I've been working on something new, but not a full costume. A group of my cosplay friends thought it would be fun to all purchase the Mobbunny cozy/sexy Eeveeloutions costumes, add light-up skirts/accessories, and wear them for the Glow Parade at Yeticon this year. I ended up choosing Vaporeon, so I wanted my skirt to have a watery vibe. I ended up designing a layered skirt which I hoped would resemble a waterfall, and make it out of sheer fabrics with lights sewn into the bottom layer to light the whole thing up. After a trip to Fabricland, I had 5 fabrics with a variety of textures: tulle with a dark blue to navy gradient, plain blue chiffon, bright blue tulle with flocked white dots, baby blue gauze with little tufts, and white tulle with little iridescent hearts on it (hearts were the closest I could get to "bubble" shapes with that one).
Thinking back to my Rosalina Gown, I cut an offset circle skirt from each fabric, at 5 different sizes - the largest from the darkest fabric and so forth. That way I would have little to no skirt in the front, and all the party in the back. At this point I started hand-sewing strings of lights to the bottom layer of tulle (I had anticipated sewing by machine but the light diodes turned out to be just a little too big for that plan). It wasn't fun but at least I got my skirt to light up.
I split the narrow section of each layer so that the waistband could be an easy-to-wear front closure and hemmed each layer with fishing line to get that nice ruffled edge. That part was a challenge with these specific fabric choices so some layers look better than others, but overall I think it worked OK. Then it was just a matter of sewing all the layers to my elastic waistband (for comfort) and VOILA! Waterfall-butt!

As for YetiCon itself, the weekend started out with our traditional visit to Chuck Burger for dinner, where we ran into so may friends! After eating, a group of us put on our first costumes of the weekend: easy/casual/mostly-closet-cosplay Team Rocket grunts! Popfrocks provided us with beautiful glitter "R" logos to stick to our clothes and off we went to try to find some Pokemon. It was a really fun time and I hope we get to do it again in the future!

There was a second cosplay for Friday night though - our Eeveeloutions group for the Glow Parade! I didn't get many photos (too busy glowing LOL) but we had a good time, and ended up with allllmost every eevee! Jolteon was missing, but then Jolteon was out of stock for the whole run-up to the con so that wasn't even an "us" problem. The parade itself was as the previous year - good silly glowing fun.

Saturday started out rough despite a nice brunch at Sunset Grill (I stayed up way too late with friends after the Glow Parade) and it was a little chilly, so I decided to put on my NasKart Rosalina outfit (as opposed my alternate cosplay, Tennis Rosalina). I ended up running into friends in a big Mario Tennis group (and maybe slightly wished I'd worn the other costume) but it was still just nice to see them and grab some photos. I did some shopping in the exhibitors hall, witnessed the "wedding" meet-up, and then squeezed in some lunch. For unknown reasons I started feeling a little unwell, so I kinda called it a day mid-afternoon and spent the rest of the day in the hotel just hanging with friends and having dinner.  

Sunday was our designated chill/activity day, which kinda worked out. Clay and I put on our Team Rocket outfits again, hoping to have the group together again, but most of my friends were in better costumes looking to win cosplay awards LOL. We also messed up the timing of our activity passes so we only had time for one coaster ride and one trip on the gondola. On the up-side, we stayed at the hotel Sunday night this year, so we had the whole evening for hot-tubbing, date-night dinner, and celebrating friends' prizes while learning contact juggling. It's so nice to get to enjoy Sunday at Yeti without thinking about timing the long drive back home.

Despite doing "couple cosplay" together since we met, it's actually pretty uncommon for Mr Stark and I to do photo shoots together, mostly because it's been difficult to get our schedules to match up to actually go to cons together! So I'm extra happy that we got to shoot with Amaleigh Photography at YetiCon this year in our brand new Pokemon Professor costumes. And as a happy coincidence, we ran into 50 Shades of Fandom in her adorable Lillie costume, so we totally adopted her for the shoot! It was a lot of fun, despite occasional rain and my wig falling apart! Previews are below and lots more from the set are up on my Pokemon gallery page.

