Alice in Avalon

The glorious fabric haul begins! Taking a break from my more recent remorseful, "My Hand Hurts Saga", which hasn't improved but I hope to get at least a day of rest this Thanksgiving before finishing towards most of what seems to be the home stretch for my classes. Ideally once classes are done, I'd love to get started on my ALA cosplay going. I actually have two to make, and then a holiday one after buying some lovely fabric for a holiday dress. I had planned to make a Christmas Nia outfit, although I'm unsure if I can get the wig in time. I might possibly be able to do a holiday Mirai or Stocking? So to show my homework productiveness, here's a preview of what's to come of the future of the real website I'm working on: I've started to consider to keep this blog, but to eventually transfer it over as well to the main portion of the site. I'm quite happy with how it's all looking, and I've just completed my comps for this pr...

A short update because my hands can't really do this right now. School is pushing towards finals, so my biggest focus these upcoming weeks (as if it isn't already) is finishing up all of my classes as best as I can. I literally haven't slept in days sans the one moment my mother found me catnapping on the sofa. I think the exhaustion is getting to me though, and I'm at the point where I'm just refusing coffee. Given that these past weeks have been hell on the moon for my hands with their popular demand, I'd really like to get through this semester with my hands in one piece and give them a little rest before the spring semester starts. All of my classes are currently online, so my computer time is maxed out and my hands are like, "Oh honey no." The lovely news is my spring semester looks promising, and I love the classes I'll be taking. I'm planning on moving forward with classes that are career-friendly too. I've also started my tras...

So I got tagged by a friend on Facebook to write facts about myself, and I've seen it going around on everyone's posts. I filled one out, and thus I also thought to post it here since they're really more about who I am and what I really do beyond cosplay.   I subconsciously think I’m eternally 17, and I apologize to anyone in the past if I’ve ever seamlessly said, “Oh, I’m 17!” I’ve been doing that every year after being 17, and I think it’s just me really just liking that age number. I’ve been carded before for saying this by accident.  My real name is Alexandra, but I’ve gone by Kagura as a nickname since I was 12 when it stuck in middle school after Fruits Basket came out. Ironically, I don’t know if I really have Kagura’s personality much, but she was also my first cosplay then too. I’ve come to love her personality more now than before as the manga made her more of a complicated person. I really love my real name though too, and I don’t usually go by Alex because ...

So the verdict is in....and Yuuki Kuran was victorious! I won the Honorable Mention in Craftmanship at the Masquerade! While loading the new pictures, here's the current picture I have of the completed cosplay for Yuuki: I've been so exhausted since yesterday from all of the hectic amazingness that PMX was, and it was all quite worth it! So many experiences and all probably in less then 48 hours considering I missed nearly the whole Day 1 of the con unintentionally. Coming back to the reality, going back to work on a crowded day, everything hit me how these con experiences really add a break to the norm. I honestly don't think I ever had gone to PMX, I really couldn't remember before, but getting there, everything felt so foreign that the only reason why I probably questioned why if I had been there before was because of the local area. It's right by ALA's current home, and previously had also stayed at the Renaissance nearby for this past AX with th...

Happy November! I can honestly say I remember very little about what happened in October...it all feels like an odd blur of homiegoshness. I haven't had a proper chance to post a decent, Happy Halloween! although I hope everyone had a fun and safe Halloween. I'll add pictures of progress work, I promise! But this year I completed Hermione and it was fun being her! I worked on the costume till the last minute before I headed off to my good friend's house, which was absolutely fun. All the friends were around and we were goofing off and playing Project Runway (psssst Michael Kors digs my designs. xD). But unfortunately what I do remember of October was I actually got Carpal Tunnel Syndrome on both my left and right hands, which are now in wrist braces. Over the past couple weeks, I've been really working hard on my homework, juggling work and then trying to sew and get other items done. Unfortunately my consistent lack of sleep and lack of breaks have probablymade t...

