Oh my. It’s been a busy couple of months. For Christmas last year, we bought the two children who live locally (and would be in the country) FanX tickets for April. FanX is Salt Lake City’s version of San Diego’s Comicon and it’s held twice yearly, once in April and again September. As all of our family members enjoy dressing up, this was also a great way to spend time with the kids. My husband in particular loves to make more challenging costumes which works for him because I do the sewing part of his outfits while he gets to fiddle around with the other, often cooler aspects. Not that I’m jealous at all…
Dave as Steampunk Green Lantern (he’s on the right)
The kids and Dave always seem to know exactly who they want to be as for these things while I, on the hand, have a more difficult time picking out characters I want to imitate. I don’t know why. I enjoy the superhero shows, fantasy programs and a limited number of anime. Still, I have a hard time choosing a someone; I wore a basic steampunk persona when Dave was Green Lantern a few years ago because it’s what was on hand. Sadly, this year was no different. I finally settled on the evil queen from Once Upon a Time but by the time I did, it was too late to make one of her more embellished looks so I stuck with a simpler rider’s outfit knowing I would have to figure out how to apply the makeup and fix my hair to define who I was (hair and makeup are not my strong suit).
Dave chose Scaramouche from the anime Samurai Jack a few months before the con, which was good because he was still working on his outfit right up to the day before we left for our Airbnb. I finished my outfit three days before.
Scaramouche the Merciless from Samurai Jack
If you’ve never made even simple costumes or cosplay items, let me tell you, they are time consuming. Dave’s Scaramouche outfit was insane with details and learning to manipulate materials he had had little or no prior experience working with. The end result was really cool but only lasted for a couple of hours on Saturday (the busiest day) as there were too many prop issues to continue wearing. I am so proud that he made it into a couple of videos taken, including Comay’s part 1 and part 2 on Youtube. My absolute favorite aspect of his costume was watching my 6’2” husband wearing 3” high lipstick red gogo boots…so fabulous. As for me, as much as I loved my outfit, after spending a couple of months pushing to finish sewing both of our ensembles…I was tired and ready to wear comfortable clothes.
Friday was the con’s slow day and as we had spent so much time on our Saturday paraphernalia we wore the King and Queen of Hearts outfits I made for my Wonderland Murder Mystery party last year. Much to our surprise, we were stopped for photos quite often, with my favorite was being snagged, along with other Wonderland denizens who happened by at that moment, by the animated version of the Queen of Hearts. Who knew costumes thrown together for a party would actually be popular?
Wonderland crew
All in all, we had a great time at FanX. April is the smaller of the two cons but it was fun family time and a good test arena for Dave’s Scaramouche cosplay. He plans on fixing / reworking what didn’t work this time so it will be better for the next Comicon type event we go to. That means I need to start figuring out who I want to be since I will only be making items for my own character….hmmmm…..
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