​Last year I had a good time at YetiCon despite being in a terrible mood because of bad cosplay juju, and this year I had a good time despite being constantly rained out so I think that says a lot about the awesome people that I went with (both years). I was much more ambitious than usual going in: I attempted to make 3 new costumes for the con (Kevin for Mr Stark, and Professor Burnet and Milotic for me), and while Kevin was the only one that got 100% finished, my other 2 were more than wearable, so that was a good start.

Since Mr Stark doesn't get to attend many cons with me, we picked our costumes to coordinate all weekend - we figured Wendy and Robbie from Gravity Falls would be location-appropriate for Friday (though I don't think we ended up getting any snaps with Ragz's Dipper or Logan's Gruncle Stan, who were both also around); Professors Kukui and Burnet (from Pokémon Sun/Moon) for Saturday's Pokémon Snap hike, followed by Milotic and Blastoise for our friends group of water-type Pokémon for the pool party; and Ghostbusters with Elemental on Sunday.

I did try to do more convention activities this year than last - but somehow that didn't really work out... I partially blame the rain, which I got caught in at least once... every day. We attempted cosplay bingo, rode the mountain coaster, played about half a round of mini golf before getting rained out, and went on the Pokémon hike (which not only ended in Mr Stark, the Video Ninja, and I soaked through and temporarily stranded at the top of the mountain, but also the Celebi supposedly at the top had already been stolen). Sadly, pretty much everything else that I had planned or attempted to do was rained out, or missed because I was spending quality time with friends XD

So big props to all my hotel roommates (and extended roommates) for the awesome company, great food, cosplay groups, game nights, and not-so-pool-party water Pokémon; to the other friends I saw and played games with and hung out with over the weekend; to Amaleigh for shooting with Mr Stark and I (not to mention the adorable and awesome addition of 50 Shades of Fandom); and extra props to Kiirokeishi and Dan for picking up the camera unasked ^_^

My photos are below, along with some of my faves that other people took... and as usual, full gallery updates with photos from private shoots will be coming later... as soon as I finish all the con reports!

It's been difficult to post this photo set from YetiCon, simply because I love every shot that Elemental took! Kurumasha and I brought out our Flashback Hannah and Tizzie costumes and barely held it together in front of the camera. OK, sometimes we didn't hold it together. 

Honestly, this set is more Needle Panic than Rat Queens, but it was lots of fun and Kurumasha is so awesome for always being willing to join me for my graphic novel cosplaying whims. Can't wait to get together again at Halloween this year ~_^. Lots more of this costume on my Rat Queens gallery page.

YetiCon was a treat at the end of the spring - a reward almost for 3 months of conventions and events every other weekend. In other words, it was the vacation that it deserved to be instead of the usual chaos that conventions usually are for me. As a result, I'm not quite sure how to write about it - I mean, I had a great hotel room with lovely roommates, wore comfy and fun costumes every day, and did a couple photo shoots... but I didn't participate much in the rest of the convention activities. 

Due to a large oversight on my part, Cersei wasn't ready to enter in the costume contest like I planned, and because I spent all of Thursday night working away on that dress, I spent most of Friday at the con tired and trying to unwind. Saturday Kurumasha and I watched the costumes contest and cheered on our friends, poked our heads in on a couple of panels, and spent the evening in the pool and hot tub. Sunday was the "adventure" day - I was channeling Flash while riding the Ridge Runner coaster in my sloth kigu and riding the gondola to the top of the mountain, and we also spent some time at the magical tea party where we met a miniature unicorn XD

​I didn't carry my camera with me for most of the weekend and so I took very few photos, but I've collected a few below.

Dream Land took some cute photos of my "Chihiro", which I have added to my Spirited Away gallery. I also shot Chihiro with PPhoto (first time shooting with her; so excited to see the results!), and Kurumasha and I shot out Rat Queens elves with Elemental (like, the millionth time shooting with her - total fave). Both those shoots will be posted at a later date ^_^