June 19, 2014

Desucon 2014 – I finally had Ramune soda for the first time!

Hello folks!

I know I'm posting this a bit late-ish but I've had a shitlot of photos to go through and I've barely recovered from the huge con hangover. But now I'm finally done so here comes my Desucon 2014 experience!

"Desucon 2014 has begun!"
A few days before the con I was styling wigs for Yukinaga and SSL Okita. I got them done on time but I still ended up staying awake the whole night between Wednesday and Thursday because I was stressed about the suitcase packing. Yeah, we packed our suitcase on the same day we had to leave home, aka Thursday. Not the brightest idea I've ever had...

Unstyled wig.
Styled wig.




















My con journey started on Thursday, 5th June, when I took the bus to Kemi and then a night train to Lahti together with Hasakitsuki. Our train left Kemi at 22:21 local time and we had a train change at Riihimäki that left 08:13. We had bought a lot of unhealthy provisions at Lidl in Kemi before we took the train so yeah, at least this time we weren't dying from hunger. We didn't run into random drunks this time, which is for the better. The journey was okay but I barely slept shit because of uncomfortable old train cart seats...

Friday

We arrived at Lahti 08:54 and I texted Moonbeam aka our sleeping place savior and asked where she was. Moonbeam said she was at the cafeteria but because I'm soooo familiar with Lahti train station (hint: sarcasm) I and Hasakitsuki ended up having quite the adventure finding our way to the main part of the train station. We took the elevator like 3 times and always ended up in the wrong place, genious. Finally we found Moonbeam and we walked over to her place, which was super close! There we just packed up some of our stuff, turned the couch into a bed and I tried to sleep because I was dang tired (I barely slept in the train, surprise surprise!) but at some point I got energy and then we ate one of those one meter pizzas for food. xD With extra tuna and pineapple, of course.
At some point Moonbeam needed to go to Eurokangas in town and after a bit of "should I or should I not come with" (I was laggy) I decided to go and I'm so happy I did! I ended up finding the perfect soft and thick dark red linen fabric that screamed Okita's red kimono to me! <3 Hakuouki's Okita of course. Yeah, there's many Okitas out there... I bought the whole remaining roll because there was only 5 meters left and the remaining fabric had been cut into two pieces already; I need to make both the anime and the game version because they differ quite a lot and I sort-of accepted the "cosplay all official Okita versions!" challenge so yeah, here we go. xD

Fabric doesn't want to photograph it's true color, as usual. It's a bit darker than it looks.
The clock ticked away and soon we noticed there was only about one hour left before Desucon would open its doors and so we started putting on our cosplays. My cosplay for the day was Yukinaga Kuroyama, an Original Character. I had fun putting on long pointy ears (I love these things!) and then I battled with the obi because it's so slippery that it didn't stay tied for very long. I managed after a while and when we all were done Moonbeam had someone drive us to the con.
At the con we were welcomed by something I didn't quite expect there was a horse-head guy and a hair-overload guy singing (more like, screaming) some heavy metal at the entrance. It was glorious, I tell you. All horns up for these two! \m/



After having enjoyed the duo's little performance for a while we went to get our tickets, but because printing them out before the con hadn't been possible for us we had the tickets in an USB key. The persons at the Desucon ticket table at the entrance told us to go to the info desk and so we went inside the con to get our tickets printed. Actually, the random guy guarding the entrance door (aka ticket controller) seemed suspicious about letting us walk past without tickets. >.< I showed him the USB key and told him that the people at the ticket desk adviced us to go the info and then he let us pass. We ended up getting our tickets printed and got fatass fabric tickets on our wrists instead, securing us as Desucon attendants, booyah!

Desucon 2014 ticket. It looks pretty boring, I must add.
It didn't take many minutes before we bumped into Joel who was cosplaying Saizou Kirigakure from Brave 10. He said that he didn't have any friends with him on this day so we quickly adopted him into our group! We ended up hanging together the whole day and he even did a photoshoot for us!
Oh, and I must mention that during the shoot we saw a house that was sailing away. Yes, a house. It was beautiful but I failed to take a picture of it on time. :C It was basically a house built on some wooden platform that was floating around and moved; some Finnish invention I guess, probably related to sauna lol. But now, photoshoot pictures!

