Throwback Thursday: Ichigo Kurosaki cosplay from Bleach!

Hello guys!

I will start this year by doing something that I haven't done before but have had in my thoughts since forever – namely a number of themed posts all dedicated to my first few cosplays! :'D Ever since I found some really old cosplay WIP photos in the deep dark corners of my laptop I've been wanting to do something with them – like, for example, show them to the world because we all started somewhere. Yes, I totally took progress photos before I even started cosplay blogging. 

This means that, once a week, on Thursdays (because it's called Throwback Thursday for a reason), I will invite you all to experience a 'blast of the past' with me – featuring old cosplay photos, WIPs and stories ranging from late 2009 to 2011. So yeah, we're gonna be riding the time machine and you'll get to backtrack into my cosplay history and see some never-published-before photos on this here blog!  
Be warned that this, naturally, means a lot of embarrassment for me and highly varying photo quality for you. ;) I only had a crummy compact camera back then and didn't even notice if a photo was blurry or not...

I must admit that I originally wanted to use a more creative/original name for this blog post series (TBT is so mainstream, lol) but yeah, I couldn't come up with anything short, funny and something that everyone would instantly know that it means flashback time. So yeah, it became Throwback Thursday anyway. xD

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Ichigo Kurosaki, shinigami version. Bleach.

Oh, haven't we all done at least one Naruto or Bleach cosplay back in the days? *nostalgic*

Ichigo Kurosaki from Bleach was actually the very first costume I started sewing when I 'officially' started cosplaying back in late 2009 – November, to be exact. But if we count that I made a couple OC outfits way back in school's sewing class, before I even knew what cosplay was (I had seen cosplayers on internet but didn't know that it was a thing), then that would mean that I started cosplaying in, err, somewhere around 2004-2006 or some such, yikes! Regarding those OC costumes I never made other parts except the clothes themselves, I didn't know about wigs or anything (I wanted white hair thou) and I had never heard of the word 'cosplay' either, hence why I often consider that 2009 is my official cosplay debut year because at least then I knew that cosplay was a hobby that anyone could do, I got all the parts needed for my costumes and debuted them etc.

I don't think that Ichigo as a character needs any introductions – he's the main character from the popular shounen series Bleach and is also a really typical shounen lead. The reason I picked Ichigo was simply because I had recently started reading the Bleach manga and I liked it. Back then many characters hadn't been introduced yet (I think I was on volume 2-5 or such, lol) and I chose Ichigo on a whim, thinking that it'd be easy to do and really recognizable – which meant that I'd possibly get new friends at conventions. Yes, I had almost no friends before I started cosplaying and thus picking a well-known character/series to cosplay was sort of important. My reasons were simple. 

I also remember thinking that if I started with Ichigo I could easily use the same main outfit (the shihakusho, aka shinigami outfit) for cosplaying almost anyone from the cast later, which I did.

Sadly I have no actual progress photos of this cosplay, only shots of the finished product.

Finished Bleach shinigami kimonos.
(note: this is a new photo but the outfit is the same)

It's worth mentioning that I knew how to sew before I started this geeky hobby. I also knew about fabrics (thanks to my mom having had her own fabric store for a majority of my life) and thus I'm not actually cringing when I look back at my old sewing work... :D Of course I've improved since then but I can still easily reuse my first cosplays without feeling a need to burn them, at least not the clothes. Needless to say that I conveniently avoided the common mistakes that a lot of first-time cosplayers do: shining satin monsters, "bedsheet cosplays", poorly hemmed or outright raw/untreated edges, random threads hanging, wrong fabric choices etc. But of course I had my Experience Zero™ zones too, namely I didn't know nor care jackshit about makeup and was bad at posing as well as doing facial expressions. Facing the camera and staring into the distance, anyone? I also didn't style wigs early on and that ended up with a lot of fibers blocking my eyes etc...

I want to mention in the same go a bit about my top robes and what they look like and this is simply because, over the years, I've had surprisingly many people contacting me especially to ask how I made mine because "it looks accurate" and/or "you seem knowledgeable". Think of this as a bonus mini tutorial/guide for Bleach shinigami cosplays! Truth is that because of these multiple requests I've been wanting to make a post about my shinigami outfit already earlier but now, with this Throwback Thursday nostalgy series, I got a fitting post to bake it into ~

