Experimenting with blood capsules!

 Hello neh ~

So this weekend I'm spending at mom's place together with Hasakitsuki. Mom and stepdad are currently in Thailand so the house is empty and we thought quickly that it would be awesome to go there and have some cosplay experimenting with no risk of anyone seeing us and getting scared shitless and well, just chill around in a house that is big enough to live in... for a change. So, while there on the Saturday 15th February, aka today, we decided to put on our Hakuouki cosplays and have me –as Okita– trying out something bloody...

Eeyup, I'm gonna use these things. See where this is going?

Blood capsules, yep. They are not mine but Hasakitsuki's but she kindly let me use some. The ones in the plastic round box are powder edition and the ones in the blisters are liquid edition. The powder capsules say on the packaging –in German– that they stain and you can't wash it off clothing and that it might take several tries to get it off your skin. We'll see...

I went outside far enough into the woods in the big yard so that when mom returns she won't immediately see some suspicious alarming red spots in the snow. Good thing we had already the day before walked in the snow and thus made safe "feet holes" to walk in without sinking through the snow all over again; I wouldn't have been all that happy getting at the very least ankle-deep and at best, knee-deep in the snow in cosplay. Okay, so when I got far enough into the woods which was, not that far I just put one capsule in my mouth –the liquid one– and put on my acting cap and let's go!

I must say the taste of this thing is not pleasant but it wasn't really bad either, at least according to me. Then again, who expected fake blood to taste strawberry cheesecake anyway? Not me for sure.
There's not all that much blood in one of these but still sufficient for a few coughs or whatever you want to do with it. Oh, and obviously because I was cosplaying Okita, who has tuberculosis, I was doing the coughing scheme but you can use these for other things as well.

In my case it's not all that hard to act like I'm sick but then again that miiiiiight just be because around this exact time 3 years ago I was hospitalized with a pretty bad case of pneumonia. *shivers* Sure that doing this, especially in February, gives me some rather unpleasant flashbacks of that time but oh well, what won't we do for cosplay and the love of a character?

Okay, so back on track about the liquid capsule. Except for the not-so-good taste it wasn't really hard to use – sure it needs some timing and acting skills if you want to make it look more realistic but it's not bad. Oh, and obviously you have to bite it whenever you want to use the capsule.

When I was done with the liquid one, which didn't take all that long, I decided to try the powder capsule right after. This thing requires that you use your saliva to get it to work because, well, it's blood powder. I didn't have any problem with this but what I did notice pretty instantly was that this thing tastes even stronger than the liquid one, if you ask me. Yep, still definitely not strawberry cheesecake for you...
Oh, and it's not really noticeable on the pictures but the powder one is a few shades darker as well. Actually, the blood ended up looking brighter on photos than IRL anyway, both of them.

I must say that personally I prefer the powder variant, mainly because it's a tad darker and also takes a lot more time to use up. I was actually pretty surprised how many times I could cough and still have a fair amount left in my mouth. To be honest even when I thought I was done I still kept getting more of it and it took quite a lot of spitting to get rid of the red afterwards. The only slightly hard thing with capsules is to not have it show on your face that you have it in your mouth because yeah, if you plan to scare the bejesus out of your friends they'd better not know you are up to something... ;)

I'm sorry about the photo quality but they are taken with my old camera, which is a lot lighter than my SLR to carry, and thus easier to take self-photos with.
Oh well, when I was done coughing blood I hurried back inside because staying around 20 minutes outside in a not-very-warm-at-all cosplay in 0 °C will eventually make you cold. Duh.

This is what the ground looked like when I was done...

Back inside I washed my bloody hand with warm water and yeah, the powder one seems to stain. It's not all that visible on this picture but IRL it's kind of easy to see. It seems to fade nicely after a few more washes though and all in all it's not bad staining at all if you ask me. I was prepared for worse.

Notice the stains.

Soon enough I was back in the cold again but this time for some quick pictures together with le Chizuru, aka Hasakitsuki. I was the one taking the photos and yeah, still with the old camera and it shows in lack of quality. Didn't really get any good photos because it had already gotten too dark but oh well...