Well, I survived my midterm. I stayed up till about 7am finishing everything up, but it was overall a pretty smooth experience. I had one strong cup of coffee and pretty much worked through my sleepiness. So I went to purchase items firstly for my Hermione costume. I bought fabric for the skirt and the robes. I initially wanted to make the robes with the lovely black lining on the inside like the first two film designs, but the red just called out to me. Tomorrow I'll likely get to the robe, and I'll have to purchase a frog and then my Gryffindor patch should be arriving on Monday. Also my sweater should be arriving tomorrow! Whee! If I finish Hermione tomorrow, I'll likely move on to working on some patterns for Yuki's dress. After some thinking, I realized that I have been wavering so much about whether to cosplay and go to PMX or not because of all of the craziness outside of my cosplay life. It's productive no doubt, but it does burn you out. I think tho...

So this post might only have *one* valuable reason. Bahaha, finally some digital art piece for this site. #_# I actually realized how rarely I put art in here, but I also added it to my (slow but still existing) tumblr too. I rarely get the opportunity to site down and work on my art, though I actually should...and this was a really quick one. It features Serena with an alternate outfit I decided off the top of my head. Originally it was going to be a derpy mid-time doodle, but I got to fleshing it out a bit more. It's made on Sai like the others, and I just keep on practicing slowly but surely. She's probably the cutest starter I've seen though. <3 I'm still waiting on getting the Pokemon X till probably early November to keep myself away from being distracted by anything that isn't school/work/cosplay. The nice thing is that my classes at the moment have allowed me to practice my digital artwork while also making some nice pieces for class (and resume/p...

So after some week of being sick, I'm slowly getting better but with so many delays in getting anything productive done! Besides rest, it's been mostly about work and trying to get homework done, and somehow obsessively deciding to tinker with my homework projects some more. Either way, the awesome news is that I was accepted to participate at the Pacific Media Expo 2013's masquerade! This is so exciting! I haven't been to PMX (at least I don't think I have) but I think I almost went since my friend had a panel there years back. So it will be an awesome first time! My only sad regret is that Shii will be able to attend PMX but she's on a budget right now and might not be able to do much in a role for the skit beyond helping with ninja-work. But no worries, because we have an amazing plans for next con! She's going to be putting all her funds and efforts to that definitely, so it's all going to be good! In silly news however, this sort of places me ...

Gah, perfect timing! My Taobao order arrived while I was asleep and feeling rather sick with a sore throat. I kept dreaming that I was opening up my package and looking through all my stuff. Eventually I woke up and walked to the kitchen to find my package sitting on the floor! My mother had brought it in while I was asleep. So immediately, I opened it up like a kid during Christmas (durrhurr, I'll be making a Christmas order!) and running around looking for scissors to open my items with. So here's a collage of what I ordered (you could probably click to view the full size): So I mostly bought for myself, my mother, and my sister, yet there are two wigs belonging to Emi, and my two other cosplay friends. Everything was absolutely nice!! Things my friends got: - The Stocking wig and the pink Yuno wig belong to my friend Emi, who's cosplaying them for PMX. - My other friend got the two sets of Junko's hairclips for her Junko cosplay from Dangan Ronpa. -...

So I just wanted to quickly post a couple images that we got back from the event! Credits to Kayumi Lam for the images, they're actually really lovely! The beginning of the sit, and a pretty good view of the full dress! Shii then entered the stage and she and I both unraveled the flower veil. There was a lot of wind, so it caught a great deal of air, an this is a pretty good shot of how high we got it to go. Shii also looks wonderful as Romeo! Our standard Romeo and Juliet pose. xD Might I add that this is such a cool angle of the layers Shii cut into her Romeo wig. It also doubles as her Ciel and Sohma Yuki wig. <3 This is my favorite picture ever, because of how beautiful the light is casted on Shii and I look so ambiguous. You can see a great deal of flow on the dress, and we just look so tranquil and happy! A super special and heartfelt thanks to Mikarin and Hagi, who were absolutely wonderful and gave us the pleasure of being part of this amazing ...

Finished! I fnished Juliet, cutting it super close, but it was very much worth it! The day feels like a bit of a continuous blur to me at the moment, but I wanted to take the moment to post about the Cosplay Exhibition today, which went wonderfully regardless of some challenges! So since that previous post, yes, the cosplay was finished! It was a bit of a painful challenge at the last minute, mostly because the cosplay is still quite oddly constructed. I do plan in the future to challenge myself and remake Juliet following a bit more rules when sewing, but nonetheless, the dress actually looked remarkably clean and well draped, especially with the new white skirt additions I made. In all honesty, I didn't get to fix up the collar and the sleeves the way I had wanted them to be, but they were optional at this point. A lot of my time had been devoted to making sure the peplum and the skirts looks all right. Surprisingly enough, it looked pretty decently draped. Shii and Yukito ...

So some progress before I go back to sewing. Side blog story time moment, but it was actually a fun and fulfilling day! I thought it was going to be a quiet day till I woke up to an amazingly cloudy and cold day! Then, had a much-needed lunchtime and sweets break with Shii, and left with another good friend to go see a local company's rendition of Shakepeare's Cymbeline, which was absolutely awesome! Topped it off with a wonderful dinner and now I'm all back to work! I'm in for a massively long night and day tomorrow, and somehow on Sunday will have to squeeze work and some homework on the side. Thankfully, not a long day for that, I hope! Progress has been slow but all right this week on Juliet. I have till 2ish to finish her, and realized last minute that I will have to shop for the items for my rose baton tomorrow. ~_~ I actually had to stop working for one night on it because I had a commission to fill for the new League of Legends Finals here in downtown Los ...

Taking a quick break from Yuki's cosplay progress, I wanted to make a quick post that I was invited by the really lovely and talented Mikarin of Takeriya Samurai Cosplay to be a participant in her Cosplay Exhibition at the Asian Pacific Festival in Newport Beach, CA on September 21! It was an absolute honor to be asked to be one of the cosplayers, and her entire premise of the exhibition is absolutely wonderful and honest. Each performer will get about a minute or so to present their costume and do a mini-skit while having a narrator talk about their cosplay background. My biggest focus was on how much I love to teach panels and help others in cosplay. I often write about how I love cosplay as a hobby that helps others and myself grow from it. I love being able to look back throughout the years and see how I've improved skill wise, but personality and my ability to make friends with others as well. I'm very blessed that I have a wonderful amount of friends and connections...

So to be honest, I've had dozens of progress photos throughout the months of all the work I've done and talked about here, although most of it's on my phone. ^^' I didn't bother to realize I could photobucket a massload of those photos from my phone so here's to hopefully having more recent posts! I'm hoping to make a couple more updates on older cosplays with better pictures. I want to start out by saying that I've never been a huge fan of vampires outside of reading Dracula and Carmilla. It's mostly because I have a issue with blood and when I was younger, I was scared of vampires in general. In high school, I read through a good amount of Vampire Knight however because I was a fan of Hino Matsuri's work (MeruPuri) and gave this one a shot. I liked it enough that I watched the two seasons of the anime, and occasionally used scans for some of my desktop graphics and a web layout for a site I staffed at. A few months ago before Fanime, I bought...

I wanted to quickly make a separate update to announce that I have purchased a new domain soon for my site! It's likely that the new site will not be available till late December/January, which is the time when I will be having the proper time to work on my graphics and get a lot of things ready to make it post-friendly and to compile a lot of my cosplays and whatnot. I don't want to attach a new link already, mostly because the current domain is being used for classroom purposes for a project that will also go well into December or so. However, if you know the name of this blog, you're all good! I've only previously had one solo graphics site before when I was given some hosting by a wonderful online designer name Rain. I was referred to her by a good friend named Sana, who made some really great graphics back in my high school days. When I was really into making graphics online, I participated as staff for a number of sites and after meeting Sana, she heped me get...

Hello, and I apolgize for my lack of updating! This has been a mighty slow summer since Anime Expo, and unfortunately I was not able to attend Japan Expo at the last minute! It was very sad to hear, especially when I had several plans already made for it based on someof the awesome guests they had announced. However, life is life, and there's been some good news (I have a better job now!) and I'm in a better place to be able to keep cosplaying and focusing on the next conventions. Already, there are so many wonderful plans in my head! I did manage to go to a small event at Little Tokyo last night, which was nice and a good opportunity for a quick and casual cosplay. I has planned on going a week before after finding out my sad news, but then I decided against going by making other plans. Those fell through as well, so I ended up quickly arranging to go with a few friends. Unable to pick something (or missing a vital piece of cosplays I did have in mind), I quickly got my EV...