When I made the shihakusho robes (yes, there's a top and an inner one) I did a lot of extensive research to figure out what it was supposed to look like. I had seen so many cosplayers doing it in different ways and when you add horribly inconsistent anime/manga references then the following confusion starts hurting your head. I ultimately ended up picking out some selected images from the manga and sticking with them, which I'm glad I did. The images I used showed that the whole front of the sleeve was open, likewise the back; there was also an arm opening like those seen on real kimono and from which the white under kimono could be seen peeking through. Tite Kubo either had no clue what he was doing when he designed the shinigami outfits or he simply decided that "screw the rules" was the way to go.
It's worth mentioning that during the time when I made this cosplay I had no idea about how kimono were traditionally constructed and thus this costume has shoulder seams, no okumi panel and the like. Yes, if anything then that's a reason if I ever wanted to remake this thing. Then again, considering all the inaccuracies of shinigami outfits anyway (at least when compared to proper kimono) then it's not a big deal anymore, lol. I mean, why does both male and female characters have the underarm slits and open back sleeves? That's reserved for women only. *rolls eyes*

Fully open sleeve mouth.
(note: this is a new photo but the outfit is the same)

The sleeves of the white under kimono/gi/kosode/whatnot I made a few centimeters longer than on the outer black one, so that it would stick out like it does on all characters in the series. Even this little detail strays from general kimono kitsuke ideals. The white and black robes are identical otherwise, except for that I sewed the white one shut under the arm and the back of the sleeve is closed as well. No idea if this is accurate to the series or not (lol) but that's what I did because I didn't want to potentially flash my may-or-may-not-be-there armpit hairs to other congoers...

Just me trying to show what the armpit slits look like. Notice that the white
sleeve peeks out from the open back of the black kimono.
(note: this is a new photo but the outfit is the same)

The black kimono is made out of twill cotton and the white one is from some kind of bridal quality cotton blend that mom had a leftover roll of lying in the attic. A bit overkill perhaps, but it looked really nice. xD Oh and yeah, both the robes are mid-thigh in length (recommended minimum) and this is so that they'd cover up the side openings of the hakama, so to not have my bare skin showing.
Speaking of which – the hakama. I must admit that I lazied out on this and, because I practiced kendo at the time, I simply just decided to order a black budo (martial arts) hakama for the costume. This saved me a lot of fabric, time and effort – and looks better. I used a heavy cotton aikido hakama but of course you can order some cheaper polyester ones too, or make it yourself if you're up for it. Just remember that if you decide to make your own hakama that it has 5 pleats in the front and 2 in the back.

My black aikido hakama (folded) that I use for Bleach cosplays.
(note: this is a new photo)

This hakama that I use is a lot sturdier and stiffer than your average synthetic samurai pants. What I do to get the iconic white sash/ties that the shinigami have is that I use a separate white sash, approximately 2 meters long (can be shorter, depends on your body and preferences), that I put under the koshiita (backboard), tie the hakama's own ties as I normally do and then I just turn or twist the white sash so that it covers as much of the black ties as possible and, finally, tie it in a loose ribbon knot at the front. It's a bit hard to explain, hope you can understand what I mean. ^^" Please note though that for this to work you need to prepare/set the white sash in place below the koshiita and the back ties before you secure and tie the back half to your body – the white sash is supposed to get 'stuck' and be kept in place by the hakama itself; it's only there for decoration/accuracy. 
Of course one could always do covers for the black ties or replace them altogether but yeah, I did it the easy way.

I also have some really old photos of the Shikai Zangetsu –aka oversized bread knife– back when I had just completed it. I did it completely by hand with a little sawing help from my stepfather (the curved thin part of the handle, if I recall right) back in mid 2010, I believe. It's about 150 cm long, made out of a block of solid wood and thus it's rather heavy. I planed it down towards the edge (to simulate the look of a cutting weapon), used masking tape to get a crisp line between the silver and the black paint and used silk ribbon for the handle. It was a really big project for being one of my first wooden cosplay props. I had actually done Sesshoumaru's (InuYasha) swords at woodwork class in school a few years before I tackled Ichigo's Zangetsu – again, before I knew what cosplay was.

Finished Shikai form Zangetsu.

Zangetsu close-up.

The white ribbon was actually only fastened by a few nails and not glued on, which meant that after a few conventions it started to loosen (because of shifting when held for long times) and currently it's lose to the point it's almost hanging/unraveling at some spots, showing the bare white-painted handle beneath. This doesn't look really good and I've come to wish I had done it another way; maybe I can still fix it or at least replace it.
I'm still mighty proud of this prop –especially considering the quality and how long ago it was made– but it's such a shame that the tip cracked at Kitacon in Luleå, at the end of 2010. It was a really small local con held for the first (and only) time; I let someone hold my sword because they thought it was hella cool and they then proceeded to strike a pose, struck it to the ground (too carelessly), tip down, and once I got it back I noticed that the tip had a horizontal split in it. I was too timid and meek to really say anything and just swallowed it and acted as if nothing happened. The tip hasn't broken off but it needs to be glued to prevent it from breaking and, well, since then I haven't cosplayed Ichigo. Lesson learned: don't let (over-excited) people handle your props.

