Birthday Blog: My Fav Costumes of 1998-2002

This week the theme for my Birthday Blog posts is costumes! There’s a ton of posts to go through for this week, so let’s get to it.

October 25, 1998 – WHEN I THOUGHT ABOUT HALLOWEEN COSTUMES
In 1998 I kinda threw together a last minute costume for Halloween – I’ll get to that in a minute – but while I was thinking about it I decided to think about what I wanted to do for next year’s Halloween. The first of many “costumes I want to make” posts – and actually the first post tagged “costumes” so it all starts here.

November 2, 1998 – WHEN I WENT AS BRITAN FOR HALLOWEEN
So I was set on being Tifa from FF7, but couldn’t find the stuff I wanted at the mall. So I scrambled around to make a Britan costume – a character from the comic I was about to start doing. It all ended up being stuff out of my closet. I never got any photos of it that year, but a couple of years later I reassembled it to take at least one photo for posterity.

1998 COSTUME TALLY: 1 for me.

November 3, 1999 – WHEN I SNAPPED MY WHIP
A year later, another Halloween. This time I decided to go all in and have my mom and grandma help me make a costume. For a couple of months I’d been set on being Utena, but then I got FF8 for my birthday and switched to Quistis. It’s hilarious to think back to this now… I was going to dye my hair. LOL.

1999 COSTUME TALLY: 1 for me.

October 21, 2000 – WHEN I TRIED TO MAKE BOOT COVERS
I had to include this because, for Halloween 2000, I was going to be Sailor Jupiter, but I didn’t know where to get green boots. So I dug around online and found where people made “boot covers”… So I went back to the fabric store and got more of the fabric I used for the skirt. Which was a green taffeta. And I tried to make non-stretch boot covers to go over a pair of boots I had. With just hot glue. Needless to say the boot covers did not happen.

December 30, 2000 – HALLOWEEN PARTY
I finally scanned in some photos from Halloween and our party. Halloween night Ash and I went trick or treating as usual and I finally got asked “aren’t you too old for trick or treating?” So this was my last year for that šŸ™ Then we had our little Halloween party which was fun. Cath was Sailor Moon, Ash was McGonagall, and I was Sailor Jupiter (with plain black boots, of course)

2000 COSTUME TALLY: 1 for me.

March 17, 2001 – WHEN WE DECIDED TO COSPLAY
Cath and I decided to to Animazement, our first anime con! Here was a list of duo costumes we were considering.

March 29, 2001 – WHEN I GOT SOME SUGGESTIONS
So people gave me some more costume ideas on the WOFS… and I know I shared this one in my “fav posts” entry… but it still cracks me up that I said “I don’t like the whole princess thing.”
Baby Kell when you grow up you are going to be ensconced in hoopskirts and ruffles and tiaras and YOU ARE GOING TO LOVE IT.

May 21, 2001 – WHEN I WORKED ON STUFF
This is really the first post where I talked a lot about costume construction progress. I decided to make 3 costumes for Animazement. At this point I was working on Beatrix and Selphie, and I started on Sakura after this and threw it together in like a week.

May 29, 2001 – WHEN I SHARED MY ANIMAZEMENT TRIP REPORT
My first con trip report! We had so much fun. I ended up with 4 costumes – Beatrix, Selphie, Sakura, and a thrown together Britan. I thought everybody only wore one costume a day so I wore Selphie Friday (and forgot my hat so my hair was wrong), Beatrix on Saturday (and was uncomfortable all day), and Sakura on Sunday (even though there really wasn’t time for it with us flying back home, I wore it for maybe an hour). Saturday night I wore Britan to dinner and back to Selphie later that night because it was way more comfortable. Out of those 3 costumes Selphie is the only one that stood the test of time – I wore it to several more cons over the years.


Of course this was pre-digital camera. So everything we took is on film, and I’ve since somehow lost the film photos of my costumes from this con (I think I pulled them out to put in a scrapbook and they got lost.) So the only copies I have are very, very small scans. I think I’ve found the negatives recently, and my dad knows how to scan negatives, so fingers crossed I can get some bigger copies uploaded one day.

June 7, 2001 – WHEN WE DID MY FIRST PHOTOSHOOT
After Animazement I realized I didn’t really have many good pictures of my new costumes. So Ash came over to take some pictures for me in the yard. Only then I discovered I’d left multiple costume pieces at my grandma’s house (I’d stayed there for a week after the con and for whatever reason unpacked everything in the drawers of my room there?!). So we got the photos but I’m wearing the wrong pants with Beatrix, the wrong boots with Selphie, etc…
I ended up not using most of these for anything.

