I seem to have gotten myself on a roll of being productive lately, in spite of my best efforts to be stressed out and lazy all the time ;) Not only did I finish my Stark Tech prop for Pepper Potts in time for Anime North, but I also finished my sloth onesie before the convention. With only a week and a half between the end of AN and my departure for Colossal Con, in which I suffered not one, but two injuries, I thought that there was no way I would get my Colossal projects finished. And yet, somehow, I made it happen (almost).

I had two projects in mind to take to Kalahari - both very casual costumes which would be appropriate to wear at the water park. The first was Kim Pine's bathing suit from Scott Pilgrim Gets it Together, which I have wanted to make since I started cosplaying her. Yellow isn't my best colour, but I love the cut/style of the swimsuit that O'Malley designed - it's exactly what I, Jen, want to wear in a one-piece. Unfortunately it's not something available through retail, so I figured I'd try my hand at making my own. I started years ago when I found some yellow swimwear spandex with a neat texture, but I ended up getting bogged down by the way I interpreted the seams. I figured that Colossal - a convention at a water park - would be a good time to try again. Two nights of cutting and sewing later, I had a new bathing suit and matching headband. Unfortunately, I worked right down to the last-minute with sewing the bathing suit so I didn't have time to cut/style the wig that would turn swimwear into a costume.

The second costume was yet another outfit for Triana Orpheus from Venture Bros. In a second-season episode (Assassinanny 911) she and her friend Kim hang out with the Ventures to use their pool, and I thought it would be fun to pull together her ensemble from that episode to wear to the pool/waterpark at Colossal. My Triana wig is looking a little ragged at this point, so I didn't mind if it got ruined by getting wet >_<. Painting the t-shirt was a pain since I had to pile the pink on REALLY thick to get decent coverage on the dark grey, but fortunately that was the only difficult part of the whole outfit (aside from finding dark purple shorts, which was impossible within my time frame *sigh*). We don't see Triana's actual swimsuit in the show and I didn't have time to make something custom, so I just picked out something I thought she'd wear to go with the rest of the costume. Unfortunately, my wig wouldn't stay on in the water, but in the end, that didn't really matter. I got to do a small photo shoot with SolarTempest with the costume, so look forward to seeing those in the future! 

Full sets of both photos will be posted in their respective series galleries at a later date. In the meantime, enjoy the gifs that Featherweight made for The Video Ninja, Whitless, and I today <3  (There's a second one of me because clearly just standing there behind the camera is not an accurate portrayal of reality ~_^

Well, Anime North has come and gone once again. Unfortunately, with very little time between AN and Colossal, and since I have very few photos and no video of the convention, my video review/retrospective is pretty much just me rambling on this year. I put my collection of photos in a gallery here.
The closest thing I have to a written report is in questionnaire form, and can be read here.

Catch Cosplay for a Cure at ConBravo! More info available on their Facebook page  https://www.facebook.com/CosplayForACure
full Cosplay for a Cure Anime North gallery on flickr
 http://www.flickr.com/photos/cosplayforacure/sets/72157633771933578/

While at the Cosplay for a Cure booth, I did a small interview with Culture Toronto, which is available here.

As usual, Dan the Video Ninja talked to lots of cool cosplayers at the con and has posted footage from the masquerade as well on his channel.

My next con report will be from Colossal Con, but since that's a video which requires editing, there will be a delay on it.
Next cons:
ConBravo! (community guest!)
Atomic Lollipop
Unplugged Expo (cosplay guest of honor!)