Birthday Blog: My Fav Costumes of 2006-2009

Today’s post covers my favourite/notable costume blog posts from 2006-2009. These were some pretty busy years, sewing wise – but a lot of it was just more of the same, there’s not a lot that’s notable off the top of my head. So let’s see if this ends up being as long as 2003-2005 was…

January 7, 2006 – ONE PIC FROM SHADOWCON
Ash and I went up to Shadowcon for a couple of hours and I wore my new Bespin Escape Leia. Had planned for it to be Hoth but realized I wasn’t going to finish in time if I tried to do the vest and boots… so I just wore it as Bespin Escape and saved the other pieces for later.

January 17, 2006 – LEIA PHOTOSHOOT
Technically this is the first backdrop shoot I ever did. Even though it wasn’t really a backdrop – it was some black suede and red velvet (and some blue velvet on the ANH Leia pics) just pinned on the wall or draped across a a couch. (The black and red were the fabric I bought for the Halloween 2005 costume that didn’t happen). I actually think it worked pretty well, better than some of my later efforts anyway.

March 21, 2006 – ST PAT’S PARADE PICS!
There’s a big jump for you! We went down to walk in the Atlanta St Patrick’s Day Parade with the GA garrison – there was some confusion on what costume I could wear, and I ended up having to switch to Padme just a couple of weeks out… so I scrambled and made a new belt, new boot covers and got new base boots and made new armbands.

March 28, 2006 – MIDSOUTHCON 2006 PICS 😀
This MidSouthCon was the debut of Kevin’s Luke costume, my stormtrooper, my second attempt at a Padme Lake dress, and my 70s Poncho Leia. I miss this era of MidSouthCons… when we had a bunch of friends come down and even we didn’t get a room we spent the whole weekend there.. (I think this was the first year we got a room at the hotel instead of driving back and forth from my house.)


I was going to enter the costume contest in my lake dress, but at the last minute started feeling queasy. We went and had dinner and then ended up going on home, so I didn’t wear Padme long.

April 24, 2006 – MTAC 2006 PICS!!
We just stayed at Chase’s apartment and ran over to MTAC each day for a few hours. A friend let us crash/change in their hotel room. It was a pretty laid back weekend. I did pull out some old favs – Starfire, Belle, Yuuko, Lum and my Stormtrooper, and we made a “Darth Stitch” outfit for Chase to wear with Ash’s Stitch costume.

May 2, 2006 – WOE IS ME
I bought a mannequin on ebay. It arrived broken. They just sent replacement pieces so I ended up with 2 mannequin torsos and 2 sets of arms. And then the stupid thing wouldn’t stand up on its own (had to lean it against a wall), and none of my costumes really fit it right. It was NOT a good investment.

May 8, 2006 – A LONG OVERDUE UPDATE
This post was a “catch up” post from my livejournal, reposting several events that had happened that I hadn’t posted about there (but already had at my regular blog). So there’s a few things in here that are repetitious but I included it here for my Padme lake dress photos – the only decent photos I got of it before I sold it to fund version 3.

May 31, 2006 – WONDERFEST 2006 PICS!
We decided to run up to Kentucky to give this con a try. It was actually pretty fun, it was more model-building/model kit based which was a fun change of pace. It was mostly just hanging around with 501st friends, taking silly pics. And the hotel was super cool.


I updated my Dark Phoenix, had my new Ripley, and my new Gentle Giant Leia.

June 6, 2006 – WSMI AT COSI 2006 PICS!
The 501st and Rebel Legion were invited to come out in force to the opening weekend of the “Where Science Meets Imagination” exhibit at the COSI museum in Columbus. My uncle had given me some airline points that were going to expire, so I was able to use them towards our plane tickets, and the museum provided the hotel rooms! They treated us so well and it was so neat to have so many 501st/RL folks in attendance. I wore Queen Amidala friday night at the opening gala, my brand new Leia (updated dress) Saturday afternoon and my Imperial Officer sunday. Chase wore his clone, Ash wore her X-Wing pilot.