I bought a short orange wig for this cosplay and used it straight out of the bag. I didn't know how to style wigs and the wig was, upon later realization, way too flat. I remember trying to constantly tease it during conventions to get it to be more spiky and fluffy but it always returned back into looking like a Kyo Sohma (Fruits Basket) wig instead. xD I tried to look for some really old cosplay photos to demonstrate but even though I lifted every nook and cranny of my computer I couldn't find a single one that I could use! The few (and I mean few) that I found either had another person on them blocking part of my costume, were a horrible red-eye-open-mouth-flash-photo candid shot or had an old non-blog watermark on them and the non-watermarked version was nowhere to be found. I might even have (accidentally) deleted all my Ichigo cosplay pics a few years ago when I stumbled upon them and acted on a spur of the moment... oops.

This is a cropped version of an old (already resized) photo.
It's just to show the red chain. Yeah I know, it's on the wrong side.

I want to make a special mention for the weird red chain, possible sword-carrier thingy, that Ichigo has going on. Fun fact is that I legit made it by taking a bicycle chain, taking off the grease and spray painting it red with car spray – it worked wonders! I don't remember if it was originally my idea or my stepdad's but whatever the case it was genius. Sad part is that ever since I moved into my own apartment I have no idea where the heck this chain is...

[edit] A few days after I posted this (aka on 13-14 January) I went to my mom's and, while there, I took the chance to start up her old laptop and check in the image folders if there happened to be any of my old cosplay stuff in there because I remembered that I used to store photos in it back then – bingo! I found a lot of reaally embarrassing photos, including those from my very first Ichigo photoshoot. I must admit that most were a lot blurrier than I remembered and thus unusable but yeah, I found this one joke pic which, ironically enough, is one of the few that doesn't make me cringe badly. By this I mean that at least I'm not lowering my chin enough for my neck to completely disappear or any other hilariously bad posing shit. xD Actually the only reason I can show you guys this one –without being ashamed to death– is because at least I was clever enough I think it was unintentional originally to block out most of my (horrible) makeup-less face with the sword. 
So here ya go, a really shame-inducing cosplay photo from early 2010! :'DD

Ichigurr durr.

Just... don't ask me about the pose. It was some kind of out-of-character joke about Ichigo being shy or whatnot, lmao. At least it showcases the sword and yeah, I'm holding up the ribbon because otherwise it would have been dragging behind on the ground. You probably also noticed that I'm wearing zori and not waraji and that's simply because I was afraid of making/wearing waraji because I thought they'd be uncomfortable, a lot of work to make and would break easily. Oh and yeah, I'm cringing at that wig – I mean, it's good quality and all but oh lord, do I wish I had spiked it... [/edit]

I don't have so much more to say about this costume, especially since I only ever used it at two conventions and both were really small local ones. I have some nice memories of it (mostly other congoers gushing over how badass my sword was, which felt really nice since I was a lonely beginner xD) and I actually competed at both the conventions I wore Ichigo to and, funnily enough, I placed both times. Second place and shared second place, lolwut. It was my first time ever trying a cosplay competition and I was horrified and so nervous that I don't even want to think about how awkward I must have been on stage; I've never been good at standing in front of people and during my school days I avoided oral presentations like the plague itself because I started shaking so much. The competitions were both of the "pose in the middle when it's your turn and walk away" kind and there were a shortage of competitioners anyway, hence why I got asked to participate, lmao. This was still during the early days when there weren't any hardcore armor cosplays in even the smallest cons but just good ol' Narutos and closet cosplays – aka if you had a big cool-looking prop you were almost sure to win. No way I'd ever stand a chance if I had competed with Ichigo in today's standards, hahaha... no. :-DD

Oh and yeah, before I forget! I actually made a Substitute Shinigami Badge a long time ago as well but I never got around to using it, sadly. It's made of wood (the base) and craft foam for the details. I'm not sure if I'll ever get use of it but at least below is some photo proof that I have indeed made one. This was one of those spontaneous projects when I had scrap materials lying around, by the way.

Substitute Shinigami Badge.

Substitute Shinigami Badge.

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So yeah, Ichigo Kurosaki was my first cosplay that I 'officially' started working on, back in November 2009, and although I started Ichigo first it's actually not my debut cosplay that I wore to a con – that would be Byakuya from InuYasha, which I'll talk about in another TBT post! 

My Ichigo cosplay will always have its place in my heart and even though I have no idea when, or if, I'll ever rewear him out to a convention again I still plan to at least have a photoshoot, to get photos that are up-to-date with my current standards.

Current status of this cosplay: In need of repairs/update and a new wig.

Stay tuned for next Thursday's episode!

Shiro Samurai out.

Hotaru's sword from Samurai Deeper Kyo!

Hi there everyone!

