Cosplay Senpai

There are some pretty skilled cosplayers out who put out some amazing work. Today I thought I would share some of my favorite cosplayers that I look up to.

Please note I do not own any of those photos and all photos were taken from each cosplayer's facebook page

International Cosplayers

Yaya Han

I admire Yaya Han sewing abilities. Her ability to sew something amazing is out of this world.

Kamui Cosplay

What I love about Kamui Cosplay is her armour work. It always looks so good and she always adds details to it.

Shoko and Jerome Cosplay

I found this pair looking for Gabranth cosplays. I am still trying to get over the fact that their Gabranth was made out of foam.


Australian Cosplayers

Armored Soul Cosplay

I love Armored Soul Cosplay for her work with worbla and her ability to make such large armored projects.

 Floksy Locksy Cosplay

Floksy Locksy Cosplay had produced some amazing cosplays over the years, and so far my favorite would have to be her Yunalesca.

My Geeky Story (so far)

Hi my name is Sarah and I'm a geek. I love to play video games, reading (both novels and manga), cosplay and watching anime.

I thought I would share my background as a geek as a way to let you get to know me better.

This is my Geeky Story (so far)

I was a 90's kid, the youngest of four, and Nintendo was king. I can't remember which one we got first, but my first leap into gaming and geekdom was though the Nintendo 64 and the Nintendo Gameboy.

My siblings and myself would spend lots of time playing with each other and with friends on the 64. Our favourite games include Super Smash Bros, Mairo Kart, Snowboard Kids. We also enjoyed playing other games like Mairo 64 and Donkey Kong. Being the Pokemon fan I was, I also enjoyed Pokemon Snap, Pokemon Stadium 1 and 2.
Fun fact I got Pokemon Stadium 2 as a Christmas present one year and one of the first mini games I tried to master was the one where you had to catch eggs falling from the top of the screen using Chansey. To get a prefect score you had to catch all 100 eggs and it was crazy on hard, but I think that just made playing on hard so much more fun.

Oh yes, I loved Pokemon and everything to do with Pokemon and it was all thanks to my neighbour who introduced me to it. My very first Pokemon game was Pokemon Blue on the Gameboy and since then I have been addicted to it. I used to collect so much Pokemon stuff that looking back I am surprised that my parents let me get half the stuff that I did. Most if not all of which I still have even to this day.
During high school my love for Pokemon did calm down a bit. I was still playing the games, but I wasn't going crazy about all of the other stuff like toys, videos/DVDs, the cards etc. Now its just BUY ALL THE POKEMON STUFF!!!!!!!!!!!!

I feel that I should mention books, but there isn't much to tell, other than I read a lot. One series that did make a impact though was the Ranger's Apprentice.
While most other kids who read were reading and loving the Harry Potter series, I was in love with Will and the adventures that he would go on, most of which were with Halt. I started reading Ranger's Apprentice back in about year 6 (give or take a year) and to this day it has remained my all time favorite series.
I was rather upset when I finished the last book, that I think the only reason that I didn't have a breakdown was that I was on my lunch break, and I really need to go back to work.

Eventually the PlayStation 2 came out and by that stage my oldest sister had moved out and the remaining two siblings and myself decided we wanted one. It though the PS 2 that I really started to like different games than my siblings.
My cousin who was a similar age to myself discovered Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy X and introduced them to me. Both of which I really loved.
I remember trying to finish Final Fantasy X with my cousin in as short a time as possible and in order to do so we would take in turns to play so that the other could rest. We could not have been older than 12 or 13 at the time.

Small mention goes to Fire Emblem: Sacred Stone. I loved playing this game and only picked it up because I was looking for a game to take away on holidays and it was the only half interesting looking one at the shop. I ended up replaying it a few times, and want to play more of it, but for quite a while I couldn't find another Fire Emblem game. Until Radiant Drawn came out. It was good, but it wasn't great, and I wanted something more. Something only Awakening could fill.

During high school nothing made a big impact on me as the likes of Pokemon or Final Fantasy. I knew what I liked and I kept to those things and those in a similar category. That was until I became friends with a girl I was friends with at the start of high school but than drafted apart from.
We hit it off pretty well as we were both into gaming. It was during this period that she introduced me to a thing called Anime and Manga and it all went down hill from there (in a good way).
The first anime she showed me was Ouran High School Host Club and I was in love and wanted more. Now some of my favorites include Say "I love you" and Sword Art Online.

She also told me about this thing called AVcon.

After finding out about AVcon I thought it sound cool and that it was something that I wanted to go to. Which I did end up doing the next year. I had so much fun that I have been every year since (that was in 2012) and I have started cosplaying.

Its a bit hard to know about conventions and not know about cosplay. When I saw it I thought that it looked fun and that I should give it a go. My very first cosplay was Hope from Final Fantasy XIII. I call him my first even though I wore him and Edward Elric for the first time at the same convention as I brought Hope first, and Edward was a bit of a afterthought. Since than I have enjoyed making my own cosplays.

And that is my geeky story (so far). Thanks for reading!

Dewey's 24 hour Read-a-Thon April updates!

This is where I will post updates of my Read-a-Thon.


The first book I will be reading is Bakuman Volume 14

I just finished my first book at about 10:50pm

Next up is Bakuman Volume 15

Seeing as it was nearly midnight I decided to go to bed





I only ended up finished Bakuman Volume 14 and 15, and reading most of the first Harry Potter book

Open Meme for the April 24 hour Read-a-Thon

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today?
I'm from Australia

2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to?
I'm looking forward to reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone the most. I want to get though a fair bit of the manga in my TBR bookcase (yes I have a bookcase for my TBR pile. Keep in mind though it is only a very small one), but in the past couple of weeks I have had a inkling for some Harry Potter.

3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?
I haven't actually got any snacks planned! I probably should have thought of that. I will probably just see what there is to eat when I get hungry.

4) Tell us a little something about yourself!
I love reading and Pokemon and I have loved them both since I was a little girl. To the point where one of the earliest memories I have of my dad is him reading me a Pokemon book before I went to bed. Not much has changed since then, I still love reading and I still love Pokemon.

Besides for that I like to play video games, read manga, watch anime as well as cosplay (I try to make most of my cosplays) and Lolita fashion.

5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what's one thing you'll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to?
this is my first read-a-thon, so I don't really know what to expect. Like I said before, I really want to a few of my manga read, but I'm also looking forward to extra motivation to read, or at lest I hope there will be.

Dewey's 24 hour Read-a-Thon TBR

With the read-a-thon starting tomorrow, I thought I would post the list of books I hope to read over the 24 hour period. I have a few thicker books on my TBR list, but in the hope of reading more books this challenge I will stick to thinner books. 

Last July I brought the complete Bakuman series, and the first ten Naruto volumes, which while I have started I am yet to finish. I would like to finish reading one and read one or two of the other. My main focus will be those two.

To mix things up, I will have the choice of The Maze Runner, the first Harry Potter book, the ninth Ranger's Apprentice book, book five of Brotherband or a choice of one of the books off my Kindle.

Dewey's 24 hour Read-a-Thon

I just signed up to do the [url=http://24hourreadathon.com]Dewey's 24 hour Read-a-Thon.[/url] Like the tile suggests, you read as much as you can in a 24 hour period. It is a Read-a-Thon that is held twice a year, with everyone starting and finishing at the same time. The next one is on April 25th. 

Earlier this year I read 10,000 pages which worked out to be around 21 (?) books in one month. I got though a lot of my to be read pile. I want to pick things up a little bit as I'm hoping to reading 100 books this year.

I'm really looking forward to it, and hopefully meeting some other people who enjoy reading as well along the way

How I made my Weeping Angel Wings

Recently I finished making a pair of Weeping Angel wings. They took me a little over a month to make start to finish, working on them on and off, and I decided to share how I made them. I do have details on how I made them on my WIP photos on facebook but I thought I would go into more detail.

Please note I used EVA foam otherwise known as those foam mats people use for camping.



First I went looking for some good reference photos of both the front and back of the wings. Once I did that I did a little math. I measured the length and width of the wings in the photo. I than decided how long I wanted them to be, which was 1m. Using the measurements I took from the photo, I worked out how wide I would have to make them if I wanted them to be 1m long.

With that work out, I took some paper and stuck it together to use as a pattern. Using the final measurements I drew a rectangle as a base. From there I drew the final outline of the wings

For the first wing I cut each feather out and than traced them on to EVA mats, and from there cut them out, along with the top bit. For the second wing I did not as I thought it would look just as good and it would be less time consuming. I ended up having some problems with the first wing. There was a gap where the feathers and the top piece joined which I fixed by using scraps to fill.

From there I cut out the top pieces and glue them on

Now on to the front. For the front I drew a pattern just for the top piece and I traced just the under side of the pattern on to the EVA foam, and I traced the top part of the wings so I knew it would match up later on and I wouldn't have to change it much later. When I went to lay the top piece on to the wing with gabs, I found that the gabs would show up on in one area which I fixed by making a feather for each wing to cover this.

As you can see in the photos one side of the feathers is flat and the other has a pattern on it. I wanted both sides flat so I sanded the pattern side down, but I only sanded the area that would not be covered. This is to save time. This photo is to show the top pieces all glued on to the sanded down base.

From there I covered both wings with PVA glue. I tried to lightly cover the wings with silver spray paint and from there drew on the black lines. You can see some uneven color, this is from where I covered some joins in the EVA foam with some paint over silicone.

From there I made a back piece to join the wings to and hold them on to my back. I glued two bits of EVA foam together and angled the edges where I was going to glue the wings to. I used seat belts to attach the whole thing to my back. I had one going around my waist with two going over my shoulders and attached to the one around my waist as shown in the photos. The seat belt going around my waist is the only one that I made go though the foam.

From there I glued the wings to it. The weight of the wings pulled a bit on the seat belts particularly at the top. It need a lot of hot glue which I ended up getting my heat gun out and using it to heat up the glue.  In the end I get some Liquid Nails and used it at the top of the seat belts and I added a extra layer of EVA foam.

Not the best photo of the wings on, but so far this one is the only one I have. I would also recommend the use of clamps when gluing and sanding, it helps a lot.