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Description

Alright, the final reveal of my whole costume—Woooo~! I didn’t do a full on photo shoot with this one, but plan on doing some at Boston Comic Con with my New 52 Mista’ J.
Some things I learned doing this…
1. How to work with worbla. The corset and the bracers are made out of worbla. One of the things I see people do in cosplay that has always impressed me is good body armor. I’ve been tinkering with the idea for a while on how to work with this one some project ideas, and this seemed like a great opportunity to try it out to get the effect I wanted for this costume. I had help in the construction of the bracers and the corset with friends I made at Rhode Island Comic Con, Justine & Jay (who are wicked cool nice people btw). Justine helped me a lot with the fitting and showing me the basics on worbla play after I freaked out after finding out that heat guns get up to 1000 degrees lol and Jay made the awesome little kunai knives you see on the side with his nifty 3D printer. The bracers have the diamond shapes imbedded in them. The corset was at least two layers of worbla (one to get the right shape, the second to get the nice smooth look). For the lacing, I heated the worbla up a little and banged in some rivets to lace some parachute rope through. One of the biggest fears everyone had for me was the corset staying up. No one wanted to see any wardrobe mishaps lol I was originally thinking of constructing the corset with velcro areas to hold it up, but realistically that would not have ended up looking right—it would have been too lumpy and bumpy, and may not have stayed up. Then we thought maybe for extra security there might be some clips underneath just to help hold it up, but as I found out, you can’t really clip that when you have such a stiff object so close to your body, so it kind of just hung there creating more pressure points. So, what really helped actually was the parachute rope. It was honestly kind of hard to thread, considering pleating in the front, but once threaded, like a regular corset, you tighten it and fasten it. Since if you look at the original design of Harley’s corset in the comics, you don’t really see any laces coming out of the top, to stay true to that, I cut the rope, and rolled some hot glue between each thread at the top to help fasten it. It surprisingly worked really well. I had no issues. I just had to cut myself out of it afterwards, but it got the effect I wanted lol
2. Working with body paint. To get the full on comic book effect of WHITE white skin, I decided to try doing full on body paint. I mean, I have a natural graveyard tan as it is, but in the comics, she isn’t just pale, she’s WHITE. Doing full on body paint to my face, shoulders, back, arms, hands, midriff, and legs was a lot of hard work. First, I did some research and found out how to do this. You use an airbrush to apply alcohol-based paint (alcohol based so it lasts all day and doesn’t wash off so easily like water based paint—I used the brand Kustom Body Art—it worked great!). I originally ordered this little airbrush kit from ebay. It was a cute little thing in the shape of an elephant that came with a set of water-based paint (which I figured I could test with). However, when I tried it out—the darn thing wouldn’t work! It was coming out in a trickle at best! And I tried searching the internet for ways to fix the darn thing, took it apart and put it back together several times, and just couldn’t figure it out. The people that sold it to me were kind of enough to try and call and explain how to use it, but when I wanted a refund, they were trying to tell me that I didn’t know what I was doing and blame it on ME! Terrible business. I DO NOT recommend www.ebay.com/itm/141143999613?… SO I began the search of another airbrush machine that I could use. I tried looking at craft stores like AC Moore, but the prices where ridiculous! Like $2-300 ridiculous! So after taking some advice from a couple friends, I found a 1 gal air compressor for like $60 (they were selling 2 gallon ones at Home Depot and Lowes, but come on people, I live in an apartment—I need something small here!), and attaching it to a quick change air brush kit my friend gave me. It works beautiful! You can adjust the nozzle, and it actually sprays the body paint evenly over the skin! Finally! I’m loving it! I do warn you though, it is a loud machine, and with the alcohol based paint, there are some fumes that rise in the air. The whole body paint process took like 3 hours though. I blame this mostly on the fact that I used a different type of generic face paint on my face based on the recommendations I read online. I DO NOT recommend this. It is hard to get an even tone over the skin consistent with the rest of the paint that won’t cake up on you. I would recommend working on the face first, then work on the torso, and then the legs, and then the arms, and finally the hands. And then you have to let yourself dry for about 20-30 minutes before attempting anything else. Ooff. Have the TV on lol Despite the long time I gave myself to dry, I still managed to get some paint on the seats of my car. But they are leather seats, and it was summer. So if you are driving anywhere, I recommend sitting on towels or something so that way you don’t ruin the seats lol The paint held up for the convention. Getting it off took another three hours, a whole packet of makeup remover wipes, and a couple scrubbings in the bath, and a heck of a lotta lotion lol Cosplay is hard work. But this is what I learned from my experience, and thus I share it with you. I plan on doing two body paint based makeups this weekend for Boston Comic Con—so hopefully it goes smoother!