For a long time now I've wanted to cosplay Hotaru from Samurai Deeper Kyo and, as you may know, I've already got most of the cosplay done, yay! :D I think SDK is a pretty underrated series and even though I read it more than three years ago it's still one of my favorite shounen manga and the urge to cosplay from it hasn't withered away, which just further shows that I really enjoyed SDK and it left an impact on me. Some of my cosplay impulses come directly after I've finished a series but then they just die out in a couple months at best – but with SDK even after all these years I'm still super eager to finally get to start working on a cosplay from it! I just really enjoyed the story, all the characters, the art style... ♡

This is the only official colored manga artwork that
I found that shows Hotaru's sword completely.

On 3rd September 2015 I started the making of the sword – notice how long ago it is! I wrote on this post every time I did some progress during my "woodwork" class (aka 'redesign' and 'furniture renovation') in school, which I had approximately once per week, except during school breaks/vacations or when I was sick. Note: this is gonna be a rather lengthy post.

I was in my woodwork class in school and when I had to think up a project that I wanted to do Hotaru's sword quickly came into my mind. I saved some references on my cellphone, fetched a suitable plank from what school happened to have available, drafted the sword's shape onto the wood by using one of my unfinished other katana swords *coughmasamunecough* as a base. I left the sawing for next time as I didn't find the kind of saw in school that I had gotten used to and wanted to use; I went to borrow one from my stepdad on the Saturday that followed.

Back in class I cut out the sword from the plank; it didn't go quite as neatly as I had hoped. I hadn't used said saw in a couple years so I had forgotten how it was to use one of these. I didn't make any horrible mistakes but things just didn't end up as straight as I ideally would have wanted. I cut so gay! 
I took a file and started filing down the dagger end of the sword first. My arms were hurting so much after I was done sanding and filing for the day, hallelujah.
The next time I sanded and filed some more on the dagger and then I did the main blade part. Before I left class I put some filler putty on areas that had holes or cracks in them.

I apologize for the crummy cellphone-quality on most of the photos ahead; I didn't have my SLR camera with me in school during this project.

After I had started sanding the "dagger" side and put filler
on all the spots that needed it.

The next time I came to class I had a short panic moment – things had been moved to new places and I couldn't find my sword anywhere! For a moment I thought that someone might have thought that it was just a scrap plank and trashed it. D: Luckily I found it lying on the "coffee break table", lol. 
I started by sanding the filler putty smooth, wham! I then took a piece of plywood from the scrap pieces box. I drew the circular tsuba on it and two pieces the same size of the handle; I wanted to thicken the handle so that it wouldn't be the same thickness as the blades. I also wanted to thicken it for a better and more comfortable grip.
I sawed out the plywood pieces and glued one side of the handle pieces to the, well, handle. OH LORD THE SCHOOL'S GLUE BOTTLE. It's so stuck that I had to use all my force to squeeze minimal amounts out of it – it was horrible lol. Took forever. ._. I swear it felt like over half of the glue had hardened inside the bottle...
Oh well, 10 minutes of glue squeezing later (and a red face and hurting hands) I had glued one side in place and put pressure clamps on. 

Glue added and pressure clamps on. Notice the tsuba on the table.

Next up I put some filler putty on the tsuba too; it had gotten a fair amount of "cracks" (aka the top layer of the plywood had peeled off while sawing) and I accidentally got a dent on the edge that had to be filled in too. I put plenty of putty on it and put it on a clamp to dry as well.

Tsuba put to dry after adding filler.

Next time I came to class I was horrified – everything had been moved again and a loooot of stuff was gone. I saw that my sword was lying on the table where I had left it but the tsuba and the other handle add-on piece were missing. My first instinct was to dig in the cardboard box on the table and in it I found a lot of sand paper and my handle piece. Thank God. I guess it helped that I had written my name on it before I left last time, otherwise someone might have thought that it was a random scrap piece... Now I just had to find the tsuba. I remembered that I had left it to dry on the clamp but when I cast a look at the clamp I noticed that it was open and nothing was in it. I went and asked the teacher if he had seen it and he thought that someone might have thought it was just a trash piece and thrown it away. We both started digging in the big box on the floor that was filled with scrap pieces of wood; we dug in it for several minutes before giving up. 
I looked around everywhere possible and didn't see a trace of the tsuba – THE HORROR STRUCK ME. What is someone really had thought that it was just a random trash piece that no one used? D:
I went to ask this one older guy, who seems to be a "helper" but not an actual teacher. I got it implied that he was the one who had been moving stuff around and yeah, I described what my missing piece looked like to him. He looked at me for a few seconds and then his face did this kind of I-just-had-a-revelation-and-now-I-feel-guilty expression, as if he remembered seeing my tsuba and putting it in the most horrible of places. Yeah, probably there.