Got super cool pics in the Falcon interior.
Ash fell walking to the museum friday afternoon. She tripped over her X-Wing boots and went down so fast I thought she’d been shot. She had a banged up knee the rest of the weekend. I told her there was no need to fall and pretend to be hurt here – this wasn’t SDCC.
We met Jeremy Bulloch too.

June 19, 2006 – SCULPEY MOMENT
This was a flashback to 2002, when Ash and I made sculpey poop.

July 16, 2006 – VADER SNEAK PEEK!
When Chase and I first hung out he told me he wanted to make a Vader costume and I agreed to help out. The first time he came to visit was in December 2005 to start hunting for Vader fabric. 🙂 Finally nearly got it complete in July.

July 17, 2006 – NEARLY THERE
Probably the first and last time I had to wake my mom up in the middle of the night crying over a costume piece. LMAO.

July 19, 2006 – HELLO FROM SDCC 2006!
San Diego Comic Con 2006 was our last SDCC. The con itself was fine, and fun – it’s just we realized a lot of the stuff that WOWED us the first year hadn’t changed or updated. It was so crowded on Saturday that it was panic-inducing. And we had a HUGE fight with the hotel. We couldn’t get into the Omni so we stayed at the Marriott Gaslamp a couple of blocks further away. Their staff was made comprised of idiots. I was still fighting with the manager weeks after the con, and eventually Marriott Corporate gave me a bunch of points to make me go away, LOL. And then we missed our connecting flight home and got stuck in Cincinnati for a night. So yeah, by that point I was over it, and we haven’t been back.


I did get some super cool pics of my Gentle Giant Leia with the big one they had at their booth, that was neat.
I debuted my new Rogue, and my 3rd lake dress, which wrinkled like CRAZY… we went to the Rebel Legion breakfast and the following photoshoot and after sitting at breakfast for an hour my dress was really wrinkled.

Chase debuted his Vader and ran smack into a pole the first time out. I wore Slave Leia with him for a while (we were in Nintendo Power magazine!), and then my new Mustafar Padme. He also wore it again for the 501st photoshoot and I wore my stormtrooper… never doing THAT again, both of us in armor! Ash was probably ready to strangle us.

(Although we did do this again once more, at Dcon…)
And then I stayed in ANH Leia most of the rest of the weekend, and instead of entering the masquerade we sat in the photo pit and just took photos of the contestants.

August 1, 2006 – MARA ON THE 501ST SITE!
I used to be one of the characters that would rotate on the 501st main page.
I still have a screencap somewhere.

August 26, 2006 – WONDER WOMAN DELAY, MANDO UPDATES
Chase and I made the decision to put my Kingdom Come Wonder Woman on hold… LOL we were like what, a week and a half out from the con and hadn’t started on anything?! I think we had a lump of clay for the helmet and I’d bought a piece of leather. It wasn’t happening that year.

September 6, 2006 – DRAGONCON 2006: FRIDAY PICS!
I started separating out my pics into days instead of doing everything in one post… which makes it harder to pic which is the more important one.
Dragon Con 2006 was the first time we drove to the con, so I was able to take more costumes. Also the first time Chase and I stayed together and the girls got their own room. This is the Dcon where Ash punched my pregnant Padme belly, where somebody had “the best they ever had”, where Mel and Ash had to lead Chase around saying “duck… duck… turn…” and there was inappropriate corsetry.
I did my new mando to match Chase’s:


Only time I wore it to a con, and only time the lights worked.
Wore my Lake dress in the parade with Mel as my train bearer. Worked the RL table and had a ton of ketchup as a freebie.
I wore my new Corde in the Star Wars costume contest and died a lot:

We had a mando shoot and a Slave Leia shoot in the same area, back-to-back, so I changed in the public bathrooms and everyone was quite impressed. I got Jabba slime on my leg.
Chase wore his new Leonardo (TMNT) costume and convinced not to wear my new village Belle and wear my April O’Neil again, and that version of Belle never even got worn.
This was the last year we entered the masquerade, as Belle and Beast. Somebody captured this post-masquerade pic of us which was my fav ever:

September 22, 2006 – LEIA BELT DAMAGE
The first time I noticed damage on my Leia belt – I said I was going to retire it and make a new one in 2006. I never did LOL I just kept patching it and wearing it up until last year, when it did finally get retired after the TLJ premiere in Dec 2017.

