatsura, made for Otakon 2002. This is the first costume I made without help from anyone, though I did buy the swimsuit I built the fur bikini off of. Made the boot covers, gauntlets, and made the horns out of sculpey and wired them into the wig.

The reason I’m calling this my first 100% made by me is funny - because I was traveling to Otakon with my grandparents, I didn’t want anyone to know I was doing this costume, I thought they’d be mad 😹 so I made this in secret, and at the con I put it in my backpack and walked over to the convention center in normal clothes - I changed into this in the public restroom at the Baltimore convention center, then changed back before going back to our hotel 😹

This pic was taken by the legend kevin Lillard of fans view. And on a side note, i told my grandparents this story years later and they thought it was hilarious!

“What was your first _____ costume?” I asked

“What was your first _____ costume?”

I asked in my story yesterday for more “first “ prompts and yall gave me some great ones! So today here’s a costume that covers (almost) 3 of those firsts - my Princess Leia costume from the AOTC midnight show in 2002.

This covers first Star Wars costume, first Leia costume, and (almost) first costume from a mainstream movie. (There was an earlier costume from a mainstream movie I did in 2001 but I no longer post that costume, so we will move on to the runner up for this post.)

This costume was made last minute, the night before the attack of the clones midnight show. Mom and I went to the fabric store, bought a bunch of white fabric, came home, cut a few holes in that fabric and I had a Leia costume to wear. The belt was my She-Ra belt. Of course I went on to make a ton more Leia costumes, and while this one isn’t perfectlu accurate, im still damn nostalgic for it.

Sadly I’ve somehow lost this costume in that last few years. Still hoping I run across it miscategorized in a random bin one of these days so I can do a white backdrop shoot with it! 😹

“What was your first _______ costume?” Today

“What was your first _______ costume?”

Today let’s do first anime costume - and that would be Sailor Jupiter I did for Halloween 2000. I do still have most of this costume - I just updated it to eternal style in 2003. Still have the main costume, gloves, accessories, the original green boots are still in good shape (but my white eternal boots died a couple of years ago cuz they were pleather.) I reused the original y2k earrings and hair bobbles when I made my new Jupiter costume in 2020!

“What was your first ______ costume?” Let’s

“What was your first ______ costume?”

Let’s start with what was my first superhero costume - that would be my Shadowcat/Kitty Pryde costume I did for dragoncon 2002. Kitty was always one of my fav X-Men so she was a natural choice for my first time making a comic book costume. This costume is still in great shape - I rewore it to dragoncon in 2014 and replaced the mask and tights. I could probably still drag it out and wear it again right now!

2024 White backdrop roundup! Here’s every costum

2024 White backdrop roundup! Here’s every costume/outfit we shot in the 2024 sessions. All together I think this was 8 sessions over 2 months, mostly focusing on my new 2024 costumes of course, but also shooting some older stuff that either needed reshoots (like Boushh with the new helmet) or realllly old stuff I just needed decent pics of.

Everything I made to wear on our Disney trips - ex

Everything I made to wear on our Disney trips - excluding Minnie ears cuz that would make the video to long! Everything from shirts to Disneybounds to dapper days.

Happy Valentine’s Day! Here’s a collection of

Happy Valentine’s Day! Here’s a collection of costumes @chasingphotography and I have done over the years. Today is our 19th Valentine’s Day together 💚

Space twins For Midsouthcon 2019 Kevin and I wor

Space twins

For Midsouthcon 2019 Kevin and I wore our ANH Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia - I think this was the first time we wore them together at a con? I really need to do some upgrades to his Luke one of these days. Especially the boots.

I can’t wait to do more upgrades to my Boushh co

I can’t wait to do more upgrades to my Boushh costume now that I have this helmet 😍

At long last here’s the last costume we shot dur

At long last here’s the last costume we shot during this years white backdrop sessions. I had already shot Jedi Leia on the backdrop before, back in 2019, but i was never happy with the results (hated the way I did the braid) so Ive always wanted to reshoot it and finally here it is.

Also as a side note I’ve been updating my site/blog pretty extensively recently - going back through old costume entries to update them with newer pics or more up to date info. I try to do this every couple of years but some of my entries were shockingly out of date, like I hadn’t ever updated my Dorothy costume write up since 2006! Even though I’ve updated it and worn it quite a bit in the last few years. So just a heads up if you see anything in flux or funky if you’re over there reading anything!

Art vs artist I think this one is my fav. My “

Art vs artist

I think this one is my fav. My “liberty dies” padme from my Padme art project in 2018 abd my costume from 2021.

Art vs artist While I was doing my Padme art pro

Art vs artist

While I was doing my Padme art project in 2018, I fell in love with Amidala’s post-senate gown, so that’s the whole reason I made it for dragoncon later that same year!

Art vs Artist Here’s one where I made the cost

Art vs Artist

Here’s one where I made the costume way before the art - my Queen Amidala parade dress art from for 2018 Padme Project, and my parade dress costume from 2005. With ones like this, my art version was absolutely influenced by my own costume, because it’s so engrained in my brain.

Art vs artist Here’s another one where I did t

Art vs artist

Here’s another one where I did the art before I made the costume - I did the Padme Packing Gown art in 2018 and made the costume in 2022. I definitely feel like I have a better understanding of this costume after making it 😹

Art vs artist Continuing my series of my Padme a

Art vs artist

Continuing my series of my Padme art from 2018 with my own version of the costumes! It’s most interesting to me to look at the ones I made since doing this art project and how I drew details back then vs how I made it a few years later. Here’s my Tatooine Padme art from 2018 and the costume from 2024.

Art vs artist I thought it would be fun to do th

Art vs artist

I thought it would be fun to do this trend using my Padme project art pieces from 2018 with the Padme costumes that I’ve made for myself! Here’s my lake gown art from 2018 with my lake gown costume from 2019!

Today I played “posting roulette” - I blindly

Today I played “posting roulette” - I blindly scrolled my video folder and I’m posting the first thing I stopped on.

So here’s a video of me making my t-shirt quilt back in 2020. I had a ton of old tshirts I wanted to use for this project - so many I’ve got enough for a second quilt eventually! I had put this project off for years, so I’m glad to finally have it done. It’s been a great nap blanket for my sewing room ever since.

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