Category: Pepper Potts

Tutorial: Pepper Potts Clipboard

20/10/2015

Welcome to a new feature from Mai Sheri Costumes: Tutorial Tuesdays! I don't know how often these will be posted, but I'm looking at once a month for now - it depends on what people ask me about and how much writing time I have available. I post lots of progress photos of my work, but occasionally I get asked for a more detailed description of how I made something, and I decided to turn the answers to those questions into proper write-ups!

Take Note: this tutorial is not necessarily the "right way" to do things, nor the "best way", but is simply how I went about it when I made my own. Anyways, on to the project!

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Pepper Potts glove

5/10/2015

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This is my Extremis Pepper Potts from Atomic Lollipop (with Stark Reality Cosplay and Dan the Video Ninja as Iron Man and Bruce Banner respectively). It's hard to see, but something is missing (aside from a wig that hasn't spent 5 years at the bottom of a box) - the glove. Mr Stark made the arm for me a year ago - I wore it last Halloween - but I was supposed to make the glove on my own. Unfortunately, I needed more instruction than a Pepakura file provided (i.e. none) which slowed me down - a LOT. After Stark did the palm assembly for me it was on to painting, which I then really messed up. The paint that I bought (Martha Stewart satin craft paint in Habanero) went on very, very poorly. It dried both too fast and too slow, which meant that it went on very streaky and took forever to dry enough to be able to handle. And it just absorbed gloss finishes like a sponge instead of getting glossy (I tried 6? different products). And only once everything was painted with a billion super thin coats of paint did I learn that I'd gotten the colour wrong to begin with and it didn't match the rest of the arm. So Mr Stark took all the pieces that I had worked on and re-painted them with matching paint. Unfortunately, all those products were never meant to be combined, so now all the sealing and priming and painting and stuff, which was flawless when I started, has cracks and wrinkles. Just have to live with it at this point.

Anyways, I finally got the pieces back and painted the base glove and glued all the armour pieces to it with contact cement, and since I was on a roll, tossed a light in there too. Here's hoping I have an opportunity (and the confidence) to wear it again sometime now that the arm is finished ~_^

Photos of "Extremis Pepper Potts" are on my Iron Man gallery page: Click Here!

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Atomic Lollipop 2015

23/7/2015

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Another A-Pop has come and gone, and I have mixed feelings about the convention this year. It was my 4th time attending, and while on paper it looked just as exciting as it has the previous years, after actually attending I think that the shine has effectively rubbed off the event for me.

On Friday I wore a Kate Bishop Hawkeye outfit (a bit of a mix of my other costumes since it was too cold and rainy for the summery one I had planned) and after arriving at the Ontario Science Centre around 6, we spent the next few hours in line to get wristbands, greeting friends, and having dinner. By the time I actually got inside it was after 9pm, and what ended up happening was mostly Mr Stark , Yavarice, and I checking out the open exhibits and getting a feel for the con until I wanted to go home and crash hard at midnight. most of my photos are from Friday since I wasn't "working" and had full use of both my hands LOL

Saturday was the "debut" of my Extremis Pepper Potts, with an almost-complete arm from KW Stark Resilient .... a certain boyfriend didn't double-check that the finger joints were packed LOL. The arm will be ready for next time, and I should have a better wig too since the one I wore was the "close enough" one from my stockpile. I spent the afternoon volunteering at the Cosplay for a Cure booth raising money for the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation. When I wasn't doing that, I was chilling with Mr Stark in his full armour, Dan The Video Ninja in a rare cosplaying appearance as Bruce Banner, and Ragz Cosplay as Spidey. I even ran into one of my friends from university (yes, I have a science degree) who works at the Science Centre and we had fun torturing Dan and Kat. In the evening, we managed to catch the circus show, and some of Elijah Wood's DJ set, but missed out on seeing Prozzäk perform when the fire marshal shut down entry to the area just after we left. We waited in line to try to get downstairs for a little while before being told what was going on by OSC staff and then we just gave up, headed home to take off the armour and makeup, and just listen to Prozzäk on CD. Still took me right back to being a teenager.

On Sunday I had been thinking about wearing Izabel , but I just couldn't get up early enough and I also didn't have all the costume pieces prepped and ready to wear. I decided to just go with my Iron Man dress instead, and in a twist, Mr Stark and I put "Deadpool" in one of my other costumes - Erika from Welcome to Night Vale . That was fun and he confused a lot of people at the con LOL! I spent the whole of the day on Sunday at the booth which was relatively chill compared to Saturday. More friends stopped by and I tried to talk them into shooting with us ~_^ My pals and I stuck around for the booth tear-down and we all had a lovely post-con dinner.