October 24, 2006 – HOTH LEIA PICS!
Finally finished my Hoth vest and boots to wear to HoFest. We also did a bunch of other events that weekend; zoo troop, etc.

December 14, 2006 – NEW VIBRO-AX! LEIA PHOTOSHOOT, AND CHRISTMAS PARADE PICS!
I attempted another backdrop photoshoot – this time with a grey backdrop I bought on ebay. I have never cared all that much for the resulting photos and don’t use them anymore.


December ’06 was the month Chase moved — his lease was up at his apartment and he ended up renting a room for 2 weeks until it was time for him to move to Memphis. During that 2 week period we did a couple of Christmas parades in Nashville.

And then he moved to Memphis right after! We still tried to go to Nashville for events through 2007-2008 but it got to be harder and harder with a wedding and buying a house and we eventually stopped. 🙁 I miss having some trooping event every other weekend!

December 19, 2006 – LOIS UPDATES…
I was trying to make Lois’ greyish purple dress from Superman Returns. I got a decent amount done before I called it off. I’ve tried to pick it again several times and I don’t know if I’ll ever finish it.

2006 COSTUME TALLY: 17 new for myself. 1 updated. 2 for Chase I think? 1 for Kevin.

January 10, 2007 – PRINCESS LEIA & HAN SOLO BLASTERS!
Matching His and Hers blasters – appropriate since we’d just gotten engaged!

February 9, 2007 – TIMOTHY ZAHN SIGNING PICS! & LEIA UPDATES
We went up to Nashville for a Timothy Zahn booksigning, and I’m so glad we did, this was a super fun troop, one of my favs we’ve done.

March 27, 2007 – MIDSOUTHCON 2007 PICS!
Another year, another MidSouthcon – got to meet Terry Pratchett (dug my Susan costume back out for it!), and debuted my new Wonder Woman and ceremonial Leia.

April 1, 2007 – HEART OF AN EMPIRE PREMIERE
This was such a weird event! The 501st got invited to troop the premiere of the 501st documentary, Heart of an Empire, at a Mississippi Film festival.


The good: Seeing the movie, trooping the premiere, breaking my updated Imp Officer out for the first time in a while
The good weird: Driving my bug across a huge parking lot, with Chase sitting in the open trunk in full Vader gear. It was raining and he didn’t walk in the rain from the hotel to the theater, and he couldn’t fit in the car to sit normally.
The bad weird: The hotel was weird, the AC didn’t work, it smelled musty, I had a horrible migraine all weekend. We could not sleep the second night and got up and drove him at 2 in the morning.

April 14, 2007 – HELLO FROM MTAC 2007!
Took Kevin to MTAC, hung out with Nashville friends, it was super cold and SNOWED that weekend. Wore my new winter Belle and redone Utena. Kevin wore his updated Link and we all wore Star Wars stuff, and Teen Titans stuff.


Fun weekend except for the drama leading up to it (tried to buy Kevin a link sword and shield online for the con and the seller was an ass.)

April 22, 2007 – WEIRD MYSPACE COMMENTS LOL WUT
OMG I really wish I’d kept a log over the years of weird comments I’ve gotten. The weird wrestling stuff was new with myspace.

a href=”http://www.kelldar.com/2007/06/05/adcon-wrapup/”>June 5, 2007 – ADVENTURECON 2007 PICS!
We headed to Knoxville for Adcon and a special event! I was still blue all over my legs and arms from desperately trying to finish Funeral Padme…


But we got to see our friends get married there at the con and had a really fun reception afterwards.
Also, I don’t know that I ever said it anywhere on my blog, but I think this was during the short time period when I was LMO of the Rebel Legion.

I was Royalty/Senatorial LCJ for a long time, and a BMO for Corellian Base. I was LMO for about a year before I had to step down when work and wedding stress combined to make it too much to deal with together.

