Grüße!
So I think the title is self-explanatory, but I'm going to say it anyway - the con life isn't for the weak! ;) Seriously though, it snowballs into more of a stressful affair than you'd think, preparing for a con. Especially if you cosplay! You've got to figure out exactly what you're going to cosplay as (obviously), and then you've got to figure out how in the world exactly it is that you're going to put that cosplay together, and all before your time limit. 
It creeps up on you faster than you think! What outfit should I wear? What wig do I need? What accessories? Is that even allowed at [insert name here] Con? What makeup do I need? You'll find yourself swirling down that vortex really quickly. Funny enough, the reason I found myself in the makeup world is because of preparations for my Dragon Con outfit last year, when I dressed up as Disgust from Disney/Pixar's Inside Out. Thank you, Youtube, for you saved my life last year and sent me on a completely unexpected one that I never thought I would continue.
Side note: Seriously, if you've never checked out makeup tutorials on YouTube, you're missing out. A special mention to a makeup-guru that you couldn't possibly miss or mistake, NikkieTutorials. She is extremely talented and empowering, and I bow down to her skills. She has taught me half of what I know about makeup, and I'll never forget it!
Back on topic, that picture there is me last year at Dragon Con! I was and still am actually very proud of how that turned out, being that my makeup skills were at the 'I don't know what I'm doing and I've watched makeup tutorial videos a few times in the last two weeks' level! My eyebrows were completely green, I got a huge pair of green lashes, and a pair of green contacts, as you can see... Those contacts killed my eyes. Word of warning to anyone who has never worn contacts before, I wouldn't advise trying it out for the first time on a Con day. If you feel the need to, bring the contacts case with you so that you can take them out when the inevitably irritate your eyes... trust me. Just trust in me.
As for my makeup here, I took inspiration from a Poison Ivy makeup tutorial on YouTube. If I were doing Disgust this year, you could bet you would see more than the simple makeup I did last year, but I digress. There are many more tutorials out now that are specifically about Inside Out characters, but since there weren't then, Ivy saved my life! Probably not a coincidence, as she's my favorite female DC villain! If you want to go for not just face makeup but body, I recommend MadeYewLook on YouTube. She is beast.
As for the rest - putting this all together was a ball game, let me tell you! You start head to toe, and if you're anything like me, you want to make it as perfect as you can. Long green wig? Check. *Warning - not for the faint of heart - the heat and the weight of that wig, they get to you!* ;) Contacts? Lashes? Makeup? Check. And let me tell you, picking all those out, though they may seem trivial, can take hours each. Should I get neon or forest green? It feels a little like picking out paint colors. Have you ever done that? Whatever choice you make, you always doubt it. I went through at least 4 different lipstick shades before I chose red. I was going to do lilac but didn't think I could pull it off at the time. Fast forward a year and I wear purple on my lips like it ain't no thing! *This look here was one of my makeup tests for Disgust!*
But you can't stop with makeup! I wanted to have an outfit that represented my girl, but I also don't know how to sew yet, so my sister and I had to get creative. Luckily, I had a green dress already that worked really well for Disgust, but my sister was to be Joy, and she had nothing. You wouldn't believe how long we looked for a dress that would work with no results. So we finally turned to... that's right, folks, dying some fabric! For this, you need a giant pot, and I do mean that, some good fabric dye, and just the right amount of mixture for your color. (We used Rit Dye for ours, and you can find whatever color you want and how to achieve your desired look on their guide here.) You can only keep it in the water for so long to get the color you want, and God help you if you spill the color! But do I recommend? Heck yes! This was so much fun. And since I couldn't find a pair of shoes I wanted, I turned to a favorite of mine - shoe painting! I cannot for the life of me find a picture of the Disgust shoe I painted, but I made an Inside Out shoe and an Anger and Sadness shoe! For this you need any old canvas or fabric shoe, acrylic paint, and Mod Podge. Use as much acrylic paint as you want, but only do one layer of Mod Podge, or the shoe cracks and your work can easily be destroyed!
Another project we found ourselves working on was the accessories that the characters carry around with them, and myself, my sister, and our friend Bogdana (and she has an awesome blog about all the books she reads that you should check out!), landed on carrying around their memory orbs. Although Joy also carried around a backpack, so we bought a plush Bing-Bong and a plain canvas bag that we dyed purple with the same Rit Dye and that I then painted over with the acrylic paint and Mod Podge that I mentioned before.
We made the memory orbs with ornament balls that open up from Hobby Lobby, and we got some standard school glue, foam paint brushes, glitter, and shoelaces. First, we lined the inside of the ornament balls with glue using the foam brushes, then we dumped some glitter inside, closed the ball, and shook! We just did this with each color until we were satisfied with the glitter coating. When those were dried and done (we left them sitting open overnight to dry), we closed them up and stuck some shoelaces that we dyed the appropriate color through the loop at the top of the ornament and fashioned it into a bracelet of sorts. See, we knew we wouldn't necessarily want to hold on to them all day, so we tied a good knot at the base of the ornament loop, and when we were ready on the day of the Con, we tied the other end around our wrists. It was lightweight and portable, and it gave us something fun to play with all day while we waited in the lines for panels! We're really just kids at heart, after all! In these pictures, you can see Sadness holding up her memory orb and Joy holding hers and pointing to Bing-Bong!
We had loads of fun at Dragon Con and took a ton of pictures of amazing costumes there - some of these people just knock it out of the park and blow me away! Like all of these guys that absolutely killed it!
I hope you guys like what we did or maybe picked up some ideas at the very least! Enjoy the nerd life, everybody!
Oh, and if you get anything at all from this... Plan ahead! It's worth it in the end and usually really fun to put together!
Bis zum nächsten Mal!
RayKay
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