Battousai wig styling + preview!

I got my wig for Battousai yesterday and today I decided cut it. It was originally sold for another character but the color was perfect for Battousai in my eyes and it also had a short clip-on ponytail, double yay!

The wig looked like this before my scissors attacked it:

le wig in its original glory

I cut off this much hohoh

I can't say I'm all that pleased with the wig, it's decent but could have been better.. I'm still really new to wig cutting and I hesitate a lot and doubt myself, hah. Oh well, maybe I can fix it a bit better when I have more proper hair/wig cutting equipment. Oh well. With the wig cut I decided to do a cosplay preview. The sun was about to set, but it wasn't dark yet outside, so I put everything on as quick as I could manage (while still looking decent) and went out in the snow. I must say.. wearing geta in snow was... interesting...

Cosplayer: Valkoinen Samurai
Photographer: Jäätynyt Enkeli 

And those were pretty much the only decent ones.. OTL I will try to get better pictures after/during Närcon Vinter.

I find it a bit funny how when I earlier tried to be does-not-kill Kenshin I ended up looked super serious on photos and when I now cosplay Battousai I looked like I'd hug a squirrel before killing anything on most photos. Not sure if going the right way... x'D

Screen printing for Date's coat symbol pt.3

More progress on the screen printing!

Last time I finished all preparations needed for the symbol.. so now I had to get it over to the frame itself. I had kept the frame since last time, treated with photographic emulsion, in a dark room so it wouldn't get ruined by being exposed to light. Okay, so to get my chosen symbol traced over to the frame I put it next to the frame's "outside" (make sure the design will be the right way for how you want the final print to be on your fabric) and then put it inside an UV-light cabinet with a thick glass plate on top of it. I put my screen printing frame with the symbol transparent paper in there, put the UV-lights on, closet the doors and took time: 5 minutes.

UV-light cabinet (photo taken after I had removed my frame and lights were off)

After 5 minutes I took my frame out and it still looked totally... greenish. I couldn't see in the semi-darkness that anything had changed... except that not it wasn't light sensitive anymore. I held up the frame towards the door that was ajar (art classroom consists of two main rooms, I was in the non-main room were the heavier/special equipment is) and when I looked close enough I could see the symbol in a slightly fainter greenish shade along all the other... greens. Now to get it visible.. with the help of a high-pressure water jet thingy-whatever-it-is!

It looked like this ~

I put my screen printing frame into that.. err.. whatever it is called... to start "cleaning" my frame.. or well, to get the symbol visible. I find it a bit funny because that box I sprayed inside looked like something from a horror movie lol. I put earmuffs on because this water jet thingy makes very high sounds.

I just sprayed all over the frame in quick circle-ish motions.. making sure not to spray on the same place too long. I alternated the sides of the frame so that I would "clean" both sides evenly.

When I had sprayed once or twice.. you can see the symbol becoming visible (lighter green)

After I had sprayed more (notice the symbol turning transparent)

After I had sprayed enough to have the symbol turned fully transparent I took it out and attacked it with the blow dryer because.. well.. obviously it was soaking wet. I kept some distance with the blow-dryer, art teacher told me not to have it too close.

Speed drying for the win!

When my screen printing frame was dry I took it out into the light.. aka over to the main room of the art class. I taped around the frame's edges just to be sure of no paint leaking when printing.

Started reinforcing the edges with tape

I then held my frame up into the lights above me; I had to check for small holes and other faults (aka places were the paint could get through) and tape over them on the frame's "outside".. otherwise I would get small spots when printing on the fabric.. not cool. You have to be very careful when checking for holes, you don't want to miss any.. even if they are barely the size of a needle prick. So look many times to make sure there are no holes whatsoever.

Taping over all holes..

And that was all progress for today. My frame is now ready for a test printing!

Screen printing for Date's coat symbol pt.2

I said in the earlier screen printing post:

"And with that the art class had ended for me. More about this next week."

I LIED
Or well, not really, I just had forgotten that I have art class on Thursdays too... xD

Today I picked a frame to use. While I applied the photographic emulsion on the frame, in a semi-dark room (the stuff is light sensitive), the art teacher went to scan my symbol over from the A3 paper to two A4 halves on transparency paper. (no A3 available)

Photographic emulsion

Plan of attack: screen print frame and a metal scoop-ish thing with the emulsion in (it's actually more of a teal color IRL)

There was a certain technique how to apply the photographic emulsion. You would hold up the frame with one hand and hold the metal scoop with the liquid in the other. Put the scoop at the bottom of the frame and then carefully angle the scoop so that the photographic emulsion flows and touches the frame, when it does that angle the scoop sliiiiiightly back up (but have the emulsion still touching the frame) and run it up towards the frame. Just repeat until the frame's.. frame... is covered. After that do another run with the scoop but this time without angling it.. aka so that you don't get any more photographic emulsion on. Just run it down and up to wipe off the excess. I dunno if my explanations make sense...

When that was done I took some paper and wiped the corners of the frame clean (no need to have the liquid on those) and then used a very painted, if I might add blow-dryer to dry the frame super speed.

Before the drying operation

After that it was time to work with the symbol itself. As I said I now had two A4 sized halves which I had to match as perfectly as possible. My art teacher by the way printed out two of each half because just one alone looked so faded.. not dark enough.

If you look closely you can see that it's not perfectly matched..

I tried for a long time get the symbol to match perfectly but I noticed it was impossible to get all parts of the symbol to meet just right in the middle. If some part was perfect it was off somewhere else etc. But then, a lot of inner irritation later, I noticed that if I left a bit of space between the two halves all different parts of the symbol would match if I just drew a continuous fitting line over to the other half; it was as if the scanner had eaten a few millimeters of the symbol.

Next up was to use some clear tape to tape together the two halves to one. I didn't want them coming loose or having the layered halves (remember I had two of each half to get the symbol dark enough) move so that they are not perfectly on top of each other.

I put a lot of strips of tape along the middle on both sides

Okay, I had the symbol taped together into one piece.. but there was now a line of empty space in the middle which needed to be filled in with the missing "eaten" parts of the symbol. Marker to the rescue!

After using markers to fill in the missing parts..

That was all the progress for today. :)