Hotaru's sword from Samurai Deeper Kyo!

Hi there everyone!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tsuba put to dry after adding filler.

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

Guessed it?

– Yep, dumpster diving time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Worbla pieces added – success!

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

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

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

Worbla gets a bit paler by sanding...?

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

Primer in a spray can!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Glossy varnish that I used.

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

Finished SDK Hotaru sword!

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

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

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

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

Shiro Samurai out.

Black Bullet Rentarou Satomi's gun

Hello cosplayers!

As some of you might remember I've mentioned cosplaying Rentarou Satomi from Black Bullet for a while ago. The thing is that I actually already have the whole outfit completed and my original plans was to debut him already last summer but yeah, I chose not to debut him back then because I was missing the gun. The gun is such an important part that I didn't feel okay going without it and well, I'm horrible at coming up with poses to do without a prop anyway. xD And besides, the series is not called Black Bullet for no reason – aka going without his trusty weapon felt pretty much the same as going without pants, lol.

Rentarou reference.

Rentarou Satomi uses a Springfield Armory XD as his primary gun and in the series he says that it's just "a normal gun". Well, it might not be completely normal in the series either but I tell you that it's a fucking nightmare to find one for cosplay purposes!! I've spent over half a year, on and off, searching for something suitable and oh lord is it stupidly hard to come by. I've plowed through eBay multiple times with no results, I've checked all airsoft online shops that I know of (within Europe) and I've even checked toy stores for toy guns both online and in real life. 

My original plan was to buy an airsoft replica of a close-enough gun, but the more I thought about it the more I didn't feel like spending 1500 SEK on a prop, for a cosplay that I likely won't use all that much – just not worth it. It would have been different if I had been an airsoft player too but sadly I'm not, although I do have an interest in trying it at least. Oh and for those curious the guns I were eyeing for Rentarou were either this one or this; I know that they are not 100% accurate but they were the closest I could find. (note: Swedish store. Those were the only Springfield Armory guns they carried)

Rentarou's gun reference.

After deciding that even though an airsoft replica would have been the most ideal choice it was by far out of what I was willing to pay for a single prop. My next choice was to check for a similar toy gun online and oh lord I won't even tell how many online stores I went through without finding anything even remotely similar; at some point I thought that it would be okay if I could at least find a damn glock but even that was seemingly too much to ask for. I don't know what's up with the miniscule amount of toy guns (you pretty much only find revolvers, cowboy guns and some smaller-than-real-deal pistols or shot guns, if lucky) currently on the market but I guess it has something to do with the heated debates about if it's morally right for children to play with toy guns. I do have my opinions about that but I won't open up my wordy chest about it here because that's not the purpose of this post and yeah, I could easily do a whole blog post about it. xD 
Feel free to skip until the next block of text but yeah, for those really curious I can say that I support kids playing with toy guns and that's mainly because I see nothing wrong with it – kids don't think about death etc the same way adults do. I remember as a kid I'd play war with my best childhood friend during school breaks and we made pretend guns with our fingers and yeah, when we shot each other we just pretended to fall down, counted to 10 and then we could continue playing again. It was never violent or unfair in any way, just fun and a way to up our reaction speeds and imagination. So yeah, even though I played that kind of games as a kid I grew up to be a normal adult who knows what's wrong and right. Playing with toy guns doesn't make you a murderer or whatever and especially not if you otherwise had a good upbringing; I'm sure parenting and environment plays a bigger role than what toys you had when young. That's all for this quickie opinion. :)

Because I couldn't find any toy guns neither online or in physical toy stores I gave up on finding a gun for a while and just put this costume on ice. I even tried to find some damaged second-hand or otherwise non-functional airsoft guns on auction sites that I could use because yeah, I just needed it for looks and not for use; I found some reparation project guns but none had the general shape I was looking for.
I even tried to look for those brightly colored plastic practice guns but yeah, couldn't find those either on eBay in the right models...

Anime screenshot of Rentarou pointing his gun.

I've noticed that Rentarou's gun isn't consistent in the anime either so yeah, at some point I just decided "screw perfect accuracy" and decided on just finding whatever fake gun that I could that was as cheap as possible and that I could modify to fit, if necessary. I thought that most people would probably not even pay as much attention to it than I would – as long as I had a damn gun that would be better than none at all, lol. What you mean I got sick of hours upon hours of fruitless searches? :DD

I also checked online for an actual character prop gun for cosplay purposes but the only store that showed up seemed so fishy and the photos looked stolen anyway so yeah, I wasn't too keen on buying from them. Finding cosplay props for that masked guy from Black Bullet was easy but for some reason finding a gun for Rentarou, who's the goddamn main character, is impossible. What the heck?? ლ( `Д’ ლ)

Okay so, it was pretty clear that a toy gun would be the cheapest and still easiest to find. I had plowed through all local toy shops and even checked the multiple second-hand stores several times (that's where I got lucky for my last gun project!). I was annoyed because I found toy guns that would have been suitable if only they had been in the right scale. All good ones were always smaller than their true size!! (I guess so that it would be even more obvious that they were toys)

Official artwork.

