Morrigan Aensland: Sensual Succubus

Photo by Paul Cory Photography

I was first introduced to Morrigan maybe 5 or 6 years ago, while playing Marvel vs. Capcom 3.  I loved the moves that she had, and the fact that she could turn her wings into weapons.  I also later watched Darkstalkers, and still need to play the games.  Once I got into cosplay, I knew she’d be an awesome character to dress as, and a challenge because of her wings.  Besides her charm and deadly allure, she’s also strong and confident.  She’s not really a heroine, but she’s not entirely a villain.  I might call her chaotic neutral.  At any rate, she’s fun, and she was a big departure for me, at that point.

I had a brief moment of anxiety when I made up my mind to finally cosplay Morrigan.  Her body and mine aren’t exactly the same, aside from being pretty boobtacular, lol.  I wondered being the size that I was, if I would really be able to pull off her outfit.  Then one day, I got an idea to modify her leotard.  I sketched it out, and I loved it.  Instead of wearing her classic leotard, I would wear a dress.  I wanted to make sure that I stayed true to what she wore, but I also wanted something that I felt would flatter me, and this was the result!

The dress is made out of a suede cloth fabric that has a leathery look to it. It was really easy to work with, and I’ll have to remember it in the future if I ever do anything else like this.  I used Simplicity pattern 2400 and modified it to be a slinky, high-cut dress, similar to her leotard.  For extra lift in the chest area, I sewed a push-up bra into the top of the dress, and replaced the straps it came with, with clear ones.  I ordered feather trim from ebay, and some open gloves from Amazon.

A work-in-progress photo, circa 2014

The wings  came after that.  I did some hunting around online and found large sheets of craft foam, which was awesome.  I was pretty new to do cosplay at the time, so there were lots of materials I didn’t know about.  But I happened across that, and then found out the rolls could be bought at either Joann or Michaels, so I went out and bought a large roll of foam, and some smaller sheets for her head wings.  I’d found a tutorial online for how to make the head wings, but I ended up just kind of doing my own thing with them.  The head wings are made of 14 gauge wire that’s soldered to a metal headband.  The talons are made of sculpey, and there is vein detailing done with puff paint, on the back of both the head and back wings.  The frame for the back wings is made with 9 gauge wire.  When it came time to paint the wings, I was really inspired by some artwork I had come across of her, where she was in the sky and her wings appeared to have a purple and blue gradient look.  I really liked it so I tried to re-create it as the color-scheme for my wings, but the purple came out more pink-ish.  I still loved it though.  You can check out the WIP album for both sets of wings here.

I found purple tights at WeLoveColors, and made a bat stencil and  painted the tights myself.  That was really tricky!  I’ve since had to replace those tights with another pair that still needs to be painted.  I debuted Morrigan at Dragon Con in 2014, and about a month later, I did a photo shoot in her with Paul Cory Photography.  This was the first time I had truly gotten to see everything I had done, and I was incredibly happy!

Photo by Paul Cory Photography

I wore her to Animazement in 2015 as well, and did an impromptu shoot with my friend Kim, of Midday Enchantments Photography.  You can see the rest of the photos from both shoots on my Facebook page.

Photo by Midday Enchantments Photography

Currently, she’s “retired,” but not really.  I need to re-make the back wings.  But I am currently working on another version of Morrigan that I plan to debut in Spring 2017.  She’ll probably come out to play again someday, as I have really been wanting to do a night time shoot in her.  Until next time!!

Lunar Fairy: Moondust Wings

Welcome to my first entry!  For the last few weeks, I’ve been leisurely working on a set of wings for my first original cosplay, a lunar fairy.  I have a name for her, Yvana, and I’ve been trying to give her a little backstory, too.  I think that once I’ve got everything done and can look at it all, I might be inspired to come up with something. 🙂  I’ve always had a fascination with the moon and the stars, space, and wings, and flying.  Maybe because I’m a Gemini and it’s an air sign, I don’t know, lol.  One of my favorite designers to follow is Firefly Path, seeing their beautiful creations really had me itching to come up with a fairy of my own to make a costume for, so I did and I came up with a Lunar/Moon fairy.

I have another blog on Blogger where I started talking about this costume, you can take a look at it to see some of the other work I’ve been putting into this costume and others, here.  I wanted to give WordPress a try after seeing how nice my friend Moonkitty’s blog looked and thinking I might want to give mine a face lift. If you want to follow her adventures, you can find her right here.   She’s seriously awesome!  Anyway, for the past two weeks I really got to work on these wings, and they are pretty much done, save a couple of things I need to add to them.  I have a WIP album of photos as well as a short video of their epic sparkly-ness on my Facebook page.

And without further adieu, here they are!

I had a lot of fun making these and I learned a lot, too!  The wings are made of iridescent cellophane and organza, which I have never used  a fabric in making wings before.  I had some help from my friend Tj with covering the first half of the wings, as I needed them to be as smooth as possible.  Thanks to him I’ve got a more efficient way to do this stage in the future.  In certain light, the green in the cellophane really comes out, and they almost look like the Aurora Borealis.  I designed these myself, and having them go from concept to reality is honestly really rewarding. ^.^  They are hand painted, glittered, and bedazzled.  My craft room STILL smells like E6000, and I have no doubt that I’ve been tracking glitter all over the house. 😛

Depending on how you look at the wings, they may be falling stars, or shooting stars.  I was envisioning the infinite number of stars in space, and trails of stardust left behind them as they travel through space.  Though they are pictured here stuck down the back of a corset, I intend to add straps.  I usually wear them down the back of a corset but the costume I’m doing will call for straps this time around.  The main frame (ha ha) is made of 12 gauge wire.  I usually use 9, but because of the scalloping, I needed something easier to manipulate.  Overall, I’m extremely happy to have these (mostly) done, and I can’t wait to have the entire costume completed and do a shoot!!  Now it’s on to the fun task of figuring out where on Earth I’m going to put them until then. XD  Until next time! ❤