Oh, and before I let you go I must tell you about a funny and rather awkward thing that happened. So when I had put on my cosplay I looked out of the living room windows (they're big) and saw a random man walking on the yard. I hurried to go hide in case it was this guy who mom had told to bring in the mail but......... it wasn't. So this unknown man rang the door bell once and I thought "let's pretend there's no one home" but then he rang a second time and some seconds later he was still waiting outside. I decided to go "fuck this shit" and went –in full cosplay– to open the door and guess? It was no other than this one old friend of stepdad who, more of less often, comes and asks if stepdad is home and I tell you, he does this whenever he pleases and yes, it has happened at least once in friggin' midnight! Another critical detail about this guy is that he is drunk 90% of the time and always asking for alcohol if you let him in. Love Finland. But yeah, I opened the door to this guy and told him stepdad is not here and frankly, he's far away in Thailand. I swear he was looking at me with a weirded out face and there was a moment of awkward silence before I just tried to get him to leave already. xD Yeah, awkward.

With that said Valkoinen Samurai is out!

Masamune's gloves + arm guard test!

 Hello hello!

On 7th February I decided to paint Masamune's gloves and thus get some more progress done on the costume. The gloves I got for free by the awesome Kandi & Cyber some time ago (thanks <3) and now they got a cosplay make-over!

Glove before my treatment

Okay, so what do? Well, first thing was to check how the paint would behave on the fabric. I obviously don't have any scrap piece of the same fabric so I was stuck with doing a paint test on the glove itself. Of course I did this on the inside just to be on the safe side.

Paint test

It seemed to take the paint really well (and it didn't leak to the other side even though the gloves are not the thickest) so I felt sure enough to start painting. But of course before I could start painting I dug up a bunch of Masamune Date references that I had saved on my computer.

Ta-dah! Better.

Because I'm left-handed I figured I would paint the right glove first and wear it while painting. Turned out to be a good idea because I could get a better idea of how it would end up looking and I could turn my hand when needed and so on.

Started painting..

... and painted some more...

... and wham! One glove done.

I did a few layers of paint because it faded slightly every time it dried, not bad at all though.
When I had the right glove done I realized I was up for a dilemma - I can't paint my left glove by using my right hand! D'oh!
Well, I needed to find a right-handed victim helper who would be willing to act as my hand stand while I did the painting - Hasakitsuki was up for the task. So for 1 hour she ended up with only one hand to use meanwhile I painted the glove on the other. I must admit it was a bit harder to paint the glove on someone else's hand but oh well, ultimately it still turned out okay.
With both gloves painted I had to wait 6 hours before going to iron and thus set the paint, according to the instructions on the paint that is. I decided it's better to obey the instructions every once in a while so I let 6 hours pass.
A few hours from midnight I thought it would be okay to go and set the paint. I walked to the laundry room, put the iron to heat and started turning my gloves outside in.

And this is what they looked like when turned. Sexy.

I waited a bit for the iron to heat and did a quick try on one glove and well, it was barely hot at all. I waited some more and put slightly higher heat and then tried again and... it felt like something glued itself to the iron and didn't want to let go! Luckily I had quick reflexes so I pulled the iron away out of instinct that something wasn't right and well, when I looked at the glove I saw this...

PERKELE!!  (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

The fabric literally melted away; the edges next to the holes are a bit harder. Note to self: don't iron stuff if you aren't 100% sure of what fabric it is. Thank God I didn't melt any part with the paintings on or a showing part for that matter! I'm a bit relieved because I avoided a disaster seeing how the damaged part is far down and would likely get covered by the arm guards anyway. But I'm still going to try and repair it by sewing some fabric to it.. now to just hope that mom remembers to bring me a piece of black fabric tomorrow. Yes, I cosplay emergency called her.

