Moonlight Justice

I am so excited for this costume, you have no idea! It has been my dream cosplay for so many years and this year at MegaCon I was able to finally live it!

This costume looks deceptively simple to make, but omg was it not! For the fuku I was super unlucky and wasn't able to get the Green Pepper pattern a lot of other people use so I had to use a different pattern which was awful. I ended up wasting so much fabric because the pattern was designed so poorly, so eventually I gave up after about 5 attempts and made my own pattern which worked perfectly the first time, yay! The roll sleeves and skirt were 2 of the more difficult pieces of the fuku, the sleeves alone took about 6 hours (I don't even know how). While the skirt was just a pain to try and pleat and shape correctly so that it sits at a V angle at the top and bottom. The bows for the costume were a nightmare and I never wish to make those again. They're strips of plastic sewn and glued into place with Velcro on the back of each so that I can easily remove them from my costume, which is necessary when putting the fuku on or taking it off. The boots, base gloves, hair feathers clips, and odango shields were all purchased, though I did replace the moons on the boots with ones made out of worbla. The rolls on the gloves I wish to remake as they were really rushed in order to get everything finished in time. The tiara is just some pieces of worbla painted gold. The choker I also made from worbla and the rest of the choker is various bits of plastic glued together. The brooch is 3D printed plastic that I ordered and had to assemble and paint and make and add the gems to. I decided to attach magnets onto the back of the brooch so I could use it on other costumes in the future. Now the wig! That thing was a serious labor of love, taking the longest out of everything else to make at 20-30 hours. I got the idea for the gravity defying curls while watching Crystal and noticing that all the characters hair really do just defy gravity and I thought it could look neat if my wig did that. I also had been dreading having to deal with those long, looong, pigtails of Usagi's, and keeping them smooth and tangle free was literally a nightmare of mine. So to avoid dealing with having to curl, and re-curl, and comb, and brush, and de-tangle, and wash, and smooth out the pigtail fibers I went with a solid pigtail design that requires virtually no maintenance and ended up looking rather neat. Without getting too into detail the way I made the pigtails was by combining a few tutorials I had looked up. I took 12 gauge wire and made a cage out of the wire, covered the wire structure in tape to make it a little more secure and sturdy. After the tape was all on and covered the pigtails entirely I cut up strips of felt close to my wig's colour and wrapped the felt around the wire and tape structure. I used 1.5-2 packages of Arda long wefts on each pigtail, cutting very small sections of wefts and wrapping them around the pigtails. The only down side to the design is the weight, I am still experimenting with the best way to keep the wig from sliding back as it usually stays put for an hour or 2 before it decides it won't stay in place any longer. The entire wig weighs 10+ lbs x_x but I really liked making the pigtails, not so much making the structure for them, but adding the wefts, despite the long hours, it was fun. I actually really want to do more things like this now but preferably on a smaller scale, hah hah!

Photo by: Arda Wigs