How I Made My Raven Cosplay

​Raven from Teen Titans is my spirit animal. I identify with her so hard, but I knew I wanted to cosplay some version of a redesign of her. Cue NoFlutter's early design sketch. she's since redesigned Raven in a gorgeous design, but I really wanted to cosplay her original concept.

​The inspiration for this costume originally came from the shiny black faux latex fabric I had in my stash. I had bought it along with red of the same to make Madame Vandersexxx from Eurotrip. I wanted a unique Lucy Lawless cosplay to wear to meet her for her appearance at Calgary Expo 2016. She ended up backing out, so the costume never happened. The red fabric later turned into a naughty Christmas Cruella dress.

I figured a latex Raven would be awesome! Now I just had to figure out how to squeeze my body - including a suit, boots and gloves - into only 2 yards of fabric. I managed to do it by measuring my body, testing the stretch of the fabric, and comparing my pattern to swimsuits and old bodysuits I'd made.

By some miracle, it all worked! I finished off the boots by gluing an old pair of flats inside with e6000 and holding it stretched with pins. The boots didn't stay up my thighs on their own, so I sewed the tops of a pair of dance tights to them and now I had bonus shapewear for my lumps and bumps. ;)

​The first cape I made was with a burgundy material and an additional lining. While it was a really pretty material, it didn't end up suiting my vision for Raven. This cape is for sale if anyone's interested!!

I was at Value Village on 50% off day and scored some great deals on sheets and clothes, and then lucked out on this gorgeous purple material. It was just enough material for a lined hood and super wispy cape. 

​The belt was made from craft foam, doubled up, and attached with an adjustable buckle in the back. The gems were also made by me. I experimented with resin casting for the first time this year and enjoyed it so much. Because of my resin's long cure time, I needed to find a way to cast multiple gems all at once, and I didn't have enough time to buy one online and ship it.

My miracle solution was to use the bottom of pop cans! I made a step by step tutorial for my patrons you can see here. I honestly felt like a genius. Haha!

I dyed the resin with alcohol ink and backed them with glitter before it cured. The glitter was my sneaky way of diffusing the appearance of any bubbles trapped in the resin.

​I used some worbla scraps to create little worbla noodles and formed them around the gems. I painted everything with a layer of yellow, then gold, then gold sparkles to finish off the look. Then I attached the gems with e6000. I was extremely surprised how heavy the belt ended up being.

​The forehead gem was a random gem I had kicking around. It was actually blue originally, so I painted it red, added glitter, and a layer of gloss to keep it uniform with the gems. And then the costume was finished! Overall a fairly simple build, yet I still managed to learn a few new techniques. Here's the cosplanner breakdown!

Thanks for reading, friends! And I hope this write up helped explain how I made this costume. If you have any questions, just drop them in the comments below!

Graphic photos by Veronica Scallion