Plastic Princess

Confession:

I cosplay.

I'm also a massive Firefly fan.  I like to be a
well-rounded geek.

I'm sure some of you had your suspicions when I dressed up as an Alice in Wonderland character for Halloween last year with materials from scratch (though - I could just have really been into Halloween). Nope.  The truth is, I'm really quite into costume play - mostly from a design basis, but partly from a media appreciation standpoint, too.

For some reason, cosplayers get a lot of grief, particularly the lady breed, though something like this is totally acceptable:

George Takei posted this on his Facebook feed the other day, which I appreciated greatly:

Post by George Takei.

The jagoff's snarkiness aside, cosplay is an art form, though.  A lot of costumes take a great deal of time and effort, not to mention money.  I mean - just look at that girl!  ...And try not to get lost in her... gaze.

I confess to not being a very good or experienced cosplayer, mostly because I haven't had the opportunity, and also because I am super cheap.  I aim to change this, though.  SJH and I will be attending Geek Creation Show this fall, and he challenged me to come up with a costume worthy of the ages.

But the problem is that I'm still a tightwad.

Screw it.  I guess I'll just have to make my outfit out of trash.

"What?"

In Freshman year of college, I attended my first "No Clothes Party" - essentially you can wear anything, as long as it can't be considered a typical item of clothing.  Barrels, boxes, plastic - all copacetic.

The girl in the center with the duct-taped bikini?  She was the one that
got me into cosplay to begin with.  <3

 I put a surprising amount of effort into my Target bag sundress:

Even had matching shoes:

Anyway, needless to say, I had a lot of fun with it, and thought this might be a good opportunity to try it again.

So I had a lot of black plastic trash bags lying around...

Which I cut into long panels to be fluted into pleats:

The tedium...

THE TEDIUM!!!

First layer done...

And... the product so far:

The black layer is all plastic.  The white is tissue paper (like for gift stuffing).  Everything is held together with duct tape or electrical tape.

It's definitely in its infancy at the moment, and I have quite a lot of work before the entire outfit is done. I promise to share the final product, however good or terrible it is.  But I really must say - I'm proud of what I've accomplished so far.  If I'm trying too hard... well... Oh well.  At least it's more productive than putting people down.

Until the next.