August 6, 2001 – WHEN I GOT MY MISATO WIG
I don’t know if you guys remember how hard it was to find wigs back in the day. You didn’t have every colour under the sun, or wig dye, or lacefronts that were affordable and “fun” colours only came in like a handful of styles.
So I was very excited to find a DARK purple wig for Misato, everything else that I found was bright purple.

August 14, 2001 – WHEN I TOOK PHOTOS OF THINGS
I bought an Asuka sundress on ebay. I had a hell of a time getting the shoes I originally bought for it — I found a pair of red Mary Janes on ebay another cosplayer was selling so I bought them, sent the money order (this was pre-paypal). Couple of weeks go by, she says she never got the money order, and I actually ended up buying another pair of boots from her, so I sent another money order for the cost of both… and never heard from her again. So I gave up and bought another pair. In these photos I’m just wearing some plain black ones since I was still waiting on the errant first versions.
Also a pink wig I bought for Utena and decided it was too dark – so I sold it. Although now looking at it I think I like it better than the one I used.

Speaking of bad ebay deals, also in 2001, during our Disney World trip, I found this beautiful Super Sailor Moon costume someone was selling and I decided I wanted it. So every morning I’d go down to the internet kiosk, pay to get online, and check the auction. I ended up winning it! I told the seller I was out of town but I’d send the money order as soon as I got home, which I did. A few weeks pass, no costume. I email her and she claims it got sent back to her, so I reconfirm my shipping address and she says she’ll ship it back out. And guess what, it never arrives, so I email her again, and she claims it’s gotten sent back AGAIN. So I again make sure she has the right address. And then I never hear from her again. I even got my dad to email her. She wouldn’t reply to anything. She actually kept an presence in the cosplay community even after that and I kept an eye on her for a few years but she eventually faded from the scene. But I’m still SO salty over that.

But those kind of things are why I decided, I’m not trusting anybody else with this stuff. I’m just going to make it all myself. And here we are.

August 21, 2001 – WHEN I TOOK PHOTOS OF PIPER
So I found this giant red wig on ebay and thought it would be a PERFECT Piper wig, and I had to have it. Got into a little bit of a bidding war and ended up paying more than I probably should have, especially considering it was really poor (halloween costume) quality and more neon-reddish orange than true red. But I was excited to throw together a Piper costume.

August 22, 2001 – WHEN I MADE A COSPLAY SURVEY
The first of many “here’s a list of costumes I want to do” posts.

October 11, 2001 – PICS! RUBY MOON AND UTENA PROGRESS
The first time I took progress photos. I’d finished part of Ruby Moon so I took some pics. And I’d found a short pink bob wig that would’ve worked for Utena’s boy uniform from the movie and had wanted to make it but never did…

October 15, 2001 – CAMMY & UTENA PROGRESSā€¦
I went from 0 wigs on 3 costumes at my first anime con to 3 STYLED wigs for 3 costumes for my second. And my mom’s hairdresser gave her a “Miss Kim” styling head to give to me to help with my wig styling. I still use Miss Kim to this day, she’s the best.

October 17, 2001 – WHEN I PAINTED SOME SHOES
I had to include this because it cracks me up, I remember these shoes. These shoes I tried to paint for Utena were some of those really gigantic thick-soled “creeper” rockabilly style shoes. Absolutely NOT right for Utena. So I tried to paint them and thought they looked good at the end but if you notice I did not use them in my costume… LOL (I realized a week later that they looked terrible and went and bought something else.)

October 26, 2001 – WHEN I TOOK SOME PICS
I was always scrambling random costumes together back then, and in this case I’d been trying to update Cath’s “Rinoa” costume so Ash could wear it to MTAC. I painted the wings on the back and then of course I wanted to take some pics in it, so I scrambled a mini-skirt together out of some fabric. It was literally just taped together in the back.
This post also includes a costume I COMPLETELY FORGOT EXISTED until a couple of years ago.

November 6, 2001 – WHEN I SHARED OUR MTAC RECAP
We couldn’t find the hotel, then I got mad at the hotel, had an art table for the first time, sold some art, entered my first costume contest, won a red wig, bought a whole bunch of stuff I didn’t need, got Ash hooked on cons…

November 18, 2001 – HOGWARTS UNIFORM PIC
And then of course I wanted to dress up for the midnight show of the first Harry Potter movie. Mom helped me put together a black robe and I added some black ribbons to a sweater I had, and made a tie out of red/yellow striped fabric. My fav part was the original patch I made — I based it on some promo shots and apparently changed the Gryffindor patch design somewhere along the way because that first one I used as reference was totally different?! — but I made out of paper and just glued it on because I didn’t know how else to make a patch LOL


This one got updated a lot over the years.

December 6, 2001 – WHEN EDEA WAS TOO DIFFICULT
A hard realistic look at my skill level at the time, the limitations of traveling with a large costume, and how hard it was going to be have an art table going forward.

