After 'Kon nonsense, a new (completed) pattern, Etsy, and other musings

So Nebraskon was a couple weeks ago, and I'm just now getting settled back into the real world. I always seem to leave the convention wishing I could stay in such a friendly place full of warmth and togetherness, but alas, the real world beckons, and so does my job and other responsibilities... Anyway, I still don't have a computer of my own, so I'm posting this from Ami's before I go to work today...

I think I'll start off by showing the cosplays we all wore, and talking in depth about them a little, since I didn't do much of that this year!

First up, we did a Final Fantasy group on Halloween, with Ami as Yuffie from FFVII Dirge of Cerberus, and myself as Reno. We met an awesome Chocobo named Kweh and a lovely genderbent Barrett at the FF Get together, as pictured below! Reno's outfit was really just me throwing together a suit and styling a wig, however I did make his weapon completely from scratch. It was two pieces of pipe stuck together, some wooden dowels, some craft foam, and believe it or not I even used a candle! I wrapped craft foam around a really thin dowel and shoved it into one end of the pipe, then glued it into place, then I carved a hole into the candle, stuck a black ribbon through it and glued that. Then I proceeded to melt the candle on the outside until it was able to fit into the other end of the pipe, then I glued the cap to one of those little coin machine bubbles like they have outside walmart and what not to the tip. Hit it with spraypaint and electrical tape, and ta-dah! Yuffie was made from scratch completely from head to toe as well as her shuriken, but for prop how-to's you'll have to ask Ami.

Next on the list is Logan, who cosplayed as Leon/KH Squall the whole weekend. Logan is pictured on the left of an awesome Dress Uniform Squall we met while wandering the halls! His gunblade is a large wooden blade attached to a small, still functional cap gun. This means that if he loads it with caps, it will fire, make a noise and emit smoke! His outfit was a combined effort between the two of us, and his wig and makeup done by me.

Now onto the main cosplays of the weekend! Our Kingdom Hearts II group! Ami cosplayed the main protagonist, Sora, and her outfit, wig, and shoes were made entirely from scratch by me, with a little help from her. Her Keyblade on the other hand (the large thing lighting up on the left) was made by the three of us. I did the handle, she made the shaft and keychain, and Logan made the blade. Our amazing dad made the whole thing light up, and if you could see it on the ground or a wall, it lights up in the shape of a keyhole, fitting the theme of the game. My Riku cosplay also had his Organization XIII coat, which earned me quite a few squeals when I took it off on stage to reveal his normal outfit underneath! Our group got judges choice for the group position, earning us our second cosplay contest victory, some DVDs, and $25! Below I'll also picture my Organization coat, since you can't see it in the group shot.

Now cosplay ranting aside :) I have a new cross-stitch pattern! It is a Mine Craft Parody of My Neighbor Totoro! It features a dirt block and enderman as the two girls, and a ghast as Totoro! I'm actually already almost done sewing it as a pillow, and it will be for sale on Ami and I's Etsy shop! Here's the pattern. It's actually rather small, as the Ghast is only about 50 stitches tall max. It doesn't take long to sew at all! If you're interested in our Etsy the shop can be found by copying and pasting this link! https://www.etsy.com/shop/GeekFandomFactory

Until next time!

Computer Problem, etsy, and 19th Birthday awesomeness!

So...my computer won't recognize it's charger chord.......... I don't know what to do, short of buy a new (charged) battery, put it in, back up all my files, and then buy a new computer.

I spent an amazing birthday yesterday with my twin and our good friend Logan! We had a costume party and had a Kingdom Hearts cake! I posted all sorts of pictures on our cosplay page, which can be found at this link! (https://www.facebook.com/konspiracycoslay) but as a quick preview this is what I was wearing!

My Reno makes a comeback MWAHAHAHAHA with a restyled wig to boot!

other news of note, Ami and I made an etsy account! https://www.etsy.com/shop/GeekFandomFactory?ref=hdr_shop_menu
This blog post will hopefully get the word out, and to encourage more people to leave comments here, let me know what kinds of perler bead or small plush you'd be interested in buying and what you feel is a fair price! We will take it into consideration!


SIDE NOTE: anyone else playing Theatrythm final fantasy (hope I spelled it right) THAT GAME IS SOOO FUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SERIOUSLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Completed at last! Matt and Gabumon pattern!