Okay, so 8th February dawned and mom appeared with the fabric. I ended up with the whole roll because she couldn't be bothered to cut out a piece for me. Ah, the joys of having a mom who used to have her own fabric store - you borrow whole fabric rolls for your projects. xD

le savior fabric

I must say this fabric is an okay candidate, it's not exactly the same obviously but I would say it's close enough; it's black, feels similar, about the same thickness as the glove fabric and has slight stretch. 

I just did some quick measuring and cut out what I needed...

... and this was it. So worth borrowing the whole roll.

Yeah. After that I quickly zigzaged around the piece (which proved out to be a bit hard because of the ridiculous size..) and then it was time to sew it on to the glove itself. I thought for a moment if I should sew it to the inside or outside but decided that it would maybe be better on the inside after all. I must say this was a pretty scary mission because even if I took off a part of the machine the sewing surface wasn't small enough so that I could pass the glove through and thus avoid the worry of accidentally sewing my glove shut. :'D This might have been easier to just hand-sew but I'm too lazy for that so I decided to rock the more hazard edition anyway.
So I put the glove next to the presser, adjusted it carefully so that I wouldn't have fabric underneath where I was about to sew and then I just slowly started sewing around the square with a straight stitch. It took a while and I was pretty nervous but it went well and at the end I had my glove feat. repair patch.

Sewing in progress

Inside of glove after reparation (yes, my fabric paint test is there..)

Outside of glove after reparation

Sure it's not the prettiest ever but at least there's not a gaping hole there showing my skin or anything. Also, this should prolong its life slightly. Hopefully.

So with the glove repaired I thought I would try the whole arm guard system on and see if I could even put on all the completed parts. I swear at some point I started feeling a bit unsure and thinking it might not work but BAM it sort of did after some struggling! But hands down I must say it was overly hard to put the guards on by myself.. I would need at least two or three arms lol. Valkoinen Octopus' Cosplay. But yeah, as I said I managed to put the guards on... or well, one of them.

This was a test try-on but I did realize that I will need something to hold the top ends bent over each other or its gonna explode in any random direction. If you look a bit closer on the pics you can see that my first solution for this was to use hairpins. xD It actually worked surprisingly well but I'm not sure if I would call it a discreet enough solution... unless I find black ones somewhere that are half the size of the ones I used. I'll have to think about this but I have a feeling that I might end up using hairpins anyway.

But that's it for now, smell you all later! ~

Liquid eyeliner test

 Hi!

For quite some time now I've considered buying a liquid eyeliner for cosplay because some things you just can't do with a pencil one. Last week or so I figured it's time I get one and so I went to the makeup shelf of the store and felt awkward as always #guyproblems, pretty much took the first one and did a quick test stroke on my arm. It seemed good enough so I rolled with it.
Funny thing is that I had this test stroke still on my arm for the coming week and barely shit happened to it; it didn't flake or fade or anything... or wait, correction, veeeeery slight fading around the fourth day or so. But whatevs, yesterday I decided to do a quick test à la Okita edition (because Hakuouki characters are half the reason I wanted a liquid one lol) and well, for a first try it's not half bad I guess?

Sorry for the slight blur.
Oh, and if you wonder the contacts are Volte Green.

I'll be practising some more before I attend my next con but it should be okay, I'll get the hang of this!

Oh, and about the eyeliner itself, well, have some photos:

Rimmel's  Exaggerate Waterproof Liquid Eyeliner

I must say I'm pretty fond of the tip; it's basically like a thin marker but you have to dip it like a paint brush – best of both worlds if you ask me! Yes, that's actually a big reason why I took this as well as the fact that it's waterproof (I tried) and wasn't all that expensive. I think it's pretty good, then again it's my first liquid eyeliner so I don't have anything to compare it with. But yeah, it's easy to use, fairly precise and holds nicely. I've noticed that sometimes after some hours it might flake a bit, especially at the corner of my eyes. Also it doesn't dry instantly so be careful when you apply it on your upper eyelid etc.

Oh, and before I leave you guys I must show you the newest addition to my bed space stealers plush collection. I just couldn't resist, okay? ;_;

Okita please <3

That's about it! See ya!