June 17, 2007 – THE BOUSHH BOX CAME!
So despite saying we needed to save money for our wedding/honeymoon/future living arrangements, I came across someone selling a bunch of Boushh pieces they’d assembled and decided not to finish, for a really good deal. I snapped it up.


(Indy not included)

August 21, 2007 – KINGDOM COME WONDER WOMAN HELMET
I was in LOVE ya’ll

September 6, 2007 – DRAGONCON 2007 PICS!
Dragoncon 2007 was insane, I took more costumes this year than EVER. We had to rent a van to get it all down there. Cat rode with us since we had room. Chase and I manned the RL table that morning. Got my fav pic of my funeral Padme ever:


Seriously I took: Marion Ravenwood (new), movie Rogue (new), Endor Leia (new), Funeral Padme (updated), Ewok Village Leia, Boushh (new), Wonder Woman, Kingdom Come Wonder Woman (new), Belle, Winter Belle, Marasiah Fel (new), Slave Leia (updated), Hoth Leia. Chase had Han Solo (new), Jango Fett (new), Wolverine (new). Ash brought her new Admiral Ackbar. WHEW.
Wore Boushh in the parade with Chase a “just out of carbonite” Han.

We did a hilarious photoshoot with eBK.

FINALLY got to do my dream costume. So glad we were able to pick this back up after dropping it in 2006!

And I made these stupid Leonidas masks that we had way too much fun with at the Yule Ball.

October 15, 2007 – LOL WUT… WEIRD COMMENTS
Yeah, all these costumes belong to my husband. WTF.

October 25, 2007 – SUNDAY PARTHENON SHOOT
We went up to Hofest for Saturday, trooped the zoo Saturday night, and on Sunday, we had a big photoshoot over at the parthenon and I got some of my fav costume pics EVER.

October 29, 2007 – HALLOWEEN 2007 PICS
This was a fun Halloween, we went and got some nice pics of Wonder Woman. Kevin was Fabio which was the funniest thing ever.

December 5, 2007 – 501ST CHRISTMAS PARADES!
We went back up to Nashville to do the 2 scheduled Christmas parades and a toy drive! Brought Kevin and Ash, too.


I wore Leia, Ash was in X-Wing pilot, Kevin was Luke, Chase was Vader.
Ash killed her feet in her pilot boots though. If you ask her now, she’ll sing, “Iiiiiiii hate a parade!” Thankfully the Sunday parade got canceled due to rain so we went on home without subjecting her to a second one LOL.

December 25, 2007 – MORE HOGWARTS ROBES PICS
I spent December scrambling to buy all the black Kona cotton in Memphis to try to make Hogwarts robes for the girls for Christmas. I ended up having to switch to a different cotton for 2 of them.

2007 COSTUME TALLY: 13 new for myself. 3 new for Chase, 1 for Ash.

February 17, 2008 – PADME LAKE DRESS FINISHED!!
So I had some pretty georgette in my stash, and I thought it would make a new lake gown. I reused the underdress from version 3 and made a new outer dress, this time finally adding the satin edging (which I wasn’t a fan of originally). Chase made some new accessories. I was really happy with how this turned out.


I was going to sell it, but didn’t want to 🙁 So I hung onto it for a while.

March 2, 2008 – CON NOOGA 2008 PICS
I was a panelist at Con Nooga that year – this was the only year we went! I’d like to go back. We took Kevin along too. My Belle library dress was supposed to be new for this, but I got there and didn’t like the sleeves so I didn’t wear it.

March 31, 2008 – MIDSOUTHCON 2008 PICS
Brought my fixed Belle library dress, and my new Scarlet Witch. We booked a suite this time around because we had an engagement party with our friends! The hotel staff was super snotty about letting us check into the suite though… they made us sit in the lobby until the late afternoon before letting us check in. I was so glad when MidSouthCon moved away from this hotel…


Our friend Starla made this awesome cake that looks like a scrapbook, with edible “pics” of us and a snowglobe of Belle and Darth Vader!
The cake was yummy and we still have the snowglobe 🙂

And in April we got married – not really costume-related, but just for reference!