Cosplayer: Valkoinen Samurai (Yukinaga Kuroyama) & Hasakitsuki (Aki)
Photographer: Joel

Not amused.
"What are you doing? Stop that bullshit."
"Piss off, you imbecile! Don't touch me unless you raise my pay!"
"I don't want to be your bodyguard, it sucks balls."
"Give it back, dammit!"
"Stay away... I need an Aki-free zone."
"I SAID STAY AWAY... OR TASTE MY STEEL."
Bonus pics!



This was by far the most hilarious, crack-worthy and totally-not-serious photoshoot I've had so far! Then again Yukinaga is supposed to be this kind of character who is constantly grumpy, annoyed and probably even growing a dick on his forehead because he's always pissed about Aki's positivity, cheerfulness, crossdressing and teasing attempts. Positiivisuus on perseestä. All in all this photoshoot was so different of what I'm used to – I was supposed to do derpy angry faces instead of serious angry faces!

After the photoshoot Joel had to go to the closest food store to buy something to eat and we tagged along as company and I was his sword-holder. Not too long after that we had to leave because Moonbeam's cosplay was still unfinished; she wanted to go home a bit earlier to have a chance of finishing it, before the whole con is over, so that she wouldn't need to pull sewing all-nighters. There wasn't that much to do on Friday anyway at the con –and we both were fairly tired from the long train journey– so we left to charge or batteries for Saturday.

Saturday

Aaah, Saturday morning. I didn't even have a bad case of morning lag, what happened? We had breakfast and then started putting on our cosplays. I took a bit less-of-a-forever than I thought I would with the eye makeup for Okita, progress! My wig had got slightly damaged during the travel but luckily Moonbeam had a wig head that I borrowed on Friday to put the wig on over the night. When I now put the wig on I noticed that the side pieces were crooked (yeah, that was the damage) and looked funny so I borrowed a straightener and then it was a-ok!
When everyone was done we got a ride to the con (except for Moonbeam and her assistant because she wanted to try finishing her cosplay so yeah, they stayed a bit longer) and pretty much the first thing me and Hasakitsuki did was to check the Dealer's Hall because now it was finally open! It wasn't on Friday. We spotted the table of the Japanese candy guy (yeah, best nickname ever lol) and Hasakitsuki bought candies for way too much. He had so much awesome stuff!

*beep*
Now it's time for an advertisement break. 
No, not really, just kidding! It's time for the generic con photos!





People made these small papers with funny texts and stuff!

This seemed so suspicious before it was revealed what it actually was... xD

That was the end of generic con photos. Con summary may continue.
*bleep*

Okay, back to the con. We just walked around for a while and at some point I was in so much pain I needed to go to the bathroom. I started feeling better after a while and we went to the food store to go buy some small things to eat. Because I had fake blood on my face (Okita happens) it was hard to eat without accidentally smearing the blood and so we got the wonderful idea to use a straw for all drinkable things and well, things that weren't drinkable Hasakitsuki ended up feeding me; Chizuru didn't mind too much, lol.


We barely had time to eat our Angry Birds chocolate puddings before the Desucon weather decided that it was time to kick in! Dark rain clouds were rolling in and the curse continued. Actually, it ended up raining more or less for the whole remainder of Saturday and so our much wanted photoshoot had to be postponed for a later con. Meh. Of course it has to rain on the main day – it's no fun otherwise. OTL Aah Desucon, we love your weather so...

At some point my feet started to hurt and so we went to sit down next to the rhythm/dancing games. Earlier Hasakitsuki had bought a doujinshi from the yaoi guy's table (Finns all know who I mean) and that included a rainbow flag; I was bored so of course I snatched the flag and fooled around ~

"Looking for a man ~" eiku xD
Khrmm. Yeah. Let's move on...
*cough*

Being pretty bummed about the rain we stayed inside and derped around for a while. Eventually we got hungry and needed more than snacks to silence our stomachs and so we headed out to get the obligatory Desucon pizza, aka let's raid the nearby Kotipizza.

What you mean everyone else had thought about eating pizza too?
Luckily we happened to get there just when the line was relatively small so we only had to wait about 30 minutes or something, in total, for our pizza. Because the place is small pretty much all the indoor tables were taken and it was too warm anyway so we took a table outside that was sheltered from the rain. Good thing we still had the straw so I could drink some coke without any problems, but when it came to the pizza eating Hasakitsuki gave me directions where to aim the pizza-filled fork (so that I don't shove it into the blood) and then it worked. xD

I don't remember exactly but at some point during the Saturday, I can't remember when, a guy came up to me and asked for my picture. He asked me later if the blood on my face was real/my own and I replied "no it isn't. If it was I would be dead" and he seemed completely confused and probably a bit creeped out by my answer. :)) It looked like he didn't know the character so that might explain why such a reaction. I'm not wounded, I'm supposed to be sick. Afterwards me and Hasakitsuki had a good laugh. xD
Oh oh oh! There was a group of Japanese tourists (or at least I assume they were tourists) at the con of which one of them who after having observed us from a slight distance for quite a while came up to us and asked for a photo. She seemed so happy, fangirly and excited that I could just have melted right back then! She took some photos and then proceeded to bow very deeply several times and thank us and ghjsajhgdhgjs;shkg I COULD HAVE DIED OF THE ADORABLE-NESS! ;A; Yeah, now that's a word. I tried to keep a sort-of-in-character face and just smile politely but inside I was bubbling and spreading everywhere like sparkly unicorn goo – definitely one of the best cosplay reactions I've had so far! I had glitter and hyper-happiness in my system for the rest of the con day because of her, hnng! TwT

Later we ate some yummy Japanese Pokémon candies bought from the Japanese candy guy of course that were a "you thought I was bubblegum? lolnope" edition. It was some kind of candy but it looked like those flat bubblegum sheets...

Pikachu candies!
And now some quick duo face photos taken by me, selfie-style!



This is the "try to smile and not look bad" pic. xD
We stayed and watched the Iltabileet (night party) a while from above and then we ran into Moonbeam and went back to her apartment for the night. There we watched some episodes of Vampire Princess Miyu anime before heading to bed. Ah, old-school anime...

Iltabileet dancers.
Sunday

On Sunday it was time for our school uniform Hakuouki cosplays. It's nice to have an easy cosplay for the last con day; it feels more relaxed, chill and comfy to move around in.
Our morning started like all con Sunday mornings do – laggy and slow. But at least I had my eyes still attached to my face, unlike Hasakitsuki, who had raisins in the eye sockets after her contact lenses were trolling. Oh and speaking of contact lenses, mine trolled too! On Saturday I had no problems with putting on my contacts (I wore the same lenses two days in a row) but on Sunday the left one decided to be a bitch; when I put it on it came off when I rubbed my eye and of course it had to fall into the sink! I took it out, cleaned it again and put it on and OH MY GOSH THE PAIN! It hurt like piss and I immediately took it off, cleaned it once more and put it back on. This time it was slightly uncomfortable but nothing that didn't go away after one minute or so. Oh well, save for the contacts I didn't have any other problems with putting my cosplay on... except that I took longer doing my makeup because I kept screwing up.

When we got to the con we went pretty early to have a photoshoot next to the dock area. We hadn't found a photographer so we just ended up taking turns photographing each other. The sunlight was pretty strong and this cast very dark shadows that made most of the photos turn out not quite alright. But at least we got a few okay ones...

Cosplayer & photo editor: Valkoinen Samurai (Souji Okita)
Photographer: Hasakitsuki



Selfie style, taken by me.
After the shoot we went back inside the con and walked around a bit; we spotted Anniilaugh, whom we had seen already on the earlier days, and she mentioned that she had been taken into the Hall Cosplay competition and ended up winning the whole shit. I congratulated her because her cosplay was ultra amazing and for me it's no surprise that she won! Anniilaugh asked if we had watched the Sunday cosplay competition because there had been an awesome Pokémon sketch thing. When she mentioned that it included Digletts I realized it was this "mystery Pokémon thing" that was mentioned in the Exciter's Momentum blog of which I had been curious about! In her company was a girl who had recorded the Diglett sketch and so we watched it (without sounds, because no sounds) and I laughed my ass off – oh god it was gold! XD It seems that it was recorded and uploaded on Youtube and I'll totally go watch it with the sounds later. I did get explanations though what music was playing when and stuff but still, it was hilarious! Wish I had gone to see it but I had honestly forgotten all about it. ;_;
Oh well, later we ended up in the Dealer's Hall again and Hasakitsuki bought herself another eyecandy doujinshi from you-know-what-seller. We also bought our very first Ramune soda; I've wanted to try one ever since I started going to cons in 2011 and now I just couldn't resist anymore despite being well aware that Ramune are quite pricey. We picked a litchi flavored one and went outside to drink it. We had a short battle, including "how do you open this thing, the instructions don't work!?!" awkward moment, but eventually we put our Ramune-noob heads together and solved the mystery! I must say it was surprisingly good!

Ramune feat. Okita plushie!
Hasakitsuki even bought some ice cream.
I don't remember exactly when but I had promised to photoshoot Moonbeam's Usagi Tsukino (Sailor Moon) cosplay and when I went to find her I found FankiKitsune in her company as well. I didn't know they were friends so it was a pretty cool surprise because I knew FankiKitsune before I met Moonbeam, haha – the world is small! :'D
When we were photoshooting at the dock area there was this one guy cosplaying Finland from the Scandinavia and the World comics and he went into the water and swore in Finnish and did other beautiful things. When he had been in the water for a while he started walking towards the shore and then he slipped in this hilarious looking way, you know, like that "banana peel slip" that happens in cartoons! Basically, when you fall on your ass with your legs straight up! xD So yeah, he slipped on the shore and two legs were poking straight up from the water and then he was swearing again, just like the character is supposed to. It was gold!! *laughs* And then he came up to us asking for a hug while being completely soaked – "Give a hug to the land of a thousand lakes, perkele!" x) But yeah, while I was at it I did a quick photoshoot for FankiKitsune as well – he was cosplaying schooluniform!Hitsugaya from Bleach

You see, because we both were cosplaying school boys we took a photo together!
Later we ran into Joel again, after having magically managed to not see him at all on Saturday. I asked if he could possibly photoshoot us again but he said that he had to leave soon so it didn't work out. On this moment we were hungry so we sat down on one of the tables inside and ate one of our provision triangle sandwiches. There wasn't much time left of the con and before we knew it some staff member came and told us to start moving outside in 3-2-1-now – basically making it clear that Desucon 2014 was over. I haven't been in any other con in a while where I was so eagerly chased out after the clock had struck the last minutes... *shrugs*

Snack time!
We noticed a little prior to being chased out that Ri-kun had come to sit down on the table behind us and I asked, once more, if they could possibly photoshoot us outside. The answer was positive and so we headed outside to shoot during the con's final minutes! There was a nice small park-ish area just next to the con that we deemed fit for a school surrounding.

Cosplayer: Valkoinen Samurai (Souji Okita) & Hasakitsuki (Chizuru Yukimura)
Photographer: Ri-kun
Photo editor: Valkoinen Samurai 









Bonus pic!

Chizuru: Okita-san, give me the chocolate please!
Souji: Then you have to catch it ~
I must say that I'm overly pleased with this photoshoot; we got surprisingly many good ones! Ri-kun's photography skills definitely leveled up since last time! Yay!

If we bundle it all up I must say that all in all Desucon was as enjoyable as ever! It went by way too fast too, haha. It's just a shame that Desucon has its notorious weather curse always occurring...

Oh, and as per usual here is a con video consisting of photos I took during Desucon. If you want a photo leave a comment on my blog here or on the Youtube video.


That's about it. Thanks everyone who was with me during the con for making it a great experience, even all those peeps who came to ask a photo or just swap a few words! Desucon 2014 was a success!
Oh, and if anyone happens to have photos of me from Desucon I'd be happy if you sent them to me! :D My email can be found to the left of my blog as usual. Thanks!
But now I'm off!

...
......
Or no. 
I'm not off.
There is still something waiting for you. 
You know what it is? – Good.

... 
FINAL SUPER SURPRISE BONUS PICTURE, PERKELE!

There went my night's sleep...
That's it for now, really! Next up I'll be seen at Skecon in Skellefteå, Sweden! 
Hold on and see you!

June 3, 2014

Desucon 2014 cosplay plans – A reluctant bodyguard and double Okita!

Heeeeeeey!

I've barely recovered from Cosvision's con hype lag (it lasted longer than usual, I still get the Cosvision feels! *flappy hands*) but very soon it's time for Desucon! I'm pretty set for what I will cosplay so here goes!

Friday

Series: Original
Character: Yukinaga Kuroyama


Eeyup, I will be heading to the con in an Original Character costume! I think this might be the first time I'm ever doing this; I'm pretty curious how it will turn out. Hasakitsuki will do a pair cosplay with me from the same OC story and yeah, it actually has a name Demon Idol. *badamtssh* 
She will cosplay the main character, who is the idol, and I'm cosplaying the idol's not-so-excited-about-his-job bodyguard. Oh, and there's no picture for you this time (I don't have time to draw one!) but I can tell you that Yukinaga has white hair, a horn on his head, pointy ears and is wearing *drumroll* kimono! You didn't see the last one coming, now did you?

Saturday

Series: Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan
Character: Souji Okita (bedridden yukata, anime version)


I don't know what to call this version or if it even has a proper/official name, sorry. But it's basically that pale violet yukata Okita is seen wearing in the anime especially often in the later episodes when his condition worsens. ;_;
If someone remembers I actually wore this same version once before at Desucon 2012 (my first Desucon! *nostalgic feels*) and since then I've meant to remake it... and that's done now. Hasakitsuki will help me around as Chizuru and I will be taking with me a black haori for comfort warmth. Kondou-san was here. ;A;

Sunday

Series: Hakuouki SSL ~Sweet School Life~
Character: Souji Okita (summer uniform)

Screenshot from http://www.otomate.jp/hakuoki/ssl/
 Okita again, this time in a more modern format. Yep, I needed an easy "normal clothes" cosplay for Sunday so that I don't have to change out of it after the con when I have to run for the train back home. So yeah, school boy Okita will get his debut at Desucon!

That's about it, Desucon is calling soon! SOOOOON.
Bye!

June 2, 2014

Souji Okita's violet yukata remade!

Hello there!

Yesterday on 1st June I biked to mom's place together with Hasakitsuki
Our reason, you ask? Make some cosplay progress for the very-rapidly-approaching Desucon! Go go go!

I already spoiled one of my cosplay plans earlier and that was Okita-san's violet yukata version. Remade, of course. Because my original one is so damn bad that I wouldn't wear it to a con even if I got paid for it. So yeah, I went to mom's to remake this fucker! 8D Because mom has the awesome high-tech sewing machine and I have trusting issues with the old-school one I got to borrow...

So around afternoon 15:00 or such (Finnish time) I started sewing; I had already cut out all the parts needed (except for the collar) at Jäätynyt Enkeli's home a few days prior. I did the measuring and cutting based on some French kimono tutorial as well as my own knowledge.


(note: this picture is of a woman's kimono, I'm making one for men)
I tried to make it accurate, as far as appearance is concerned, but I did cut some stuff off instead of folding it inside collars/seams and stuff because I just couldn't be bothered – for example the collar and okumi panels. The kimono police won't come and chase me with a naginata for a not 100% authentically accurate cosplay yukata anyway. Phew.
Well well, let's get on with this; at mom's the first thing I did was zigzaging around all the pieces except for the okumi panel pieces and the collar, but I hadn't even cut it out at this point because it was to be made of a different fabric.
The first part I attacked after the zigzaging was the sleeves. I went to iron them to make life a bit easier; one small fold for where your hand will come out of the sleeve and one bigger fold for the sleeve's "hanging end", so that there will be less bulk when I sew it shut later.
Oh, much later on I sewed a straight stitch on top of the small fold so that I would get a neat finish and avoid having to fold in the hand opening when I sew the rest of the sleeve shut.

Sleeve preparing – ironing.
I then left 10 centimeters of the sleeve hanging off the body panel (for men's kimono only), aka leaving the sleeves not fully attached to the body of the garment. Then I just sewed the sleeves on. Of course before this I had taken the body panels (left and right) and ironed them in the middle to get shoulder folds; this makes attaching sleeves a lot easier because kimono does not have shoulder seams. I had ironed the sleeves in the middle too to have a corresponding fold that I could easily match up with the shoulder fold to see that it was centered.

10 centimeters marked.
Sleeve attached to one body panel.
With the sleeves on I sewed the back seam shut. I also ironed it flat so that it would look better. Now the front is fully open and the other half, the back, is closed.

Back seam done.
After the back seam I just had to sew the sides shut. I started at one of the sleeves, left 27 cm for the hand opening (this measure is for a man's kimono, women have smaller openings) and then started sewing it shut. When I reached the armpit I prayed to the almighty cosplay gods that it would go well but lolnope, my wish wasn't granted; it ended up being wrinkled and fugly as usual so I had to rip up the armpit seam after I had sewn down the rest of the side. I swear, armpit seams are the bane of my existence, I never get them right. Of course the other sleeve's armpit seam had to derp as well and so I ended up hand-sewing these suckers down.

 I have no idea what I'm doing but let's hope it turns out a-ok! (handsewing)
With the sides sewn I took my okumi pieces and cut them triangle-ish. Actually you are just supposed to fold the excess of the okumi panels into the collar somehow, but I couldn't be bothered to be this accurate so I just cut it brutally into a close-enough shape. I have cheap cotton, not precious silk.

Okumi panels.
I sewed the okumi panels on and noticed soon afterwards that I HAD PUT WAY TOO MUCH SEAM ALLOWANCES EVERYWHERE. It's hilarious to the point of ridiculous because my first yukata ended up being way too narrow to wear properly –because of lack of fabric– and this remade version turned into a "size: SUMO". Needless to say I spent some time taking in all the seams (okumi included) at the very least 2 centimeters, sometimes up to 5 centimeters! And then I spent the remains of the day ripping up the first seams I made because double seams look bad. Don't we all love ripping seams?

Yeah, I actually slept over at mom's place. I need to finish this yukata before I leave or it's not gonna get done in time. On the following morning I woke up fairly early (more time to sew!) and started preparing to make the collar. I cut up 9 cm at the shoulder folds on both sides on the front to make room for the collar. At this point I also lazied out of accuracy so I just measured a straight line from the 9 cm cut to the beginning of the okumi panel and cut out a triangular part on both sides, to make room for the collar.

Upper part of the front panels. Also shows shoulder folds.
Making slits on the shoulder for the collar.
I had found a piece of white scrap fabric that was pretty much perfect for the white collar in a plastic bag in the attic; I measured around the part of my yukata where the collar would be attached and I ended up with it being approximately 180 cm. Luckily the scrap fabric piece was just below 2 meters long so I had enough!
I cut out a 14 cm wide piece (it's called seam allowances and the final collar will be folded in half), ironed it and attached interfacing fabric to the whole length. Then I just folded and ironed it in the middle and sewed it on. I trimmed the interfacing fabric excess off as well.

First, iron it smooth.
Add the interfacing fabric! Floppy collars are eew.
While I was pinning down the collars on the yukata I figured that I could fold inside the collar ends to avoid having an additional (and inaccurate) seam at the very end of it. Of course the iron was of help in keeping the fold inside. Like this:

Folded like this shows.
Folded and pinned in place.
Being sewn on.
Lastly I spent forever trying to figure out if the bottom hem of the thing was straight or not. I swear when I put effort in measuring the whole length of the yukata and trying to get it to be 140 cm long (my ideal kimono length) it kept trolling me. It's like, when I measured it carefully so that it would be 140 cm at all ends then lolnope, it was completely not straight when you lined it up. I probably tried all possible measuring methods but there was always something giving me a headache and finally I got tired of its bullshit and just folded in 1 cm everywhere and prayed that it wouldn't end up uneven as hell... and it actually turned out surprisingly okay. What the actual fuck?! :'DD And here prior to this I put so much effort in trying to straighten it out before getting fed up and opting for the most basic couldn't-care-less solution. Grah! the fabric was cut unevenly to begin with so I don't even know anymore why it didn't end up straight when I tried to measure it right... gh gh gh gh hurr durr derp.

With the bottom hemmed my yukata was basically finished and so we biked back home and I took a few photos of it. If I have time I will do a preview before Desucon but if not then you have to satisfy yourself with this finished product photo:

It's finished! And doesn't fit on my bed.
Valkoinen Samurai goes off to eat some pancakes and think about what more stuff needs to be done before the con arrives ~

May 30, 2014

Where are my Desucon tickets? A tale of panic and relief!

What's with the flashy title?
– Sit down and see, dudes and dudettes. I'll share my experiences.

You see, back when Desucon released their tickets I was a part of the ticket rush and I managed to elbow my way through and fetch two PDF-tickets. Now –with the con creeping close– I suddenly realized late a few nights ago that "hey dude, you haven't even received the tickets yet!" *booom* Stress. Panic. THE HORROR.


I immediately sent an email to Desucon and asked what was going on; I had paid and everything so why was there no tickets to be seen anywhere? I got an answer telling me to check my mail's trash bin in case the confirmation mail (feat. tickets) had been sent there by mistake and, if not that, to check my Desu profile on the con's website. I checked my trash mail inbox –nothing there– and then I logged in to the Desucon site and saw... the most horrible thing. You see, at the "payment situation" box it read cancelled. Motherfucking cancelled.


I immediately logged in to my bank and saw that yes, the money had been taken on the same day I ordered. I remember paying for the tickets instantly. Okay, so what was up? My cash was gone yipee but there were no Desucon tickets and my order was claimed to be cancelled. This didn't feel all that great. No, not at all.
I kept mailing back and forth with the Desucon sales support over the coming days and sent them a screenprint showing proof that I had paid from my bank.
Today I then got an answer that said that seemingly the problem was that because the payment was registered (or whatever it's called in English, "merkkaantunut maksetuksi" in Finnish)
on 22nd April in my bank and it had –for some reason– not been registered in Desucon's system and thus it said cancelled even though it had gone through on my bank. This contact person fixed it and sent me my printable PDF-tickets to my Desucon profile, YEEESSSS!


Phew, this feels like the biggest relief ever; for a moment I thought I was screwed for good! I had time to think all horrible possibilities – that I had accidentally, in all the rush chaos, paid to the wrong receiver or paid too late (I got told that if you didn't pay after a few hours of purchase it was automatically cancelled) and everything in between. But luckily it was just a system registration fart on their site. I am so relieved. I am 100% coming to Desucon now!

Oh, and before I leave I'll tell you guys that I've managed to get myself a sleeping place for the Desucon weekend, hell yeah! I'll be trolling over at a congoer's home who happens to live in Lahti and is going to Desucon as well. I don't think we have met IRL before but from what I've talked with her online she seems very nice. I'm thankful that she invited us over to her place over the con weekend! >w<

That's it, now to just continue working on my Desucon cosplays! Ciao ciao!

