Extremely buh-lated Anime Boston post (and a long horror story) Part One

A couple weeks ago, I attended Anime Boston 2012! I've been going ever since I was 12 (except for 2010, which was the year I first seriously got into Lolita and saved my money for wardrobe-building), but so far this was the best year yet! Due to the fact that I actually had money this year from my job (I took SO many extra shifts to save up for this thing! Somehow, my grades didn't suffer), I was able to go both Friday and Saturday, something I've never been able to do before. I could have gone Sunday as well, except it was Easter and I didn't want to abandon my family since we always have a little get-together to eat ice cream on Easter day :)

Friday I went as the vocaloid SeeU, which was a blast! Apparently, I was the only SeeU there so lots of people came up asking for pictures and such. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get an amazing picture of my costume due to the fact that I was being rushed around all day from the time I got up to the time I went home (which was fine, of course), but some of my friends managed to get decent shots of me.

Before I share a picture, let me share the short horror story that went along with this costume:

I originally ordered this costume from a reputable commissioner known among the cosplaying community. I trusted her because her reputation seemed good enough, and she'd always go around and give out free cosplay advice. Based on the quality of her advice, she seemed to definitely know what she was talking about. I'd been wanting to cosplay SeeU for a while, but knew I wouldn't have the time to make the costume myself since school, work, and other creative pursuits like choir and musicals owned my soul, so I figured I'd drop the $210 and order from her. It was a bit pricey, but I thought I'd be getting a quality costume from her, and it would be easier to work a couple extra shifts to get the money than to acquire all the money and materials to make the thing myself. To get and idea of what I expected, here's a picture:

Days before the con, the monstrosity she called my costume arrived. Now, those of you who know SeeU know that one of the defining traits of her costume is that it's orange. Lots of people hated this, and I wasn't too fond of it on first but it grew on me. What color is the thing she gives me? Freaking yellow. Not even tangerine-orange, or yellow-orange, just straight-up yellow. 

The SOLID black panel on the top half of the shirt is made of lace for some reason, which might be a cute touch except I never request ANYTHING like that and the shirt is cut low enough that you can see my bra. The whole top sags really weirdly because it turns out that she, the professional full-time costumer, forgot to dart the bust (though there's a whole lot more going on). 

The CD pin is missing, and the buttons and bangles (which she agreed to make with wonderflex) were poorly made from sculpey clay, of all things. Instead of having the circles and power symbol on the buttons, which were falling off due to the fact that she only added a very small amount of hot glue, she just kind of painted whatever the hell she wanted there, which sort of looked liked the symbols from a Playstation controller.

 The cat ears were also poorly hot glued onto a cheap headband, and just had little orange circles hastily painted on them, and one had fallen off (she'd e-mailed me before warning that due to the fact that sometimes USPS would mishandle packages even if they were marked "fragile," which mine was not, one of the ears might have fallen off and that I could fix that with some hot glue. Seems kind of odd that she ONLY warned me about the ears, which had conveniently fallen apart, and not the buttons or anything else that looked ready to fall apart as well). 

Instead of the bangles being orange on the outside and black on the inside, she'd just kind of roughly formed two little circles that looked like they were made by a freaking pre-schooler in orange and black, both of which were WAY too big for my wrist even though I'd sent her my wrist size and emphasized that my hands are smaller than average. The second pair of bangles were missing, as well as the pause button on the back of the shirt (she claimed to have "sketchy reference," but I'd sent her an e-mail with several, VERY clear close-ups of SeeU's outfit, including a clear shot of the back with the pause button).

Despite needing to be ironed and not having serged seams on the inside, the skirt, which was what she'd sent a progress picture of a week or so before sending my costume, was pretty nice- except it was made for a 34 inch waist. My waist is 27 inches. When I told her about this, she said she usually makes her items a half inch or so bigger just to be safe and may have overshot a bit. That's nice, I do that too, except my skirts that end up being too big are usually 28.5" at worst, and I'm not the professional costumer getting paid $200+ freaking dollars to make a costume within a couple weeks.

