Brave: Carnival Photoshoot

I was lucky enough to go to a photoshoot a week or two ago. The photoshoot was for people in their Carnival costumes, but I thought I should wear my Merida costume, because I had no nice pictures of it.

Courtesy of Mandy's Photography and Taylor's Photograph, I now have several beautiful photos of my costume.

Merida is one of the best Pixar/Disney characters to date. She's bold and brash, rides and shoots like a badass, but she's kind, and smart enough to learn to put her mother's lessons into practise, and to compromise by the end of the film.

The photoshoot was in Ta'Qali National Park. This is one of the few large green areas in Malta. There's a pine wood next to this strange modern structure. If you have your back to all the buildings, the forest looks very wild and mysterious. I was really lucky that there were two photographers and only six people in costume, because I managed to do a lot of poses and the photographers got a lot of photos. 

I really wanted to use all the natural scenery for the photos, which meant a lot of leaning against trees and bushes, and climbing trees (I needed a leg up: this dress is not the best for climbing! How did Merida manage to get up that cliff?)

 

My wig was a bit of a pain, because it kept falling into my face. I'm so grateful that the photographers were patient and didn't mind me arranging my wig; they even helped me get my hair out of the way, or untangle it from trees (sometimes it got stuck in rough bark or pine sap)

I'm really happy with how my makeup turned out. i got up early to apply it. Most of my time was spent trying to paint my eyebrows orange. It involved glue, spirit gum, a lot of foundation, and orange eyeshadow. I was partly successful, as you can see in some of the photographs. i went with a natural makeup look; just enough to hide any spots or shadows. It took longer to apply because I couldn't use my middle finger properly-my new cat bit me and the finger was very swollen. You can actually see a plaster on it in some photos.

Merida's costume is great because it's very iconic: you can figure out straight away who I am cosplaying, even without the props (though they really pull the whole cosplay together). I actually used a very similar pattern to how dresses were constructed in Medieval times. It's basically a rectangle that goes over the head, with triangle gores to make the skirt wider, and tailored for a better fit. It even closes with laces at the back. Admittedly, it is difficult to get in and out of because of this, and it would be smarter to just add a size zip.

Let's talk props. I love having props for a photoshoot, because they help me to act more like the character, and give me something to do with my hands. At the steampunk photoshoot a few months ago, I didn't have any props and had to mess around with pine cones and leaves to give my hands something to do. Props make everything better!

The bow is a children's plastic toy. I wrapped it in masking tape and painted it brown, and wrapped vinyl around the middle for a grip. This bow is obviously non-functional, even with a tightly-strung bow string, but it looks pretty good.

The quiver was a very lucky find. We had a bamboo tube quiver at home, complete with arrows. It looked like it was inspired by Amazon tribal or Native American culture, so I covered it with vinyl to make it more accurate. The vinyl came from an old coat; the coat is very big, and i've used it for so many costume. The bracers and armour on my Wonder Woman costume are actually made of repainted pieces of that vinyl. 

Anyhow, I covered the bamboo quiver with vinyl, staining it with shoe polish to get a tan colour. I also made a belt using an old broken belt and more vinyl. The belt and quiver are mostly held together with hand sewing and Bostik glue. It's surprisingly effective. 

I also re-fletched the arrows. To fletch an arrow, you basically cut a feather in half along the 'spine' of the feather, and glue the feather pieces to the top of the arrow (I used Bostik). 

You can find the photographer's at these links:
Taylor's Photograph: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Taylors-Photograph/165756750105590?fref=ts
Mandy's Photography: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mandys-Photography/207445399437312?fref=ts

Making Merida's Wig

The Merida wig is DONE! Yay!

And now I'm going to share with you how I styled it.

This is what I started with: a 28 inch long wig from Epic cosplay. You can find this wig over here http://www.epiccosplay.com/eros-28-autumn-gold-large-skin-top-semi-lacefront-long-cosplay-wig-clone.html
It's a great wig: nice and long, and the fibres feel very soft. It's also very thick (which actually made curling it a little difficult)

I had very little idea how to curl wigs, so I experimented with making rollers out of paper. That didn't work so well, mainly because I tried to curl from the bottom layer of wefts up, not from the top layer to the bottom.

Next I tried using a curling iron, which was more successful. I recommend using a curling iron that has a clip to help hold the hair while you curl it, because you may risk burning your fingers with a 'wand' style curling iron.

Curl from the top to the bottom, section by section. You can curl large sections, or take small pieces from each weft layer. This will give you a variety of curls, which will emulate Merida's messy hair.

The actual curling it quite simple. Take a section of hair, and wrap it round the curling iron (or use the clamp/clip a hold the hair in place, then turn the curler around and around). Keep it on low to medium heat. Hold it for a few seconds. 30 seconds is ideal. After 30 seconds, gently release the hair from the curling iron. Try and catch the hair so that it remains rolled up. Take a hair pin or bobby pin, and use it to pin the curl of hair to the top of the wig. Repeat this step over and over. 

You might find that the hair slips around when you are trying to curl it. You can spray some water on the strand, which sticks the fibres together, making it easier to curl the strand of hair. To keep the curls in place, lightly spray them with hair spray.

This is how the finished wig should look. The only thing I don't like about mine are the frizzy bits at the bottom of some the curls, caused by trying the separate the fibres from each other. I'm not sure if the curl would survive being being, so keep that in mind if you need to wash or dye the wig. Also note that curling will make the wig look shorter, because much of the length will be in a helix shape rather than straight. Try and buy a longer wig to stop it becoming too short.

The Making of Merida

My Merida dress is finished, so I thought I would share the process with you. I also recommend looking at Angela Clayton's website to see her guide on making the costume. She explains her process in great detail, and provides information on making Merida's cloak and hair.

Merida is easily the best female character (apart from Mulan and perhaps Yzma XD) that Disney has created in recent years. She's brave and tough, and her story doesn't end with her falling in love - instead, she matures, while retaining her free spirit. I think she's a great character, so I wanted to cosplay her.

I started by taking a Simplicity pattern (one of their Medieval patterns) and altering it to removing the princess seams and to improve the fit.

Once the fit was right, I cut out the dress pieces. There is 1 front piece, 2 back pieces, and 4 godets for the sides to add volume. A godet is a triangle of material that you add to increase width: the opposite of a dart.

Next step was to overlock all the edges and sew the main part of the dress together

I added eyelets to the back and cut the little V shape out of the front.

Sleeves! I think if I ever make a similar style dress, I'll do it differently. The green sleeves are one solid piece, then ruffled pieces of white cotton were sew on top. Next I added the green rectangles on top.

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This is what a finished sleeve looks like

Next step was to add the white material around the neck.

First I sewed in the white material at the V-shape.

Then a long white ruffle.

I make my ruffles by sewing a tube, turning it inside out, and ruffling it. That way, all raw edges are hidden.

The last step was the add lacing at the neck and back, and to sew the hem.

It looks really pretty, but it's too hot to wear it at the moment, so it will have to wait until winter.