Princess Mononoke Dress (dying a dress)

One of the most challenging part of this San cosplay has been both the dress and the mask. I started on the dress by surfing the internet endlessly to try to find a nice, navy blue dress. Yet, I could not find anything, despite the countless hours searching every website.

It got to the point where I even bought a cheap fabric for $10 from Joann's and made my own "A-line" dress, but I cut it too short so you could see my butt even when I was standing. I was not going to a convention with my booty hanging out.

I finally came to a good decision! About a year ago, I had a formal presentation in my English class and I had to go out and buy a dress for it. I decided on a dress from JC Penney. I spent $30 and it's called a "Sleeveless A-line dress" by B. Smart. I bought it in a denim-looking blue color (it's actually 97% cotton) and wore it for school. I only wore it once, but I still kept it. I was looking around in my closet the other day for good dresses for my cosplay, and I found that one. Of course, though, it was not even close to the navy blue dress San wears.

So I bought navy blue Rit dye, and decided to see if I could dye my dress darker. Smart, right? It seemed obvious to me, since I didn't want to go out and buy a whole new dress when I could revamp the one I already owned.

I bought the Rit dye from Stop and Shop for about $5 and it was a small packet:

So it took me a couple days to finally suck it up and start dying the dress. You could see how light the color of the dress was, and the box of dye says the final color will be something like the box color, and I was happy with that dark of a color. So I started by getting in yucky clothes. I pulled on ripped, old jeans and a shirt I didn't care about in case the dye splashed on me. 

I used the bucket method to dye, but I put the bucket in my sink to make it easier to pull the dress out and rinse it afterwards. First, I collected everything I needed. 

TIP: 100% COTTON FABRIC WORKS BEST, BUT ANYTHING ABOVE 60% COTTON WILL WORK TOO. ANYTHING OF HIGH POLYESTER COUNTS WILL NOT HOLD DYE.

I got some gloves, the dye, a bucket, HOT water, the dress, and some paper towels just in case I would splash dye everywhere. 

I started by filling my bucket with HOT water, enough to make sure the dress would move freely in the water. Then I filled a Pyrex measuring cup with 2 cups of hot water to pre-dissolve the dye. 

I got a mini whisk and stirred the dye until it dissolved completely in the water. At this point I had gloves on so I didn't get the dye on my hands.

Before I put the dress in the dye, I got it wet with hot water to get it ready to soak up dye.

I added the dyed water into the main bucket of water and mixed it up. I then added the dress and now it's time to stir!

I stirred continuously with my hands for 30 minutes to achieve the richest and darkest blue color. 

The camera doesn't do it justice here, but it is a dark blue color, much darker than it started out with.

I pulled the dress out of the dye water and now it's time to rinse out the extra dye. Run the fabric under warm water for a bit, then gradually make it colder and rinse until the water runs CLEAR (you shouldn't see any blue dye coming out)

I spread out the dress in the sink just to get the dye out of the crumples and wrinkles.

Now it's time to wash out all the other dye using a washing machine! I set my washer to WARM then to a SMALL load, since it's only one thing and it should wash for about 30 minutes. 

Add MILD detergent into the dress and water and you should see some extra dye come out (even after rinsing to clear) since the detergent will draw out some more dye.

Hang to air dry and then fluff for about 5 minutes in dryer or iron. 

 BEFORE      

AFTER

Viola! You're done! Now you have a dark dress for Princess Mononoke! 

Tip: You don't need a blue dress to make darker. You can use any color. White works best, but it you have like a pink dress and you want it blue, buy Rit's color remover and remove as much color from it first, then use the dye to change the color. 

My Neighbor Totoro Leaf Umbrella

So, after all my posts about Princess Mononoke cosplay and all that, I decided for Halloween I wanted to go as something a little more... cozy. Last Christmas, I got a Totoro kigurumi for a present. If you don't know what a kigurumi is, it's basically Japanese onesies (pajamas). Of course, me loving Totoro, that's the character that I got. This is what it basically looks like:

So, I decided to go as this for Halloween. But, I felt like it wasn't really complete. So, I thought about what I could do to enhance the costume. First I was thinking about making a plushie of a totoro to go with it, but, today is the day before Halloween, and I had school tomorrow so it's not like I had all day to finish it. Anyway, I ended up thinking about totoro's leaf umbrella! I thought, "Why wouldn't that be an amazing addition to the costume?". So off I went looking for tutorials on how to make it. This is where I ran into some problems.

First, there are no tutorials on the web or on YouTube about how to make a leaf umbrella for totoro. I found many tutorials on other things, but not what I was really looking for. So, it came a time to make my own. I rummaged through my garage until I fell upon some materials that I found suiting to use to make the actual leaf and handle. So, here are the materials I used:

• Cardboard (I used a cut up box)
• A large, thick wooden dowel
• Green fleece
• Green felt
• Black acrylic paint
• Hot glue
• Paintbrush
• Pencil

Luckily, I already had all these materials, so I didn't have to worry about running out and buying stuff last minute.

So, let's get started.

First, I got my stuff.

I just used a cardboard box that was used to mail shoes to me. For the dowel, I already had it in my garage, since it was from my dad, so I'm not sure where you could find the same. Try hardware stores like Home Depot or Lowe's.

Next, I started drawing out the design and shape of my leaf on the cardboard. In the picture, It's kind of hard to see the design though.

Here you can sort of see the pattern I went for, but here is the cut out design (you can see it better)

So, you can also see I cut out a small piece of cardboard for the small little stem part of the leaf on the top, but now it's time to cover with fleece! I cut out a square of dark green fleece and placed my leaf on top. 

Now I started to cover the leaf, by overlapping and folding over the excess pieces of the fleece around the edges and gluing them down with the hot glue gun.

These are the finished covered leaf!

Then I basically repeated the overlapping technique for the little stem chunk and then glued that down onto the top of the leaf.

I actually bent the leaf in the middle a little bit just to add some dimension and make it look more realistic. If you didn't bend it, it makes it look too flat and silly.

Next, you want to cover the dowel in the matching color fleece! Start by gluing the dowel onto the edge of the strip of fleece. Then, apply more glue to the rest of the fleece and roll the dowel up in the fabric.

You should get a completely covered stick that looks something like this:

Then I decided to add the detailing on the leaf before I glued the two pieces together. I first tried drawing the patterns on with a Sharpie marker, but that didn't really work, so I ran and got my black acrylic paint. 

I basically just started drawing some leafy looking patterns on the top of the leaf with my paint, until I was satisfied with this:

I touched the paint before it was dried and practically freaked out since I thought I totally ruined my leaf (luckily I didn't smudge anything).

Next came attaching the two pieces together. I applied hot glue to the top of the dowel and underneath the leaf, then stuck them together and held it until it dried. 

Then, I ran into a slight problem. By itself, the cardboard was a little too heavy for the dowel, so it drooped like this:

I didn't like that at all, so I decided to make a support. I started by gluing 3 popsicle sticks together in a stack. 

Then I took my popsicle sticks and wrapped them in green felt (I actually found some in the closet left over, close call for me).

Then I glued it down to the bottom of the leaf and touching the dowel to help support the leaf from drooping.

And, it actually worked!

And that is my finished leaf umbrella from My Neighbor Totoro!

Princess Mononoke's Accessories

So, if you are familiar with San, you would know that there are some accessories that she wears. These include earrings, armbands, a headband, and a spiky necklace. I will be showing how I constructed these accessories for her outfit.

I'll start with the earrings, since they are really simple. I am a huge craft freak, so I already have a big supply of Sculpey polymer clay in my possession. Because of this, I decided to make the accessories out of that clay. I basically took my white clay and flattened it out into an even thickness. I used my clay conditioning machine that I got a couple years ago, but if you don't have that, just use a roller. I actually used old hoop earrings that I had that I didn't wear anymore as a template, but you can always use a big circle cookie cutter. I traced out the circle and then cut it out of the clay. I made two circles and poked a hole at the top of both circles. I baked these in the oven and then attached an earring hook through the hole. 

These are what they looked like after baking. Just attach a jump ring to the hole and put on the earring hooks for completed earrings!

Now onto the armbands and headband. 

I started by measuring around the top of my arms (right below my armpit area) and around my forehead. I then cut out three strips of fabric; two pieces that are the size of my arms, and one strip for my head. I used extra fabric that I had left over from making my San dress (another post) so they could match. 

This was me measuring out the strips from my navy blue fabric.

These are the three strips you should have. Now you have some options: you can either sew these strips or use hot glue. I decided to use hot glue, since it was easier and faster. Basically, I folded the width of the strips in half and glued them together so they were skinnier, then I folded them in half lengthwise and put a small glob of glue to make them into circles (kinda looking like bracelets).  San has a gem on each of her bands, so I made these out of polymer clay too.

I actually used translucent polymer clay from Sculpey, but you can use white too. 

I made three flat circles that were rounded at the top to make raised gems. I baked them and this is what they looked like:

You can see that two of the balls are smaller than the other. The two smaller ones are for the armbands, and the biggest one is for the headband. 

Then, I put a glob of glue on the back of each clay ball and glued them in the middle of each band. This is what they turned out to be:

You can see the top one is the headband and the two bottom ones are the armbands.

Next, the necklace.

When I post how I made my wolf pelt, I'll show how I attach the necklace to the pelt, so for now I'll just show how I made it.

I basically took my white Sculpey clay and made four spikes out of the clay, and then poked a hole through the top each spike, so I could later thread them onto a necklace. I then took my dark blue Sculpey clay and made 5 cylindrical beads that were each the same size. I also poked a hole through each one of those, and then baked all of them. 

Once they were baked, I cut a piece of elastic and strung all the beads onto it in this order: blue bead, white spike, blue bead, white spike, blue bead, white spike, blue bead, white spike, blue bead. This is what it looks like:

And later, I'll show how to attach it to the pelt!

Stay tuned.

Up next: clothes and mask!