With the end of the calendar year sadly come the end of weekly twitch streaming with my friend and neighbour Dan the Video Ninja. For over a year now, we've been gaming (almost) every Thursday night, and I always dress for the occasion, but once I move I won't be able to just drop in anymore. At least not for a while.

In any case, this is a "part 2" post to follow my first twitch cosplay collection - "costumes" from August to December 2017.

And a small bonus: While Dan didn't record all of our games, he did save a lot... and he put together this awesome farewell/best-of video to commemorate all our fun times streaming as Team Ninja Sloth. I'm going to miss him and our game nights... so hopefully I'll figure out a way to come back and visit regularly!

Did I plan a far-too-busy Halloween seaon once again this year? You bet! So without delay, let's get to the opener:

EPIC HALLOWEEN BATTLES OF 'SEVENTEEN!

I've been going to Toronto's main geek Halloween party - Snailoween - since 2012, and have been hearing about the closest equivalent in Ottawa via Kurumasha for almost as long. This year I owed Kurumasha a visit, and the parties didn't overlap, so we decided to hit up both. Because I'm such a party monster >_> *ahem* Thus, I figured that I would write about Halloween by pitting the two parties against each other!

​Who are you wearing?
First off, Heroes & Villains had a theme this year; it was actually "Heroes & Villains That Came From Space", which I thought was brilliant. It gave people an optional costume theme, and they carried the space theme through all the decor, drinks, music, and even some of the prizes! I decided to be on-brand with my only "alien" costume, Izabel, which also happens to be one of my faves (but I don't get to wear her often).  Kurumasha was AMAZING and pulled off a last-minute and also totally legit Alana to go with my costume ^_^
Originally, Kurumasha and I were thinking about taking some new Marvel costumes to Snailoween this year, but in the end neither of us had enough time to finish anything, so we picked something party-friendly from our closets: Chihio and Lin from Spirited Away. As a bonus, it was going to be easy to make a No Face mask for Dan to join in! 

But what did you think of the actual parties?
I'll start with the down-sides of Heroes and Villains: the venue was very hot, and the music was very loud. So between music volume and wearing the big fake ears I have for Izabel, I couldn't hear anyone unless they were yelling into my ear (and then: ouch). And while my makeup (somehow) survived dancing in the heat, the uncomfortable air plus use of smoke machine did force us to leave early  - which means that we missed our photobooth time. But still, they had a pro photobooth to take everyone's photo; that's awesome! There was a large variety of prizes, everything was on point with the theme, music was awesome, and the venue was cool, even though it wasn't cold ;) Bonus: a lot of people recognized and liked my costume!!

The following weekend, I left the Snail party feeling satisfied, but I saw a lot of complaints about it in the week that followed, and while at first glance I was dismissive (things like "the music/DJ sucked" are completely subjective) the more I considered it, the more I realized that this year was pretty disappointing. The new venue was too dark to see everyone's costumes, lacked seating, and was generally a boring big box. My experience with the washrooms was worse than the previous venue - and they weren't even signed! I hesitate to describe the drinks as "expensive", but they weren't cheap and with only one bar, the lines were long.
While I wasn't directly affected by them, the policy of absolutely no re-entry, no ticket sales at the door, and controlled entry to the patio area? That sucks. I won't comment on the catering since I ate right before the party so I didn't bother with their food. I don't know who was awarding the merch prizes this year but the table was still weirdly full by the time we left. And while music taste is subjective, I enjoyed it up until the contest a announcements, after which the DJ switched to painfully slow R&B type songs which I could not dance to. 

​Ultimately though, not many of my friends went to Snailoween this year. And despite H&V being both too hot and too loud for my taste (and the prizes mostly unappealing since they were all specifically local) I had more fun there and saw just as many friends. Weirdly... Snailoween couldn't compete. So while I don't know if I will be able to make it back to Ottawa for Halloween next year, I will probably be looking at Snailoween alternatives closer to home.

​I didn't take many photos, but here are some from both parties:

Wait, there's more?

Well, less "more" than  I planned... I had wanted to go to the Kitchener Zombie Walk in my R costume, but unfortunately I came down with a cold that weekend and had to duck out. I had also been planning a Halloween-y photoshoot but it needed to be rescheduled until November for a variety of reasons. But that brings us to Halloween proper.

As in previous years I wanted a subtle/stealth costume to wear to work for Halloween since I don't like being the only one dressed up. So of course I went with my latest trashy addiction and put together Betty from Netflix's Riverdale. Nobody at the office recognized it, but I went to Fran's Diner downtown for dinner with a few friends and had fun ordering shakes with Iamwintermute who wore her Jughead stuff, and TrickyLove also arrived in time to get the hat I made for him and also be Juggy! (though I forgot to get a photo with him T_T) Yay for friends indulging me ^_^

And finally, the big post-Halloween "party" - Dan the Video Ninja's Extra Life stream, AKA:

This totally counts as part of my Halloween-a-thon because it was Nov 4, and because I dressed up. So there. As I'm sure you already know if you're reading this, Extra Life is a 24-hour gamaing marathon fundraiser for Children's Miracle Network hospitals. Dan's done it 4 times now and I've dropped in to help out every year! I'm not sure it really needs more description than that, so my photos are below, and Below that is Dan's highlight reel from the day. Enjoy!

