Grey Faerie costume breakdown!

Just let me know when it's time for a "Ginny decided to put together a costume in 24-48 hours" intervention, okay??

When Ginny Liz (affectionately known as "Other Ginny" around my household) came to visit for Denver Comic Con, we made plans to collab a little. Other Ginny had recently finished a Space Faerie cosplay from Neopets (those of my generation may affectionately remember this weird digital pet site, where many of us learned things like how to code with HTML, and how to spell "omelette" the British English way) and we briefly discussed me making a Neopets Faerie too, but I ended up not having time.

But you know me!! I'm always game for a speed cosplay challenge. So when Other Ginny arrived in Denver last Friday, she suggested that I put together a faerie after the con was over, and, conveniently not thinking about how exhausted I'd be after a 3-day weekend of working a 120k+ attendee convention, I agreed.

I chose the Grey Faerie partially because she was one of the easier designs, but also partially because I felt like she had a unique look that would stand out in my portfolio. (Someday I'd love to make the Tooth Faerie, too! She was the other one I strongly considered.)

On Monday we made a materials run, I got the dress patterned and half-made, and I dyed a white wig silver to match my Ciri wig, which I was using as the base for this look. (I used acrylic inks and isopropyl alcohol in a spray bottle — it was time consuming, but ultimately very effective!)

On Tuesday, I finished the dress...

...and created the wings, which are just clumps of feathers hot glued to a little wire frame wrapped in muslin. Here's a rough diagram:

That long "tongue" of muslin-wrapped wire is tucked into the back of my dress, underneath the band of my strapless bra and into the corset I wore underneath. (It was very lightweight and honestly didn't need the corset's structure to hold it up.) I covered the base of the wings, where the feathers attach to the two wire-and-muslin circles, with soft, fluffy little feathers to conceal the fabric.

I also got to experiment with worbla! I created a lightweight worbla frame with a bolt sticking through it, out the back of the wig. I cut the second wig (the one I dyed) into its component wefts and glued them down, layer by layer, onto a styrofoam ball. That way I could put the frame on my head, then put the wig on top (with the bolt sticking through between the wefts), and then stab the styrofoam ball onto the bolt to hold up the ponytail. This provided some structure to keep the heavy ponytail high on my head. Here's a diagram, because it's kind of hard to explain:

This is the technique that Kinpatsu Cosplay uses on her extremely badass & flawless high ponytail wigs, like Ember and Nidalee.

I found that the weight still pulled the wig backwards on my head a little, but definitely not as much as I expected. Next time I'll probably try wearing this with one of those grip headbands that Arda Wigs sells.

I also got to make ANTENNAE and let me tell you, they were so easy and so cute and I want to wear antennae with everything now. I created the shape from wire, used worbla to build the little teardrop shapes on the ends, and also used worbla to affix them to a plastic headband base. (Guys, worbla is so cool??? I didn't realize it could be used for so many things other than armor!) Here they are pre-paint:

That's it! Pretty simple costume, all told!

The next day, we were joined by Hide My Error for the shoot! It was my first time putting all the pieces together and I gotta say, I loved my makeup look for this:

(It's kind of hard to selfie with antennae on, though!!)

We shot on a white backdrop and a black backdrop in my home studio using Other Ginny's external flash and gels (SO COOL), and then we went across the street to the park to shoot some video. I'm sorry to say that the wig/antennae setup was so uncomfortable for me that I rushed us towards the end, and somehow we didn't get any selfies of the three of us together?! But here's a cute one that Hide and Other Ginny took:

Photos are coming soon, as well as the little video feature that we shot! Now.... go feed your Neopets! 😜