ShinobiXikyu as Princess Luna

Princess Luna

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic

Gijinka

Cosplayer: ShinobiXikyu
A new costume for Con-G 2014 (the last one! T___T) and Costume-Con. I wanted to do something big and pretty for the stage, and then combine that with my pony love? A Luna gijinka was born! I decided on the dress design for the reason that I love flowy medieval-style lines over things like hoopskirts and ruffles, and Luna being in the moon a thousand years equated to "middle ages" for me, so I decided to design with that in mind.

The costume is;
Wig; First I bought a coscom Ivy in dark blue, but it seems I had a defective wig or something, because even for coscom's snug-as-heck wigs this thing was MONSTROUSLY tight (my head is 22 inches around, and it hardly fit. Yeah.). I had to express-order an epiccosplay wig as a replacement. The styling is simple, just a slightly volumized swept-over "bang", the rest long and loose. This wig is amazing at not tangling. To replicate her sparkly hair, I pinned a royal blue sparkle organza veil overtop. It's EXACTLY the same as the hair colour, so it works great.

Crown, ears, horn: I put the crown and horn together into a tiara (made of craft foam and paper mache, painted silver and with black and clear small jewels on the edges). The ears are craft foam, painted sparkly silver and not really "ears", more like curved crescent moons, and glued to the veil- they were going to be part of the crown, but I just couldn't get it to look right. Pin loops on the tiara band attach the crown and veil to the wig (veil sewn to crown's loops, crown's loops pinned to wig).

Main dress: Using the same pattern as my Schala dress, but modified to have wide but not BIG sleeves (more hoof-like in shape and width) and a slightly higher neckline and more rounded bodice seam than the original pattern calls for. Made of blue-black stretch velvet (wasn't the ideal fabric choice, but it was the only velvet in that colour I could find that wasn't all-silk and $60 a yard), lined in black rayon bemberg. On the sleeves, I decorated them with silver satin fleur-de lis taking up most of the sleeve and with a touch of beading, and another four small ones along the dress hem (and the closest to a satin stitch I could do on my sewing machine for their edges), a sparkly black belt/sash on the waist with her cutie mark beaded on and gathered blue sparkle organza for her tail, and on the skirt, beaded crescent moons. Also beaded the neckline with a crescent moon, and black ribbon trim.

Wings: I wanted to abstract it a bit, and I've never made wings, so I'm sewing lappet-like pieces attached from my dress shoulders that are designed to vaguely resemble wings, made from the same velvet as the dress, and with the hems cut to shape like feathers and crescent moons of silver satin appliqued on with plenty more of that "satin stitch" on my machine (it's actually a very tight zig-zag...). And then, I decided to leave them off due to both time constraints and it looking fine anyway.

Shoes: Sparkly silver ballet flats from Payless Shoe Source. Have I mentioned that when it comes to ballet flats, being an 8 1/2 sucks balls? All the super-cheap shoes I'd happily buy for cosplay don't come in half sizes and are much too big or too small in 9 and 8, so I have to pay more. Fortunately I can still get cheap ones for $10-20 ($50 for a BALLET FLAT at some stores? HA! My cross-trainers cost that much...)

Makeup: Portland Black Lipstick Company's Indigo Bridge colour. As for the eyes, G&G puffy/shiny 3-tone aqua lenses for her turquoisey-bluey eyes. False eyelashes too, of course, giant pony eyes require it.

Lucky me, I entered Luna with a short but funny skit in Con-G's last masquerade (sigh, the con stopped due to being too much to keep up with for the staff and they didn't want it to end as a bad convention), and won the "Most Regal" award for a combo of a very regal-looking costume (can you say 50+ hours spent on beading?) and my use of the ROYAL CANTERLOT VOICE AND MANNERISMS onstage. VIdeo of the masquerade here- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbD4XAXcDpE My own entry is at about 26 minutes in (and the camera guy added lightning-flash edits, dawww).

....all of this was worked on, mostly, while in fashion school too. It was definitely a down-to-the-wire costume, which usually doesn't happen with me. But I'm quite proud. Just needs a few repairs and I'll be strolling the halls at CostumeCon and Anime North in it!