I have one last bonus video to squeeze in today: musician Brigit O'Regan (who I met last year) surprised cosplayers at Fan Expo Canada by playing their theme songs - and she ran into me at the Ontario Ghostbusters booth! Try and spot me hahaha...

This is a thing that happened because of the awesome creative people I’ve met in fandom, all building original ideas off one another’s work. I hope we can keep doing these kinds of projects with our OC’s in the future.

Crystal Entropy: Mai Sheri Costumes
Camera, editing, effects, voice over: Dan the Video Ninja 
Voice over: Doctor Holocaust 
Voice over: Professor M. Hades
Concept: Professor Enigma  

For more about Crystal, check out her gallery page.

Since I have a small back-log of things to upload, it's time for a second February photo post!

First I'm excited to have nice photos of my Iron Man dress (made this past summer) instead of the selfies I had up until now. I've wanted to make an Iron Man dress for a while, but I was holding out until I could find a print which wasn't the retro character design. I had several problems putting the dress together (Burda's pattern really frustrated me for something relatively simple) but in the end I like how it turned out. Looking forward to wearing it lots once the weather warms up again!

If you have followed my blog since last winter, or have received one of my lumas [she wrote, knowing full well that while there might be a few readers in the latter group, there's almost no one exclusively in the former] you'll be aware that I make customized character-based luma plush toys, using clearkid's luma pattern. For Christmas 2014 I added a single new luma to the family, a Hulkling to go with the Wiccan that I made for Ragz last year. Although I made Wiccan knowing almost nothing about the Young Avengers, in December Ragz was kind enough to loan me a few of the books after I expressed an interest in cosplaying Kate Bishop, who I'm familiar with from the Hawkeye books. And I surprised myself by actually really liking the first two YA books ("Sidekicks" and "Family Matters") and realizing that Wiccan-Luma really really should have a Hulkling-Luma to keep him company!!! 
Tangentially, I'm not sure about cosplaying the YA version of Kate, because dat fabric and dat outfit and I'm not as young as I once was.... but it's a maybe. we'll see how I feel about being Princess Hawkguy first.

And to wrap up, the blooper reel from my "Being Izabel" video has been posted! Yikes. Never put me on camera, people >_>

Luckily, it's not all embarrassment regarding that costume - I had a total "Sempai noticed me!" moment when Fiona Staples (the artist behind Saga) retweeted and reblogged my photo; and SO MANY positive responses followed!!! I know that the numbers aren't very impressive as internet-fame goes, but those are a TON of faves and notes for someone with my usual level of recognition *_*
General thank you to the Saga fans and the universe for helping me feel really good about this costume! ^_^

First things first: sending mad props to all my friends in the last stretch of the Katsu Krunch (and there are an awful lot of you...) even though they are all too busy finishing their amazing new costumes to be spending time reading my blog. I've been watching my friends' (and my roommate's) costumes come together through progress photos, blog posts, and almost daily Google Hangout sessions over the last couple of months, and they are all going to look amazing. On one hand, watching everyone work so hard makes me feel like a bit of a bum since I'm just la-dee-dah-ing through casual costumes with no deadline at the moment, but seeing everyone else working so hard is also doing wonders for my motivation! ... adding more vitamin D to my diet is probably helping with that though too ^_^

Anyways, it's time for a photo-post!!!! Izabel has finally been upgraded with a new wig and other "invisible" upgrades - basically fixing some of the bits that were not up to Mai Sheri quality standards; a.k.a. parts that were rushed for the Snailoween party. I was hoping to do two shoots at FrostCon but unfortunately one had to be cancelled. Luckily for me, Elemental's set from the Cosplay for a Cure booth turned out really awesome! I love getting to shoot with Amanda (which might be obvious looking through my gallery - she has literally photographed two thirds of the costumes I've worn since we met). My Saga gallery page has been updated with the full set.

I took the opportunity of being dressed in Izabel to also squeeze in a costume spotlight video with Dan the Video Ninja. I've missed doing all this stuff, and I'm really looking forward to making, wearing, and having fun in more new costumes in the coming year!

It's here! It's done! It's ready! 

The Night Vale fan-video that I recorded with Elemental and CTgraphy back at Colossal Con in June has been edited and is online!!! The video was a lot of fun to shoot, and it was great to get to meet so many cool night vale fans in the process. Considering how few American conventions I go to I'm not sure if I will run into any of them again, but I hope so ^_^

Please like/favourite/comment/subscribe on the YouTube page if you enjoy it (and definitely let me know if it gets you interested in checking out Welcome to Night Vale!!)