Guessed it?

– Yep, dumpster diving time.

The trash hadn't been taken out and so we still had the hopes on our side – or that's what he said. We probably spent like 10 minutes digging through all the trash bags before I finally hear a voice shout "hey you, boy, I found it!" and I look behind me and see this guy holding up my tsuba with a satisfied grin on his face and a trash can next to him. I thank him, he pulls some jokes and I go and sand down the filler areas with sand paper. After that I fetched the drill and made several holes in the middle; the rest of the class I spent carving, filing and sanding the tsuba hole so that I could thread it all the way down the blade, into place.

Tsuba with the hole fixed. I added some more putty to even out
some pressure marks from the clamp as well as cracks that appeared
while making the hole itself.

Oh, and I also sanded down the excess dried glue, on the handle, that had spread past its intended place. I then glued the second plywood piece on. It's not a problem to sand down dried glue with sandpaper!

This shows the glue spill from the first add-on handle piece before I sanded it down.

When both handle pieces were glued on and dry I took a file and started filing the corners of the handle, so that it would be more rounded and thus provide a more comfortable grip. I sanded them smooth after the rough file work.
 

Handle rounded (it barely shows on this photo) and testing tsuba fit.

After this I went home to buy the termoplastic holy grail of all cosplay prop makers – Worbla's Finest Art! Yes, now the time had finally come for me to try out this material that everyone has been gushing about for years! *u* It feels so good to finally get some studying money so that I can afford ordering Worbla from Germany...

Back at class I put gesso on the tsuba because I wanted to give it some extra base coatings; the rest was to be primed after I had done the worbla parts. So yeah, time to try out worbla for the first time ever! I must admit that I felt all kinds of "holy shit I hope this won't be hard" and a case of kuumotusta but yeah, once I had measured, drafted and cut out the pieces I needed I just turned on the power of my heat gun (borrowing from stepdad is da best!) and prayed to the cosplay gods that I wouldn't commit some disastrous nooblord maximus.

Worbla pieces added – success!

Thankfully this was a very simple and newbie-friendly first project for learning how to use worbla. I only had to wrap some approximately 2 cm wide strips around and blend in the seams. I didn't do any screw-ups and I'm quite satisfied with the results for being a first-time. :) After this first experience I already figured out a lot of how worbla works and now I'm even more excited to do some bigger projects!
Oh, and to blend in the seam/overlap so that it "disappeared" I thought for a while what to use and so I went to dig around the garage... and I found this little tool that proved to be mighty useful:

much clean. such wow.
It's for school use though, so what did you expect?

I used this metallic spatula thingy to make the seams (aka where the worbla overlaps with itself) flat, move and push the edges, flatten it out etc. It worked wonders!
Next I thought about ways to smoothen the worbla out; not like I mind the texture that much but I wanted to try to at least make it a little bit less noticeable. I took some really fine grit sand paper and sanded it carefully – although I'm not sure if it actually made a difference...? Oh well.

Worbla gets a bit paler by sanding...?

Next up I went to buy some spray primer because heck yeah, why not? I would have preferred white but the store only had gray so that had to do. My school has discount prices to this one store so I get things a bit cheaper if I buy from there so, eh, who cares about the color in the end since it's just a primer? :DD I regret not knowing about the discount earlier because I bought paints from this store already last year...

Primer in a spray can!

I started painting my sword and, err, of course I'm not patient enough to do like a billion thin coats so I sprayed on a closer distance than recommended to get better coverage quicker. Am I the only one doing this all the time? I really shouldn't do this crap. Well, if anything I noticed that the excess paint was very easy to spread out with your fingers and it didn't leave any signs of where it had been before. Flawless blending, frick yeah! o/

I didn't get to finish priming though because out of nowhere I saw that a spot that had been just nice before now had the wooden grain sticking up. I just took the grain and ripped it off, added some filler putty and left it to dry. Damn you derp wood for prolonging this project now, why didn't you show yourself earlier? ._.
Oh, and guess what? The next day, when I had fixed that grain issue and continued spray priming, well, more surface derps showed themselves and I entered "fuck this shit"-mode and put filler all over the damn thing! I was really sick of having to constantly backtrack and delay my progress because uneven surfaces galore – yeah, it happened many times during this project but I just didn't bother to mention it each and every time. It's annoying how much more noticeable those fuckers get once a coat of paint goes on; really sticks out like a sore thumb.

Filler added all over the place and put to dry. Priming incomplete.
(notice my mad balancing skills!)