December 9, 2001 – UPCOMING CONS & COSTUMES!
Pretty sure this was my first “here’s my con plans for next year” post.

December 10, 2001 – WHEN SOMEBODY THOUGHT I WORKED AT THE FABRIC STORE
“No seƱor, no trabajo en esta tienda.”
Also $10/yard isn’t bad, but I guess it was to a college student who was just hot-gluing stuff together.

2001 COSTUME TALLY: 17 that I still admit to. Helped Ash with 2, helped Cat with 2.

January 6, 2002 – WHICH WIG FOR SHE-RA?
The was the first “realistic” wig I bought and I remember thinking I looked so stupid and weird in it when I first wore it.

February 6, 2002 – LOTS OF PATTERNS!
I bought this lot of 60 patterns for like $10 and it still the best thing I ever did. It really bolstered my pattern collection – it was a whole lot of evening/formal/wedding dresses along with some simple stuff like jackets/skirts/etc. And a whole lot of different styles. I still use some of them to this day.

March 3, 2002 – SHE-RA DRESS
We ended up going to the local dance store to see if they had a white leotard with a skirt, and they said they could just make it. So they did and it wasn’t 100% what I wanted (I never liked the skirt) but it worked. Though, as I noted, the skirt DID make me feel like Xena.

March 23, 2002 – MIDSOUTHCON 2002 & SHE-RA PICS!
So She-Ra ended up being scrambled together at the last minute. We were only going to MidsouthCon on saturday and by that afternoon I was in the kitchen wearing the full thing while mom hot-glued the symbol to the front of me. My cape was just pinned on and my boot covers were floppy (they had nothing across the bottom of the shoe to hold them in place). We didn’t get up to the con until early evening, just in time to walk through the dealer’s room for about 5 minutes before they announced it was closing. Then the costume contest was way later at night and nobody wanted to stay for it šŸ™ But this was Kevin’s first con experience so there’s that.

April 1, 2002 – WHEN I TRIED TO GET CATH TO GO TO DRAGONCON
First mention of going to Dragon Con. I find it funny this was posted on April 1. April Fool’s Day TO MY WALLET FOR THE NEXT COUPLE OF DECADES

April 3, 2002 – DRAGONCON SUGGESTIONS
My first round of ideas for what to take to Dragon Con the first year.

April 18, 2002 – LULU WIG
Kristie took the wig I bought for Lulu to her hairdresser… he ended up completely doing the wig for me. And then later in the year I started going to him for my haircuts and I still go to him to this day, he trims my wigs sometimes and sometimes I make costumes for him! Thanks for introducing us, Lulu wig! (I guess it would actually be Kristie and not the wig but still LOL)

April 27, 2002 – WHEN I HAD CON DREAMS
The onset of con-stress dreams.

May 3, 2002 – HERMIONE AND RALLY PICS
I had just finished my Rally wig, which was the most difficult wig I’d styled up until that point, and finished putting the rest together, and I’d also done the first update to my Hogwarts uniform – I’d gotten a skirt and updated my patch. So I set up the little digital camera and took some pics on timer.


I did that a lot in 2002, I’d just randomly set up the camera and throw on a costume and take some pics. That little digital camera actually didn’t belong to us – it belonged to dad’s work, and it only held about 15 600×800 photos at a time. So I’d take photos, download them to my computer, and then delete them off the camera and start over.

May 9, 2001 – XIAOYU SHOES & LULU MAKEUP
My first time buying specialty makeup… or any kind of makeup that wasn’t eyeliner or lipstick.

May 16, 2002 – WHEN WE DRESSED UP FOR STAR WARS
Attack of the Clones midnight show, and my first Star Wars costume! Originally I was going to wear mom’s old Bride of Frankenstein dress as Leia but we couldn’t find it, so we went and bought some white material, threw it over my head, cut a hole, cut slits where I could put my She-Ra belt on through it, and ta-da, Leia costume.

JUne 1, 2002 – WHEN I POSTED OUR ANIMAZEMENT 2002 RECAP
Our second year at Animazement, Ash’s first “big” con. My biggest memory of this trip was dropping my suitcase down a flight of stairs when we were leaving Sunday. It jumbled all my stuff up… no costumes injured but I’d bought this big Auron figure and his glasses were never seen again.

June 7, 2002 – WHEN I WENT HUNTING FOR LINA PANTS
Based on the OAV art of the Lina I wanted to do, her pants looked shiny. So I set about trying to find shiny red vinyl pants. Mom drove me down to the one Hot Topic we used to have, they had ONE pair, and somehow I wiggled my way into that one pair.
Sad thing is I had bought a pair on ebay that looked more like leather — but they were a tad big. So I resold them but they would’ve looked so much better.