It's been a busy week so far, I'm tired, and I have to get up early tomorrow, so I'll make this short, sweet and to the point. I finished it! After procrastinating for like ever I buckled down and finished it. All in all this pattern took about 10 hours to make. I'm rather proud of it, though it's ridiculously huge and I'll probably never sew it myself. If anyone does, however, I'd love to see it so link me a picture in the comments and what-not!



I guess next on my agenda is my Ventus pattern...hopefully I won't procrastinate so badly on that one, as I really wanna get it done and start sewing it on this adorable pale green fabric <3

Until Next time!~

Man, it's been a while!!! Pattern WIP and AkuRoku day art!

Well now...it's been a long long time, since Easter, I think....Anyway! Work has been busy, but I just recently took an 11 day family vacation, where I managed to get some personal things that resemble art done! I couldn't be happier. (LIES LIES LIES) I finally got around to finishing a picture I started in December, I got some more work done on Matt and Gabumon's pattern, as you'll see if you scroll down, and I still have a lot of cosplay work to do, but it's MUCH further along than the last time I talked about it! Our group even has it's own Facebook page that you can follow if you want to see WIPs and ask us questions! Just copy-pasta this link here into your adress bar! https://www.facebook.com/konspiracycoslay

Now onto the pattern!

I've started on Matt, after a lot of false starts...Those shoes should not have been that hard! And I hope to keep working on him in my very minimal spare time. I really can't wait to get this one done, but he's going to be HUGE! I counted and Gabumon's eye alone is 9 stitches tall!! That's like HOLY CRAP!!! It's a labor of love though, so I'm not complaining.

If my thoughts seem scattered it's because I have to get ready for work in ten minutes, and I'm not looking forward to it, but anyway, here's some art to finish off this really weird jumpy post.

In honor of AkuRoku day this year (8/13/14) I painted this watercolor beauty, with a quote from the second Kingdom hearts game...I JUST LOVE THESE TWO! They make me so sad tho~~~ Anyway, it's two pictures done on card stock, so they didn't line up exactly, but I love it nonetheless~

And here's that pic I should have done in December! It's two of my original characters, I think I posted the colored pencil version but whatever....

If you have any questions or comments, put them down below, I've only got a bout five more minutes of down time, so I can't be real specific anymore! I love you all, and I hope to be more active eventually................ But um follow our facebook page for cosplay, and for art and such follow http://www.kakashi-copycat-kun.deviantart.com and http://www.keki-to-suteki.deviantart.com !

RAWR OMG COSPLAY SPAMSS AND STUFF!!!!!

So first off I'm going to be honest and say I'm probably not going to be posting very often anymore...especially not cross stitch patterns. I will be continuing to make the patterns, and sew patterns made by others, but I've been so damn busy with work that my life has turned into "Sleep, Go to Work, Eat, Work on Cosplay, Repeat..." I've had zero downtime, and with about 140 days until the convention and only one costume even close to 90% done...I've got a lot of work ahead of me. That being said, let's start spamming PWNSOME-NESS and stuffs!!!!!!!!!!!!

So here's a photo-spam of awesome ness!!! And after that I'll fill you in on what I still have to do.


I'm cosplaying Riku from Kingdom Hearts II (the one with white hair), Ami is cosplaying Yuffie Kisaragi from FFVII: Dirge of Cerberus, my brother Dylan is being himself (at least in the photos), and the ducttape robot is my brother Cameron as Nemesis Prime.

Onto what's left. I still need to finish an armband and a boot for Yuffie as well as a custom swimsuit for the swimsuit contest, For Riku I need to complete the decorations on his Organization XIII coat, and make a blindfold...as well as a custom pair of swimtrunks and a shirt, for Sora (Ami's main costume), I need pants, a jacket, a keyblade, lots of belts, two large satchels, gloves, etc... For Leon, Logan's cosplay, I need to finish adding fluff to a jacket collar, add a zipper, make pants, and paint his gunblade. For my mother, we're remaking the mystical elf, I need to order a wig for her Auntie Nakahara, and we need to reconstruct some armor...For Dylan, I need to make a DBZ version of the Con's mascot Husker Ninja...and that kind of sums it up, well unless Logan's cousins agree to be Kairi and Namine, then there'll be a whole bunch more work...Until then, I hope you guys have it good!

"Witty Easter related title goes here!"

