Turn a toy gun into a cosplay prop!

Hiya peeps!

On 8th October I went on a mission, as some might remember. Basically plowing through all four second-hand stores in town, in hopes of finding a toy gun to modify for Taregard Frir.
Luck was on my side and one of the shops had toy guns; luckily they were cheap, in fair condition and there was a bag with two and one with three. The bag with two guns had identical ones and the one with three had three different ones. I bought the bag with three because it had one with the style I wanted.

Gun bag! :D

The following day I took out the one I planned to use (for now) and went to spray paint it. I wanted to have some details in red so I first sprayed a part of the gun red.

Toy gun before modifications..

After getting a dose of metallic red spray paint.

It was fairly windy and around 0 °C so yeah, I was freezing my fingers off. When I deemed that it had dried enough I went back inside my apartment and put it very carefully on the newspapers I had been spraying on. What I didn't think about was that the paint wasn't 100% dry and so of course –after a few hours– when I moved it the newspaper had stuck to a small part of the gun and glued itself to it. FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUU-
I carefully peeled it off with my nail but of course some of the paint went with it. Blegh. :C So I had to go back out and fix that spot. And yeah, when I came back inside I was wiser than last time...

HANG THE FUCKER TO DRY!! >8D Boahaha!
(excuse my extremely dusty fan.. it collects dust so fast it's not even funny)

On 10th October I had planned to finish spray painting the gun, but... *gritting teeth* THE WEATHER DIDN'T WANT TO COOPERATE!! 8C Yeah, it was super cloudy and snowing/raining all day. All day. Not to mention that it was so moist outside that it wasn't even funny! D: I couldn't go outside spraying because there was no outside area close-by with a roof or anything to protect from the snow and rain – and I know from previous experience that spray painting when it snows is horrible because the snow will stick to your newly painted surface –while you wait for it to dry– and make this kind of "cracked snowflakes" on it and well, it looks fugly and might ruin your work. :C I couldn't spray outside and then run with the gun back inside either because my apartment is so horribly small and has shitty air circulation so yeah, I would probably have gotten poisoned from the paint fumes lingering around for the following month. xD Needless to say no painting was done that day and that also meant that I didn't get my gun prop done in time for Taregard's debut. Meh. Oh well, rather that than potentially risk ruining it as well as endangering my health...

Some days later I went ahead to put masking tape on the areas of the gun that I wanted to keep red – the rest was to be painted silver. It took a while to get the tape strips to be just the right width and shape that I needed; it's tedious to cut tape with such precision. xD
By this time it had started going below zero outside quite frequently too, which also meant that I had given up on getting the spray painting done. Yeah, I've had previous experience with spray painting outside in the cold and have the paint ending up looking fugly on the surface of the item because it kinda froze before drying properly. Not amused. >_>

Fast forward to somewhere very soon after Christmas 24th – I was at mom's place and had taken the toy gun with me. I had been thinking about finding something to fill the two holes in the gun where the screws were placed; if I didn't fill them in I would constantly have to be aware of what side of the gun I was showing to the camera because the side with the holes just looked shittier. I went to my stepdad and asked him if he happened to have any stuff that could work for this purpose and he told me that he had some brown silicone lying around that would do the trick. I left the gun in his care and a few days later when I went back home the holes were filled with brown wonder and it had dried too!

Gun with the masking tape and silicone-filled holes.

Close-up of the silicone.

The thing with silicone is that seemingly when it dries it sinks in a little and so the surface wasn't completely flat. I don't know if my explanation makes sense so I'll just draw you a crappy Paint picture instead to make sure everyone knows what I'm talking about. xD

So yeah, instead of having the desired B finish I had the A one. This meant that I still needed to put something on top of the silicone so that it would even out – I thought that white glue would do the trick.

Glue recently added.

So I basically just put some Erikeeper white glue on top of the silicone and played the waiting game. I had waited a few days between applying the glue to make sure that the silicone was 100% dry. After this was done I waited for the weather to be "warm", aka around 0 °C or above so that I could go out and try my luck at spray painting again.
On 7th January the weather seemed to be kinda okay (I couldn't check temperature anywhere so I had to guess) so I took my gun, the silver spray can, some rope –to hang the gun from– and went outside. As soon as I got outside and started spraying it seemed to be okay.. until about one half of the gun was painted and the spray can died. 8C Okay, it didn't die because there was still obviously paint left in it but the presser just stopped responding altogether; I kept pressing it down, twisting and turning it and I even took it off to check if anything was wrong but it looked fine! Dafuq man. :S
I ragequited after a while and went back inside; inside I thought that maybe if I took the black spray releaser thingy from my other spray can (a dark red one) and put it on the silver one then maybe it would work. I quickly tried it inside and it seemed to work like a charm and so I hurried back outside again! :'D As soon as I got outside I pressed the sprayer down and OH MY GOD IT WORKED!! 8DD ................. for one second. Fuck. 8C I noticed that the exact same thing happened again, except that this time the presser made this kind of slight air-is-coming-out sounds but no paint came with it. I looked closer in the "mouth hole" of the thing and noticed that the paint was slowly seeping out in its liquid form; I also took off the whole presser thingy and noticed that some more liquid paint had flowed up under it!

Presser taken off just to illustrate, but on this pic I had already
wiped off the liquid build-up. (Hasakitsuki holding it)

I went back inside, wiped off all the paint that had bubbled up from the can and decided to see if the presser would return to normal if I waited a few minutes and then painted indoors. After some minutes of furiously hammering pressing the black button down it suddenly came back from the dead and it even sprayed to boot! Ohmaiglab! What wasn't so wonderful was that the spray ended up on the apartment's bathroom wall, oops. Let's keep that a secret... *innocent whistling*
I went to fetch some old newspapers to protect the shower/bathroom floor and then I could FINALLY paint the rest of the gun. I just did one thick layer (should have done thinner layers but I was too impatient for that shit lol) and hung it from the string to dry in the shower curtain holder thingy. I then exited the apartment to go do some other stuff because I swear my apartment has the most horrible air circulation/ventilation/whatever and the paint fumes were so strong that I felt sick. I opened the air vent to maximum and left for some hours; when I came back the gun was still sticky but it was at least dry enough so that I could spray the areas that I had missed previously. I left it to dry again and went to squat at Jäätynyt Enkeli's place to wait out the paint fumes.

Painted gun hanging to dry in the shower...

A few days later I came back to check up on the gun – it had dried completely. I took off the masking tape and crossed my fingers that the silver spray paint hadn't bled in under the tape and on the area that was to remain red. Luckily it had stayed red almost completely and only some minor touch-ups were needed.

Just showing the spots that need some touch-ups...

So since the whole gun was already silver I couldn't be bothered to tape the whole shit so I just took a pencil, the red spray paint, Hasakitsuki's hands and a plastic bottle. So she sprayed very little and veeery close on the bottle and meanwhile I quickly dipped my pencil in the spray liquid –while it was still wet– and painted the spots red.

To finish it off I borrowed some black hobby paint from Jäätynyt Enkeli and painted some other areas black to make it 20% cooler.

Waiting for black paint to dry.. (it took approx. 40 min)

I painted both sides black and it was really tedious. The paint didn't act like the paints I'm used to – it felt thicker and well, much more rubbery. I had to paint very slowly (dip the brush in the paint after each time I painted a dot the size of the brush tip) and use much paint to get a nice result or all the brush strokes would show, even though the surface remained kinda bumpy. It was seemingly some akrylat-latex (that's in Swedish) paint.

I left the gun to dry over the night hung it from the kitchen lamp and on the morning it was all done! Looks much cooler than when it was just all black and it wasn't even hard except annoying with the spray can derps to give it a make-over! :D

LOOK AT MY GUN, MY GUN IS AMAZING ~~

You might have noticed that on the last photos there's still two holes at the red part of the gun – I didn't remember them, because I put the tape over long before I thought of filling them up, and so I forgot that they were even there during the whole remake process; a little miss on my side. I plan to cover them up later.

Taregard's gun is finally done, w00p w00p! o/
Shiro Samurai out.

Eren Yeager makeup test!

Hello titans humans! :'D

I'm now one of those in the growing list who have gone and fallen into the Attack on Titan –aka Shingeki no Kyojin– fandom wave. I can't go and call myself a mega fan or anything but I must admit that the anime was very good and I'm looking forward to the second season! The soundtracks, oh my god. <3 

I took a quick liking to Eren Yeager –our hotheaded main character– even though he's not the usual character type that I tend to gravitate towards; I don't know, something in his character just really caught my interest and so the cosplay antennas started tingling! 

