Alice in Avalon

It's been a little while, but I've definitely been busy! The last leg of the 2018 year went by really quickly, but I enjoyed quite a bit of cosplay experiences along the way! Since my last update, I've had the pleasure of working on some wonderful skits, and focusing on the core of storytelling again by adding details to both my costume and our set work to develop each concept. At Anime California, I took the challenge of creating a storytelling skit from Majestic Majolical, which was more difficult than I thought. There's a lot I took from the experience that helped me go into my next project for PMX 2018. I had a wonderful masquerade partner for PMX,  and we won Best in Show with our Tanabata Madoka and Homura from Madoka Magica! Shortly afterwards, we began developing our next skit for ALA 2019, which had initially been a duo skit from a totally different series, but while revisiting the project, we began to notice some issues with the storytelling aspect of ...

Whew, it's been busy, but I'm being as productive as I can be! I'm a little dazed that Anime LA is only a few months away! "Technically" I've started, but I'm not where I want to be. Obviously with the holidays coming up, I'm going to be doing my very best to keep my eyes on the goal! On top of that, I start school again this upcoming week! It's kind of weird starting when my friends studying are on break for the Thanksgiving week here. I'm here just hoping I can brave through the holiday sales and crazy store hours, but we can get through this!

I'm here, I promise! And with lots more good news and lots of hope for 2017. I know that everyone's probably heard the phrase, "Please let 2016 be over already", and while it's pretty true, it's hard to also not look back and realize that with lots of difficulties comes some of the best moments. 2016 was a difficult year for most people, and was quite the rollercoaster for myself. I feel saddened by the loss of great celebrities and heroes, but I also mourn greatly the loss of the real people in my life and changes which, with some transitioning, will hopefully bear better news and promise as the new year begins. It's important to remember, as I often have to remind myself personally, that happiness is oftentimes the byproduct of living, which means for as much difficulties and pain we hate going through, happiness is usually the small, twinkling moments we have to live for. So in light of this and given that it's the end of the year, I wanted to...

My derpy posts are so long, and I've just discovered the cut function. This past month has been pretty hectic, but I'm sort of glad to say that spring break is bringing a bit of a clearing in a number of things going on with school, work, personal life, creative things. Everything had really rolled into too much of one, massive thing. Now it's slowing down, so I'm optimistic that it will give me time to be able to tend to each priority to the best of my abilities. Always staying positive! I've started working on Fanime plans, although to be honest, it's been quite a journey since ALA. I took a bit of a sewing break for the month of February and while I had plans already in motion for what I want to have done by Fanime, I hadn't actually done much more than some rehearsals, some patternmaking/drafting, and general fabric hunting. I hadn't really done as much as I would have hoped, but I kind of needed the break to mentally focus on school...

Time to take a trip to Australia! I am a victim of the Cosplayer's Halloween Curse! There's no hiding that this month is probably (and hopefully) the stretch of the Great Time of Derp, which has spanned for over a a year of a lot of derp. Despite my rougher looking schedule, I was encouraged by my recent derp of not being able to hit the Highland Games because the weather was so awful to treat myself to looking forward to dressing up for Halloween. Which basically means, what do I want to sew?  My friends and I don't often have huge plans for Halloween, but we love the novelty of dressing up, yet again, as if we don't nearly three times a month. But it's uniquely fun in its own way, because you get to dress up with friends who don't normally do other than on Halloween . Given my lack of last year's posting, I didn't get to mention much that I went back and fixed my old Usagi seifuku to attend a friend's party. I made the costume for Comikaze...

Today is a happy day! And brings a week of creativity (and a lot of work!) I got a job offer with better hours for school! Recently that had been taking a toll on me. My summertime was mostly working, which is great, but the school year brings a lot of demands. I got a job opportunity to have work while going to school, and it's closer to my interests in gaming. I'm definitely excited! Hopefully this will bring a realm of stability I have lacked a little over the year. Like I mentioned before, I am blessed to be able to fit a lot of my interests in with my priorities, and it's a constant evolution. It is difficult due to my school hours to factor in a really heavy workload, so I hope that it will allow me to be able to care for my health too! I celebrated a year of progress on my back, and I want to keep on going! I'm currently in progress to start my PMX cosplays just before I transition out of my old workplace. Most of my sewing will start this week, and I...

And as usual, it's 3am here and I'm completely elated to be journaling again. I honestly feel like I own my blog a personal apology for not keeping up with it, even though not keeping up with it feels like a good sign of actually living life, yet I like chronicling things, and it's one big paradox! And as usual, I have my portfolio site but I cannot abandon this blog at all. I won't. I decided, and it's final. If I could find an awesome way to integrate it, that would be amazing. I'm don't want to just let things go by without getting the chance to talk about them, because otherwise I feel like it just fades away in a sense. I spent today ruminating that my work situation, which I have mentioned here before, has been extremely busy and without sugarcoating it, difficult. It is severely understaffed and I spend fifteen hour workdays alone, and while I'm blessed to be able to motivate myself, I'm definitely suffering a little creatively on the in...

Oh goodness, I'm not gone! My online chronicling has been rather terrible lately, even on my main website. It's been a whirlwind of a year, and yes, cosplay has been involved, but it's been so crazy...but I intend to keep updating! I'm trying really hard to get my momentum going. So here's a recap of what's been going on: Bahaha the Slayers Return! Whenever life gets a little hectic, I recollect the memory of being about four or five years old and watching Pocahontas, particularly in the scene where Powhatan tells her to choose the smoothest and steadiest course. And of course, the ever-bamf Pocahontas realizes that the river isn't steady at all. It's a wild and crazy ride, with a few tranquil spots along the way, but it eventually leads to a whole new opportunity. Sometimes, it still might even have the same decisions to be made, only the experience adds a fresh perspective to it. And that...is my excuse for my delays in writing about...

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 ...

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 ...

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...