Still... A-Pop just didn't "do it" for me this year. Or last year either, really (though I kept the con report very positive). I could list off all the little negative things, but I think it really comes down to the size of the convention and the venue; all the programming is really spread out throughout the (huge) building, and the con has gotten too big for me to enjoy the events and activities that I loved the first couple of years that I went - either because of crowding or because they're not offered anymore. Although it was great seeing so many of my friends there and I enjoyed spending time with the Cosplay for a Cure booth, I don't think I'm going to be back again next year.

Additional photo credits: Joe's Garage Photos , Elemental Photography , Dan The Video Ninja , Skyleaf Creations .

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July Plans

1/7/2015

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This summer is turning out to be incredibly busy as I'm being much more ambitious than usual with my event plans. Also much, much more ambitious than usual with cosplay plans! Here's how things are shaping up at the moment:

Centre Island Cosplay Picnic: July 4

Going to wear Cersei for as long as I can stand to (She's not necessarily a great choice for summer LOL), and then switching into an "L.A. Woman" inspired Kate Bishop outfit for the remainder of the afternoon.

Toronto Cosplay Beach Party: July 11

The plan is to make a Hawkeye bikini (a Hawkini?) inspired by Kate's costume in Young Avengers.

Atomic Lollipop: July 17-19

To be honest, I haven't made any decisions yet about what I'm going to wear for A-Pop this year. Hawkeye is a possibility, so is Pepper, but I really don't know.

Con Bravo: July 24-26

Pretty sure that Postal Midna and Hawkeye will be happening for Bravo, but I'm not sure what else to bring.

Otakuthon: Aug 7-9

On Friday I'll be in Chell since it's my comfy "staff" costume... because I'll be working back-stage at the World Cosplay Summit preliminaries. I'm also planning to bring Cersei for pretty photos in Old Montreal, and Midna (probably postal since I doubt I'll have the "real" version done on time).

Game of Thrones

One of the costumes on my (long) list that I want to make is Cersei from Game of Thrones. Although I didn't put it on my list of " next 10 " back in January, I ended up bumping it up on the schedule since Shelle-Chii invited me to her Thrones-themed birthday party and Elemental convinced me that I could put it together quickly. In the end, Elemental was mostly right. I got the dress completely sewn in time (although I did miss the beginning of the party because I insisted on hemming it hahaha), but I didn't get the belt done at all. Luckily Elemental had something almost perfect for me to borrow to wear to the party. I have since finished the belt and I'm going to try to do a little bit of the embroidery detail before the cosplay picnic this weekend. Below you'll find photos from the party, and the dress with my newly finished belt. I've also decided to toss in the closet/modern/whatever version of Ygritte (my other planned GoT costume) from my trip to see the costume exhibit , since Mage posted the photos she took recently ^_^
The actual Ygritte costume currently consists of a large bag of faux fur in my storage room, a small swatch of experimental home made imitation leather, and a wig.

Hawkini

I have a sketch, a partial mock-up, and a pile of spandex. Yep.

Extremis Pepper Potts

Ahhh, the "simple" project full of endless frustration. Unfortuantely, since I'm working with Mr Stark on this one and we live in different cities and don't get to see each other very often, progress has been excruciatingly slow. The picture here is where things stood just before NFCC : my paint job complete but totally not matching Stark's T_T. I had hoped to repaint it at his workshop this past weekend but it poured rain all weekend and so I just left the glove there in his care. Maybe I'll be able to wear it by next year. >_>

Phase 2 things

I managed to squeeze in a couple of "fun" projects around my costumes recently, because taking breaks from big things is good and my creation-motivation has been unusually high for a while now! I made a baby-luma on order for the new child of a friend of the Video Ninja. Apparently the baby liked it, just like his big sister's ^_^

I also threw together a new shirt for summer, which was a frustrating exercise in creative pattern placement. I bought the fabric last year not really paying attention to how big the piece was and not realizing it wouldn't be enough for the dress I wanted, but it was so pretty I had to do something with it. And I think it looks nice with my Majora's Mask leggings from Lunaria .

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KCC Con Report

13/3/2015

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Cosplay group shot at the close of the con. © CosplayersCanada

So much (and yet also so little) to say about the inaugural Kitchener Conic Con.

Part 1: The Con Itself
I had a good time. I hung out with friends, got to know the KW geek community a little better, and saw a lot of people (especially families) being excited about comics.

I went with KW Iron Man , doing our Pepperony thing. Since he was a guest of honour and was doing most (or all?) of the cosplay programming, I spent almost all of the con sitting behind his table in the market place (an experience that all partners of "professional cosplayers" know all too well LOL). We weren't selling anything, but it was a convenient place to have all the extra armour pieces that we brought for the "props and armour" panel out on display promoting his work (especially since he was doing so many events that he was barely at the table). I was thrilled that Ragz Cosplay showed up since he kept me company at the table all day while Mr Stark was off doing his thing. I did have the opportunity to leave a couple of times for lunch and a little walk around the building, and was fortunate to be able to squeeze in some photos/video with Trillance , Everage , and Yo Napper while doing that. And when the con wrapped up, Mr Stark and I had a fun dinner out with a bunch of our cosplay friends ^_^

So far the only couple photo to surface! © Peter Wang Photography

Preview from my first little shoot with Trillance/Rocky!

