Princess Mononoke (San) Cos-play PART 3 FINISHED!!!

Well my first Comic-con was absolutely awesome and I had an absolute ball! I also got my cos-play finished in time although because of having over committed myself on the Friday night before I ended up stitching one of my ears onto the hood the morning of. (I was up at 7am to ensure I would be up in time to have it done)

I got a Firefly photo of Kaylee signed by Jewel Staite (I was so excited and happy I started tearing up!)and she was so happy and nice!!!

Signed autograph by Kaylee (Jewel Staite) with one of my favorite beaded gauze shawls draped over the top and Granddads car in front.

There were also a couple of other Studio Ghibli cos-players there as well which I was happy to see! (Due to amount of photos I took I'll put them in a new post.)

THE CLOAK:

The back of my pelt. I had sewn front and back paws onto my pelt too but you can't actually see the back paws sticking out like I thought they would. The front ones sat on my shoulders a few millimeters below my collarbone.

THE MASK AND EARS:

How my cloak sat with the mask on. Unfortunately my ears decided not to play fair and so they're sitting on an angle... But it was a comfortable and warm cos-play for a massively over air conditioned convention center and a chilly, windy, rainy day considering I get cold easily and both my legs and my arms were exposed.

A close up with the actual mixed colour I made for the inner ear and red of the mask.

My paper mache ears sewn onto my hood. That was a pain in the thumb... Literally. I accidentally stabbed my thumb trying to get the pin to stab through the paper mache so I could stitch through the holes. My partner was laughing at me when I called out to him for a bandaid "and quickly please sweetie as I'm trying not to bleed on my fur!!" I mean really. That's a normal reaction right? Right???

My San mask. I changed the colours of the lines to the dark grayish leafy green as I thought it would better reflect the forest and what someone who lives with wolves would likely make paint with.

How I attached my paper mache mask to my hood and pelt.

THE EARRINGS:
I ended up not doing the earrings as everywhere I went looking for that USUALLY sold clip on earrings (my ears are no longer pierced) were actually sold out and not knowing any other way of attaching the earrings I felt best to leave them off rather than try and half arse them.

THE MAKE-UP:

I forgot to have my lovely assistant (ahem... sorry sweetie! I mean partner) take a picture of the make-up that I actually got him to do on the day. I figured with the fact that my hands shake quite a lot and extremely noticeably, especially when trying to do fine things like painting my Beast-men and other Chaos miniatures (I also enjoy painting Warhammer- just another layer of geek to my onion) or even doing my eyeliner, that he would have steadier hands.

THE FANG NECKLACE:

My fang necklace that I made using jewelry twine, wooden beads salvaged from a truly hideous necklace bought in an op shop for $2 and air drying clay that I shaped to try and look like naturally battered wolf fangs. I then painted them in a lightened yellow and dry brushed Pearlescent White (Jo Sonja acrylic paint) over the top to dull the yellow a bit as it was very garish. I painted the tops of the fangs brown as all the photos I had looked up first showed the half of the tooth extracted from the gum as a dark brown colour.

ASHITAKA'S CRYSTAL DAGGER PENDANT:

So my crystal dagger didn't end up turning out this good which I was really disappointed about however in trying to replicate that pretty shimmery blue I did learn a fair bit about colour mixing limitations... (In other words I am really terrible at mixing paint colors.)

APRON TOP:

I didn't end up taking a picture of the apron top as I plan on making a completely new one from scratch. With the op shopped top I bought I pretty much just slit it straight up to the sleeves (and slit the sleeves off) like I'd planned and then left it as it was without hemming for that unkempt, raised by wolves look. I stitched some white ribbon to the sides and it was complete. 

THE TOP/SKIRT COMBO:
As planned I wore my fantastic op shop skirt and just a plain black strappy singlet. It was enough to keep me warm in the over air conditioned Convention Center but not too covering that I got warm too quickly!

THE BOOTS:
My op shop uggs were really comfy as first but by the end of the day they were really hurting my feet. In terms of keeping them as part of my cos-play they are a big no as I only used them as the closest (budget friendly) thing to San's boots as I could find. For the next time I wear this though I would like to learn how to make a pair of San's boots in preparation. However these served their purpose for this round.

THE DAGGER:

My knife for my Princess Mononoke cos-play. I used cut and shaped cardboard from a milo muesli bar box, duct tape paper mache (with home made glue) and my clay handle with paper mache over top and me holding the handle in place while my partner kindly used my hair dryer to set the glue so it would hold the handle properly for me to let it go... Once it was dry I painted the blade with two coats of Pearlescent White as a base coat and then two of silver over the top. The handle was painted in three coats of Carbon Black and the red boomerangs were hand painted.

THE HEAD AND ARM BANDS:

These are the cabochons I got for my Princess Mononoke cos-play.

This is one of my finished arm bands. I painted the copper cabochon in a deep purple, let it dry and then varnished it and stitched it onto the blue velvet ribbon I bought.

The finished head band. Painted the cabochon Pearlescent White from Jo Sonja's acrylic paints, let it dry, varnished it and stitched it to more blue velvet ribbon. Snap fasteners finished the three bands off.

THE FINISHED RESULT: