Today I get to share a guest post written by a special friend of mine! Shelley has been a huge inspiration to me and a very talented cosplayer. She wrote this breakdown for her Rapunzel cosplay and is letting me share it with you guys while I work on my own costumes! It's a great read and it's nice to see the approach other people take to their projects. Enjoy the read!

Before we get into full Christmas swing, let's do a quick recap of the cosplay and makeup challenge I did leading up to Halloween Day!

​I teamed up with We Love Colors recently to do a mystery Halloween Challenge. They sent me three different colors of tights and my challenge was to base a costume around them. Maybe it was an accident, maybe it was fate; but the main costumes I came up with all involve the same base pieces! Read on to find out all about my costumes and how I tackled this challenge.

​This cosplay is a lot to take in, from the long name, to the bright and shiny armour. This was such a challenging cosplay for me, as it was my first armour cosplay, and I didn't have the time or finances to play with worbla.

On one hand, I love the flexibility of the foam on certain parts, but on the other hand, I would love to see a few more ridgid elements. This is all things I can look into when I rebuild the armour.

​This was such a fun cosplay to make and I am honored to be a part of a wonderful group for Edmonton Expo this coming weekend. I posted my shield tutorial a while ago and the other princesses in the group followed my tutorial so we could have matching shields! It was so amazing to see everyone come together! I will have group photos to share soon. For now, check out how I made this cosplay!

​Yin was a fairly simple build, even though I tried some new things and gained some new skills. Keep reading for a complete breakdown on how I made this cosplay!

​I wanted to be as accurate as possible with this shield, so the only thing that's accurate is the dimensions of the shield.... (she said ironically)

You can make your shield as big or as little as you want, but the bigger it is, the more magic required. I made mine with no tutorial or direction, I just winged it, so my tutorial is going to be a bit different than how I actually built it. I've since thought of better ways to do certain parts. So let's get started!

I procrastinated pretty hard on this project and left my self a week to finish it in. I had the design mostly laid out, and I knew exactly what I had to do, so luckily I wasn't winging it all week. Read on to see how I put together this cool mashup!

​May 21 - 22, 2016

My first closet cosplay challenge in January was so much fun and a great success, I just had to do it again. So read below to find out how I made each cosplay, complete with reference photos, raw photos, and the edited finals!

​Well I was honestly not expecting this to be such a favorite cosplay of the people. It was supposed to be a quick cosplay for a Marvel photo shoot (that never happened, ahem, Kyle....) and a little ode to one of my boyfriend's favorite characters.

I'm not gonna lie - making prop guns make me feel so bad ass! Well, at least all the progress selfies I took did. Before this, my prop list includes a giant spear for Nidalee, a cupcake bomb for Harley Quinn, and a sword for Red Sonja. None of these are fancy, none of these are screen replicas, exact copies, etc. I took a lot of pride in this prop, even though it is a little bit lopsided and twisted.

Did I mention I made this entire gun for free?

Danyella and I had planned to do a Pokemon cosplay together for Calgary Expo, and I found myself with the tough decision of what Pokemon do I choose to make? She had chosen quickly to do Pidgeot, and I was stuck deciding between Mewtwo, Jigglypuff, Psyduck, Cubone, and Sandshrew. I had created mood boards and everything and finally came to the decision that I had to do Psyduck. (I will eventually do all of them... just my favorite confused duck first)

I started this project as a just-for-fun because one of my cosplay idols, UndeadDu had posted a photo of her version and I was absolutely in love. After asking her how she made it and receiving such an enthusiastic reply, I just knew I had to tackle this project.

​January 9-10, 2016

Last month I asked my followers for some closet cosplay suggestions. I had a whole weekend of nothing planned so I figured I could handle one or two casual cosplays. 24 hours after the post was up, I had a ton of suggestions. My weekend just went from casual and fun to full on crazy (but still fun).
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Nidalee was a very random character for me to cosplay. A lot of factors led into this decision. Ryan and Collin came up with the idea initially. The other League of Legends characters they suggested were way out of my skill level. Nidalee fell somewhere in the middle. And then, if you remember, I had all that extra material from making my Mad Rabbit ears! ;)

​The final decision that pushed Nid from the "ideas" folder to the "in progress" folder, was the upcoming TCEG Con in Edmonton. It was a new convention, it's first year going live, and I wanted to enter the cosplay contest. The only rule was that characters had to be video game related.