Totally guarding all this armor. Guess Spidey had stepped away from the table for a moment! © Wild Wicked World

From my mini shoot with Tom, photo ©Everage

1/2 photos I took all con! Featuring Judge Dread, Cloudbreak Cosplay as Nightwing, KW Iron Man as ... Iron Man

2/2 photos I took all con! Featuring Elicia the caffienator and Ragz Cosplay as Spidey

Part 2: The Con's Online Presence
Unfortunately, as much fun as I had at the convention, I feel I should at least acknowledge the issues surrounding KCC's disastrous PR. If you're part of the Southern Ontario con-goer community, especially if you know staffers from any of the other cons in the area, you probably saw at least a little of the drama being played out in the days immediately following the event.
I watch the event's Facebook page, and in the lead-up to KCC I was a little surprised at some of the comments that were being posted by the Con Com*. While the posts weren't outright rude, they were often written in a way which was casual, joking, or not actually answering the question which could easily be read as being rude, condescending, or elitist due to the loss of meaning in text communication. But I gave them the benefit of the doubt. That is until, the day after KCC, I saw the abusive post by the Con Chair directed towards an attendee who was unhappy about the con's parking situation... and the next couple of days of fallout and escalation and bullying and other people's experiences with the Chair which came through my facebook feed. The behavior went so far beyond unprofessional that they no longer have my benefit of the doubt.

The bottom line being that even though I had a great time at KCC itself and I would like to support the awesome artists, craftspeople, vendors, and friends I have made in the region, the aftermath left a pretty bad taste in my mouth. Since the con chair seems to be unable to treat all their attendees and prospective future attendees with respect, I would have a difficult time choosing to attend another one of their events.

If you read my blog regularly, you'll know I rarely get into the gossipy stuff that goes on at conventions. Most of the time it's not worth mentioning, especially since it rarely or never affects me directly, nor does it affect the experience of the average attendee. But the KCC statements have created a LOT of ill-will in the community, and when put together with the very poor treatment that Mr Stark and a few other friends received earlier this year from KW Tri-Con organizers, I'm pretty disappointed in Kitchener-Waterloo's ability to host events which are welcoming places for everyone to feel comfortable sharing our geeky interests.

*for those not involved in convention staffing "con com" refers to the convention committee, and the " con chair" is the convention chairperson aka the boss.

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Feb Progress Check-in

3/3/2015

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While I wait to get photos to go with my KCC report, I want to do a small progress post. I had really really wanted to finish one of the 3 costumes that I'm actively working on by the end of February. I tried hard to push at least one of them to a point where I could consider it complete. Unfortunately, I failed in that goal. (Though I take solace in that it's due to the fact that I've been splitting my time between >5 costumes this month instead of due to me slacking off)

I ran into different problems with each of my main projects (what I've decided to call 2015's Phase One)

Princess Hawkguy 's props can't be finished because the winter weather has been too cold to work with the paints and glues I need to use. (This is in addition to my wig being in Ottawa and my sunglasses probably being on a boat somewhere on the Pacific, but at least those should be ready to use on arrival.)

Modern Mai is on hold mostly because I'm waiting on delivery of some stuff I want to try using to style her wig.

.... scratch that, everything arrived today. No more excuses!

Related costume Modern Zuko is on hold because it's very difficult to coordinate shoe shopping with a boyfriend who lives a couple hours away.

Extremis Pepper was going well except there were some design/instruction issues with the pepakura file I was using for the glove and so KW Iron Man decided to just redesign the palm from scratch. So... waiting for another pattern there I guess.

All the finger pieces are primed and ready for colour though.

Although I'm disappointed that I didn't get any of those three done, I am far enough along to still consider myself on schedule for my goals this year. Izabel was completed in January, and Mai and Princess Hawkguy are both far enough along that I can easily get both done in March. Then I can get down to serious cosplay business through April and May working on Midna and my Anime North back-up costume. Extremis Pepper's completion goal is for SouSho in June. Then I'm going to spend the summer working on the rest of Phase One (namely Nightingale and finishing Midna), collaboration costumes with/for KW Iron Man and Iron Girl (Phase Two!), and a couple brand new projects which I'm really excited to get started on (Phase Three!!)

Finally, I've been posting fewer individual progress photos lately, mostly because I've been working on so many different things a little at a time, saving image posts for when whole sections of a single costume are done. Sometimes I randomly put single progress images on Facebook or Twitter , but it really is random; I'm god about taking photos, but it disrupts my workflow at lot to try to post while I'm working on things. If you realllly want to keep tabs on whether I'm on track though, I've put a running progress meter for each costume on the right side of my blog (assuming you're reading this on my blog page). This way it's easy for me to keep myself accountable without having to constantly post images and boring descriptions!

Anyways, time to get back to work!

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Saturday is Kitchener Comic Con

27/2/2015

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I'm going to be there with KW Iron Man as Pepper Potts - keeping an eye on that always troublesome Tony ~_^ He is going to be doing a "Props and Armour" panel with Shelle-Chii and London Batman, but I'm just going to be hanging around the con all day ^_^

If you're in the Kitchener-Waterloo area and want to check out KCC, come to Kitchener City Hall from 11 to 6-ish (Feb 28). Admission is free, but paid VIP passes are available which give priority entrance to events and discounts from some vendors.

Hope to see some of you there!
Kitchener Comic Con on Facebook
Photo: Elemental Photography at Tri-Con 2014.

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Overly Ambitious

8/1/2015

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I was tagged by Ragz to post my 2015 cosplay plans... I posted something similar already in December, but this is a more... complete... list.

Top row is actual goals for 2015: " Modern Mai " from Avatar fan art for whenever (with KW Iron Man as Zuko), Extremis Pepper (have to get off my butt and finish the glove), cover-art Kate Bishop from Hawkguy with Chris & Carrie and friends' Hawkguy group and/or Brian's Wiccan aiming for C2E2, Twili Midna from Twilight Princess/Hyrule Warriors for Anime North (dream costume; WHY WON'T YOU MAKE YOURSELF???), and Nightingale from Atomic Robo to wear with Featherweight as Robo (pants and boots done, need to finish the jacket, wig, and hat).

Second row is stuff I don't even have hopes of finishing this year, but since I have stocked fabric/wigs/etc for all of them if I find myself with free time will be putting work into them. L-R: Lolita Thor, Journey protagonist, Ygritte, Espeon, Miz Mishtal. Realistic completion on second row is 2016-2017 - just in time for Costume Con to return to Toronto! lol

I think everyone I would have tagged already has been, but if you haven't: feel free to pile on (and leave a link in the comments ^_^ )

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Next 4 costumes

8/12/2014

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I have been meaning to post about my upcoming costumes for a while now, especially since I don't have any new photos or progress to write about, but I do have a LOT of projects in various stages of being started. The recent meme going around about posting the next 4 in the works seemed like a pretty good place to start though, so here we go with that :)

Fan art Mai (and Zuko) is mostly purchased items. Boots need to be altered, shirt and vest need to be sewn, and the wig needs to be styled. Deadline: none.
Nightingale has been on hold since Oct 2013. Anxious to get back to work on her jacket and hat. Also need gloves and to style the wig. Deadline: none.
Twili Midna has been on hold since May 2014. Recently got the last supplies I needed so I should be back to work on that. Bodysuit is 95% complete, everything else is still just supplies. Deadline: Anime North 2015, but that's just a goal, i'll finish it when I finish it.
Extremis Pepper is just waiting for me to work through the baffling design of Pepakura patterns (and this coming from someone familiar with how clothing patterns work). Had a test-run at Halloween this year using the arm that KW Iron Man made for me, and borrowing his glove since I'm making my own for that part. Deadline: none.

More to come next time!

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Here Comes Costume-Con!

23/4/2014

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There's just a few days left until CC32 and I am a mix of emotions about it. As I mentioned previously , I'm not making anything new which is really one of those "disappointed in myself" things. It's not really helped by seeing so many of my friends either posting progress photos or working on things in Google Hangouts - I've also been working on costumes the last couple of weeks, but not quite with the same commitment since my next deadline isn't for a while yet and I'm doing several things at once to boot.

So what have I been working on? In my last progress blog I mentioned working on bodysuits, and that's what I've been doing, although it's been a slow process. I have 3+1 bodysuits ahead, and I'm working on Midna first, though there's some simultaneous work going on for all. Unfortunately, all the suits require different patters and they all have to be hand-drafted so... I hope I'll be really good at this by the time I'm done. Progress pics of things so far below:

Also, spending face-time with friends:

and speaking of Costume Con... my cosplay plans are below. Aside from doing Alice on Friday, I don't have plans for which costume for which day. I'm not entering any of the masquerades, but I am going to be part of the Future Fashion Folio event on Sunday, modeling a couple of dresses for Andrea Schewe. I'm excited just because I get to wear the Cercei dress XD. I might not want to take it off LOL. Looking forward to sharing photos and maybe videos from the con once it's all over <3