May 12, 2008 – HSO EVENT PICS!
Got to go down and troop a symphony event in Huntsville – Chase was Vader and I was Belle. This was the weekend after we got back from our honeymoon and just a couple of days after I had my wisdom teeth cut out. I was hopped up on pain killers but funnily enough I don’t think I ever looked better as Belle.


Got to hear Jodi Benson sing! <3

May 20, 2008 – POISON IVY PROGRESS
So Chase and I did a lot of decorations for the wedding ourselves including some of the floral stuff – we decorated the trellis he and dad built with silk ivy leaves. So I had a ton of them left over after the wedding. And what to do with all that? Don’t let it go to waste, make a Poison Ivy costume…


Our aisle runner got used up in costumes, too, but I’ll get to that later.

June 19, 2008 – MORE ADVENTURECON 2008 PICS
We went back to Adcon for another year! I had my new Poison Ivy and new Giselle. We brought Kevin along again, too.

July 1, 2008 – OCD WONDERLAND (AKA MY COSTUME CLOSET)
In June we moved into our first apartment! One of the bedrooms was designated as my sewing room and the huge walk-in closet was of course, my costume closet.


I miss this so much.

August 16, 2008 – PADME LAKE DRESS PICS!!
So in summer of 2008 I put together a snowbunny Padme supposedly to sell… but then I kept it because I liked it. But I did decide it was time to let the 4th Padme lake dress go and I sold it. But not before taking some pics of me in it, of course.

August 22, 2008 – FRUSTRATION, AND STARFIRE PROGRESS
So Exhibit A on why I don’t outsource costume construction. I want to do everything “in house” as much as possible, but Chase had an acquaintance who agreed to make the chestpiece, belt and side pieces for my Ame-Comi Wonder Woman. And of course a week before the con and he hasn’t done them. Still have never seen them to this day. We had to scramble and come up with alternate way to finish the costume – everything else was done and I wanted to wear it! We managed to scrap it together, just barely.

September 6, 2008 – DRAGONCON 2008 – THURS AND FRIDAY!
Dragon Con 2008 was a lot more of the same. Chase and I did our matching Black Canary and Green Arrow.


I also wore Giselle, surprised Chase with a secret Selene costume I’d put together, wore Poison Ivy again and got some great shots, debuted Zatanna.
Wore Starfire in the parade and twisted my ankle.

And then almost passed out on the way back from the parade. (Didn’t realize yet how bad my anemia was at that time.)
Wore Scarlet Witch again, debuted my Ame-Comi Wonder Woman of course. Nearly got kicked out of the dealer’s room because I got separated from Chase in the crowd and he had my bag with my badge on it and the volunteer was a super jerk about it. Stayed out late with Cat and when I finally made up to the room (via the stairs), Chase wouldn’t let me in the room and I pounded on the door for 10 minutes before he finally came around the corner – he’d been waiting by the elevators for me the whole time.
Wore my Beastly Belle with the Undead Disney group and discovered I am slightly allergic to latex. Met Edward James Olmos.

October 5, 2008 – WIZARD SCAN
My Kingdom Come Wonder Woman made the Wizard Halloween special.

October 6, 2008 – NASHVILLE PHOTOSHOOT & HALLOWEEN
We needed to run up to Nashville to film some stuff for the upcoming Predators Sci-Fi night, so while we were there we did an Ame-Comi shoot at the parthenon:


And Black Canary downtown:

October 9, 2008 – INDY THE WONDER DOG
Made Indy a Wonder Dog costume out of scraps. It was SO CUTE.

,a href=”http://www.kelldar.com/2008/11/07/halloween-weekend/”>November 7, 2008 – HALLOWEEN 2008 PHOTOS!!
I put together a Joker for Kevin and he loved it. I made a Sleeping Beauty for myself.

December 4, 2008 – HOCKEY GAME STAR WARS TROOP!
We trooped the Predators’ Sci-Fi night and I decided I wanted to be Ahsoka, so Chase and I put this costume together lightning speed.

2008 COSTUME TALLY: 15 new costumes for me. 1 for Chase, 1 for Kevin.

March 2, 2009 – SALLY JUPITER AND AURORA PICS
Big ol’ jump in time there – the first half of 2009 was just me lazily working on Sally Jupiter and a theater project, and everything else kinda got detailed by my anemia scare.
We had gone out and taken Aurora pics right before that:


And right after we’d gone to Megacon…

March 10, 2009 – MEGACON 2009 PICS
We’d never been to Megacon, heard good things about it. Thought we’d take Kevin and bro-in-law, Scott. And do a quick Disney trip too? (This was Chase’s first trip to WDW!)
The top of my feet got sunburnt at the park the day before so wearing these boots with Sally about killed me LMAO.


Also wore Zatanna! Was supposed to wear Starfire but my chest piece had darkened up and didn’t match anymore…
Kevin wore his new Jedi Luke we’d gotten him for Christmas and Scott wore his old Luke:

March 26, 2009 – BOX FULL OF GEEKERY.
This was back when, when you get in on a run of Rebel Legion cards, the minimum amount of cards you’d get was like, some crazy huge amount. (Now you can get like, 200 cards for $25). So I got in on series 2, I think it was… and ended up with a massive box of trading cards I don’t like to hand out because they have my full name on them. I basically just give them to other 501st/RL members and friends :\ Also I wish I’d done regular Leia instead of ewok.

March 28, 2009 – MEGACON & PHOTOSHOOT PIC DUMP
Another massive dump of recent event photos — but this one was important to include because it was our first white backdrop photoshoot. The whole reason we did it was because I wanted to recreate the Sally Jupiter pinup from Watchmen… and then it became a thing.

May 3, 2009 – BODYCASTING, & NEW BELLE & PADME PICS
We needed to take a bodycast of me for my Wonder Woman armor sculpt… and I passed out in the middle of it, LOL.

June 25, 2009 – SUPERMAN CELEBRATION PICS AND UPDATES
We drove up to Metropolis for Superman Celebration for the first and only time. It was miserably hot but still had fun.

August 2, 2009 – ANNE BOLEYN UPDATES
Summer of 2009 was super busy, between moving out of our apartment, moving in with family, and trying to close on our house in between. We ended up living with family from July through September – it took us THAT long to close on our house, it was ridiculous. So I wasn’t posting a whole lot, but I was still trying to make my costumes for Dragon Con. Actually had a really nice workspace at my aunt’s house! And I was finally working on a dream costume – a tudor era gown!

September 9, 2009 – DRAGONCON 2009 RECAP
We met Patrick Stewart and George Perez, Chase dressed up as Henry with my Anne Boleyn, walked in the parade as Scarlet Witch, but mostly just wandered around wearing costumes. For new I had Marvel Girl, Ame-Comi Poison Ivy, classic Wonder Woman, Anne Boleyn, AoA Rogue, and classic Black Canary. Also took an updated Scarlet Witch, my Sleeping Beauty, Huntress, Sally Jupiter, modern black canary and Ame-Comi Wonder Woman.

October 7, 2009 – GMX 2009 PICS
This was the first year we went to GMX in Nashville! I didn’t make anything new; Chase and Derek set up a photo area so we mostly just hung out there all weekend.

November 5, 2009 – SNOW WHITE + GRAVEYARD PARTY PICS
Halloween stuff! Snow White was the first costume I finished in my new sewing room!
And Ash and I went to a “Graveyard Party” at our fav local bookstore and the ads said, “Come dressed as your favourite dead celebrity!” So we put together a Teddy Roosevelt for her and I wore Anne Boleyn. We ended up being pretty much the only adult patrons dressed up. But we got some hilarious photos.

December 3, 2009 – C5, PHOTOSHOOTS, CONVENTION PLANNING
We had to miss Celebration 4 because of our wedding planning… and then Celebration 5 was 2 weeks before Dragon Con so we couldn’t swing it. I was SUPER disappointed.
Also some new backdrop shots.

2009 COSTUME TALLY: 9 new for me. 1 for Kevin, 1 for Chase.

Onto to 2010 next post!