Sorry I've been gone for so long!! Man it really has been a while, but work's been keeping me REALLY busy, we were severly understaffed when I applied, and since then we've lost one employee, and as of today another. Neither one was fired, both had to leave Subway to pursue better paying employment....Sad to see them go, but we had hired some new employees, one of them however is really really slow, and the other, though he applied to be an opener/closer said that he can't handle the pressure and wants to be a normal employee...We desperately need openers and closers, so I may be getting trained to close up shop, while my sister, Ami, gets trained to open up shop....All that rambling translates to "I'm going to have severly less time for sewing, posting, and cosplay."

I suppose somewhere in this post, you're expecting a "Happy Easter!!!" so there that is, I hope it was a good one for everyone, I realize it's almost over where I live (it's 11:45 PM), and probably completely over in other places. Anyway, I don't have any new cross stitches to post (although I am currently working on Missy-Tannenbaum's Ryo-ohki pattern ^.^), and Although I'm really far along in my cosplays (relatively speaking) I don't have any pics to upload of them either...

What I do have are two drawings I managed to accomplish, One of which happens to go with today's theme!!!!!!!! HAPPY EASTER, from a rather irritated Seifer Almasy (KHII version). There are two versions of this picture, both of which will be posted below!

The first one is the color version. This effect was achieved by drawing him out with pencil, going over those lines in black ink with a nib-tipped pen, then pencil shading all of the shadows, after that I scanned it into my computer and used layers of transparent color to give him this sort of "vintage" look!

The Greyscale shown here is simply the pencil and ink shaded sketch.

You can see the full size versions of both of these, as well as many other drawings of mine at http://www.kakashi-copycat-kun.deviantart.com !

Also for you today I have a colored ink sketch of Gaara from Naruto Shippuden! I love the manga-like look to this, with just a dash of color to add some contrast and make it interesting.

Anyway, I hope you all are having a great day (or night I suppose (-.-') ) I will try to post more often but with this whole work schedule thing...I don't know how well I'll be able to hold up that promise. Anyway have a good night and I'll see ya next time!!!!!!!!

So no pattern, but ANIME REVIEW: Girls Und Panzer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Today I'm doing an Anime Review on Girls Und Panzer if you don't recall, a while ago I reviewed anime such as HSD: Kenichi, The Wallflower, Junjou Romantica, and Rave Master, but today's anime is nothing like any of the aforementioned.

(characters pictured Left to Rightt: Yukari Akiyama, Hana Isuzu, Miho Nishizumi, Saori Takebe, and Mako Reizei)

Girls Und Panzer follows the story of Miho Nishizumi, and her 4 friends, pictured above. The first episode kicks off with the girls already mid battle, riding in a Pazer 4 tank. Miho is looking out the top of the tank, and radioing orders to several other tanks, which are also full of high school aged girls. As they formulate a plan, we are flashed back to Miho waking up, and heading out to her first day at her new school, Oorai Girls Academy. As the day progresses, Miho meets two girls who want to be her friends right away, one is upbeat and talkative Saori Takebe, who, like most girls her age, is all about romance and gossip. The other is Hana Isuzu, a quiet, polite and pleasant girl from a rich family.

It soon is time for the students of Oorai to pick their elective classes, and while the three initially want to do flower arrangement, a talent Hana's family is known for, after a short assembly in the gym about how the school will be bringing back "Tankery", Hana and Saori have changed their minds. Miho on the other hand seems to want to avoid Tankery at all costs, and feeling sympathetic, the other two select flower arrangement as well for their electives.

The next day, the student council bursts into Miho's classroom demanding an explanation as to why Miho didn't choose Tankery, and then proceed to literally bully her into changing her elective. Thus begins the Oorai Girls Academy's newly revived Tankery class. Once in class, the three meet a girl who's as passionate about tanks as my dad is about cars, her name is Yukari Akiyama, and later on we're introduced to Mako Reizei, a narcoleptic girl who has really good grades, but poor attendance. After nearly running Mako over with their tank in class, she hops on in and drives the thing to safety like a pro. Now, I don't want to give you a play by play of every episode, but after a while the girls are entered into a tankery tournament that gets into Miho's back story and why the Student Council (who also take Tankery) was so adamant about her taking Tankery.

Overall, it's an endearing, comedic story about high school girls in tanks. Don't pass this one up just because of its ridiculous nature, it's animation quality is good, the voices sound unnatural at first, but they grow on you over time, and the theme songs are super catchy! Not to mention, it's only 13 episodes, so it's a really quick watch.

With relate-able characters, a fun, yet emotional story, and good writing, I give Girls Und Panzer very high marks, probably an 8/10.