Before posting about my wonderful weekend at Comic-Con Montréal, I feel like I should show a bit how I made the staff and the transparent shoes for my Jack Frost cosplay. I didn't make that for my Aoba cosplay (especially the jacket) and I alway get a lot of questions so I think that from now on I should explain a bit more how I make my cosplay stuff.
Let's begin with the stick/staff!
I made one last year for G-anime since I was cosplaying Jack Frost too back then. But unfortunately it broke a bit during the con and also completely on my bus trip... so I had to think of a way to make a sturdier one for Comic-con.
Here is the previous version of the staff:
And here at a shoot at the end of the con, you can see the paint peeled quite a bit on the tip:
So I decided to make a new one with real wood this time to avoid it breaking and peeling that much. I asked first if it was ok with the weapon check though because I didn't want to work hard and then be refused at the entrance...
I went to small woods near my appartment and picked up some sturdy branches. One already had a shape that could fit so I took it right away. I took a few smaller ones to make the curve in the staff. Then I looked awkward going back home with all those branches in my hands... but it was definitely worth it.
I used a knife (I would recommend a small saw though) to cut the wood pieces the shape I wanted and then used duckt tape to hold them together. I tried hot glue and quick grip glue but nothing worked.
I used green duckt tape but noticed it would show too much so I bought brown tape (it was somewhat very expensive for tape...) and retaped the top part. I also carved swirls all along the staff with a knife, I think it is what took the most time.
After that I mixed paint to get a light blue and began to paint in the carved swirls.
And improvised for the taped part since it wasn't carved. I also used brown paint to cover the tape since it wasn't the same brown as the wood. I tried to match the color the most I could.
I then used a sponge and white paint to apply the 'snow' on the staff. For the 'magic ice' I used light blue glitter glue that I applied in the carvings and regular glitter that I sprayed about everywhere possible (even on the floor and the cat...).
I took some pictures to compare both the old and the new staff. The old is on the left and the new on the right.
You can see the paint cracked a lot on the old one. It didn't crack on the new one, except a bit on the part with the duckt tape but it is easy to repair with a bit of white paint.
The old one was taller, but broke at the bottom. The new one still is taller than what the old one was when it was still intact. I would say the new one is about 2 meters high.
That's enough staff pictures for now!
I don't have much pictures on the transparent shoes, but I do have a link to the original tutorial! It is really useful for all the cosplays where the character doesn't wear any shoe.
http://andsewingishalfthebattle.com/invisible-shoes
Mine didn't turn out exactly as hers, but they still did the job. People were really thinking I wasn't wearing anything and thought I was crazy!
I won't repeat everything from the tutorial above, but I'll still talk about the basic stuff.
To make those invisible shoes, you just need a transparent sole, some stretchy net fabric and a marker that fits your skin tone. You basically just need to sew the fabric straps to the sole where your second toe and middle of your foot are, and tadaa!
You need to be sure of where to sew the straps though because mine were a bit loose at times... I didn't do the marking step and really should've!
That's mostly it for the staff and invisible shoes tutorial. Hope it helped!
Next up should be my Comic con recap. Also I have enough material to make a tutorial for the lights in my Rin cosplay, maybe I'll do that if you are interested.
*Kinerai*