Description

Alright, the final reveal of my whole costume—Woooo~! I didn’t do a full on photo shoot with this one, but plan on doing some at Boston Comic Con with my New 52 Mista’ J.
Some things I learned doing this…
1. How to work with worbla. The corset and the bracers are made out of worbla. One of the things I see people do in cosplay that has always impressed me is good body armor. I’ve been tinkering with the idea for a while on how to work with this one some project ideas, and this seemed like a great opportunity to try it out to get the effect I wanted for this costume. I had help in the construction of the bracers and the corset with friends I made at Rhode Island Comic Con, Justine & Jay (who are wicked cool nice people btw). Justine helped me a lot with the fitting and showing me the basics on worbla play after I freaked out after finding out that heat guns get up to 1000 degrees lol and Jay made the awesome little kunai knives you see on the side with his nifty 3D printer. The bracers have the diamond shapes imbedded in them. The corset was at least two layers of worbla (one to get the right shape, the second to get the nice smooth look). For the lacing, I heated the worbla up a little and banged in some rivets to lace some parachute rope through. One of the biggest fears everyone had for me was the corset staying up. No one wanted to see any wardrobe mishaps lol I was originally thinking of constructing the corset with velcro areas to hold it up, but realistically that would not have ended up looking right—it would have been too lumpy and bumpy, and may not have stayed up. Then we thought maybe for extra security there might be some clips underneath just to help hold it up, but as I found out, you can’t really clip that when you have such a stiff object so close to your body, so it kind of just hung there creating more pressure points. So, what really helped actually was the parachute rope. It was honestly kind of hard to thread, considering pleating in the front, but once threaded, like a regular corset, you tighten it and fasten it. Since if you look at the original design of Harley’s corset in the comics, you don’t really see any laces coming out of the top, to stay true to that, I cut the rope, and rolled some hot glue between each thread at the top to help fasten it. It surprisingly worked really well. I had no issues. I just had to cut myself out of it afterwards, but it got the effect I wanted lol
2. Working with body paint. To get the full on comic book effect of WHITE white skin, I decided to try doing full on body paint. I mean, I have a natural graveyard tan as it is, but in the comics, she isn’t just pale, she’s WHITE. Doing full on body paint to my face, shoulders, back, arms, hands, midriff, and legs was a lot of hard work. First, I did some research and found out how to do this. You use an airbrush to apply alcohol-based paint (alcohol based so it lasts all day and doesn’t wash off so easily like water based paint—I used the brand Kustom Body Art—it worked great!). I originally ordered this little airbrush kit from ebay. It was a cute little thing in the shape of an elephant that came with a set of water-based paint (which I figured I could test with). However, when I tried it out—the darn thing wouldn’t work! It was coming out in a trickle at best! And I tried searching the internet for ways to fix the darn thing, took it apart and put it back together several times, and just couldn’t figure it out. The people that sold it to me were kind of enough to try and call and explain how to use it, but when I wanted a refund, they were trying to tell me that I didn’t know what I was doing and blame it on ME! Terrible business. I DO NOT recommend www.ebay.com/itm/141143999613?… SO I began the search of another airbrush machine that I could use. I tried looking at craft stores like AC Moore, but the prices where ridiculous! Like $2-300 ridiculous! So after taking some advice from a couple friends, I found a 1 gal air compressor for like $60 (they were selling 2 gallon ones at Home Depot and Lowes, but come on people, I live in an apartment—I need something small here!), and attaching it to a quick change air brush kit my friend gave me. It works beautiful! You can adjust the nozzle, and it actually sprays the body paint evenly over the skin! Finally! I’m loving it! I do warn you though, it is a loud machine, and with the alcohol based paint, there are some fumes that rise in the air. The whole body paint process took like 3 hours though. I blame this mostly on the fact that I used a different type of generic face paint on my face based on the recommendations I read online. I DO NOT recommend this. It is hard to get an even tone over the skin consistent with the rest of the paint that won’t cake up on you. I would recommend working on the face first, then work on the torso, and then the legs, and then the arms, and finally the hands. And then you have to let yourself dry for about 20-30 minutes before attempting anything else. Ooff. Have the TV on lol Despite the long time I gave myself to dry, I still managed to get some paint on the seats of my car. But they are leather seats, and it was summer. So if you are driving anywhere, I recommend sitting on towels or something so that way you don’t ruin the seats lol The paint held up for the convention. Getting it off took another three hours, a whole packet of makeup remover wipes, and a couple scrubbings in the bath, and a heck of a lotta lotion lol Cosplay is hard work. But this is what I learned from my experience, and thus I share it with you. I plan on doing two body paint based makeups this weekend for Boston Comic Con—so hopefully it goes smoother!