Närcon Vinter 2016 cosplay plans – Sword boys with sad stories!

Hello puppies!

So my first con of the year will be Närcon Vinter in Linköping, Sweden. It's held during the 12-14 February and I must say that I'm really stoked about attending! σ(≧ε≦ｏ) I already bought the con tickets and everything else is fixed too! I haven't been to Närcon Vinter since the very first one back in 2013 – it's gonna be interesting to see how it has evolved! What makes it even more of a fresh experience is that this year they changed locations so the con will be in a different building, yay! It used to be in Anders Ljungstedts Gymnasium but now it's gonna be in Saab Arena and Sporthallen!

I will be carpooling with the best company ever – we're gonna be 5 friends in one car! >w< Our seat takers consists of me, Frozen Angel (former Jäätynyt Enkeli), Sacchan, Ronya and Hitsu. It's gonna be so awesome!

Regarding my cosplay plans I need to admit that for the longest time I was pretty damn set on what to cosplay but then, like two weeks before the con, it suddenly hit me that some really important stuff for the cosplays have yet to arrive and that I won't be able to finish some props in time. D'oh! 

So yeah, I ended up having to change my original plans almost completely, only leaving one of the characters still on the list. But without further babblings I'll get to the cosplans, here goes!

Friday

Series: Rurouni Kenshin (Tsuiokuhen OVA)

Character: Kenshin Himura (Hitokiri Battousai)

Time to let Kenshin out again! A rather comfy and fun cosplay to wear for Friday – and I can't deny that it will feel a bit nostalgic since I did cosplay him at NCV (shortening for Närcon Vinter) three years ago. :') Kenshin is one of those cosplays that I really enjoy wearing to cons because I often get funny interactions and yeah, people are more likely to come and talk to me about RuroKen etc. It's a classic series for many and I just feel all kinds of fuzzy inside when a random congoer comes up to me and tells me that they're so happy to see that someone is still cosplaying from the old classics. ;u;

Saturday

Series: Touken Ranbu

Character: Kashuu Kiyomitsu

New cosplay! I have already spoiled here at my blog that I was planning to do Kashuu's casual outfit for my next con so yeah, this should hardly be a surprise anymore. xD I think I'm starting to fall quite deep into swordboy hell but I regret nothing. I just love the designs so soooo much, okay. ;A;

I decided to put Kashuu on Saturday because I'm hoping I'll find other TouRabu cosplayers on that day since it's the main day and well, Touken Ranbu is popular right now!

 _______

That's about it. Even though the con is three days I don't plan to cosplay on the last day, aka Sunday. Sorry about it. ^^" The reason for this is mainly because the con will close it's doors around 16:00 and that I'm really not sure if I can be bothered to put on a full cosplay and, well, it would slow me down and be a bother in case our carpool group has to leave ASAP after the con closes. I'm really not the type to want to be in a 9+ hours car trip with my cosplay and all the makeup still on, ughh. I just don't want to stress as soon as the con is over because yeah, we won't have much time to waste because driving back up to the far north will take the rest of the day and, most likely, we won't even reach our first destination before midnight – especially if we actually stay at the con until 16:00.

That's my cosplay line-up for Närcon Vinter! See ya there!

Shiro Samurai says byebye!

Tsurumaru Kuninaga sword WIP – part.1

Hello geeks!

So for my coming-later-this-year Tsurumaru Kuninaga cosplay from Touken Ranbu I wanted to start by making his sword, in good time. Technically he is a sword himself so... yo dawg. x) But yeah, you get the point...
I decided to split my progress in several parts to avoid a text wall. I also want to mention that this first part, the beginning, mostly consists of me being a disaster master – everything that can go wrong went wrong, basically. Can't succeed every time. I never do anyway, who am I fooling? trolololo.

Reference image.

What I did was that this time I decided to do things a bit differently. You see, previously I've always made wooden swords from scratch but this time I decided to try the "let's modify a toy sword" approach. With that said I bought a cheapo toy katana from Partajshop and I must admit that I was quite surprised with the quality of the thing – I was expecting something really flimsy and low-end with all the parts glued on but yeah, what I got was an extremely modification-friendly plastic sword that had all the parts easily removable by just pulling them out. Said store gets both my thumbs up for their cosplay-friendly fake samurai swords! ヽ(^o^)丿

So yeah, what I started with is your generic plastic toy katana:

This is what the sword looks like straight out of the package.

This is the naked sword, all removable parts removed.

I noticed afterwards that it's for the better that I keep the part that is the "mouth" of the sheath since it provides support for when the blade glides back in. I thought I'll just cover it with worbla because it looks otherwise really cheap and fake with that overly golden color...

The sheath comes with these two "hanging loops" on each end.
I cut them off with a scissor and then sanded them flat.

I don't know how visible it is on the photos but the sword's handle came without any kind of wrappings which is a good thing because yeah, on toy katanas the wrapping always looks like complete and utter shit. No handle wrapping (aka tsukamaki) makes life easier for me because I don't have to start undoing it and neither do I have to worry about ugly glue remains. :)

I started by making the tsuba. I decided to try my hands at the sandwich method and I must say that it... didn't go quite as planned. I almost ruined my work twice but, by some miracle, I managed to save it. I want to say a few things about it because I ended up with a hilarious fail. xD You see, at first I started heating the bottom worbla piece on my freezer's lid. I had no idea what was a suitable working space for worbla because the damn tutorial didn't say a word about it so yeah, I thought that plastic shouldn't be all that bad – WRONG. My worbla stuck to it like hell (even though glue side was up) and I had to rip it off with force, to the point the whole thing got deformed, bumpy and almost tore. Seriously, don't do the same mistake.
My second thought was to use a metallic surface. The idea was good and I was on the right track but yeah, much to my disappointment I had no worbla-friendly metallic surface to work on; the closest would have been the sink/stove area on my mini kitchen but the problem was that it's way too uneven to work on. As desperate as I was I went to the common kitchen and dug through the closets and then I found a... metallic tray. It had some intricate designs on it but because it was flat I didn't think much more about it – BAD IDEA.
So, well, I did the other side of my worbla piece and –while it didn't stick as horribly to it as with the freezer– the tray had another surprise up its sleeve...

OH MY FUCKING SHIZZLE DRIZZLE .........

I swear that when I saw that the worbla had stolen the tray's print nyysijä!worbla with it I was laughing so hard that my stomach hurt. xD Thank god that it's from my apartment house's common kitchen and not my mom's – mom would soooooo have killed me. I don't think anyone even uses this tray so I should be safe, lol...
Later on it finally hit me that aluminium foil might be the best surface to work on and... guess what? Of course that's what I don't have at home. So yeah, I had to call Sacchan to fetch some for me since she was coming over to my place anyway.
I need to say that I was right – tin foil is by far the best surface to work on that I've tried so far. The worbla doesn't stick to it! I guess you learn from your mistakes. But seriously, my mishaps didn't end there, no no. You see, because I did a layered design on the craft foam I had the stupid idea that I wouldn't need to glue the detail layer onto the main piece... I guess I don't need to even say that it was a bad idea too. :) Needless to say that when I had done one side (all nicely for a change) the other side moved and the second layer (detail layer) fucked up during the bonding process. I ended up with a tsuba that is not identical on both sides and thus, because the edges don't meet, it looks like shit. I tried to save it the best I could but nothing's gonna make it identical so I just have to suck it up. Oh and guess what? I also got a horrible king-size air bubble inside the damn thing too!! I did get rid of the air bubble but I had to really press down on it with my full palm, whole body weight and use protection gloves (warm worbla is warm). The problem is that because I've used my gloves for woodwork they're damaged on the surface from all the sanding etc and yeah, of course this shit caught onto the worbla and gave it a dirty and knobbly surface. HOW MUCH BAD LUCK CAN YOU HAVE IN ONE GO? щ(ºДºщ)
Note to self: fucking glue the craft foam details onto the main foam piece before using worbla on it. It will save you from raging and screwing up your project.

