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Costume made and modeled by me
Photography by Stewart Townsend

Construction notes:
Since I became a fan of the game Dead or Alive and Lei Fang, I have wanted to make one of her regular Chinese dresses. When it came to deciding which color dress to choose, well, I have not seen the blue dress cosplayed personally, and thought that blue and gold would be a wonderful color combination.
Plus, I can not believe I had all the materials needed for this costume! All I had to get were the gold closures and bias tape for the trim.

I made the dress using a rich blue brocade and pale yellow bridal satin for the lining.
I created two Phoenix designs for this costume and they are painstakingly appliquéd on the front and back. With gold thread I satin stitched the outlines and all the feathers over the period of two days.
I also added hundreds of iridescent and gold sequins as well as rhinestones for glamor and depth.
The dress is fully lined and boned for structure, and was tailored to fit me like a glove. The high cut slits made me a little nervous at first but they really are necessary for those crouching poses lol.
The arm cuffs snap on and I already styled a Lei Fang wig for another version of her. I plan on sharing the wig between the costumes so the hair ties will remain gold to match!

*********** Yaya on Facebook [link] ***********
*********** Yaya on Twitter [link]

Uploading another super old costume (from 2002) to round out my DA gallery.

Yuna's Wedding Dress from Final Fantasy X!

I made this right after I made Lulu, from the same game. Definitely very into FF10 back then lol...

Truly, I thought this was a very elegant and beautiful wedding dress, and the wings and feathers especially called out to me, so I took on the project.
This costume was far more time-consuming and expensive than I had originally planned, mostly because I added details and original ements to give it more depth. The dress is fully lined, serged, topstitched, and has a swirl patterned silvery sheer layer over multiple panels, to break up the monotone mass of white bridal satin. The front panel has scattered rhinestones attached for extra glamor, and every feather used for the wings and trim (over 600) is individually clipped and shaped by me. I put over a hundred hours into this dress, making everything from scratch and not taking any shortcuts, not even with the bouquet. I wanted this costume to be an actual usable wedding dress. Because I was also entering this costume in the Katsucon 2002 Masquerade contest, I went one step further and built lighting into the dress and wings for stage presence. Brian helped me install rope lighting into the entire perimeter of the feather-trim, and I also attached fiber-optic strands into the wings so they would glow in different colors.

Photos by Kyle Johnsen

*********** Yaya on Facebook [link] ***********

I got to cosplay in Tokyo yesterday! There was a cosplay event at the Toshimaen Amusement Park and I participated in a new outfit I made - Faye Valentine, Cowbow Bebop.

I have wanted to cosplay Faye for a long time but waited until I could do it right and be in the right shape for it. Ended up, I did rush sewing this costume for the Japan trip, because a friend pointed out that Tokyo would be perfect for Faye photos, and it is a simple and small costume to transport. So yeah, with Megacon stress and Japan planning, I knocked this out in a day and styled/cut the wig, which was almost waist length, the morning of the shoot in the hotel room. Without a wig head. LOL

Of course we did NOT get to take city scape photos because the cosplay event was in a remote amusement park lol, but I had a huge amazing surprise waiting for me there so it more than made up for that.

The lovely Julia with me in the photo is Omi Gibson, my favorite Japanese Cosplayer. I have followed her work for many years and was lucky enough to meet and cosplay with her. We were supposed to meet earlier this week but the fates were against it. I am sooo happy that we managed to get together yesterday. She also completely surprised me by showing up in a Julia costume! She had asked what I was bringing but I did not know it was to coordinate with me!

It was raining for a few days this week and we got really lucky with the weather yesterday. While it was brisk and windy, the sun was out and the lighting was beautiful. We did a lot of photos with multiple photographer friends of Omis and I hope to be able to share some of them in the near future, too.

Thank you to Brian for this shot!


Other Deviations of this costume:

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The last time I tried to put the latex suit on, the zipper top broke *saaaad* and I just got it fixed (dude, it only cost $8!), so to celebrate, have some more Felicia Hardy action.

While on the way to my photoshoot with Ng Master at Dragoncon 2009, we ran into Chris Fields dressed as Spiderman and it seemed obvious to grab a few shots together. Thanks, Chris, for humoring me and sticking around for these.

Black Cat costume made and worn by me. Construction info on my site [link] or feel free to browse through my GA gallery for more Deviations with this costume.

Photos by Ng Master

*********** Yaya on Facebook [link] ***********

Thank you to FireflyFan on Flickr for this photo, taking during the Dawn Look-A-Like contest at Dragoncon 2009.

Here is my entry - "Birth of the Goddess". I was awarded Third Place!

For my full construction notes, click here: [link]

To abbreviate, I designed the costume based on Linsner's art style, and the theme. I wanted it to be white, to symbolize the purity of new birth. I made the costume from scratch and also the wings and the egg. Thank you again to the contest staff and everyone who helped me get around in this cumbersome costume.

Other Deviations of this costume:

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I just realize I never uploaded my other blue Felicia costume to DA.

I made this one before the pink hair Felicia, back in 2005. In the Darkstalkers games, Felicia has always been my favorite!

Photos by Consplayers.com
Costume made and modeled by me

*********** Yaya on Facebook [link] ***********
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I am uploading a few more photos of Lulu to for the Blue Print article by Myana. Please follow the link for a detailed interview on how I made this costume!
[link]

Photo by Kyle Johnsen

Note: I totally dig that you can read the word "Mother" on the gravestone XD

*********** Yaya on Facebook [link] ***********
*********** Yaya on Twitter [link]

I am such a huge Lodoss fan T_T.. why don't they make shows like that anymore?

This costume is actually NOT made by me. It was created by my friend Cat of sewinggoddess.com [link] as a commission for one of her customers. She asked me to pose in the costume for her portfolio.
The dress itself is made of silk and she painstakingly made and painted each piece that made up the neck collar. The whole costume was gorgeous and I felt honored to model in it.

The only things in the photo made by me were the plastic elf ears

Thank you to Maboroshi [link] for the photos!

Photo by Brian Boling
costume/wings/egg made by me
construction info: [link]


This shoot has been planned since Dragoncon, we were just looking for the chance to push the giant egg into the woods lol.
We took advantage of a beautiful warm day in late October and set up the egg prop in between these awesome ivy vine overgrown trees in the North GA mountains. Realizing again how immobile I am in this costume *headdesk*, and how many bugs were flying around us O_o;, we did a fairly quick photoshoot in under an hour. I put on the horns at the last minute because I felt like my head was so bare. They were just stock from my store laying around.
I am very excited about the ivy on the trees as it matched the egg's decoration wonderfully. Got my skirt dirty tromping around in the dirt but it's well worth it.

Other Deviations of this costume:

*********** Yaya on Facebook [link] ***********

Omi Gibson as Julia and me as Faye Valentine from Cowboy Bebop while we were cosplaying at the Toshimaen park on Saturday. I love this shot because the lighting is so nice and we look so in character!

First of all, I`ll just say that anyone looking for boobilicious Faye will not find her here. When I changed into the costume at the Toshimaen park and the adorable cross-playing changing room girl saw me, she immediately stopped me and let me know that I was wearing too little clothing. Especially the *breasts* had to go away lol. Naturally I had to come to Japan and cosplay in something too scandalous for the public *facepalm*. Thank Goodness they were able to compromise with me and let me walk around and take photos still. I just had to cover up with the red shirt and my long overcoat and flip my collar up so there was no more cleavage.

For an American con, I will re-style the costume to have more accurate T & A. lol

These images were taken by Brian Boling, however we had 5 other photographers shooting photos at the same time. Trying to pose for 5 cameras and not being able to communicate at all due to the language barrier was fun lol. Omi is such a fantastic and natural model that I just tried to play off of her poses and she did the same thing with me. The worst was not knowing which camera to look at lol, but we still managed to pull off some great shots I think.

What really blew my mind about Japanese cosplay is that most of the cosplayers were there to do private photoshoots of each other and many had tripods and used the self-timer to do photos. How they can get the angles right is beyond me. The non-cosplay folk are not fazed in the least by us and no one really took photos of another group. You just stuck with your own little crowd. That being said, I totally gawked at all these beautiful costumes and cosplayers all day. They were all gorgeous and perfectly made up!!!

Other Deviations of this costume: