Crystal Collective Designs

Hella Big Skirts panel

Ever wanted to make a hella skirt? Wondering how to keep your hella big skirt puffy? Join cosplayer fabrickind to learn the ins and outs of patterning, sewing, and supporting the large, fluffy skirts of your dreams!

This is just the bare bones of the panel, as many of the examples were elaborated on in-person, and it is just the slides, not any of my notes. It is not meant to be exhaustive or definitive, and is just meant for general advice and suggestion purposes only. If anyone has feedback they would like to give, feel free to do so. That said, I hope that people find this information useful.

Here is a link to a pdf of the presentation. You may download for personal use, but please do not alter the presentation, repost without permission, or do any sort of other unauthorized use. (If you have a question about how you can use this presentation, please send me a message with your question and we can work it out. I promise I’m not scary. ;]) Feel free to reblog this post as much as you want, though. I do these panels and post them because I want the information to be shared.

Following up to this post, here’s a fantastic look at Victorian “fancy dress balls”–they were all the rage at the time, but really picked up in the later half of the century where the focus was more on self-expression than hiding oneself, as was the case at 18th-century masquerades (Phantom hearkens back to this earlier tradition, but the idea of a masquerade hiding one’s true identity also works perfectly for its theatrical setting).

Here are some wackier costumes from fancy dress balls. I’m in love with this one:

And look! A bee!

Here’s a fashion plate with some costume ideas from across the centuries (and of course, we wouldn’t be in the Victorian era if there weren’t a bit of tone-deaf cultural appropriation with the Native American costume.):

It was actually common for women to wear shorter skirts at these balls so they could show off their fabulous boots (as you see above, and as is the case with Christine’s stage version of the Star Princess dress):

Depending on your host, masks of all kinds were welcome, so you were free to be as unsettlingly disturbing as you wanted while you lounged by the punch bowl and made rabbit eyes at the eligible young heiress whose hand in marriage comes with fifty thousand pounds a year and a lifetime of resentment because women’s rights didn’t exist yet:

Suppose you can’t make it to the most fashionable balls London or Paris this season. If it’s 1883 and you are Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt and happen to have $6 million of disposable income at your fingertips, why not throw your own fancy dress ball for New York City’s elite (and spend millions on champagne alone)? And why don’t you one-up every single one of your guests by dressing as that most wondrous of new inventions, Edison’s electric light? I defy the Rockefellers to steal your spotlight when the spotlight in question could very easily electrocute them.

Like flowers? Of course you do. Like spring? Oh, my God, do you ever. Like pretending you’re but a mere shepherdess, giggling and flouncing away from the advances of the blacksmith’s apprentice? GOOD LORD, YES. Like  the 18th century? HELL YES, OH MAN, GIMME THAT ROCOCO SPRING FLOWER EXPLOSION:

BUT WAIT! You’re not gonna let that Rococo Spring Flower Explosion HARLOT flounce away with your suitor, are you? HELL NO, YOU ARE NOT. Which is why you are prepared to send her running dressed as a GORGEOUS FREAKING BUTTERFLY:

But where would a butterfly be without a lovely flower upon which to perch? Enter your secret lesbian lover, the Rose:

Or, if you’re uncomfortable with NOT being the center of attention every waking moment, you could just pull the equivalent of one-upping the bride at a wedding by wearing white and come dressed as the DAMN SUN:

But maybe you’re more of the goth persuasion. Might I suggest a tasteful sorceress?

A dainty Batman ensemble to match your wife’s delicate moth angel gown?

Vampire mistress of the night, perhaps?

Actually, bat motifs were an extremely popular costume option, not just in the 19th century, but also at 18th century balls:

But if it’s 1880 and you want to carry on grandma’s bat tradition, this might be a more modern take on a pocket-sized blood-sucking demon:

Or this:

You are so thrilled to attend the costume ball like the goth nightmare you are, you can hardly contain your enthusiasm:

Here is a tastefully acceptable take on Satan. Might I sample your punch, Mrs. Higgenbottom, before I make away with your soul?

“Oh, Ella!”

“Yes, Constance?”

“Oh, I do so love your seagull gown.”

“Oh, why thank you, my dear friend!”

“But I’ve not the slightest idea what I shall wear to the ball!”

“Why, Constance, it is a simple matter of identifying something near and dear to your heart and then adapting it into a suitable costume. I, for example, find solace in the sea, particularly in the birds of the sea, and most particularly when they nose-dive into and defecate upon the boat, shrieking like banshees in heat. Hence, the seagulls adorning my gown. What do you like the very most, Constance?” “MOTHER-EFFING LOBSTERS.”

Or, maybe you’re just a shameless ho and don’t give a brass farthing about showing your ankles, your calves, your thighs, or your hoo-ha at the Embassy Ball, in which case, blaze it:

FANCY DRESSING GOWN and COMBING JACKET, LATE 19th C

Hello there!

OF COURSE it is! 

There’s a bit of unfortunate stigma against original characters, and before you begin you should keep in mind that you’ll be less likely to get recognition at a con, especially if the OC isn’t part of an established franchise and/or doesn’t have a super eye-catching design, simply because people won’t know what it is. That’s something you’ll have to decide if it is personally worth it to you to dedicate resources to this costume.

That said, the stigma against OCs is completely unfounded. The fact that people even have to ask the question of whether it is okay to cosplay them makes me sad, since people should feel free to cosplay what they like without worrying about if it’s ~cringe~ or not. Who cares if someone kinds it “cringey” or not. We’re all nerds in costume. If you’re the type who enjoys coming up with your own characters and designs and flexing your creativity in that way, do it. It can be really empowering to be able to say “I came up with this thing from start to finish and now look, I actually made it in real life,” if that’s the type of creative work you enjoy doing. Don’t let anyone stop you or tell you that it’s not ~real cosplay~ (whatever that even means) or that it’s lazy or that your ideas and your creativity are somehow wrong. 

Want to cosplay the most Mary Sue self-insert overdesigned costume OC you can come up with (or did when you were 12)? Go for it. Want to cosplay an OC with fairly normal-looking clothing that no one will recognize, but it makes you happy? Do it. Want to cosplay an OC that’s entirely an excuse to make particular costume elements? Don’t let anyone stop you. Want to cosplay a character you like from a media work you are hoping to publish? Go get yourself that publicity! Want to cosplay fanmade characters from existing series, even if it’s somewhat passe (like a Homestuck fantroll)? If it’s something you like, why wouldn’t you? Cosplay all of the OCs you want and don’t listen to any haters. 

And really…Ren faires? LARP? Certain forms of historical reenactment? These are largely OCs, just under a different name. It shouldn’t matter if you’re doing your original concept for a 14th century English noblewoman at a faire or if you’re doing your original concept for a sparkly magical girl at an anime con, and it’s unfortunate that one of these things is often seen as an “acceptable” form of costuming and one isn’t. It’s a false distinction.

Cosplay is a hobby, and it’s about enjoying yourself. If it’s something you enjoy doing and you aren’t harming anyone, there’s no right or wrong way to do it.  

Hela Thor Ragnarok Cosplay Headdress Tutorial: Helmet

This doublet is a great example of how high definition television has greatly impacted the details of what we see. Makeup artists set designers, and costume designers all have to be even more focused on the small details than before because everything will be seen in detail.  

This costume was first worn by Benedick Blythe as Phoebus in the 1997 made for television production of The Hunchback. It’s a well made and good looking costume - but the fine details are not nearly as apparent as they are in the costume’s second appearance in the 2016 season of Galavant, where it was worn on Timothy Omundson as King Richard.

Costume Credit: Ottoriver

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Cosplay Makeup Pro Tip: paint your elf ears!

Especially if they’re the cheapass hook style ones like these that don’t blend into your natural ear because those don’t match anyone’s skin tone. The nice thing about them is that they’re really cheap and won’t gunk up your ear with spirit gum or prosaide, but the less nice thing is that they stick out as fake really badly.

I’ve put all of the fabric painting tutorials into one big photo post.

Includes silk painting with resist (Elven Banner), free-hand painting on stretch fabrics (Jareth from Labyrinth), fake embroidery with puffy paint (Peter of Narnia), graphite transfer paper with fabric paint pens (Tali from Mass Effect) and regular Tulip fabric paint (TARDIS lab coat).

The average cosplayer has probably made a duct tape dress form at least once.  For most applications a torso-only dress form is fine, but what about the times where you need arms and legs?  I needed a full body dress form for a few upcoming projects and didn’t want to shell out $500+ for a commericial option.  I also wanted the chest to be bound so I could use it for crossplay, which pretty much eliminates any possibility of finding a stock commercial option that would be even remotely close to the measurements I wanted.  So I ended up making this guy!  

I also want to give a HUGE thank you to @stella-sews who helped me with the parts of this project that required two people, and I couldn’t have completed this without her.

The dress form not only accurately reflects my measurements but also has removable arms and a removable stand so I can actually put things like bodysuits on it.  Making the dress form turned out to be a little less simple than I initially thought, but the final result is something that I’m probably going to be able to use indefinitely unless my body shape significantly changes.

Here’s the super quick version of the changes I made to the normal duct tape dress form routine:

Made duct tape shell

Taped wire to outside of shell to make a temporary rigid exoskeleton

Put in internal PVC skeleton for support stand and detachable shoulder joints

Filled with expanding foam

Removed wire exoskeleton

Cut arms off and cleaned up shoulder joints so arms are removable

For an in depth walk through of what I did, read below the cut!

This tutorial, as well as future tutorials, will be cross-posted to my new Patreon account! It will be 100% free always, but is another way you can keep an eye on my cosplay tutorials and write-ups.

Cosplay Tutorial: How to Create Worbla Feathers

By popular request: it’s the worbla feather tutorial!!

For Tsukki’s Legend of Karasuno cosplay, I decided to go with a heavy crow motif, and what better way to do that than covering myself in feather armor?  I ended up crafting close to 100 in total between the shield, gauntlet, and pauldrons, using a few different tweaks for different armor pieces.  However all of my feathers were made in one of two ways: either by sandwiching worbla around foam for a very thick, large feather, or by stacking two pieces of worbla for a thinner but very sturdy feather that is thick enough to etch deep details into.  Read on for these two methods!