My first sandwiched worbla piece done.
It's fugly but it'll suffice... I guess.

Because my apartment has no spray paint friendly area shower doesn't count and because it's cold as all hell outside I couldn't paint at home; I had to wait until I had my furniture makeover & redesign class in school on Thursdays. During said class we work in a garage and yes, my teacher totally approves that I do cosplays in school, lol. So yeah, I bought some glossy white spray paint and started spraying the sheath white. I did several coatings but –because I'm horribly impatient with waiting for spray paint to dry– I ended up with a less-than-perfectly-even surface. Oh well, I have a fair chance of getting the ugliest spots covered by random details later anyway.

My creative "where to put it to dry" solutions.

With the sheath turned white it was time to add some worbla details on it. No, just kidding – I decided to start working on the handle first. Oh boy, I need to say that I was up for some serious shit... as if it wasn't bad enough already.

Read ahead for a disastrous PU-foam story. Learn from my mistake and fucking don't do it yourself, okay? Thanks. Oh, and warning for foul language ahead. 

Okay, so after some brainstorming with my teacher and one of the, err, I guess he counts as an extra teacher/helper, we came to the solution that I should use PU-foam (aka expanding foam) to fill out the gaps of the handle. I had taken with me my barely used can of PU-foam and started shaking it and preparing it for use. But yeah, as you know my luck is as shitty as that of Donald Duck so of course nothing came out when I pressed down on the "trigger" on the straw piece that I had screwed in place. Nothing. Nada. Nope. I started twisting and turning the straw and heard some soft clicking sound and hoped that it was the "turn the nozzle to activate it" sound but nope, still no foam came. At this point I started getting both frustrated and confused so I just kept turning the plastic straw around until it fucking locked itself on the can's screwable plastic mouth piece. Fuck me. :) Now I got even more irked and because I was ashamed to go ask someone for help at this point, for such a simple thing, I decided to try and do it myself and oh lordy lord do I hate myself when I catch myself thinking like this – things never end well when I don't ask for help, especially when my gut feeling tells me that I should.

Okay so, I seriously got so frustrated that I just thought that it would be a good idea to start from the beginning and so I tried to pull off the straw from its attachment point on the mouth of the can. Horrible idea, okay – I accidentally ripped up the whole damn straw, with the can mouth/dispenser still attached to it. >_> They were really inseparable, lol...
Now I just had the black rubbery pipe-like thing still standing and if I peeked into it I could see the foam in the can, oops. I just felt so lost and so infuriatingly stupid and self-hating that I had no choice but to ask the extra teacher what the fuck I should do now. He just casually told me that it's possible to buy a new mouth part for the can. He also wanted to check if the foam hadn't hardened already since he said it does that after a while and, well, I had had mine for over half a year. He looked at me and said: "you can also do like this – take something thin and stick it to the can! :D".

...

...

JUMALAUTA.

EI HELVETTI.

PERKELE.

KULMIKAS VITTUSAATANA.

I kid you not – as soon as he poked whatever thin object into the can a loud explosion was heard across the whole garage, followed by "PFFFSSSSSCHHH" and then foam started gushing out of the can in all possible directions! It flowed so rapidly that it was uncontrollable and it ended up on the floor, into open cardboard boxes, tables, walls etc – fucking everywhere, basically.
It was like trying to stop the goddamn Niagara Falls, except that it was Foamgara Falls.

Remember doing shit similar to this during chemistry class in school?
– Yeah, something like that.