May 23, 2014

Okita wig styling, fabric and quick photoshoot

Hello neh ~

With Desucon closing in I decided that I should try styling my wig for Okita ahead of time. Cosplay plans spoiler ahead! This time I wanted to do the first season version on which he still has the hairknot in the back. I'm happy that this one wig I have (I actually have three wigs for Okita currently, oops) has some additional hair pieces that you can just clip on and tie into the knot. But yeah, this is what I started with:

Wig before styling. (has been straightened)
Wig after styling.
I must say I barely have any wig styling experience to speak of (I've mostly just cut wigs shorter, once I tried spiking a wig slightly and that's about it) so it's not the cleanest wig work ever but oh well, it's not horrible either.. I guess. Then again I'm cosplaying a version of Okita on which he is more or less constantly lying in bed; sure that anime has always-perfect-hair logics but it would make sense if his hair was a bit messy on this particular version haha... seli seli
   Making that knot was a fucking bitch, by the way. It took several tries and I would have needed at least four hands at times... but with some determination I managed to do it alone. I might have to retie it sooner or later though because some of the hairs came out of the knot and just, well, hang. ._. I've already cut some like this but more will eventually appear and it's better I just retie it when that happens instead of gradually cutting all the long hairs off, haha.

With the wig done I got excited and had to try it on with the cosplay makeup and contacts – and then I put on the whole shit. And I mean shit as well in the way that I used my old soon-to-be-remade-for-Desucon violet yukata that is too short, not wide enough and everything in between. Gah. I can barely stand wearing this thing because it's so bad. xD I need to remake it soon! Yep, cosplay plans spoiler totally revealed.

I went outside with my photographer and had a quick photoshoot between 21-22 May. Yeah, basically we had a midnight shoot but hey, midnight sun to the rescue! Main reason was to show off the wig but I ended up playing with blood as well...

Taken by Hasakitsuki.
We didn't get much in the name of good-enough-to-publish photos because of random photobombing cars in the background and me being a derp and such. I ended up taking a bunch of selfies though, cuz I wanted to have face-pics because of blooooooooood ~





Actually I have a bonus story to share! After the photoshoot I was... quite freezing so to speak, so we went back inside and boiled some tea. As soon as I drank from my cup I blew a coughing fit because well, I'm a master at choking on things. Like, it's bad. This made Hasakitsuki look at me with a "not again" face and then, when I moved my hand away from my face, I noticed it was bloody. Of course, I still had blood on my face from the shoot but for a split-second it looked like I had coughed it up and Hasakitsuki screamed at me "ARE YOU SERIOUS?!". Well, I'm sorry, but I can't help choking on pretty much everything and having random not so random blood on my face...

I'm pretty sure that I will end up running around bloody at Desucon as well, but we'll see about that. Before I promise anything I should really get going with remaking this dang yukata. I've already bought some fabric for it that is very very slightly darker than the fabric I have on this first version; would have preferred lighter but it's pisshard to find, like, it's not even funny how hard it is to find a pale-ass violet. Actually I found an almost perfect shade in Eurokangas but it was a scrap piece and there wasn't enough of it... *insert sobs here* Even this fabric that I ended up buying barely had the amount that I needed so I bought everything that was left of the roll in the store haha.

Fabric, slightly color raped because of bad lights.
Mom brought some violet sewing thread rolls that I can use, along with the sewing machine.
(flash photo)
I've borrowed the old sewing machine that used to be grandpa's but we'll see if this thing obeys my commands when I start sewing. I have a bad feeling about it. Last time I tried I barely sewed 10 centimeters before it decided it was time to fuck things up and not work properly. Heh, I don't have much hope in this thing but I will try taming it at least.

Oh, and I'm currently storing my styled Okita wig on my one-and-only wig head which means that my Kondou wig, which used to have this beloved place, had to move. Needless to say I had to look for a replacement wig head and after some seconds of thinking I had a flash of genius!

Konhorse!! ... or is it Horsedou?
IMMAH HOERSSS!!1
It's beautiful. I know. xD

Valkoinen Samurai says byebye!
*slinks away into the darkness*