I suddenly remembered that those annual outdoor markets in my town used to have toy sellers that carried a nice variety of toy guns! Luckily this came to my mind just a few weeks before one of the markets came to town and so, of course, I headed there with my bro, Frozen Angel. It was on 10th March and the market stands were all closing so only 3 of them were still open when we arrived – but much to my joy two of the still open ones were indeed the toy sellers! I instantly saw that they had an interesting sortiment of toy guns for rather affordable prices. I stood there for probably close to 10 minutes wondering which pistol I should take and when the Finnish guy, who was the seller, came and asked me what I was looking for I even said that I needed a toy gun to finish my costume. He was a really funny guy who joked around and seemed to really like selling toys; he gave me some recommendations and I walked home with a 6 € cheapo police gun set.

I know it's not super accurate or anything but yeah, fuck that. :) The size was good, it was the most square-ish pistol the seller had and it was the cheapest too. I also noticed that the "secret mission" text was thankfully just a sticker so I could easily peel it off and have an anonymous toy gun, lol. The other ones all had the name of the gun type molded into the plastic itself so yeah, no easy way to get rid of it.
I obviously had no use for the police badge nor the rubber ammunitions (although they were hella nostalgic) so when I noticed that the gun didn't actually even work, aka shoot off the ammos, I wasn't even disappointed lol. I planned to modify it unusable anyway, just to be on the safe side because yeah, you never know with con rules.

The first thing I did once the gun was out of the package was that I peeled off the sticker, no problemas! After that I shortened the pipe; there surely would have been easier and neater ways to do it but I went ghetto savage and just cut it off with a motherfucking ordinary food knife, ou yeah!

It works but it takes some patience. xD I proceeded to sand the rough edges with 120 grit sand paper, it worked just fine and the shortened pipe was quickly nice again.
I want to mention though that please don't be rough when cutting off the pipe; I accidentally was and noticed afterwards that the plastic next to the gun's mouth had cracked at the seams. It might not be that much of a big deal since it's easy to just glue in place but yeah, it might still ruin your prop. The plastic is thin and because it's hollow inside it doesn't have much support so yeah, if you hold it down too roughly when cutting then it will crack, sooner or later.

Just showing the crack.

Next up I figured that I'd need to open the whole thing to get rid of that protruding launcher thing in the back – I really didn't want it there because it was ugly and inaccurate as fuck. But much to my annoyment I realized that the only screw driver I had was way too big to even fit into the tiny holes so yeah, off we go to visit mom and stepdad and borrow some of his tools. It's so convenient because he pretty much has all the tools I'll ever need for my cosplay prop projects, lololol.
I got to borrow a set of mini-size screw drivers and on the same go I picked up the hot glue gun too. When I got home I screwed up all the tiny little screws and opened up the whole shebang.

Opened toy gun. All parts still intact.

It's... very empty inside. Then again, that's pretty much what I expected.
I first took out the pipe part and then I noticed that I had to break the launcher's triangular tip to get off the trigger from the rod; it took some violence and a knife but I managed to get it off. I removed the spring and the transparent rubbery presser thingy (not visible above) next which, by the way, had some yucky grease on it. Some of the same grease was on the rod too. I guess that's what you should expect when it's a really cheap China-produced toy...

The parts, which are mentioned above, removed.

Even after removing the triangular tip the rod still protruded from the back of the gun so yeah, I just decided to scrap it all together. Luckily the trigger didn't need the rod to stay in place; there was a hole for it where it was locked in place once both halves of the gun were on. I noticed that, once the rod was gone, the trigger lost all its tension and just rattled around when I shaked the gun (when re-assembled). I thought that I could just as well set it in place so I took the hot glue gun and filled the hole with glue and pressed the trigger's matching hole into the hole on the gun's body and waited for it to dry. So many holes. The trigger stuck nicely and now it won't move anymore, which is for the better because no silly rattling sounds anymore and now even the con security guys will be able to try it, if they are suspicious, and notice that you can't even press down the trigger, hah!

Rod completely removed and the trigger glued in place.

Next up I painted the pipe black. I thought it would be easier to paint it before I screwed the whole thing closed again. I used some black gloss spray paint that works on many kinds of surfaces.

Painted pipe. I used the rod as a holder, yay usefulness!

After the pipe had dried I put it back in place and then I re-assembled and closed the gun. After that I took my hot glue gun and filled in the screw holes – they bothered me. With the holes filled I just painted the whole thing with the same black glossy spray paint and left it to dry. Once it was dry I finished it off on the next day with a coating of gloss varnish. I left it to dry one last time.

I hung it to dry in the shower by some rope.

Finished modified toy gun. (ignore my hand, it looks retarded)

Now my gun is done! It's not all that accurate (wrong model and all) but oh well, it's not the end of the world; as long as I have a damn prop it's fine and hey, it was cheap! :'D I could of course have built on top of it –to change the shape– but honestly, I'm lazy and don't want to waste my worbla on this lol. I'd rather save it for some cosplays I'm more likely to wear a lot and for a long time. *coughmonsterhunterarmorscough* 

But yeah, maybe one day I'll improve it into a more accurate one, if I ever happen to come by an inexpensive Springfield Armory airsoft gun, that is. One can always dream...

Thanks for reading! See you!

Shiro Samurai out.

Dota 2 Invoker cosplay WIP part.1

What's up geeks? :D

I've decided to start on my next big cosplay project! *badum tsssh*

I don't have a set deadline yet for when I want to be finished with this costume but I'm currently aiming for summer 2017. I'm not making any promises regarding the debut con etc but I can say for sure that this cosplay is part of a cosplay group with friends!

The character I will be doing is Invoker from Dota 2.

*drum roll*

I'm pretty sure no one saw this coming and, honestly, if someone had asked me about Invoker half a year ago I'd been like "who's that?". xD I decided to do him on a whim after Närcon Vinter when me, Hitsu and Sacchan were talking about Dota 2 at Hitsu's place. I actually haven't even played the game myself but because Hitsu is a big fan of it I've seen her play and talk about it. I've always had an interest in this kind of games anyway, but because my internet is shit (and my computer is dying) I can't play it comfortably. :/ So yeah, Hitsu mentioned that she had planned to cosplay from Dota 2 and asked if I was interested; I had been wanting to do a pair cosplay with her for years since we're really close friends since school times and we have supported each other a lot during tough times etc. I thought that because she loves Dota 2 then I could join her in the fun and hey, why the hell not? :D I had no clue about the characters though, so I ended up asking Hitsu for suggestions. She first suggested Juggernaut (because of the samurai inspiration) but I didn't really like the design. :/ She then told me that she knew a character that I might like and so she showed me the Invoker and, well, I was game on! 

I don't say no to a fancy badass magician who gives me a reason to do an awesome cape and gain a fair amount of new learning experiences! Besides, his color scheme speaks to me and I get more use for my elf ears. I've always wanted to do at least one wizard cosplay – now I got one! o/

I started working on Invoker on 18th February 2016. I have sewing class in school and one of my teachers is awesome; she can draw patterns by free hand if I just show her what I want to make. So yeah, I had totally saved some reference photos on my cellphone and showed them to her and then I spent some time sketching the different clothing pieces on paper, to give her an idea of what they looked like when separated.

My sketch paper with the measures scribbled
on it by le teacher. (psst, I know that the vest is inaccurate)

 

My teacher started taking some measures and I gave my opinions on how long this and that piece should be, the shape of the sleeves and so on. Some of the body measures are inaccurate because she took them over my clothes and yeah, because it's winter I am wearing multiple layers and so suddenly my ass is 10+ cm wider than it actually is, lol. *coughsomanypantscough*
We got almost all the patterns drawn and cut out on the first day, here it starts!

I went to fetch some fabric from mom's attic on the following weekend and I ended up picking out a fabric I thought I'd never touch for cosplay purposes, even if I had a 10-feet pole and rubber gloves – are you prepared to hear it? *silence intensifies* .............................................. SATIN.

Yes, that shiny fabric that all cringeworthy cheap online costumes are made out of! :'D But before you decide to mentally roast me, fork me and throw my remains into a fucking sharknado I want to justify myself – not all satins look horrendous to the point you want to gouge your eyes out. You see, mom had a roll of this beautiful plumish violet quality satin fabric that actually looks good. Yeah, say it with me – satin that looks good. Can you believe it??

I decided to use the satin fabric for the jacket or undercoat or whatever you want to call it, of which basically the sleeves and the "tails" are visible. I honestly didn't want to go buy 4 meters of fabric when I could get 4 meters of satin fabric for free and hey, I've seen another Invoker cosplayer online who used shiny fabric for the jacket thingy too and guess what? It looked amazeballs!
So yeah, I thought why not and besides, I don't think it's that off because Invoker is a badass magician and I often imagine magicians with shiny precious-looking robes...

Some of the fabrics etc needed for Invoker.

 

Next time I had sewing class was on 1st March and I brought with me the satin fabric to school because we had prepared all the patterns for it. It turned out that our original idea wouldn't work because we had planned to do the jacket in two parts and thus of two different fabrics and it required that the top would stretch and/or have a zipper. We scratched that idea altogether and decided on a different approach, just so that we wouldn't have to redo most of the patterns. So yeah, what we did was that we decided on splitting the jacket so that the top part of the jacket would stay the same (with the sleeves), except that we would widen it enough so that I could fit it over my head, but the lower part would be the skirt thingy instead of the jacket "tails". This means that the jacket bottom, aka "tails", together with the white front flap thing and the triangular back cape would be a separate piece that attaches directly to the waist. I'm sorry if my explanations make no sense. XD

To check the fit of the widened top part of the jacket pattern, that was the now-to-be-jacket-with-skirt hybrid, I did a quick prototype of a test fabric. It fit well and so I used the prototype as a pattern when I started cutting out all the parts that were to be made of the satin fabric. Hhhhhh.

Cellphone photo of fabric cutting (yellow is the prototype).
The colors are raped, lol.

 

The prototype jacket top was really short and it was originally made short so that the "tails" would split very high up on my waist to give the right look when worn. But yeah, because the top was now to be attached with the skirt and not the "tails" I could afford to lengthen the top. No need to be croptop!Invoker. xD

During that class we cut out all the pieces needed out of the satin fabric. For next class on 3rd March I brought with me the whole bolt (yay mom's fabrics!) of a really dark purple fabric that I had planned to use for Invoker's skirt thingy. I ended up needing to take the fabric width 3 times to get enough fabric for the deep folds of the skirt – that's a lot of fabric!

School's serger. Always hella convenient!

 

I had time to go through all the cut out pieces so far with the serger and OH LORD I'VE FOUND MY NEW NEMESIS WHEN IT COMES TO SERGING – IT'S CALLED DOING CURVES!! ( >д<) It's 99% impossible to do some curves and sharp angles and having the serger actually catching and sealing the edges without the automatic cutter (that moves when you sew, in case someone is not familiar with sergers) taking a big bite from places where you really don't want it to cut. Even my teacher (who's a sewing artesan) said it's impossible to do some curves so yeah, there seemingly is no magic trick that I simply have not been told about...

I sewed the shoulder seams and the side seams closed on the top and later on I went to fetch some white cotton twill from Eurokangas for the bolero, aka the sleeveless vest thingy. I know that at mom's there is a perfect golden fabric that I could make the golden details out of (it doesn't even fray!) and I plan to go fetch it this coming weekend. At mom's there should also be a big roll of white fake leather which I'm planning to use for the cape, since I most likely will want it to be rigid and actually not fold like a normal cape. The reason for this is that in the game his cape stands up on its own and the full design of it is always visible. It should look like some really extravaganza fancy cape with its own will, lol. Fuck gravity!

Invoker reference.

 

I'm not yet sure what I'll make those shoulder armors out of but it's either gonna be the same leather as for the cape (assuming it's suitable, I haven't seen it in person yet) or worbla. I'm honestly a bit intimidated by making it out of worbla because I'm still really new and inexperienced with it and yeah, Invoker's armor would need quite some thinking and skills to get to look nice...

I have most of the fabrics ready or at least planned out. I only need to find something for the gloves (the black parts), the front flap and the white-ish waist & butt skirt thingy. I honestly have no idea what to call it. xD I also need to fetch buttons for the vest but that shouldn't be a problem seeing what a shitload mom has in a box, lol. I might need some fabric for the boots though, if I decide on making them crazy long, as they seem to be on the very first Invoker picture I posted.

Invoker reference without cape, shoulder armor and arm bracers. (and hair, lol)

 

I'm thinking about doing the golden chest armor out of worbla, golden leather (if I can find any) or polystyrene sheets, I haven't decided yet. Those decorations on the front flap I'm not sure about since I have no idea whatsoever if worbla sticks to fabric. Anyone know?
I'm planning on making the arm bracers out of worbla or gold-colored leather as well.

So yeah, I have many things planned out for Invoker but luckily this isn't a cosplay project that needs to be finished anytime soon; it's a more long-term one so I'll have plenty of time to take it slowly and think along the way. It feels good to not have a definite deadline that is all or nothing, hah.

That's all for this time. Stay tuned for the second part!

Shiro Samurai out.

Lens review: I.Fairy Hanabi Gold

Hellouuuu ~

Today I present to you a circle lens review for a golden pair – it's the I.Fairy Hanabi Gold! (ﾉ･ω･)ﾉ This is the second golden lens I'm reviewing! They are also sometimes known as Vassen Hanabi Gold.

Let's go!

Base curve: 8.6 mm
Diameter: 16.2 mm

Water content: 55%
Life span: 1 year (I recommend 6 months)

I must say that I'm drawn to unnatural lens colors like red, violet and gold and so, of course, I had to get these lenses! I was expecting them to show up well because I've had the Hanabi lenses in green and blue before and they were really vivid and colorful. ^^ So yeah, I was expecting these to be just as awesome and they delivered exactly that!

One lens in. Notice enlargement effect.

 

I put these lenses on without any problems and they were comfortable from the first second – they don't hinder my vision in any way nor do they sting my eyes or anything like that. I basically don't even feel that I have contacts on, which is a very good thing. The only disappointment in regards to comfort is that, for some reason, these dried out a lot faster than the other Hanabi lenses I've had – I had to push myself to be able to wear them for 2 hours and 15 minutes without taking them out. That's a really short time considering how I could easily wear the blue and green I.Fairy Hanabi lenses for a full day at an anime convention (approx. 8 hours)! So yeah, except for drying out my eyes fast these lenses are hella comfy. Please note though that I tend to have dry and/or sensitive eyes.

Lens photos coming up!
All photos taken by me during a March morning with a completely cloudy sky. There's no color filters on the close-up photos and that's so that the colors would be as true to real life as possible.
 

Facing window in my apartment, sun side.

Apartment room light. (yellow lamp)

Bathroom light.

Flash photo.

Facing window in the corridor, non-sun side.

Standing in the corridor.

White light in the corridor.

Yellow light in the corridor.

Outdoors, under the roof/shadow. (indirect light)

Outdoors, facing the direction of the light.

Outdoors, back against light. (aka facing wall)

Indoors, storage room. (natural light)

 

As you can see these look gold/yellow in pretty much any light, which is awesome and really appreciated! The color is very vivid and great for cosplay!! I seriously love these lenses! ;u;

They are also really enlarging but not to the point that it looks freaky on me – these lenses give me a dolly look that is cute and flattering. :) I like the cartoony "swirl" effect and the big black limbal ring which really draws attention to the eyes.

I want to mention that the I.Fairy Hanabi line of lenses is one of the few currently available series that have vivid colors and come in both gold and red together with the usual colors! It is a nice cosplay lens and the great color range makes them a perfect choice for those who cosplay characters with heterochromia, aka two differently colored eyes! One character example of this is Soushi Miketsukami (one eye blue, other gold) from Inu X Boku SS and another example I can think of is Nikkari Aoe from Touken Ranbu (one eye gold, other red).

And lastly I have a bunch of distance photos! 

I went for a cute type of look... with small devil horns! I don't go for cutesy looks that often (cuz I don't think I can pull it off tbh -.-) but this time I felt like being a kawaii demon, hehe~

I got a surprising amount of pics that I liked (what is this sorcery??) and I couldn't decide which ones to use so yeah, I decided to just upload all of them. xD #yolo

 

 

If you're interested in checking out other colors of the Hanabi series I'd recommend you to take a look at my other reviews!
Reviews here: Blue, Green

Bonus!

Comparison photo: I.Fairy Hanabi Gold to the left & Blue to the right.

 

Short summary:

Color: 9/10
A nicely pigmented and vivid gold/yellow color that shows up well. Amazing!

Design: 8/10

Cool swirly design with a thick black limbal ring that gives an anime eye effect!

Opacity: 9/10

Really good color coverage.

Enlargement: 8/10

These are big!

Comfort: 6/10

I don't feel them in my eyes at all but they dried out a lot faster than the other Hanabi lenses I've had. I had to push myself to be able to wear them a little bit past 2 hours without using eyedrops.

Naturalness: 1/10

Can't call these natural because of the big size and the thick black limbal ring. Also, gold/yellow is not a natural color to begin with so... yeah.

That's all for this round. Thanks for reading my blog! Baibai ~ ^u^
Shiro Samurai out.