I swear every goddamn inch of foam came out like a mad erupting volcano from hell and it felt like it would never end. The teacher assistant guy was running around with the foam fountain in his hands and I followed after; neither of us had expected that the foam would be so, err, explosive, and we both were, quite frankly, panicking. When it finally ceased (it seriously took several minutes) I was surrounded by a sticky mess. When I looked around it finally hit me that around me were the scattered remains of my almost filled can of expanding foam; my almost unused can was all wasted and that, I tell you, made me feel wasted – that was material for several cosplay projects down the drain. My jeans ended up being a sacrifice to the angry foam gods and so did my expensive winter shoes and, almost, my Sonata Arctica hoodie as well (thank god I had rolled up my sleeves!!).

This is what the can looked like once the foam explosion finally ended...

I spent several hours after class trying to salvage at least my shoes from the grip of the sticky goop of hell. I first tried to wash it with soap and water and scrubbing vigorously with one of those more robust brushes but lolnope, it didn't do shit – the brush seriously went and died before even a centimeter of the foam came off. I also got some of the foam residue on my fingers and I washed my hands thoroughly with soap 3 times during the first 15 minutes (countless times afterwards too) and rubbed my hands like no tomorrow and it barely did anything; I swear the foam residue stuck to my fingers so hard it felt like a second skin (especially when trying to peel it off), except a lot tackier – this crap is impossible to get rid off.
Regarding my shoes I sat for over an hour with a blade from an exacto knife just carving off the fucking foam, painstakingly slow, from my shoes. I was so angry I was gritting teeth and just wanted to kill something. No wait, correction – I wanted to drown something in PU-foam.  
Do you know that feeling when a stupid disaster happens, that ends up costing you a lot (both in materials and time), and you just try to joke/laugh it off with your classmates but inside you are about to break down and start crying/screaming because you hate your life and your fucking constant shit luck so fucking much? That's exactly how I felt.

I got some foam where it was intended at least... very overkill though.

I think I'll gladly just end this post here because it's starting to get way too infused with my deluxe bad luck. (ﾉ_ _)ﾉ Maybe things will go better in the next episode of this project... or at least I goddamn hope so. I'm getting really sick of this Donald Duck curse that's been plaguing me for the last few cosplays, ughh.

Thanks for reading my... err... explosive foam experiences and unintentional worbla prints, I guess? xD If nothing else I hope you won't need to experience these mishaps yourself, lol.
...

I also guess it would be uplifting to hear about the not-so-successful cosplay making stories of others, so feel free to share your bad luck adventures with me so that I don't have to feel all alone in this misery, huaah.  ╮(─▽─)╭

~ Shiro Samurai out.

Touken Ranbu Kashuu Kiyomitsu's scarf and tasuki

Hello again!

My first con is closing in and I'm starting to really rush to get things done! I'm also crossing my fingers that some stuff will arrive on time, especially considering how shitty the post has been lately. One of my packages got sent back to Japan before I even got a notification that it had arrived, boo. I'm 95% certain about my cosplay plans but I can't publish them just yet because yeah, some critical stuff has yet to arrive. Sorry about that. Cosplay plans will be released as soon as possible!

One of the characters I will cosplay at the con is Kashuu Kiyomitsu's casual (aka uchiban) outfit. I sewed the scarf at mom's last Sunday. Luckily the kimono, juban and hakama I can pull directly from my kimono collection since I happen to have perfect pieces for him, haha. But yeah, the scarf I had to make and I started making it with the thought that it's gonna be a piece of cake but yeah, it took me longer than anticipated, mainly because I had problems figuring out the best way to do the tassels at the ends.

Really quickly thrown together outfit test.
(note: mirror photo! aka corpse mode)

The photo quality is shit because the sun had gone down for hours ago and yeah, I only had my crappy apartment light to count on. ._. I couldn't be bothered to dig out my juban so I just kept my long-sleeved shirt under, lol. I might do a more proper test before the con too, we'll see. Heck, I didn't even tie the hakama...

I barely took any progress photos of the making of the scarf; I was too busy trying to get it done before mom would drive me back home. I do have a few pictures to show though, but they're all taken with my cellphone so yeah, the quality is sub-par at best. ^^; Oh and yeah, my cellphone fucks up the colors real bad, lol.

Kebab arm! :DD

I found a suitable fabric in the attic and used the whole fabric width twice for the length; I made the scarf double so that it would be a bit thicker and look nice no matter which side was showing. I sewed the two pieces together and then put right sides together and sewed the scarf into a long tube. To turn the tube the right way I threaded it on my arm (I had left the ends open), like on the photo above, and just grabbed the edge and turned it around.
I had several ideas about how to make the tassels, ranging from using silk ribbon to just cutting them straight out of the fabric. Mom also did a fire resistance test on the fabric to see if we could simply just burn the edges, to keep them from fraying, but the fabric caught fire way too easily so it wasn't an option. Yeah, basically just us trying to see if there was a way to skip the tedious zigzaging part. xD
In the end I decided to cut out two separate pieces (one for each end) from the same fabric and then pre-sew the zigzag on it and then cut it up, next to the zigzag.

Put our idea to the test – it works!

I did try first to cut and then do the zigzag but oh lord, it was such a pain in the butt that I quickly went back to the original plan. Mom later came to ask me how it went and my answer was a straight "tää on perseestä mutta toimii". :DD lol

Second piece done and ready for cutting.

With the tassels done I just took the open edges of the scarf, folded them inside, put the tassel part inside and sewed the whole shit closed. It was a bit hard to get it to look nice on both sides because yeah, this fabric is the same type as the one I made the Star Wars robe from and, well, it lives its own life. I had to rip up the "underside" twice and redo it because it looked like shit. xD

Tassels pinned in place.

I realized a few days later that the tasuki I had used for Yamato no Kami Yasusada was too short to work for Kashuu. The reason is because they have it tied differently – you can see it on the official art book. Yasusada has the tasuki sleeve cord tied the usual way in the front but Kashuu has it tied in a ribbon at the back.

Touken Ranbu art book reveals Kashuu's back!

I had to ask some of my kimono friends how to tie it like that and I got some good suggestions how to make it work! I ended up having to try it several times and it was harder than I thought to get a neat bow. I will need to practise a lot more... or ask someone to tie it for me directly on the back. #lazy

I don't have any progress photos of the tasuki, except for the one below. Yeah, I decided to make a completely new one for Kashuu because I want to be accurate and hey, the fabric only cost 3 € per meter!!
I made it in school today during my handcraft class. The tasuki was made the exact same way as the scarf but because it's a lot narrower I had to use a wooden pole, to push it back to the right side, after I had sewn it into a tube.

Tasuki in tube form, half-way done with turning it back to the right side.

That's about all I have to say for this post. See ya later and thanks for reading my blog! ^^

Shiro Samurai out.

Kashuu Kiyomitsu eye makeup test

Yoo.

Today I decided that it was high time that I started practising the makeup for some of my upcoming new cosplays! Soon I will reveal for you all the first convention of the year that I will attend. ヽ(ﾟ∀ﾟ)ﾉ I'm super stoked about attending said con because I haven't been there for years but yeah, I'll get more to that later.
This post is about the next cosplay that I will likely debut and it's no less than Kashuu Kiyomitsu from Touken Ranbu! Yep, that's a cosplay plans spoiler right there. I wanted to try out a new makeup look now that I've gathered some more products. Too bad that I had to rush the whole thing because the sun was already going down before I even started! Screw you, polar night. So yeah, I'm sorry but I had to skip pretty much all other makeup save for the eyes, I just simply didn't have time. :( At least by doing this look I learned a lot of new eye makeup techniques that I sure as hell will experiment further with!

A rare case when I can smile without looking stupid...

This one is taken in yellow room light.

It's a bit annoying how my camera washes out most of my makeup, including the eyeshadows and highlights, ugh. At least it faded my pale-ass beard too so I didn't have to shave it lol. Now that I look at the photos I notice that my eyebrows are way too light; I should have filled them in some more. ._. Weirdly enough they looked dark in real life but yeah, camera...
I also want to apologize for the blueish light, the sun was down by the time I was sort-of-ready so I had to deal with the "blue hour"... or whatever it's called. I also couldn't be bothered, nor had time, to dig out the cosplay so I just took whatever red I had around me and put it over my shoulders, lol.