Eren's face in the anime.

Honestly, the last few days I've had a horrible itch to do some cosplay makeup experimenting and what isn't better than practicing the looks for some future cosplays? I've also been aware of the fact that one of my unopened circle lens pairs will expire after two months unless I open the vials and hey, said contacts could totally work for Eren so why the hell not? :D That's totally also why I today decided to do a makeup test to try to Eren-ify myself! o/

But first, some close-ups of Eren's big blue-green eyes!

Rage mode activated.

Okay so.. Eren has surprisingly big/round eyes for a guy, which also made me think that even notably enlarging lenses would be fine for him, haha. The lenses I decided to wear for this costest are called Vassen Dori Green.

I borrowed Jäätynyt Enkeli's trainee squad uniform jacket because my cosplay isn't ready, did the makeup and took some photos! In the end I'm a bit surprised; I didn't quite think that I would fit Eren if I'm honest, haha. I barely recognize myself. Oh well, it's a challenge to do something different once in a while too!

But now, Ernu Eren time!

So, whatcha think? Eren enough for the titans you?

I tried to snap photos in angles that would make me look more childlike instead of manly because I think Eren looks young; he doesn't exactly have defined features and his face is a bit round anyway, especially if you compare to some other male characters in the cast, hah. So yeah, I kinda tried to make myself look boy-ish but it was very hard – on most pics I ended up looking like Jean Kirstein with Eren's eyes lol. xD Goddammit face!

The wig I also cut some days ago. I didn't put any products in it just yet because I might not cosplay Eren at a con until summer and I don't want to style my wig half a year in advance and have it turn poop on me when the con is finally approaching, now that would be a bummer...

Wig before cutting.

Sorry about the wig being slightly inaccurate on the test pics, especially the side pieces are a bit too long but I do have a reason for this – I plan to use the same wig for Heisuke Toudou from Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan because the hairstyle and color are fairly similar; if I had cut the side bangs any shorter it would be too short for Heisuke and I tend to think that longer sides frame my face better and look more flattering. 

That's all for today, bye!

Lens review: SeeShell Dizoneye Green

Hiya everyone!

I'll kick off this year with a lens review, woop! Some of my circle lenses have expired at the end of last year... and I felt like opening new ones! :'D It's so sad to throw away eyes. ;_; The lenses I'll be reviewing this time are SeeShell Dizoneye Green, although mine were relabeled under TheDollyEye.

Let's get started!

Lenses in vials, flash photo. (the arm belongs to Hasakitsuki)

Lenses in solution.

Base curve: 8.6 mm
Diameter: 15.0 mm

Life span: 1 year (I recommend 6 months)

Lens on finger – notice how far the design is printed from the edge!

When I bought these lenses I expected them to be subtle and natural, definitely not cosplay lenses. It turned out that I was right and thus no disappointment happened. :D The Dizoneye Green has a base curve of 8.6 mm and –according to the vials I had– a 15.0 mm diameter; the site I bought them from says that diameter is 14.5 mm though. This I can say straight out is not true – these lenses have a slight natural-looking enlargement but no way do I believe that they are 15.0 mm! Actually if you take a closer look you'll notice that the print of the lens is not printed close to the corners – I mean, there is a wide circle part around the outer edges of the lens that is transparent and thus the stated diameter is very misleading.

With just one lens in.

When I took out the lenses from the vials I immediately noticed that they are thinner and softer than your average circle lenses; they kept rolling/wrapping themselves up when I carefully rubbed the solution and even when I just slightly tilted my palm. At first I was worried that because the lenses were so thin/soft they would collapse on my finger when I would try to put them in my eyes, instead of going in like usual. This turned out to be partly true – I had to be extra careful when I put them in but otherwise no difficulties or problems with the lens plastering itself over my finger.. so far. I can imagine though that if they keep collapsing on your finger the lenses will have a higher risk of getting damaged from all the touching and flapping it to get it back in shape...

Enlargement seems to be slightly below average. It's just right for most casual looks but if you love to go all doe eyed loli or something, then it will fall a bit short. The dark limbal ring helps to pronounce your eyes and make them appear bigger.

Photo batch of the lenses ahead!

All photos taken by me. There's no color filters or such and that's so that the colors would be as true to real life as possible.

Outside.

Outside, back against light.

Outside, facing light direction.

Outside, cloudy winter afternoon.

Inside, room light.

Bathroom light.

Inside, facing a window during afternoon/sunset. *coughpolarnightcough*

Flash photo taken inside.

As you can see on the photos above –save for the flash pic– in room light, past sunset, these just turn out to look gray on my eyes; the green color just doesn't show which is kinda meh. In brighter/clearer room lights though, as well as outside during sun hours, they do look noticeably green – so if the color shows or not is highly dependent on what lights the surrounding has to offer. Then again, I think that if any lens color then green is the one that tends to disappear the most, depending at least partly on what your natural eye color is; my natural eye color is a blue-gray (more blue though) with a slight greenish tint.

Distance photo!

As far as comfort is concerned when I put them in I don't feel them at all for the first hours – it doesn't even feel like I have contacts on! I think this might be because they are so thin. But after a few more hours they did occasionally irritate my eyes (aka I keep poking the inner corners to relieve the discomfort etc) and I've had it happen that my vision was blurred for a second, until I blinked again. But I think these are perfectly fine to wear!

All in all I'd say that these are the best for days when you want to have slightly nicer eyes but don't want people to think "contacts! :O" the first thing they do when they spot you. Great for casual days, school and strolls in town. I don't think Dizoneye Green gives the visual impact needed for cosplay or any vivid fashion statement though, so don't expect them to be eye-catching or give you big dolly eyes. ;)

Short summary:

Color: 3/10
Subtle green shade; lens doesn't have much green on it though and might appear gray in insufficient light...
Design: 4/10
Average. It seems to be made to blend with and enhance your eyes for a natural look rather than to stick out on its own. The dark limbal ring is nice.
Opacity: 2/10 
Not opaque, mostly just adds a tint of green to the edges of your iris. 
Enlargement: 4/10
Pretty average enlargement – not big but not super small either.
Comfort: 7/10
I don't feel them at all the first hours, it's as if I had no contacts on! They seem to dry a bit after 2,5-4 hours though.
Naturalness: 7/10
Could almost be my real eyes, just slightly enhanced by a thicker/darker limbal ring.

That's about it for this time! If you have any questions just leave a comment! ^o^

Year of Cosplay 2014

 What's up bros? ;)

Again we approach the end of one year and the beginning of the next; every time it feels just as weird and you wonder in what black hole the time disappeared. :S I swear the older I get the faster one year is spent, seemingly – I remember so clearly that as a kid it definitely felt like half an eternity between new year and next Christmas, dangnabbit!

Oh well, as it is tradition by now I'll start this post by listing all the anime conventions that I ended up attending during the duration of year 2014:

Kitacon - Kemi, Finland

Cosvision - Turku, Finland

Desucon - Lahti, Finland

Skecon - Skellefteå, Sweden

Oulun Animeseminaari - Oulu, Finland

Nerdcon - Umeå, Sweden

DesuCruise - Helsinki, Finland ↔ Stockholm, Sweden

Tracon - Tampere, Finland

Kemin Mangapäivä - Kemi, Finland

Yep yep, I score in with 9 events for this year! It's actually the exact same amount as on 2013, although I didn't attend the exact same cons. I'm actually a bit surprised that after all economic issues I've had this year I still somehow managed to attend this many events, haha!
But yeah, this year gave me some new convention experience in the form of being a con volunteer worker instead of just an attendant; it was really nice to see the other side of the coin and I surely want to lend a helping hand more times! :D

But hey, if I have to do some kind of list of what cons were my favorites this year I assume the list would be something like this!

1. Skecon - I just had way too much fun at Skecon this year! The Vocaloid concert, the Mario Kart: Double Dash!! tournament (on which I combed home victory!), all the martial art stuff and hell, even the unlucky bouncy castle rage had its charm. xD The general comfy atmosphere was so good I couldn't have asked for more either; Skecon just keeps improving and getting better and better for each year that passes by!

2. Cosvision - Cosvision was something so great, I tell you! An event purely for and with cosplay as its main focus was so needed and boy was it appreciated too! Everything about Cosvision was just awesome – panels all about cosplay, Guest of Honors were famous coslayers *coughkanamecough*, wonderful locations and great atmosphere! The only things Cosvision suffered from were too many interesting panels overlapping and not a lot of attendants but, then again, it was the first Cosvision ever and so on.

3. Tracon - It's really hard to put Tracon third this time because it is my favorite Finnish convention to attend. Tracon is always a blast and there's great photoshoot locations, the building is perfect and this year there were even extra additions in the outside area. Tracon definitely doesn't lose to Skecon or Cosvision but I just put the other two ahead this time because Skecon had amazing entertainment value –especially considering how small it is– and Cosvision was an instant success and it just deserves second place because it was all about cosplay and well, I could praise that decision to Middle Earth and back; there needs to be more conventions that are less about anime and more about cosplay!

With the conventions summarized and ranked I'll move on to the cosplays I've worn over the year. Yep, this totally means that it's time for the yearly compilation photo!

In 3... 2... 1...

Clockwise, starting from top left corner: Keisuke Sannan (Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan), Gin Ichimaru (Bleach), Hajime Saitou (Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan), Souji Okita (Rurouni Kenshin), Yukinaga Kuroyama (Original), Souji Okita (Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan), Souji Okita (Hakuouki Sweet School Life), Gakupo Kamui (Vocaloid), William Crimshade (Original), Ryunosuke Ibuki (Hakuouki Reimeiroku), Taregard Frir (Original).

Umm, what? Why are you looking at me like that?
....
Oh, yeah, let's not even talk about the Gin photo. xD I only have herpaderp pictures of said cosplay from this year's Kitacon because well, the photoshoot was nothing but silliness so of course the Gin photo is not very, err, representative. :-DD

I think that about sums it up for this time. As for the very-soon-it's-here 2015 year's cosplay plans I dare say that I do have some cosplays in mind that I'm very likely to do, although exactly for what cons is more of a mystery! I will definitely try to do at least a few new costumes although I guess I just might end up recycling some older ones more. I'm still poor.
But as far as the new cosplays are concerned I can spoil you all enough that some Attack on Titan dudes are fairly sure to show up ~

Lastly, let me thank all my friends as well as everyone who follows my ramblings in here – I hope you all will follow my cosplay crap the coming year too! :'D

Bye bye & Happy New Year 2015!

Let's be pirate villains! – Team Aqua cosplay WIP!

Hellou guys ~

Now I will do a complete progress post of my Team Aqua Grunt cosplay – from beginning to end! I didn't take a crapload of photos because most things I had to do were peruskauraa basic and not-very-interesting. But hey, without further talk let's get going, arrrh! >8D

Our Pokémon pirate villain reference,
aka male Team Aqua Grunt.

So I first started working on my Team Aqua costume on 28th July. Man, that's so long ago! I went to mom's place with Hasakitsuki because free fabrics we needed to check if mom happened to have suitable fabrics for our needs. Without much effort I found a good enough blue fabric that we decided to roll with for the Team Aqua pants and bandana; we wanted both to be of the same color, like on the reference. Next I took out mom's old pattern folders and checked through them in case there would be some close enough patterns that we could modify and use. Yeah, I'm lazy about drafting my own patterns. xD We found some generic pants pattern that we deemed suitable with some modification – aka widen the legs like hell (cuz they are evenly wide and straight on the reference) and skip the pockets.
When cutting the fabric we realized a horrible death was nearing us – we might not have enough blue fabric for pants and bandanas for both of our cosplays! D: After this knowledge infected our minds mom prioritized cutting out my pants first because they needed more fabric than Hasakitsuki's. Luckily after a lot of careful planning we ended up having just enough fabric after all! But it was a close call. The whole first day went into pattern searching, modifying and fabric cutting.

Cut out fabric pieces all over the chair, progress for the day.

If anyone wonders the bandana headpiece was cut out as a big triangle – we actually used another bandana that mom had made long time ago as a "pattern".

On 31st July we returned to sew at mom's place because mom's high-tech sewing machine is the best. On this day I zigzaged around all my cut out pieces and sewed together my pants to the point that they, well, looked like pants. Basically only the hemming of the pant legs, circle decoration designs and the elastic waist ribbon were left.
We had decided on using the fabric paint method to make the circle designs on both sides of the pants. Speaking of which, it was a bit of a search to figure out what the designs looked like but after seeing a few more references I could make it out.

Picture from the anime showing that the circles are linked together.
(also showing that generic Grunts have different hairstyles, wohoo freedom in wig choice!)

With the help of this picture and the fact that they are after the Pokémon Kyogre –which has similar linked designs– I figured that the pattern most likely is identical on both sides – basically just big white circles linked together by lines.
Except for working on the pants I hemmed all edges of the headpiece so that it'd look neat and crisp; the only thing left to do on it was to paint the iconic Team Aqua symbol. Mom gave us some white fabric paint –that had been lying around for years– and we took our almost finished bandanas home so that we could paint them at our apartment. After all, mom lives several kilometers away and she can't be bothered to drive us there every day to make cosplay progress, even though we were in a hurry. :'D

Just a photo showing how I folded the very edges
of the triangle (bandana) when I hemmed it.

We were ambitious and returned already the following day, 1st August, and this time I finished my pants completely, save for the fabric painting of course. I started with making a sort of tunnel for the elastic waist ribbon to go through. Yeah, I couldn't be bothered to use buttons/zippers... Because we had put extra centimeters at the waist –when cutting out the fabric– I could afford doing a 4 cm tunnel and so I did. I folded in the edge slightly for a neater finish while I pinned it in place.

Tunnel pinning in progress...
(feat. extreme camera color rape! My pants turned turquoise!!)

With the tunnel pinned I went to iron it, because ironing things makes life easier. Then I just cut out a fitting amount of white elastic (2,5 cm wide) and attached one end to a safety pin. Oh, of course before this I zigzaged the ends of the elastic so that it wouldn't fray all over the place.

Best zigzag ever. xD Not.

But yeah, I used the security pin as a tool so that I could easily feel where the elastic was inside the tunnel and pull it forward, all the way around. The other end I held tightly outside the tunnel. When I got back to where I started (there was a gap of some centimeters that I didn't stitch shut on the tunnel so that I could thread the elastic inside) I took both ends of the elastic and sewed a straight stitch to unite them.

My method of doing it. Photo taken before I sewed the elastic ends together.

I also hemmed the pant legs. Actually my pants were like king size or something because there was too much extra centimeters added to the legs when we first cut them out. Mom went like "oh these will be short on you, let's add centimeters!" and I thought the original pattern looked too long to begin with. lol
So eh, I ended up double folding the hem with 5 cm each to get the finished pants to be the right length for me. Yeah, 10 cm off. Hahah...

Pant legs folded twice and ironed in place before sewing.

Even though the pattern was widened a lot and stuff my pants didn't turn out all kinds of weird and badly fitting. Actually I was surprised how easily it went. But yeah, with all the pants sewing done I took them home to paint them as well.

On 3rd August we biked to mom's place to make some progress on the shirts as well as go fetch some scrap pieces of the blue fabric, so that we could try fabric paint on it and see how it behaves.
Earlier we had decided on using a stretchy white tricot fabric for the shirt and then make the stripes out of a similar stretchy fabric instead of painting the stripes because, well, that would take a lot of paint. But we noticed at mom's place that she had no stretchy black fabric so we had to roll with a very dark blue instead. Good enough, if you ask me.
We spent way too long cutting all the stripe pieces out of the blue-black and the white fabric and it was hellish because the fabric was alive; I swear you would have needed to hammer it in place or something when cutting because it went everywhere!

Sleeve pattern folded in half to make the dark stripe part of it.

We had counted the stripes on the reference pictures and done some calculations and I ended up with figuring out that I needed to have the stripes average at 15 cm width (excluding seam allowances) each. I also had to lengthen the very basic t-shirt pattern we used because it was both too short and not wide enough for me.
When I had cut out all the body stripe pieces –as well as the sleeve pieces– I just used mom's overlock machine and frankensteined them together into whole parts.

Marimekko Pirate t-shirt is taking shape!

Gotta love overlock seams! Quick and neat!