July 28, 2002 – BACK FROM OTAKON 02
This was the one time we went to Otakon – and it ended up being a family trip deal. My grandparents, aunt, Kristie, me and Ash all went. They all went sight-seeing while we went to the con, and at night we all went out to eat together. This was the next-to-last con I had an art table at — I remember being so bored of sitting there after a while. I just wanted to wander around and I thought, I’m never doing this again.


I did have the print versions of SunDowner fresh off the press so that was fun.

Also can I point out that I never tried all of Lina or Urd on all together before the con? It was with a hope and a prayer that that toupee tape worked on Urd. Lina required some juggling to make the armor work. And my family had no idea I’d made a Lum costume. I kept it secret. The day I wore it, I put on normal clothes, put Lum in my backpack, walked to the con center and changed in the public restroom. I thought my grandma would be SO mad if she saw it.

So sneaky.

August 16, 2002 – MTAC 2002 PICS!
MTAC 2002 was the weirdest freaking convention I’ve ever been to. This was the first con where I didn’t make anything new for it, just rewore old stuff. I’d already bought an art table so I had to deal with it that weekend, even though we ended up just barely setting it up and just using it as a place to sit and people watch for the weekend. The hotel was STRANGE. The AC was out in the convention areas – in the middle of a southern summer, it was miserable. The hotel rooms had tvs older than me. There was a dude who worked at the restaurant who followed me down the hall going, “Genie, genie, grant me a wish!” when I was in Urd.


The BEST part was that our room looked out into the courtyard with the swimming pool, and at one point the rooms must have had balconies, because you could literally just open the window like a sliding door.

Did this pass inspection?! LOL

August 17, 2002 – PRE DRAGONCON RUSH
The first Dragon con rush.

August 21, 2002 – LOL COMIC CON
LOL ok right Cath, like we could ever go to San Diego Comic Con…

August 24, 2002 – DYEING MY PADME LAKE DRESS, UPDATES
Baby’s first dress dyeing!
It wasn’t my first time dyeing something – I’d dyed Ash’s Yuna sleeves in a gradient pink, dyed her skirt blue, dyed my Lina gloves. But this was my first large scale dyeing project.

September 3, 2002 – DRAGONCON 2002 RECAP!
When I say best weekend ever, I mean it. This con totally changed my perspective on everything. Ash and I had such a good time, there was so much TO DO, so many amazing costumes, bands, costume contests, you name it. We bought SO much crap and didn’t even realize there was a second dealer’s room WE MISSED. There will never be anything like it again.
I did my first comic book costume:


I got asked, “What are you, some kind of girl Harry Potter?

I lived in this costume and won a signed photo just for wearing it.

I had signed up to be in the parade (the very first Dcon parade!) wearing She-Ra but I chickened out.

I won an award in the Star Wars costume contest! And we did the masquerade too. The PHOTO GAUNTLET WAS TERRIFYING AND AMAZING

I finally did my Ocha costume and Ash had to carry scissors to cut my fingers apart.

Met Mike and Kevin:

I mean the whole weekend was just bonkers amazing

September 9, 2002 – WHEN I WAS FEATURED ON COSPLAYLAB
My first cosplay feature.

October 14, 2002 – TENTATIVE 2003 SCHEDULE!
2003 was nuts. I’ll just go ahead and throw that out before we get to it.

November 1, 2002 – HALLOWEEN 2002 & ARWEN THOUGHTS
I did Arwen’s chase dress for Halloween and learned a lesson… always print some references and take them to the fabric store with you (or in this day and age, have them on your phone). I totally got the colour of the dress wrong. And in my head it was right, just from “remembering” pics I’d looked at online. I also had some other little details wrong — no embroidery on the sleeves, lace on the collar was wrong, belt buckle was based on an early guess of what it looked like from Alleycatscratch.


So now I just consider it “my” chase dress. Always thought about remaking it…
Also, I mentioned in another one of my birthday posts – but I wore this to classes Halloween day. Only AFTERWARDS did the school let everyone know there’d been a shooting threat against students who came to school in costume that day. Glad I didn’t die.

November 11, 2002 – UTENA PHOTOSHOOT!
My first “real” photoshoot! Dad and I drove to a park and he took pics of my Utena costume from the year before, both on the digital camera and with film.

November 14, 2002 – SUSAN WIG & CORSET & SKIRT!
I loved Dragon Con so much I was already making costumes for next year…

December 27, 2002 – SHOPPING
I was rushing to finish my Eowyn dress for a party and already deep into Katsucon costumes…

2002 COSTUME TALLY: 18 new for me. Helped Ash with 5.

Tomorrow we’ll dive into 2003!