Fire Elsa - Final result!

Desucon was an absolute hoot and on Sunday I debuted my "Fire Elsa"! It was a lot of fun, perhaps in particular because there were so many other Elsas there but I was the only one who had done a fire version. Here are some of the photos from the con:

Photo by Nils Katla

Photo by Branna Laurelin

Edit by me

Photo by Branna Laurelin
Edit by me

Photo by me

I participated in the cosplay competition, but I had no ambitions of winning. I had already seen some of the other participants and followed the progress photos on Instagram and such on a few of them, and they were truly epic! But the finalists were given the chance to do a performance, and I really wanted to sing, so I applied anyway. 

Come Sunday, however, my voice was utterly broken after two con days, and when I was told I was amongst the finalists, I got incredibly nervous, as I didn't know whether I would actually be able to sing at all, plus the fact that there were probably around two thousand people in the room, and I've never performed in front of such a big crowd! In the end, I got up on stage and did my best, which, in my critically inclined mind, wasn't very impressive for the first third of the song, but the crowd was very forgiving and incredibly supportive, and it calmed my nerves down and gave me enough confidence to plough through, in spite of my uncooperative larynx! 

A friend of mine was kind enough to record it all and share it, so if you want to see my performance, here you go:

As expected, I didn't win the competition (a friend of mine who'd been working on her Elsa cosplay since January (and i bloody showed!) won, and it was really well deserved), but I won an Honourable Mention for my performance, and to be honest, that's more than enough for me! ^_^

Elsa update: Skirt, glitter and shoes!

Even though I already had a skirt that might work, I ended up making a new skirt instead of using the one I already had. Mostly because I didn't particularly feel like cutting the old on up for the front split, but also because I kind of wanted a lighter more yellow colour. I lined it using the leftovers I still had of the old fabric, though, and with the split (which conveniently has "waves" created by the seam), it gives a delightful "fiery" look! Unfortunately, I don't have any good pictures of the skirt, but here are some of the other extras: 

I ended up decorating the train with some extra glitter in red and gold!

I also found a pair of pumps that just screamed Fire Elsa!

  Facing the eternal problem of certain cosplays; "how do I carry all my stuff?" I solved it by making a cute, little bag from the left over materials. This was a life saver, and I like it so much I might actually use it for other occasions as well!

New project: Fire Elsa

Like pretty much everyone else, I've been enthralled by Disney's Frozen, and like everyone else I've been singing Let it Go on almost a daily basis. However, the cold really does bother me, and so a while back, I made a fire version of the song and the idea struck me that it would be pretty awesome to make a cosplay to match it! And so started started the process of Fire Elsa!

Inspiration:

I started planning it quite early this year, picking up material that could potentially work from fabric sales and such, but in between finishing Tauriel for Desucon Fantasy for mid April, and suddenly deciding to update Kili for HobbitCon, time slipped through my fingers and I never got the chance to start working on it. Then, a few weeks ago, having originally planned to just go for Kili all of Desucon 9, I dived into it, not telling anyone, thinking that if I finished it, I'd use it, and if I didn't, no one would be the wiser.

I already had a dark orange skirt that could work, so I started out with the top and the corset. I actually tried out two different materials for the top before I decided on a third one, the same material as the train would be made of.

Here's a sample of some of the materials I used:

This photo really doesn't do justice to all the sparklies of this material!

 The corset was a bit of tricky business, though. I used an old corset as template and cut out pieces, realising too late that it was cut far too low for my bosom to function properly, let alone look even remotely decent. So, I added an extra piece which also accentuated the sweetheart cut, and allowed me to hide a bra underneath it all, which really helped! The modesty panel in the back had to be redone as well, having miscalculated and made it too small first time around, but finally, it fit and looked as it should!

I moved on to the train that flows from Elsa's corset. Made out of soft and extremely sparkly tulle, it needed no hemming and I could cut freely. Attaching it to the corset was another story all together, however. Though the tulle did have a certain amount of stretch in it, it would not be enough by far to allow for the gap I would need in the back to put the corset on before lacing it. I considered several different options such as using an elastic band, making it somehow detachable, attaching it to the top instead of the corset, but landed on hand sewing the train on to either side of the corset, all the way back to where the lacing began and leaving a lot of material in the back, which I then stitched on around the top lace of the lacing. It allowes for the material to be naturally gathered up when I lace the corset up, and looks pretty good as well! :)

This is how the finished result looks, although I might still add some details here and there:

And I couldn't help but to a bit of photo editing fun stuff: