Why Cosplay?

Once a year for the past few years, at least a few of our family have attended either Denver Comic Con or StarFest. It's hard to explain if you've never been to one, but it's basically a convention for geeks and nerds and fans of all sorts. If you're into sci-fi (books or movies), super heroes, fantasy, table top games, comic books, Doctor Who, Star Wars, Star Trek, programming robots, building models, meeting actors from TV shows, listening to panel discussions on how to write Steam Punk, attending workshops on how to draw manga or apply monster makeup for horror movies, there's something for everyone (okay, maybe not everyone . . . but you get my point: it's more than just comic books).

One of my favorite parts is Cosplay (playing dress up). People dress up as characters from books or movies or TV shows or web comics, etc. I love looking at the costumes. The time and effort some people put into creating a costume and/or applying makeup is impressive. Take this "Groot" for example:

I first tried wearing a costume to a convention mainly to bond with my daughter. I mean, look at a couple of the amazing costumes she has made:

Once there, I realized how much more fun it is when I'm in costume! You get some interesting looks walking down the streets of Denver! 

At the Con, I keep my eye out for others dressed as my same character and we have fun comparing costumes. One year John and I dressed as Kaylee and Jayne from "Firefly" - I found two other Kaylees and John found two other Jaynes (actually, I think he saw about 10, but we only got a picture with 2):

My favorite thing about Cosplay is creating the costume. I have always loved arts and crafts, and I rarely get the opportunity to play with my art supplies. Choosing a character, designing a costume, sewing bits of it, painting other parts, making jewelry and accessories, . . . it all appeals to my inner artist.

This year, I'm taking Helene and her friend Becca to StarFest. The girls decided to be campers from Camp Half-Blood (the Greek demigod camp in the Percy Jackson books). So I decided to be Athena to go with their theme. Here are a couple of images I found that I wanted to model my costume after:

The first part of the fun is hitting the 2nd hand stores and craft stores and trying to envision what I can make without spending a fortune. I wanted my Athena to have some battle armor on - at least a breastplate. Do you know how hard it is to find breastplate armor for women (that isn't totally revealing, anyway)? So I made my own, using a $1.99 corset from Goodwill.

I knew I could find a disembodied baby doll face at Hobby Lobby. How did I know that?? Kinda creepy, but I figured that plus some rubber snakes would make a good Medusa head (which Athena wears on her armor).

Figuring out how to make this look more like armor:

 Trying the breastplate armor on over my sheet (Greek peplos) to see if this will work:

 Figuring out how to make the snakes less floppy:

And an obstacle I didn't expect: I bought the corset large, knowing it would have to go over my toga/peplos. I did not account for how much stretchiness would go away once I painted it! So I found these little fasteners to extend the existing fasteners and give me a little more breathing room:

It's all these little challenges that make creating the costume even more fun.

Another fun part of the process: getting to show off the final product!