Needless to say, I was NOT happy with my product. The ONLY excuse the commissioner had was that she'd been in the hospital a month before, and I'd been late with my second payment so I'd kind of rushed her with the second order- but she still had a whole two or three weeks to do it. Even then, if she knew she wouldn't be able to, she shouldn't told me and either offered me a refund or offer to just send the costume late. With the kind of money she was charging, the costume should have been made from decent, non-see through fabrics and materials, it should have fit like a glove, and it should be so accurate that the very seams match the character's costume. Instead, I received a see-through, wrinkle-prone piece of crap top and skirt, with sculpey accessories that look like they were scuplted by a three-year-old with key pieces of the costume missing. There was no way I was wearing this shit to Anime Boston.

What I ended up having to so was re-make the ENTIRE top, the bangles, the cat ears (which were WICKED tiny and awkward, especially with the wig), the CD pin and re-size the skirt she gave me (which wrinkled like a mofo even after being ironed several times). I did this with $15 in two short afternoons, and I am NOT a skilled craftsman. My costume ended up not being exactly the right color, and I ended up just using sculpey clay as well for the buttons and bangles, but it was INFINITELY more well-made and accurate than whatever the hell it was she gave me, and it fit fine.

Here is a picture of me (with my socks fallen down a bit) and Batman:

Not the best picture, I know. I still love the character and her costume though, and plan to entirely re-make the costume myself this time. Here are some key things I plan to change:

-Get extensions that match my wig- SeeU has a LOT of hair and even with my 40" wig I didn't quite do it justice. I had some blonde extensions but unfortunately they were too dark to wear with the wig >.>

-Get sock tape, so my socks don't fall down constantly as seen here and in every picture taken of me throughout the day.

-Get a skirt that doesn't wrinkle like a butt.

-Re-make the entire top so the colour is accurate, as well as replacing the clay buttons and bangles with something nicer and smoother-looking.

-Hopefully, if I can figure this out, get some of that fabric with those designs on it that lights up when music is played with it. Figure out how to get the orange sound-line design on the stuff, rig it to a microphone so it lights up to my voice when I speak (SeeU actually has a headset so this works), and attach it to the black part of the shirt. Possibly do the same for the gray panel on the shoes, which also need to be re-done since I didn't attach the panels securely enough and they fell off >.>

-Again just a possibility, but I'd like to also re-make the cat ears to look smoother, and maybe even actually install speakers inside them like I saw somebody do once (freaking coolest thing ever) so they actually function like they're supposed to and they're not just random cat ears (this was actually one of the things I liked about SeeU's design)

-Get a new band for the socks so they actually match.

I have a lot to do for this costume, but at least this time I'm not just putting my faith into somebody else to make it for me. I won't be doing that again for a while >.> Honestly, despite the rush when I made it, I did have fun making the costume! I hope to get back into making costumes in the summer when I have more free time. Obviously I'd like to finish my SeeU cosplay first so it doesn't suck, but afterwards, I'd really like to make a gijinka of Charlotte from Madoka magica:

I really love Charlotte's design, and haven't really found a cosplay yet that I think fully captures the character. My second outfit for Anime Boston was actually a gijinka of Pinkie Pie from My Little Pony, but I'll save that for another post :) Basically, the outfit was born from the fact that I couldn't decided between cosplaying My Little Pony or wearing Lolita, so I ended up wearing Lolita VERY strongly influenced by Pinkie Pie- the only thing I didn't do that would push it straight into cosplay territory was the ears/tail.

For now though, I'll leave you guys with some of my favourite cosplayers I saw Friday. There were so many great cosplayers, it's difficult to pick just a few to show you guys!:

Grooooose

there were so many good Groose cosplays this year, and they were ALL women which is kind of awesome, in a weird way

Rue, SO amazing!

Idk where she's from but this costume is so adorable

Link and Zelda! Zelda was especially adorable.

Finally, here's a shot of what I got on Friday:

Lots of alpacas and pastels. I REGRET NOTHING