So yeah, once more I had to pause the priming to put some filler putty to cover uneven/faulty areas. But because I put filler on both sides of the sword (except on the handle) at the same time I had to put it to dry in a way so that neither side was touching anything. This made me position the handle on a tip of a table and then put wooden blocks on it, to act as weights, so that the center of balance would change and fit my needs.
The next time I came to class the filler had of course dried so now I just had to sand it down. I was super careful to make sure that the filler blended into the wood so that it wouldn't be obvious, once the paint was on, where the filled in spots started and ended. But even though I triple-checked and everything there was still two small areas that I had missed when I once again resumed the priming work. Oh and guess what? I've almost used up the whole spray can just for this sword alone, goddammit! xD But yeah, those two misses were minor enough that I just drowned them in some extra coatings and then it was pretty okay, lol. I got lazy. I also noticed that putting filler putty on top of worbla (to even out bumps, overlaps etc) is a thing! :D

I had winter break and didn't get to work on my sword for a while. When I finally got back to school I had to go and buy some more silver spray paint because I noticed that my trusty can was pretty much empty, boo. Much to my dismay the brand I had been using had been changed and the newer replacement one, that the store now carried, seemed to be of a slightly darker shade. I thought that it couldn't be that different so I went ahead and bought it. Fuck me. :) Okay so, I started painting my sword as per usual, everything looked fine in the dim garage light when the paint had been freshly sprayed on. But guess what? When the paint had dried I noticed that it was way too dark and dull/matte to pass for a blade. FFFFFUUUUU--
Nothing to do than backtrack and go buy paint from another store and yeah, that totally means a store that doesn't give me the school discount price. Fuck my life. :) My other option was to pray that there happened to be any leftover spray paints at mom's – from the days when I still lived there and did my early cosplay prop projects...

I found an almost empty can of silver paint at mom's which I took with me to school; I also took with me my own old silver spray paint just in case there was a little left (it sounded empty). All along I was praying that there would be enough spray left to allow me to be able to paint both blades on the sword. I started shaking the cans and first tried my luck with the seemingly-empty-one-from-home and there was enough left to cover one side of the dagger part. Ooooookay.
I stared at disbelief at the other can that I had picked up from mom's – it barely felt like it contained much more than the one I had just used up. I pressed the nozzle down and........ nothing happened. It was as if the nozzle was stuck and wouldn't go down. Oh, great. ._.
I went and asked one of the teacher assistant guys and he proceeded to joke about sticking something sharp into the can again, to check if there was spray left, to which I responded "OH NO YOU DON'T" and then we both just laughed. In case someone doesn't know what I'm referring to then go and read about my foam explosion adventure here. x) But yeah, he totally did shove something sharp into the can and luckily nothing exploded this time – just a small burst of spray paint came out. :D But the problem was that the nozzle was still not working and yes, I had tried using all three nozzles from my other spray cans and neither of them worked on just this one can that I needed right now, urrgh.
I went to look around and found a spray can that belonged to someone else so yeah, because I'm a sneaky bastard I stole borrowed its nozzle and ermahglerb – it worked! I was about to jump with joy because I could finally get to paint this damn thing!

The blades are painted silver, the rest is untouched since priming.

Much to my surprise the can I brought with me from mom's actually contained enough spray for me to be able to paint both blades completely and even, almost, do two full coatings. So yeah, there was actually enough spray left and I thank the Cosplay Gods™ for that.

I took with me the sword home after the spray painting – now the only thing left to do was to paint the non-blade parts (handle, tsuba, habaki) by hand. But as per usual I had a ridiculously hard time trying to find some red glossy and/or metallic paint that wasn't spray paint! I found this weird really chunky-looking paint called Inka Gold in the color Lava Red (fitting!) in the bookstore shop in town and, even though it felt a bit overpriced, I decided to try it. I couldn't find anything else (unless I bought online but that would mean stupidly high shipping costs) and I noticed that it was a German brand so yeah, I thought that at least it can't be shitty because German stuff tends to be good quality.

Painting preparations done. The plastic spoon's other end
I used as a spatula, if anyone wonders what the heck it was for. :'D

Turns out that the super chunky paint is actually a water based metallic vax paste that you rub on by using either a sponge or a soft cloth! Fancy shit. I tore a piece of fabric from a worn-out bedsheet because I didn't have any sponges and yeah, it worked just fine. I had to use one of my stiff makeup brushes (lol but seriously, I had nothing else that would work) to paint some spots that needed pin-point precision or were impossible to reach with the clumsy crumpled fabric.
Good thing with the vax paint is that it dries really fast and that, because of its thickness, it will easily cover up flaws and uneven spots! The bad thing is that I noticed that, even after it has dried, that if I touched the painted areas the paint would rub off slightly and leave fingerprints. So yeah, now I needed to get something to seal it with too. Great.

Because I didn't have any sealer nor varnish at home I had to go fetch some as well. I first thought about seeing if the bookstore carried the specific varnish for the Inka Gold paints but they didn't so yeah, I had to get something else. I found some all-purpose glossy varnish in another store called Tokmanni (it's a mix-store selling dry foods, sodas, toys, clothes, power tools etc) that I decided to try. I've actually never used varnish before so yeah, I guess it's high time to start eh?

Glossy varnish that I used.

The varnish did the trick, wohoo! o/ Now I only needed to wrap the handle and I can finally call this project complete!
I had bought 1 meter of red fabric bias tape during early March 2016 and, luckily, it was just enough if I wrapped it a certain way. But when I was about to start wrapping the handle, with some help by Sacchan, I noticed that the trusty glue I've had since at least 2012 had dried out. :'( Damn it. So yeah, with no Karlssons klister to save me (that's the name of the glue) I had to go and ask to borrow stepdad's hot glue gun instead – which I got!
Sacchan came and visited again a few days later and we did some teamwork because I needed an extra set of hands for the gluing mission. We basically did it so that I was the one carefully wrapping the bias tape (had to wrap very specifically for it to be long enough) and giving Sacchan directions on where to apply the hot glue, little at a time. So yeah, I was the wrap master and she was the glue master. xD It took us a while to finish but at least it worked out well and nothing went wrong ~

Finished SDK Hotaru sword!

Sorry about the crummy final mirror photo, it doesn't really do it justice. :'c The tsuba and the habaki parts have a metallic shine but it just doesn't want to photograph well, lol. My sword also ends up looking overly neon red on some other test photos that I took after finishing it, ugh. I hope it will behave on cosplay photoshoots and con photos etc; it's not really flattering when it ends up looking way brighter than it actually is...

I can admit though that I'm not completely 100% satisfied with this sword. I did some early parts of it a bit too hastily (sanding and spray painting, mainly) and because of that it's not as neat as most of my other props – it's things that doesn't really show from a distance but I can easily spot them with my naked eye but, then again, I know where to look. *shrugs* Also, because of being impatient or non-observant I several times had to backtrack and add filler or sand something smoother etc; it was really annoying to have to go back and patch up stuff you either lazied out on (because you thought it was ready but it actually wasn't) or somehow missed. It sucks to have to sand down imperfections after you've already primed and started doing the final painting on something because you didn't notice them during the original sanding process... ughrrr. >_>

Note: I finished this sword and Rentarou's gun at the same time, but I decided to publish the gun post first even though this Hotaru post should, chronologically, have been published first. This is the reason why I in this post, for example, mention going to buy varnish even though in the gun post –posted before this one– I suddenly had varnish already (because I had already bought it while this post was still an unpublished draft). xD I'm mentioning this just to clear up any eventual confusion! Oh and yeah, Hotaru's sword was the first cosplay prop I used both worbla as well as varnish for.

Thanks for reading! Hotaru wig and makeup tests coming later!

Shiro Samurai out.

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.

Kenshin cosplay ramblings and herpderp sword

Hello everyone!

I've kinda semi-promised earlier on at least my Facebook Page that I would cosplay Kenshin this summer but, well, I didn't. Sorryyyy. Some of you maybe wonder why and today I thought that I'll show you guys what made it so that Kenshin got pushed back!

You see, several years back or so I got a sword from Hitsu, a very good friend of mine.
It's a sakabatou (reverse bladed sword) that she had originally planned to use for her Kenshin cosplay but, well, when the sword arrived she was very disappointed in the quality. :/ She didn't want to use it and so it had just been lying around at her place. Later on I mentioned having an interest in cosplaying Kenshin as well – and she just gave me the blade for free. 
I wondered if it was really as shitty as she said and so I pulled it out of the sheath. It probably didn't take more than a few seconds until it became obvious that this sword was so crappily made that I didn't know if I should laugh or cry; it looks so cheap that I don't even have words for it, seriously. I still thought that I could use it as a base and modify it to be usable for my cosplay, so I kept it with that in mind.
This sword was lying around in my apartment for a couple years before I figured out what to do with it. At one point, earlier this year, I unsheathed it to check if it was really as bad as I remembered and yes, it still was. But this time I saw that some random brownish spots had appeared on the blade – they hadn't been there before!

Brown spots...

Still the brown spots but shown in a different light.

I'm unsure if these spots were rust or whatnot; they seemed to be only on the very surface (on both sides) and they just suddenly appeared out of nowhere, even though the sword had been in the same room for years. I have no idea what the blade is made out of; if it's stainless steel it shouldn't be able to rust...?
Whatever it was I did some quick research – I read somewhere online that rubbing it with some iron wool should get rid off it. I didn't give a shit if the blade would get scratched because this thing looks like shit to begin with and well, some scratches would just make it look a little bit cooler. Battle damage, heheh...
Some iron wool rubbings later the brownish color had gone but you could still tell where the spots had been. It was as if I had only rubbed the surface color away and you could still see, on the damaged area, where the spots had been because the contours of their placements were intact. Err? I don't know how to explain.
I should maybe mention that the only area of the blade that got affected was the part that's the closest to the habaki (blade collar) and like, maybe 15 cm into the blade.

But that brown surprise problem was the smallest of my issues with this sword. The thing is that this sword is so poorly constructed that it doesn't even deserve to be called a sword – it's a wall hanger at best. But yeah, as soon as you pull it out you'll notice that something will do a moving/rattling sound as soon as the blade part is out of the sheath and not supported by it. I don't really know how to explain all the things that are wrong with this waste of metal – but I'll at least try.
The most notable problem is that the tsuba (guard) can be turned and spun around at least one quarter around itself. The habaki jumps around and you have to "click" it in place by pressing on its side every time it jumps out of its proper position. The tsuba is doomed to always be off-centered too and well, it looks retarded to say the least...

But instead of trying to explain every single thing that's wrong I'll just show some photos now! I hope that the whole "a picture tells more than a thousand words" is true in this case... x)

Off-centered tsuba. It's easy to notice if you look at the non-detailed
oval golden part in the middle. You can see where the hole is and how much
the habaki part is off the mark.

This is what almost always automatically happened as soon as you took the sword
out of the sheath; everything would just go out of their proper positions.
This thing is not solid...

This photo and the photo below it shows me turning the tsuba with my thumb.

Notice how much it turns out of position!
(the blade part turns a bit with it but not the handle itself)

The blade also turns ridiculously much! Compare the blade's position
with the handle. It's waaaay off.

Seeing the sword doing all of these derpy moves made me wonder how the heck I'm supposed to work with this thing. I then started wondering what it actually looked like under it all...
And so I decided to take this sucker apart! Solve the mystery!

First I took off the kashira, the end pommel, by hitting it with a hammer. It came off by itself after a few strikes. I just lifted it off and was met by the sight of the photo above.
I rolled off the hex nut thingy with my bare hands and lifted the ring under it after that. I then just pulled out the tsuka (handle) and I was greeted by an underwhelming view... to say the least.

Hello, rat tail.

I was expecting to find a rat tail and that's what I found. Poor quality decoration swords like this one are pretty much never full tang. These "rat tail swords" are outright dangerous if you swing them around. I cringe every time I see an obvious wall hanger being sold as a "battle-ready sword", by the way. And I cringe even more when some uneducated person buys a shitty sword like this and starts swinging it around, thinking that it's gonna hold up to the action, and then the blade breaks and just flies off in whatever random direction it feels like flying off to and, well, fucks someone up.

But yeah, as I mentioned earlier I was aware all along that this was a bad quality sword and the reason I took it apart was so that I could possibly fix whatever was wrong with it. I would just keep the main blade part itself and then modify the rest of the pieces – or make new ones from scratch since, well, the tsuba for example doesn't look anything like Kenshin's.

This is just to show that the tsukamaki ends were just... glued in place, randomly. Eh.

The hole that the rat tail was in...

The main issue became obvious as soon as I had separated all the pieces and saw the naked blade – I mean, just look at this weird asymmetrical disaster from hell!

WHAT THE HECK IS THIS SHIT??

That explains why the habaki was living its own life and why the tsuba could spin as it did!
I need to somehow come up with a way to make the whole thing at the very least symmetrical. But I don't have any tools that makes it possible for me to work with metal and, well, currently I'm a bit at a loss with how to do this whole thing anyway. I need to think what options I have and yes, when I found this out it was also decided that Kenshin would have to be postponed to possibly next year; going as Kenshin without his signature sword is a no-no for me – I need to solve this crap first.
I do wonder if I could possibly use something to build on top of the metal, to make it symmetrical... but I'm unsure what material would be a good choice. Hrmm...

But if we detach ourselves from the sword project for a while I do have almost everything else ready for my Kenshin cosplay; I only need to fix the wig (add wefts and style it) –besides the sword– and I'll be done!
I did a super quick outfit test-run just to see what it looked like. I'm not wearing the wig because it's not done and well, I couldn't find it lol. I might wear a different white juban under for the actual cosplay, it depends.

This doesn't show the real color of the kimono, but close enough...

I didn't want to go with the anime's cerise pink kimono; I wanted something a bit calmer. I've seen that Kenshin's kimono changes colors a lot, depending on what picture you're looking at – it can be anything from the aforementioned cerise pink to a deep red. My fabric is some mix between coral pink and watermelon pink... I guess. xD It's really hard to describe colors!
I wanted to have a light colored kimono since my wig is a light-ish orange. I'm gonna be pastel!Kenshin lol.

That's all I have for now!

Shiro Samurai out.