Video credits: 

Shot by ctgraphy and Elementalphotos, edited by Elemental

Cast:

Carlos 1 - Ed 
Carlos 2 - yoruhoshi
Carlos 3/ Video Assistant Made Of Awesome - lunariven

Cecil 1 - theguardianarcana
Cecil 2 - worthythunder
Cecil 3 - lookingglasslake
Cecil 4 - spiderwort-soup
Cecil 5 - random-fandom-girl210
Cecil 6 - cheezuscrustonacracker
Cecil 7 - buttered-poptarts
Cecil 8 - lady-of-time

Erika - maishericostumes

Eternal Scout - s-shutup-its-not-like-i-actually

The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home - woekitten

Intern 1 - stella-sews
Intern 2 - elementalsight
Intern 3 - ragzcosplay
Intern 4 - ctgraphy

Kevin 1 - cattheterrible
Kevin 2 - tiny-tiny-tiger
Kevin 3 - lady-of-time
Kevin 4 - dragonil
Kevin 5 - ryuuko-revolutich

Scientist 1 - nolifecrisis
Scientist 2 - sparkofspaceandtime
Scientist 3 - deusxsubtidens


*** Observant readers may have noted that I have a tumblr link in there... yes, I have a cosplay tumbr now. Feel free to follow me***

Now that all the con reports from months ago have been taken care of, let's take a look at recent happenings!

A week and a bit ago was the big 25th Anniversary party for Lookin' For Heroes, a comic book shop in Kitchener. KW Iron Man (and Spidey and Deadpool) were invited to be there in costume, so I decided to dress up too. I could have cosplayed as Pepper Potts again, but as much as I love her, I'm more than Iron Man's accessory and I wanted to show that. I was hoping to finish a new comic-based costume, but I wasn't even close to done. Then I hit on Goldie... the Sin City sequel movie came out recently and I still had most of the parts of the costume I made back in 2006. I found some new pants to replace the originals and Mr Stark was accompanied by a hooker instead of his assistant LOL.
I'm actually planning on fixing up the pants to make them screen accurate, picking up some red shoes, and hopefully gathering some people for a Sin City shoot sometime in the next few months.

As for that other comics-costume that I didn't finish in time? I started actual work on that this week, starting with knitting a hat. Unfortunately, I realized this morning that I'm going to need to start over and make it bigger, but at least it's started! I have my fingers crossed that I will get Izabel from Saga done in time for halloween, but I have a (surprise) back-up costume in place XD

Unrelated to costumes, I should probably plug the "let's play" videos I'm currently doing with Dan the Video Ninja on his gaming channel. Last year we played LEGO marvel Superheroes together because Marvel is awesome and LEGO games are fun (especially when doing 2-player games). The highlights are below, but if you feel like watching the whole thing, it's available here.

This year we're attacking The LEGO Movie Videogame, where everything is awesome ~_^. 
Here's the latest part, and new parts are added to the playlist every couple of days!

I was back at ConBravo! this year at the invitation of KW Iron Man, since that's where we met in 2013 ^_^. Basically the only thing I did at the con was hang out with my friends and take photos (especially since I was still cosplayed-out from A-Pop the previous weekend), so I'm going to skip the "con report" entirely, and just send you over to the #selfiecon gallery for a peek at the event. 

As a bonus, I'm throwing in a couple of  videos.... Among The Video Ninja's convention coverage is a silly video with some of his footage of my "Luma meet-up", which was my attempt to bring together as many of the Lumas I have given to friends for a reunion of sorts... although reunion isn't quite the right word as most of them had never been in the same room before XD. The Video Ninja's full ConBravo! playlist is available on YouTube.

And because "why not?" there's a video version of many of my #selfiecon2014 photos ^_^

There's just a few days left until CC32 and I am a mix of emotions about it. As I mentioned previously, I'm not making anything new which is really one of those "disappointed in myself" things. It's not really helped by seeing so many of my friends either posting progress photos or working on things in Google Hangouts - I've also been working on costumes the last couple of weeks, but not quite with the same commitment since my next deadline isn't for a while yet and I'm doing several things at once to boot.
 
So what have I been working on? In my last progress blog I mentioned working on bodysuits, and that's what I've been doing, although it's been a slow process. I have 3+1 bodysuits ahead, and I'm working on Midna first, though there's some simultaneous work going on for all. Unfortunately, all the suits require different patters and they all have to be hand-drafted so... I hope I'll be really good at this by the time I'm done. Progress pics of things so far below:

Also, spending face-time with friends:

and speaking of Costume Con... my cosplay plans are below. Aside from doing Alice on Friday, I don't have plans for which costume for which day. I'm not entering any of the masquerades, but I am going to be part of the Future Fashion Folio event on Sunday, modeling a couple of dresses for Andrea Schewe. I'm excited just because I get to wear the Cercei dress XD. I might not want to take it off LOL. Looking forward to sharing photos and maybe videos from the con once it's all over <3