My Princess Mononoke Cosplay

*PHOTOS WERE NOT TAKEN BY ME. I'M NOT TAKING CREDIT FOR THEM, ONLY THE COSTUME.*

Okay! So this was my first anime con! Yay for my loss of Con-ginity!!

Made EVERYTHING for this costume with the exception of the blue dress. That I bought from Target and cut up. IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT I MADE OUT OF WHAT MATERIAL: READ BELOW

1. MASK: Instant papier mache on a balloon covered with paper clay, painted with acrylic paint. (Same for ears.) Details on mask (Eye holes and designs) are made of a super light-weight clay called Model Magic, also painted with acrylic and glued on. Black tulle fabric is glued on the inside so it looks black but I can see through it. Fur was purchased online (NO IT IS NOT REAL), and was cut, glued, cut again, glued some more (Burned my fingers A LOT) to get the perfect look. Slits were made in the top of the mask to fit the ears, which were glued to a strip of fabric inside the hood.

2. NECKLACE: A type of clay called Polyclay (A kind of jewler's clay, I think, used to make beads) was used to hand make each individual fang. I used a small wooden skewer to poke a hole in the top of each fang and put them all on a leather cord in between wooden beads that are painted with black spray paint. Necklace ties in the back.

3. HEAD/ARM BANDS: Yes, I am wearing a head band, but you can't see it in any pics... Which is sad But I'll post pics of it later. The bands are black elastic glued/sewed in a loop with a little pendant made of black felt with a ring of braided cord glued/sewed on it. The head band has a white pearl colored marble-like stone glued in its center.

4. VEST: It's made of a thin fuzzy blanket my mom had. It's very short, soft fabric that looks a little like fur. I cut it up and made a basic (and unfortunately VERY square...) vest shape in two halves connected by the straps over my shoulders and sewed them together by the straps around my waist. It just slips over my head and is slightly stretchy.

5. CAPE: Same fur I ordered for the mask, cut in a rough wolfy shape with a stuffed tail at the end Had to use a lot of glue here kuz I was running short on time........ Rolled the edges in and glued them down, then put another layer of fur on the inside, to make it a little fuzzier and look less like a flat piece of faux fur. And then I just saftey-pinned it to my vest. (It stayed pretty well, but tended to slip back a lot...)

6: SHOES: These were my ONE big deviation from the original costume in the movie. I was going to hand-make some moccasin-type shoes, but I ran out of time (Story of my life..) SO, I used tan socks stretched over loafers that I painted tan. I stitched some rabbit-fur on one side of the sock and wrapped it around my leg and tied it with leather cord.

7. DAGGER: Also used the Polyclay, which, by the way, is a MASSIVE pain in the A** to work with. It doesn't adhere to itself and tends to crumble a lot. So I had to knead it A LOT, with a rolling pin, and folded it in on itself several times. Then I rolled it out into a relatively thin sheet and cut out two "knifey" shapes, putting a black dowel in between the halves and filling in the empty space with extra clay to make it solid. The knife was originally THIRTEEN INCHES LONG. NOT including the handle. Yeah, it was ridiculous. After I baked it, I decided I hated how it looked so I sawed a bunch off the end (It has a consistency like soap... but sturdier) and then it looked MUCH better. Except that the slot I had made for the big dowel also got sawed off. And, as I'm sure you know, two flat surfaces + glue = NOT STURDY AT ALL. I needed to be able to wave this thing around! So I drilled a hole in the center of the base of the dagger, and in the center of the black dowel, and used Gorilla glue to stick a smaller dowel in the two holes and connected the two parts that way. So now it's super solid. Then I carved the red shapes into the base and painted them with acrylic paint. The handle is also wrapped with a very narrow leather cord.

WHEW. That was exhausting So yeah, that's my Princess Mononoke cosplay Thanks for watchin'!