(Now with MORE pictures!)

At this year's Jacon I debuted my Cocona cosplay.
I'm very happy, excited, proud to have finally completed this project. Cosplays I've done in the past usually involved comissioning my costumes overseas, making them mostly out of already existing garments and lots of help from friends, and for the past year extreme costume recycling (aka using somebody else's costume or using old stuff over and over again).


For Cocona, I had to make it special... This has been my dream cosplay for over a year now. The moment I saw the figurine I completely fell in love, and the artwork is even more gorgeous.

Getting ready for this costume involved months of workouts and weight training (greatly aided by Body-for-Life and P90X baby!) to get in shape to wear an outfit this skimpy. I also needed a very large budget and a lot of time since I planned on making all the parts myself.

Illustrator was a great tool to help me make the sword prop and armor, since I could trace the design directly from pictures or artwork to then scale it to the necessary sizes...



Of course I was asked this a dozen times, and each person had their own ideas about how it was done, but since I planned on explaining it anyways and took some pics, here's how my sword was made:

The base is made from 1/4" oakwood. I printed the sword design I had traced in illustrator, glued it over the wood, and cut at it with a dremel (hand held cutting tool). One that was done, we cut a slit in the middle were a dowel would be inserted to make the handle of the sword. Thusly it was all glued up:


Styrofoam sheets were glued on each side of the sword with epoxy and then sanded down to resemble the thickness of the blade, 'its not a completely flat sword ya know...


The "heart" of the sword which is the intricate design in the middle was made entirely of several layers foamies painted over with glossy acrylic.


Here the bevel edge on the middle of the sword has been placed, as well as the cut-out of the heart design.


After this the styrofoam was covered in fiberglass cloth and given 2 coats of epoxy resin (shoulda gone for 3...) to give it a smooth edge that could be spray painted on. This was the most labor intensive part since the epoxy (hardener + resin) have to be mixed in exact ratios, you have a limited amount of time to work with it before it thickens, the cloth had to be precisely placed before being covered, and any tools I used with them would be rendered useless after the substance dried... =_=
Also it takes 24 hours for each coat to thoroughly dry, and sanding fiberglass is the biggest b*tch ever since the tiny particles stick to your clothing and skin and it makes you MAD itchy.




Cocona's hair was one of the most important parts of this cosplay for me. I love blue haired characters and I had noticed that other cosplayers had rendered her with blue -almost cerulean- colored hair, when the artwork shows her with cyan blue hair that fades into violet.

The wig is from eBay seller wigfashion [link] and was custom dyed purple with Katie Blair's [link] wig dye.



As always, I used help for most of the dress parts (yay for Grandmother's and friends that know how to sew!). We didn't use molds for anything and pretty much winged this part of the process and came up with our own.


The shoes were seriously the most difficult part of the project, and also the most unsuccessful since they fell apart by the end of the day and sustained major damage as soon as I walked in the con.
Right now I'm almost finished with the second version of the shoes which were finished much faster and are much neater.


Unfortunately the first version of my skirt was too long (as can be seen in Jacon photos), and this was corrected by the time I wore the costume again for SuperCon, where it was deemed too short =_=


Maybe it IS too much >_<... I think I've found a solution to keeping my skirt's length but not over-exhibiting my goods...












Thanks to all that asked to take our picture at the convention!
If you have our pic please let me know, I would like to see it and add to my collection ^_^