I'm pretty happy with this look, considering what a makeup greenhorn I am. This was also my first time ever using false eyelashes – oh what won't you do for the sake of cosplay?
For those curious I will review the two eyelash pairs that I used later so yeah, if you're interested keep an eye on my blog! ;) Fun fact is that my natural lashes are already stupidly long (been told that I have long lashes all my life by several relatives etc) so yeah, as soon as I put even a little bit of mascara on them they look like falsies lol. So yeah, when I wear actual false lashes on top of my own it's like... crazy shit.

Styled wig.

I also wanted to put in a pic of the wig when it was newly styled. My friend Sacchan did the cutting and styling for me this time; we had to make a hairline/parting and I wasn't really comfortable with that because I lacked the know-how to do it. I did tie the ponytail though, haha.

That's all for this time, see ya!

Shiro Samurai over and out.

Kummacon 2015 – Pikkuconi ja puolikas vesimelooni

Hellou ~

Now I've finally gotten around to writing this short summary about my Kummacon experience!
I pardon for the lateness (the con was on 14th June so yeah, more than one week ago) but I must admit that the culprit this time wasn't laziness or busy-ness or any of the other commonly used excuses – it was honestly just me playing way too much Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate with friends. xD I'm seriously addicted to this game to the point that checking internet doesn't even feel tempting and well, that's saying a lot because hey, that's normally one of my top daily priorities! When opening the computer doesn't interest me then there's something horribly wrong lol. I just sit and slay wyverns and pink farting monkeys all day instead, huehuehue. I'm past 110 hours of gameplay and I've had the game for like, less than 2 weeks...? Oops.

Okey so, ehrrm, yeah, Kummacon. Let's get back to that!
So yeah, in case someone reading this doesn't know then I'll just fill you in and say that Kummacon was a small first-time convention held at Oulu in northern Finland; it had free entrance. It's a mixed fandom event (anime & manga, Western movies and comics, cosplay, literature, airsoft, zombie walk etc) that was held on the 14th June which, when you look at the calendar, you will notice is actually a Sunday. Yep, now that's unusual!
Oh, and before someone –who doesn't understand Finnish– wonders what the other half of this post's title means it translates to something like "a small con and half a water melon". You'll understand why soon enough... and yes, I do like goofy titles.

This time only me and Hasakitsuki attended the event; Jäätynyt Enkeli would have come too had he not had a trip to Germany a few days after. I did know though that Sairu-chan was attending, so I didn't leave for the con with the "I'll see no familiar faces" mindset.
As per usual my awesome aunt provided us two a free sleeping place because she lives in Oulu, duh. We arrived at le aunt's place on Saturday evening and yep, everything went smoothly. There's not really anything to say about my pre-con experience, expect that I played on my new New Nintendo 3DS XL, which I had put to use mere days before the event. It was a good choice to actually start playing on it now; I finally feel a bit updated in the gaming scene, hahaha. (but srsly, who came up with that name? New Nintendo 3DS. ._. It's so clumsy in everyday speech to specify that it's the "New" all the time, hurpdurp – "yeah I want to buy the new New Nintendo 3DS. :-DDD The new new....... pew pew. chew chew)

Sunday morning came. I don't know why but I had regained consciousness several times during the night, as if my sleep kept being really hacky or something. There was not anything to disturb me that morning and I never actually got up from bed or opened my eyes nor anything, it's just that I recall being aware that "hey, I'm not dreaming right now and it's the middle of the night" kind of thing. Con hype or nervousness, perhaps?
Whatever kept me from having a normal sleep wasn't only after my sleep – it wanted to screw up other things too! Yeah, you can guess. -.- Directly after breakfast my stomach started making silly roaring sounds and it felt weird and, err, by the time I got to the point I had started putting on my costume and doing the makeup then, well, I spent way longer in the bathroom than I should have. No one wants the details so I'll just leave it at that lol. Worst part is that shitty issues (quite literally, at times) seem a recurring annoyance to me whenever I'm either preparing for an event or something else that's important and, especially, when I have a time limit to keep tabs on. I dunno if it's some kind of "stress stomach" case or what but boy is it annoying when it happens.

Oh well, I got my costume on and we were ready to head out!
Much to our luck the weather was actually appropriate for the month this time – it was fairly warm but not too much. I swear we've had shitty April/autumn weather all the time and the actually sunny and nice days have been so few that I could count them on the fingers of one hand...

Yamato no Kami Yasusada is ready to go!
(note: mirror photo, hence why my kimono is reversed)

When we got to the now familiar Valve building I first headed straight for the bathroom – I reaaaally needed to fix my wig because it was living its own life! Even though the clip-on ponytail is short it's still surprisingly heavy (much fibers, I assume) and during the whole walk through the city it kept pulling my wig backwards; I should sew on some clips to the wig the next time I wear it...
At the bathroom I took the wig off and what do I see? My wig cap isn't even on my head anymore lol. No wonder why my real hair was peeking out like parasites all over the place and didn't stay under the wig when I poked them back in. Oh well, it was an easy fix – I just put the wig hooks on and prepared for the obligatory wig headache that usually follows shortly. You see, normally I almost never use the wig hooks because I seemingly have a rather big head to begin with and, well, most wigs are small-ish on me anyway so there is rarely a need to use them.

Valve building entrance.

Valve as a con hosting place is pretty okay... but it's still rather small and it feels crammed and narrow – wherever you look there is a mass of people constantly on the move; there is not much in the name of a breathing hole, unless you go outside of course. But Valve has its charm and I've started taking a liking to the darn place, hahah. I guess the crappy "let's have a con at the library!" experience adds to that feeling somehow... :'D

This is the sight you were met by as soon as you entered the front doors.

In front of Valvesali. If you turned left after passing this first "door" you
got to the merchandise area.

The one and only merchandise seller.
There was also a "visitor's selling table", aka where con visitors could
leave stuff they didn't want/need anymore for sale, during con time.

Of course there was the Artist's Alley as well.
Notice the seller closest to the camera – she's selling self-made colorful kanzashi
hair decorations! Now that's something out of the ordinary!

Kummacon in itself I didn't have much expectations for in terms of entertainment value – small cons in the north rarely provide anything spectacular. When you've been 20 minutes in the con you had seen it all.
Most of the time I spent hanging around with both old and new friends, going on a stroll in the city (scout for a lunch place!) as well as playing on my Nintendo 3DS. omg the Mii army I got on the StreetPass games, it was awesome!

Time to sit down and play! :D

Of course that there were a fair amount of more-or-less-interesting panels of many different subjects but, err, I'm not the kind to attend several panels in a row because it just tires me out and then I lose concentration/interest (been there, done that) and yes, that's totally why I ended up only attending one panel, even though there would have been at least one more that was interesting; there was the armor-making panel by Sheriff's Anvil (which I definitely wanted to attend) and then there was a cosplay photography panel. The problem was that both of these were placed in the same room and right after one another.
I ended up choosing to go only to the armor panel because that one I thought that I'd be more likely to learn something new from – after all, I did attend a photography panel at Kemi's manga day last year.

The entrance seen from above.

The Artist's Alley area (and the cafeteria to the far left) seen from above.

There was also a gallery for comics in the same building. This is
the Kiroileva Siili comic (lit. swearing hedgehog) which is well-known
in Finland.

About the armor-making panel itself I can say that it was a good one. It seemed to be targeted towards people who are new to armored cosplays (I still don't know if I count myself in that group or in the not-quite-so-newbie one, haha) and while it mostly had a "how I made this specific cosplay of mine" focus the panelist took up the step-by-step process of making the costume come true, which, in turn, can be applied for many different types of armored characters; he gave good starting pointers and all of that.
I personally found that dragging my hakama-clothed ass to the panel was a good investment and yes, it kept me interested through the whole run! The guy holding it was also funny and spoke in this kind of way that was entertaining, at least in my opinion. I do think that panelist holders who are expressive, pull jokes and use a lot of different voices are much more fun to listen to, haha. Also, this guy was clearly passionate about his work and about inspiring others and that was a pleasure to see.

Panel photos!
If you want to read the text I recommend that you open the image in a new tab to get the full-size version, in case your computer shows a resized image when you click on them through the blog.

The panel was held in Valvesali. Before the panel started there was
the Kummacon logo on the big screen.

He took off his cosplay and put the pieces on the scene, so that everyone who
wanted could go and take a look at how they were made. Really nice!

Sairu-chan and Karri showed up a bit later and I spent most of the con being around their company. I did a quick photoshoot for Sairu-chan outside and... eheheh... it ended up being a rather glorious passing of time because of all the photobomb tries that were provided by Karri and another guy. Karri just kept running into and crashing half the photos, it was golden. x) He also imitated Donald Duck's voice and said different things in said voice, including "feels good man" as well as some other lines from that really silly "Akun kakkaongelma" (lit. Donald's shit problem) video on Youtube that has gotten well-known in Finland by now. xD

Photobomb success! (provided by Emil, if I remember his name correctly)

Karri ninja photobomb!
(and he kinda got photobombed by the leaves, which means
photobomb in a photobomb. yo dawg)

This was actually just Karri being funny and picking up Sairu-chan but
it ended up looking like a scene from a cheesy romance movie. xD

Oh, and let's not forget Karri's awesome super crouch walk up the steps!
LIKE A BOSS. (yes, he walked up all the steps like that)

At some point after the photoshoot derping we passed by a nearby area of Valve and there we saw something bizarre and totally out of place – half a water melon left at the whatever park-like thingy!
It was so unexpected that we all went completely "WATER MELOOOOOOOOOONNNNNN" over it and did hilarious fake gasps and surprised faces at each other.. and then we started half-running in another direction. xD Too bad that I don't have picture proof of the melon but it definitely got the gold medal in the "surprise motherfucker!" category.

Towards the end of the con our group of four headed towards a pub that Karri knew – one of his friends worked there. At the pub I felt quite uncomfortable (I'm not a drinker and the atmosphere is not really to my liking) and I considered leaving when Sairu-chan left, but Karri cheered me up and made me stay. He and Hasakitsuki played chess and I just watched and was more or less bored... until a mention of Skecon was uttered and Karri took great interest in wanting to attend the con with us! Yep yep, we might very likely have a new face attending Skecon this year – OMGYES!!
By the time we left the pub the con was close to over so we just took a quick look inside and then headed back to aunt's place. Karri followed with us back for a visit and we ended up playing Super Mario 3D World all three of us and, duuude, was it fun!

But yeah, Kummacon was an overall nice experience in my book – I would likely attend it again if a second edition comes. Even though for most part it felt the same as Animeseminaari because it was in the same building, except that Kummacon was a bit more varied, haha. I didn't notice any clumsy or lacking arranging of the event (seeing how it was a first-time con) but I heard that the cosplay competition had issues and some weird solutions going on. By "weird solutions" I mean that I've heard from others that because the competition had some time issues it was decided that the audience shouldn't clap their hands at all for the contestants when they were on stage.
Why, I wonder?
To save time, I heard.
That's just so weird and not okay that I can't but raise the nope flag. Just... why? ._. Surely there must have been better solutions out there than to cut out something that barely takes time and is a rather important way of encouraging and showing appreciation to whoever is on stage... boo.

Oh well, I don't have much more to add. I am always happy to see that new geeky events are sprouting, especially in the north. I hope that Kummacon won't be one of those "one time only" cases and that it will grow and be held in the future too.  
Psst! I didn't get a wig headache! :-DD

See ya!