On 4th August I started the painting process of the bandana headpiece. I checked my references for the exact look of the Team Aqua symbol, did some measuring of how big I wanted it to be aka borrowed Hasakitsuki's forehead and started sketching free-handedly the symbol on some random advertisement paper. I cut it out and noticed that it wasn't perfectly symmetrical when you folded the symbol in the middle and compared left side with right side. I ended up just using the side I thought looked nicer and then just turning it upside down when I needed to draft the opposite side on the fabric. I also, of course, did some fabric paint testing on a scrap piece; turned out that this white paint isn't covering for shit! Bleh.
Still decided to use it though. It's still free paint! Oh, and if anyone wonders the brand of said paint is Palett, it's bought from Panduro in Sweden several years ago...

Fabric paint test. It looked good.. until it dried.
(pic taken directly after painting)

Team Aqua symbol cut out...

.. and drafted on the middle of the bandana.

I kept adding layer after layer each time the previous one had dried. Well, at least the paint dried quickly so there wasn't much waiting time between painting the layers. I had to be very careful though because I was hand painting with a small brush; if I did a mistake even once on one of the layers it would have bothered me on the finished product. :C  Luckily I didn't end up with paint where I didn't want it and so 5+ layers later way too many layers the symbol had turned opaque enough to receive the sign of my approval.

Good enough. 8C

5th August we went to mom's place again this time with bus because biking blörgh and this time I finished my shirt; I started with sewing the shoulder seams and then attaching the sleeves to the garment – with the overlock, because it's faster. The sleeves went on without any problems and then I just sewed them closed (not the arm hole but yeah, you know xD) and all the way down the side seam on the same go.

Sleeves attached...

It's starting to look like something!

With the side seams closed I only had the smaller details to do and these finishing touches I did with the usual sewing machine. I first zigzaged the sleeve openings, the collar and the shirt bottom hem and then I went to do the hemming folds and ironed them (less annoying when you sew them down) and folded twice. I think it looks neater when it's folded twice because then you can't catch a glimpse of random zigzaged ends poking out from inside etc. But yeah, fold twice, straight stitch and go! BOOM! Finished Team Aqua Grunt shirt! 8D

Sleeve hemming in progress.

At this point the progress slowed down a lot because August was filled with anime events for us two and so we were traveling all over Sweden and Finland. We missed the original deadline anyway.
But I did manage to get my hands on some stuff that I would need for the Team Aqua cosplay during these stressy times! During Nerdcon on 16th August Hitsu went to fetch me some white fabric paint that was meant for darker fabric colors (turns out the one I had used previously was for light fabrics – no wonder it sucked!) while I was working in the con's cafeteria. Also on the beginning of September me and Hasakitsuki went into a Tokmanni store and found a cheapo 2-pack of black fabric gloves that we decided were close enough and thus bought. 

After half a forever of no progress finally –on 20th December– I drafted a big circle on some pattern paper. Said circle was of course for the design of the pants. I just took some measures to figure out the best size for the circle pattern and used a round candy box and the bottom of a bottle of gesso to draw a perfect circle, hihi. Later on the same day me and Hasakitsuki went to Jäätynyt Enkeli's place lack of space at home to draw the outlines of the circle design on the pants. It was quite rage inducing because obviously the pants were already sewn together and the elastic at the waist kept wrinkling the upper part of the pants and so, well, when you were drawing the last half circle on the top the elastic made horrible bumps in the fabric and just wouldn't stay flat! I ragequitted and drew the last circle half free-handedly and yeah, it turned into a potato. :<

Ring design drafted on pants with pencil.

The following day I returned to Jäätynyt Enkeli's place alone to start painting the pants. I must say that the new fabric paint made a huge difference! Now I only needed to do two layers to have an opaque white color! Note to self: Pay attention to if the fabric paint is meant for light or dark fabrics, it makes your life easier. So yeah, I just spread out my pant leg(s) on the kitchen table, shoved some newspapers inside the pant leg that I was about to paint first and started painting!

Painting in progress. (first layer of paint)

Jäätynyt Enkeli gave me some assistance in pulling the pants at the waist elastic while I painted the design there and he also helped me paint a bit of the first few rings on the second pant leg, to speed things up a bit so that we had more time to play Monster Hunter afterwards.

One side completed!

Now everything's done! I just need to set all the painted areas with heat, but I'd rather wait 24 hours before I go put my iron anywhere. x) That concludes my Team Aqua Grunt progress post!

Team Aqua Grunt preview and possible photoshoot will come later! See ya!
Shiro Samurai out!