In an effort to back up my stuff from tumblr, I'm going to be reuploading my cospaly pics from over the years and reminiscing, from the oldest ones to the ones currently in my lineup!
Now we get to one of the BIG ONES. Ever since I started toying with the idea of cosplaying girl characters, Nephenee from Fire Emblem was at the top of my dream cosplay list. From the day I first had the thought "maybe I could cosplay girl characters" I had this one in mind! I wanted to make sure I had enough skill in foamsmithing and prop making to do the outfit justice, and I'm still thrilled with how it turned out, even if I've gotten even better since then!
I had to get creative with some parts of it: the shield is built off of a cake tray, with foam pieces added on top for the pattern, and a leather strap on the back to hold it from. The helmet was built off of a ballcap with the brim cut off to give it structure, although I made an error there: I sized the hat for my head without the wig, so with both the wig and helmet on, it got pretty tight. As for the armor, after cutting the pieces to shape - total cheap 99 cent craft foam sheets, mind you - I hot glued modeling wire to the back to make sure it held its shape! This is a technique I still use today!
(also, fun fact, I debuted this cosplay at a small convention-type event at a semi-local high school, and I got in the newspaper for it!)
An amendment to this one, because later on I also made this cosplay for Nephenee's event outfit from FE Heroes! Unfortunately outfits like this are affected by the Gacha Debuff and much fewer people recognized it, but it was still a lot of fun to make! The dress was made from FOUR different pieces salvaged from thrift stores: the deeper blue dress was a dress in the first place, while the white, teal and lighter blue were all T-shirts I scrapped and re-used. Lots of ribbon and gold trim that I did by hand, some more craft foam for the little metal pieces.
And for the prop, as I like to do, I modified a Nerf blaster, as well as FESTIVIZING it because why not, slipping in TF2 references is fun :P